Originally Posted by jurupamae

No Waffle it doesn't. It has to do with people using the lottery to gain gold without actually purchasing a ticket.

Aha! Thats...O___O Freaky! I boght like 9 tickets. x3 Why didn't I get the glitch?? Lulz. Nah Kidding.

So people were getting tickets without even purchasing them.. is that the glitch that others were manipulating??

No they weren't getting any tickets at all. Just generating themselves a nice lump sum of gold.

That's such a scary thought that people who were outstanding Menewsha users would do such a thing. I mean, you had to know that you were going to get caught sooner or later. :/ It's rather upsetting.

Can I just say that I disagree with the resulting decisions of these frequent exploitations? Because I do. The new rule regarding members that have somehow exploited the site not being allowed to come back ever is I think a selfish decision, and one that again I don't feel was handled properly.

These exploits are the results of loopholes that have been left in the system that were not fixed earlier, thus they are the staff's fault for continually letting it occur. Now that the new forum software is coming in and features will be more easily accessible for change by the administration of this site, the decision that should have been made was to fix ALL POSSIBLE EXPLOITS currently on the site before making decisions that effect a mass group of people.

In regards to the decision itself, that's bad form I have to say. I mean, if you're making it so that any member who commits these types of exploits ("Going forward, if you are banned for cheating, offsiting, and breaking the rules repeatedly you will not be welcome back. Any account that you create will be banned immediately.") then all prior members that have been let back onto the site should be banned to. That's what should stand true to the entire site. Not only that, but if these are the cases with users breaking the rules and not being allowed to return, why not just do an IP ban on that particular user? I mean you might as well since you're not giving them a chance to come back anyways and it would probably just save you the poor trouble of doing some kind of work that you CLEARLY don't want to do anyways.

The administration need to stop being so self-rightious in thinking that the decisions they're making are what's best for the site because they PERSONALLY think that its what should be done. Oh, and speaking of personal decisions, since when is it allowed for the administration to take action into their own hands and handle them based on their personal preferences or whatever. You know what I'm talking about and it won't be brought up but "if you have any concerns you're more than capable of sending me a message".

These decisions are stupid, and I particularly don't support them. Fix the errors and let the users come back. What harm can they do when there's nothing to exploit anyways. You know my other option.

Seiki you are more than welcome to your opinion. This particular decision has nothing to do with my own personal agenda since I have none other than doing the best I can to make the majority of the users happy while enforcing the rules to the best of my ability.

As you are well aware, IP bans seldom, if ever work, considering that in many places there are a multitude of users that use a specific IP. Why should we punish innocent users who have no choice but to use the internet service that is being offered to them because one person who uses that same connection chose to cheat the system? And let's not forget the use of proxies. Of course we can ban them all but don't you think that we as a site would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we chose to do that since there are kids who use proxies to access the site while in school or at places with limited accessibility? Do you feel that those kids should be punished because of a handful of people who chose to cheat the system?

And what work exactly is it that I don't want to do Seiki? I'm not particularly clear on that.

I will not speak to why decisions are made at a higher level than myself because I do not wish to put words in anyone's mouth. If the Admins choose to address your concerns that is up to them.

Well since you bring up the subject of proxies, what is to stop a banned user from using a proxy to hide from the staff? Any user can come back with a proxy and the staff would never know if they played their cards right. It's not hard to act like another person you know.

I guess the whole IP ban is a lame idea because some people share IPs (which I forgot about). SO no, those who have no choice but to use that IP shouldn't have to go through that trouble. Ignore that part of my first post then.

I don't need to speak with the admin. I don't have any care to talk to them, I'm just stating that their personal agendas effect their decisions on this site where they shouldn't and that because of that poor decisions are made.

And lets not forget variable IPs. Most IPs these days are variable as there's not enough IP addresses to serve the ammount of internet user, so when a router restarts it is granted a new IP address (unless you have paid extra for a fixed IP) so an IP ban, while blocking that IP address is easy to get around and blocks whoever is the next person to get that IP.

//Geek

And I fully support banning their asses. If they knew they were exploiting a glitch, why should they be allowed to remain? Is that the message Menewsha wants to send out? "Oh you can exploit us, and just come back" I don't think so. Get tough on them, it'll discourage others. And they MUST have known they were doing wrong in the first place.

Well banning yes, I understand that. But I don't understand why they wouldn't be allowed back onto the site. Generally speaking, the exploiters do like the site, they're just greedy.

I know Seiki. People come on this site every single day on proxies and pretend to be something they aren't. And you are correct in that there isn't anything stopping them because they do it all the time. Going forward I do hope that we can change this, as things like this are not fair to the users that enjoy the site without having to resort to cheating to do it.

I also think though, I will agree that staff has a responsibility to clean up glitches and errors on the site, but I also think that a community as a whole has a responsibility to speak up if something is wrong or if they find a glitch or an error. In this case, no one said anything and there was a handful of people who knew this existed. I can't be everywhere all the time (and I'm aware that there are other staff on this site, besides myself) and I may not find things right away.

I am also aware that people have spoken up about things that they have found and the site had gone months without it being fixed. I don't need to rehash the reasons why this occurred because you and I both know the answer to that.

I'm sure you know what Diffusion of Responsibility is. If a user finds a glitch on the site, if they personally haven't seen it reported, they're usually sure that other users do know about it so they don't bother reporting these glitches in hopes that someone else will do it. I think that in this case, the majority of the people who knew how to exploit the lottery were probably banned for doing it. I only just found out about how to do it after this most recent attack on the system and figured that it had been reported at this point.

Also, I had personally assumed you knew what was happening when Rage took the responsibility of telling you about where the leeks in the system were months ago. Since you two had such a big incident with each other, how come you didn't figure out what she was doing when she did it twice before?

The staff need to scan the site more often though. Test more. Check for problems. I'm very aware that you're not the only staff member, but as changes are made to the site, you need to make sure that they're checked. Have the staff test everything fully. You can't expect the users to tell you what's wrong with the site 24/7. Some things you'll have to find on your own.

I'm not blaming the staff for why these problems exist. I'm blaming them of continually acting on a problem before thinking things through 100%. Did the staff think about proxies when making the decision to keep all offenders off the site? Did they think about other forms of punishment? There are other options that SHOULD be taken that the staff are no longer taking because of irrational thinking and I'm personally tired of these constant attacks that the staff have been making regarding rule changes, site features, and official actions.

Yes I know what Diffusion of Responsibility is. I would argue in this particular instance, that no, this was not the case. This particular group of users kept this knowledge to themselves and used it for personal gain. Telling a staff member meant that their gold gaining ability would be removed.

Rage and I didn't speak about the loop holes in the system as I was not the person who could readily fix them. We had nice chats as the massive gold was being given out but she never said to me specifically what it was that was being done and how she was able to do it.

I agree that staff cannot rely on the users 24/7 to tell us of problems and that yes, we do need to be proactive in finding these kinds of issues. We have been testing the new software for a while now, bringing staff in slowly and soon bringing a beta group of users in to the fray. Even that is not going to be 100% foolproof. Someone might do something that I or someone else would not even have thought of doing. I am enjoying this test forum we have now and I admit it is something that we have needed for a very long time.

And I am glad to hear that you disagree. Lately people are so afraid that if they disagree something bad is going to happen and you know as well as I do I will listen and discuss with you and try to see both sides of any given argument. I'm not perfect and I do make mistakes but I can live with being human.

Arg. This is just an announcement, not a debate topic!!!

Princess Emeraude, you're correct that this isn't a debate, but why not bring it up here where there is room for me to discuss it. These threads are not all about users just saying "Ok, thanks for the info". I suppose I could have made a new thread entirely, but that's not really necessary.

Juru, like I said in my post on my theory of the diffusion of responsibility, I assumed that the people who knew were the ones exploiting it. I wasn't saying that diffusion of responsibility was the case in the exploits, just that it happens.

To the last part of your post though, users have every right to feel afraid I think. Lee has given them reason not to stand out and openly state their opinions like in the past. The situation was stupid and poorly handled and you already know my opinion on it. But users now have the mindset that saying anything that conflicts with the views of the admin can get them into trouble. I guess I won't go into detail here in this thread as it's not really appropriate but I'll discuss it with you in PM/MSN if you wish to talk further about what I have to say.

I guess with that I'm just going to restate that I'm against the decision and that I wish the admin would take ALL possible options into account before making final decisions that aren't feasible for a site like this.

Edit, by the way. When I try to talk to you on MSN and you're clearly online please stop ignoring me. Same with PMs. If you don't have anything really to say to me on what I want to talk about, just let me know and I'll drop it but I hate that you continually ignore my messages when I send them to you and I never get even an "I don't want to talk about this" reply.

I think you'll find Em, that the announcements are left open so users can give feedback in them rather than making another thread to discuss the announcement.

You're right that this probably isn't the best thread to discuss this but I will tell you this...

In going back and doing some research I have found that users have been afraid of the ban hammer for speaking their minds all the way back to as early as April of last year; shortly after you and I both started as users on this site. It isn't something new. I think that it is just that it has received more attention as of late, but that fear has always been there.

Edit: Seiki, you haven't messaged me in quite a while (and no, I'm not online right now) so I'm sorry if I missed something that you've sent but I haven't seen anything from you. PMs yea.. I suck and I am trying to get better. It's not just you either. :)

Originally Posted by Jayms_fallen_angel

I think you'll find Em, that the announcements are left open so users can give feedback in them rather than making another thread to discuss the announcement.

Ahh! You have your point!
Jurupamae:
O__O For speaking their minds? Ahh! I'm not going to speak my mind anymore! I'm a smartarse. x3

Originally Posted by jurupamae

You're right that this probably isn't the best thread to discuss this but I will tell you this...

In going back and doing some research I have found that users have been afraid of the ban hammer for speaking their minds all the way back to as early as April of last year; shortly after you and I both started as users on this site. It isn't something new. I think that it is just that it has received more attention as of late, but that fear has always been there.

Edit: Seiki, you haven't messaged me in quite a while (and no, I'm not online right now) so I'm sorry if I missed something that you've sent but I haven't seen anything from you. PMs yea.. I suck and I am trying to get better. It's not just you either. :)

Yeah, it's been there quite a while.

And it was just in reference to prior experiences with you. I know you do it to a lot of people too so no worries. I just figured I would bring it up so you see it now in case I ever need to talk to you later about anything or whatever.

Edit, one final thought.

The staff members who sat there and discussed the decision that you've presented to the site should sit down again and rethink this decision. Constantly telling people that they're not allowed back to your site because they did something wrong isn't helping your userbase feel welcomed on the site. That and it's not fair for you to keep people off of a site because they do something wrong, even if it is intentional.

Ah, that's just whacked. :(

I've only bought 1-2 tickets in each of the last couple of lottery's sessions and never win, but I wasn't mind because I thought they're random and the winner win their gold fairly. If among the winners, there are cheaters, I feel bad to people who loyally bought lottery tickets every month and those who bought a lot but never win. x____x


Exploiting gold from the lottery is like exploiting the gold from other fellow users and friends.

I do wonder though, how they could do that, manipulating the result to win and give them gold, when lottery is supposed to be random. o_O

That's not what they were doing Witch. They were creating gold through an error in the game. I believe that all of the winners of the lottery were legitimate winners.

Thanks for fixing the exploit.

Hmm, I hope no one I know personally who's an active member here exploited the lottery.

Seiki ||
I agree with you about the new rule that banned users are no longer welcome back on this site -- that is very harsh; however, while it is partly the staff's fault for letting such an obvious exploit slip through, it would have been very apparent to anyone who used this loophole that it was illegal on the site. I think they deserve the ban because they knew what they were doing, knew it was something they were not supposed to, but did it anyways. I support the staff's actions in that regard.

I'm not saying they didn't deserve to be banned Caroline. Just that it's unfair that they wouldn't be allowed back when plenty of users have been allowed back after exploiting glitches or off-siting or continuous rule breaking. They've always just been denied certain things when they come back to the site and are watched more closely than other users are.

Why should they not be allowed back to the site now when they would have been a month ago, or even just days ago before this happened? Do you understand where I'm coming from? They did something wrong yes. They've been punished by being banned. The glitch has been fixed. Let them come back. They can't continue doing what they were doing before so I don't see why it should be such a big deal to keep them off of the site now.

Omgawsh, that is crazy. I never won, but I tried a few times.

Oh, okay. That's the part I agreed with then. :P The old system of allowing off-siters and other rule breakers to come back with a new account but denying them certain privileges seemed to work well. Losing all their items and having their reputation tarnished is enough to deter most people from repeating their illegal actions.

Yeah. I wasn't saying that they didn't deserve to be banned, just that keeping them off the site for their actions is unfair especially now that they've been punished and since the problem has been fixed anyways.