Un-Rank Obvious Cheaters on Top 5

[N_Faker]

(1) Is the punishment for cheating not harsh enough and should it be increased?

Multiple accounts
Standard penalty: For secondary accounts: ban forever. For main account: ELO reseted to 1500 / ELO penalty for all games.

Details: The report must contains the usernames of all intimidated accounts, and the reason why the report author think that multiple accounts are used. It is very difficult to find out if different accounts corresponds to different person. For example: BGA accepts that multiple players plays from the same IP address, to allow people from the same family to play at the same table. In addition, some players are using multiple accounts, but these accounts are not playing together (which is acceptable). Strong tools are available for moderators to detect multiple accounts that are used the wrong way.

To detect multiple accounts, you should focus on ELO boosting, which is the reason of the multiple accounts 99% of the time. You should look at player game history, for a given game, and look at frequent opponents with a very good / perfect win rate.


Kingmaking
Standard penalty: (no penalty)

Details: As 99% of kingmaking reports are not accurate enough, we are not ignoring Kingmaking report (and now there are closed automatically). Instead, we've add a "Kingmaking / team play" red thumb category, and we must incite players to use this (Red Thumbs) instead of report these players to moderation.

The removal of Kingmaking as a report category wasn't done without good reason. Not only do most all cheating reports provide nearly no details, kingmaking reports were near solely filed for unsubstantiatable claims.

Redefining the multiaccount category to also include other forms of systematic cheating would probably help.

[ojomojojojojo]

N_Faker, I really can't understand your stance here. It seems very back and forth. Here you have shown that there is a policy in place where they probably amended it too. You also added on that occurrence of kingmaking/multiaccount often lacks details.

What details are really needed? In the example I provided. There is a player who elo boosted himself all the way onto BGA top 5. And I provides 2 games where someone is clearly boosting, same IP for all the losing accounts, same instance where 1 player is intentionally allowing the other to win. Is there more evidence needed than this? I encountered a player who also did this in P.I and another player who used 2 accounts playing in werewolf arena mode to climb rank? I'm just wondering now what other evidence they needed.

I also think BGA maybe bga admin may want to handle such cases themselves because it seems there may be a disconnect between what moderators think is the best solution and or may not know exactly how to go about policing these types of things. To simply disregard it and say not enough, just doesn't seem like a great resolve.

[N_Faker]

What details are really needed?

A player on there has all opponents same IP address and in many games they always make a kingmaking move at the last move to let that player win.

Obvious kingmaking here. Player has the tiles to win on 5 different occasions but intentionally waiting for main account to draw the right number

Here is a coloretto game. Have you ever seen such a perfect game of Coloretto where your opponents are just giving you every card you want? Well here is one

These are the details you provided for your examples in the opening post. The underscored portion is useful, it tells the moderator what they should look out for. The rest are mere subjective claims. The report should preferably include the move numbers too, when applicable.

You may say that it is obvious, that the moderator only has to look at the replay, that they will "get it" then. Nearly every single cheating report claims the same, without nary a hint of why they think so. Keep in mind that BGA currently hosts 288 games, all with different rules, and that replays last several minutes.

N_Faker, I really can't understand your stance here. It seems very back and forth.

I don't know why you think that, my stance has remained unchanged. Though I believe that you tend to overinterpret things.

[admitted]

These are the details you provided for your examples in the opening post. The underscored portion is useful, it tells the moderator what they should look out for. The rest are mere subjective claims. The report should preferably include the move numbers too, when applicable.

You hit it on the nail, perhaps we need to change the way we report this player. That's probably why my reports (possibly most others) went ignored as not guilty.

[N_Faker]

While the difficulty in determining cheating may have resulted in moderation inaction. It does not explain why '0min concede' and 'guilty' verdict users were left effectively unmoderated.

[lincoln9818]

I agree that further actions need to be made on this issue. That player has infringed in severe kingmaking moves for very long time already, due to the inactivity of BGA arbitrators, short-term muting or reduction on reputations in fact impose zero deterrent effects to him.

https://ibb.co/19m8f3B

In fact I have tried reported him for 10 times since last October, as you can see, most of the cases I opened through the report button are not really successful. Even some of them are sentenced guilty, just a verbal warning is granted which is too little punishment to these players.

I believe there are different arbitrators on the site such that the parameter of whether or not to sentence a punishment is different. Once, an arbitrator mention to me that those obvious moves of kingmaking (for example, intentionally losing when leading) are not infringing the BGA regulations. It has severely created a disincentive for me and other players to continue learning and improving our games as we won't be able to take over the cheaters when nobody is stopping them.

https://ibb.co/MR8s38S

[lincoln9818]

I wish there wasn't so much debate on this public name-calling thing, and more debate on what should be ACTIVELY done against cheating.

Totally. I think this thread is a bit going off-track here.

I think there are two main questions to ask with regards to cheating on bga.

(1) Is the punishment for cheating not harsh enough and should it be increased?
(2) Do reports of cheating go ignored? Why? Is it a fault of the moderator team or a fault of not having provided enough info/proof?

If we have a clear answer to these 2 questions, then I think we should be able to figure out a solution, or at least be put on the right track.

This is not the first time a discussion of cheating has occurred. If you want a fruitful outcome for this thread then you should, IMHO, focus on this topic. If you keep arguing about name-calling then nothing would happen, and it would be a total waste of time.

And I agree, the reason why a post is made here, is because the current moderator team does not respond enough to the complaints. (Refer to my post above for the screencap). I believe such cases do not only happen on the player mentioned by ojomojojojo, but also some others in specific games. Therefore, I think we should demand not only to get further actions on the person himself but also a better system to avoid or at least minimize the cheating behaviors.

[ViolentSilence]

I agree that further actions need to be made on this issue. That player has infringed in severe kingmaking moves for very long time already, due to the inactivity of BGA arbitrators, short-term muting or reduction on reputations in fact impose zero deterrent effects to him.

https://ibb.co/19m8f3B

In fact I have tried reported him for 10 times since last October, as you can see, most of the cases I opened through the report button are not really successful. Even some of them are sentenced guilty, just a verbal warning is granted which is too little punishment to these players.

I believe there are different arbitrators on the site such that the parameter of whether or not to sentence a punishment is different. Once, an arbitrator mention to me that those obvious moves of kingmaking (for example, intentionally losing when leading) are not infringing the BGA regulations. It has severely created a disincentive for me and other players to continue learning and improving our games as we won't be able to take over the cheaters when nobody is stopping them.

https://ibb.co/MR8s38S

I wonder if this is part of why they've added the Community Manager role, to have someone focused on this sort of area. I also wouldn't be surprised if there are too few moderators given the speed at which the site traffic grew with the pandemic, so it may be that dealing with detailed issues like this will take a little while yet. It'll need the mods to be trained to be consistent, and to some degree better reporting tools, and better guidelines for the users

[N_Faker]

Once, an arbitrator mention to me that those obvious moves of kingmaking (for example, intentionally losing when leading) are not infringing the BGA regulations.

Can you post a direct quote?

If such actions don't fall within the current moderationpolicy anymore, then it does explain why no substantial actions were taken.

[lincoln9818]

I agree that further actions need to be made on this issue. That player has infringed in severe kingmaking moves for very long time already, due to the inactivity of BGA arbitrators, short-term muting or reduction on reputations in fact impose zero deterrent effects to him.

https://ibb.co/19m8f3B

In fact I have tried reported him for 10 times since last October, as you can see, most of the cases I opened through the report button are not really successful. Even some of them are sentenced guilty, just a verbal warning is granted which is too little punishment to these players.

I believe there are different arbitrators on the site such that the parameter of whether or not to sentence a punishment is different. Once, an arbitrator mention to me that those obvious moves of kingmaking (for example, intentionally losing when leading) are not infringing the BGA regulations. It has severely created a disincentive for me and other players to continue learning and improving our games as we won't be able to take over the cheaters when nobody is stopping them.

https://ibb.co/MR8s38S

I wonder if this is part of why they've added the Community Manager role, to have someone focused on this sort of area. I also wouldn't be surprised if there are too few moderators given the speed at which the site traffic grew with the pandemic, so it may be that dealing with detailed issues like this will take a little while yet. It'll need the mods to be trained to be consistent, and to some degree better reporting tools, and better guidelines for the users

I just don't understand why such an obvious kingmaking behavior is still neglected by the moderators and they do nothing to respond to it, or at least, the verbal warnings are not deterrent enough there. Let me post some more evidences.

1. The proof for same IP Addresses

https://ibb.co/b73r8tp
https://ibb.co/J31LC9H

In fact, through checking the opponent lists of the player, we find far more than these players who have the same IP address as him. However we only post this because of the limited size of a table. The victory rate of Katalinski towards these players are abnormally high like 96% or more. The explanation there is that they are same member of a boardgame cafe but I do not see it a legitimate reason for owing so many accounts with same IP address.

2. Irresponsiveness of moderators

https://ibb.co/GMvTrBn
https://ibb.co/xYstzMx
https://ibb.co/qNhsfdw

Apart from the one I post above, my friends have also tried to report and got some disappointing replies. If they have listened to the advice of starting practice mode, they would not have done those kingmaking moves as many times his opponents intentionally lose even though they are leading. At the same time, red thumb the player is useless because he never plays with outsiders, it cannot stop them from kingmaking for XPs. Even though the existence of arena mode solved a bit for this issue, he still invaded into most games and occupied top rankings at it which made other players hard to move up as not everyone is kingmaking as him.

Once I even got threatened by him after his karma value got deducted, as shown in the third screencap, which is the reason why that time they blocked him most. But still, they promise to ban this account if he infringed again but it is not the case now. And the recent feedback I got was posted above, mentioning that they are not kingmaking as they are just friends -> do that mean if I find a group of friends to play with me we can do all what we want to rush for rankings?

3. Some more examples on kingmaking moves

Ojomojojojo has shown examples on game Lucky Numbers and Stir Fry Eighteen and Coloretto, Let me explain a 4th game --- Bubble Pop.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=152403541

41th move: Serren did not use his red bubble ability to interrupt Katalinski

74th move: Serren did not not stop yellow bursting there which created a good chance for Katalinski to remove his excess bubbles to prevent flooding

102th Move: Serren got both red and purple ability, which can easily harm Katalinski for wins, however he does not use it at all

155th Move: He not only did not interrupt Katalinski, instead, he uses the ability to help kata finish purple burst

180th Move: Serren did not use blue ability to drop black bubbles

My conclusion is that, if admins really think as they are friends such that no punishments should be imposed, at least disable his elo and XP as they mentioned in the comments for reports --- use practice mode for the boardgame cafe trainings. I have posted many games in reports already but I never got a positive feedback. That's why I am sharing these evidence here.