Don't Cheat

Good Morning everyone! (At least for me) I hope everyone who reads this is doing well, but I wish I had better reasons for making an open suggestion, conversation, and post. Sadly however, it has been a trying couple day, and a drama filled hell of a time. So, I have decided to make a public post to address much of what has been taken to admins, and moderators, personally. Note, this is going to be a long post, and as much as I would love to say it is from the perspective of a member, or admin, or something else. That is not true for much of this post I will be donning my staff hat, for some of it I will be talking as a member, but for most of it I will be talking as a human, and a person, with feelings, thoughts, ideas, and expectations. Something I hate to say many people forget staff are.

Anyways, let’s get started. If you are reading this post, odds are you already know, or have some inkling into what is going on within the site. Judging by the large number of messages that have been sent to the admins and moderators it is almost as if everyone on site already knows, but just in case you don’t I will go ahead and start from the beginning.

The staff were unbelievably disappointed to discover in the most recent polls that a number of members on the site were using the system to cheat, and more importantly to influence the forum and public magazine. Honestly, though we suspected it might be the case (which is why we were watching), we were disappointed to learn our suspicions were confirmed in a number of cases. Suffice to say, before we ever started the votes the admin team agreed cheating is not acceptable in any form, and everyone caught would be given a warning. Which goes into the next section I want to talk about.

That being said, let me make it clear everyone caught cheating was given a WARNING. Which was the ONLY result of cheating. No one was banned for cheating. Period. Since it is already public knowledge, as it seems, people have discovered that a well-liked member on site was banned. This is in fact true, but that is the only bit of truth that we have discovered. The reason for their ban was because their number of warnings AFTER cheating hit the CoC guidelines requirement for a temporary ban, again NOT because they were cheating. The following fallout from that ban, while expected somewhat, was shocking to say the least.

The Messages we have gotten show that a number of new members of site were contacted in hope of getting them to leave, AND a number of veteran members were messaged being told the person in question was being banned for cheating and they felt that this was not fair. So, we have decided to clear the air for everyone. The Ban in question was TEMPORARY, and again came from the number of warnings, not the action in the most recent warning.

The Misinformation being shared is ridiculous, whether it is intentional or accidental that is the number one thing that I am hoping anyone who reads this understands. Note, although I can not go into detail without sharing admin information, we know those which accounts cheated without a shadow of a doubt. To share some of that information we are able to see the votes they made, the IP of their recent login, and the changes in their voting numbers. For EVERYONE that was caught cheating we noticed these numbers increase in correlation to their recent login, and the increase in vote count. Meaning, we can confirm that these players have made a vote on their characters at the times in question. Now, I will admit that does not count in the fact that someone could have been hacked, or that they do not remember making a vote. HOWEVER, that does not mean we can accept that as fact or proof, we have to follow the data and apply the same standards to EVERYONE on site unless proof comes to show the opposite is the case.

For most of the members messaged about cheating, we got no response or an acceptance and promise that it would not happen again after their warning. If they wish to share that info below, that is up to them, however warnings on site are of a personal nature, and as far as Admins are concerned should not be shared so that is all I have to say about that.

Now that that is done and said, and hopefully clear though please PM an admin if there are still issues it is time for the next subject I wish to cover. Why? Why do all of this. It is just a magazine poll on a RP site. I completely agree, when taking ONLY that info in mind. So, I will tell you all some new info. Some of you might remember a suggestion that was made some time ago asking about on-site contests and polls. This suggestion requested that some contests allow for the player base to vote for the winner. While that suggestion got various responses, many of which agreed, and many of which did not I actually liked the idea. *Spoiler Alert*: we have a contest coming up that might or might not have had a player vote. However, with the rewards that are at stake for contests we HAD to make sure the system was safe and that the suggestion was correct and people would be honest. Sadly, that was not the case and since the stakes for an on-site magazine were far less than what would come from a contest, we can ONLY assume that the number of players who cheated would have been worse for the contest. As such, we cracked down on cheating and have decided all votes will be public until further notice.
So, this is why we are looking, and why things were done in such a way. I hate that it has to be the case, but surely it makes sense why we have to be careful as staff.

Now, I am going to take off my staff hat and talk as a person. I personally am saddened, and disheartened by what was said about me by someone I considered to be a friend. Someone who knows quite a bit about me, and then went to members threatening to ‘spill the tea’. This betrayal honestly hurt me because all we had done was uphold the same rules to ALL members on site. Even those we have considered to be close to. Now, while I can understand why some can feel the ban was unfair I personally, having banned quite a few members on site, can say it is surprising how many people take personal feelings into account when upholding rules. While we have been accused of playing favorites in the past, I feel we always try to uphold the same standard to all members, and had we let the person in question off with just a warning we would be doing the very thing we are being accused of. Which as a person is unacceptable?

As a player, I would feel unbelievably cheated with the info that has come to light. The first vote was tied purely because of the cheat which caused a second vote. Meaning, the players given a chance to be featured were all cheated from what they worked for. In addition to that, the second vote was manipulated again by this cheating. Perhaps it is just me, but as a player who has never been featured, I would be quite saddened to learn that my chance was lessened and harmed by cheating, and I think the public vote made it apparent how much influence cheating had on the outcome.

I hope this has helped to clarify some of what is going on. I hate that it has to happen, and that I felt necessary to open a suggestion in such a way but I felt it was needed to clear the air.

Hey guys so yeah I'm going to tack onto this. Not going to touch of the cheating or the rule breaking because I feel like Markus covered it. But I will say this;

I am really tired of being demonized.

Like when I joined this forum, I was a scared newbie like most of you. I had no idea what to do, and I struggled to get to the level of understanding that I have now. And I'm not going to bullshit you, members on this forum abused me. I was mini-modded, harrassed and insulted. I was manipulated into situations that made me uncomfortable and I let people get away with it because I thought I HAD to. I had no idea that had I gone to staff at the time, it probably would have been dealt with.

This is why when I became staff, I made the decision to do my best to stop this happening. I can honestly say with all my heart that I try to be friendly to all of you, and I consider the MAJORITY of you good friends, I open my heart to you guys and hope that in time you will do it back. Once person in particular, like Markus, was my close friend. A person I trusted deeply, and would never imagine I would be giving a warning to. But as soon as I became staff, our relationship changed. I've seen the things they've said about me and honestly it's kind of soul-crushing. To think all those hours you wasted on these people were lies and that as soon as you disagreed with them, they would go around and try to turn people against you.

At the end of the day I am a human, with feelings and my own personal struggles. I suffer with depression and anxiety, which is why I'm on this forum. Because it provides me with an escape from such feelings and surrounds me with people I love who help me feel better. Nothing brightens my day more than bantering with you all in main chat, or goofing of in voice chat. And then I have those hard days, when I hate my life and feel like I want it to end. Only to have to come here and get attacked for 'doing my jobs', banning trolls or giving warnings for rule-breaks only to see others being messaged about how unfair I am. When in actuality I'm a lot more lenient than you all realise, so often I've seen people hate on me and wanted to come at you like a shit ton of bricks. But I don't. Because I'm an admin, so I put my feelings of anger aside and try to be rational.

I'm not going to lie, some of you have legit sent me into floods of tears over this shit. And it isn't fair, I'm so tired of letting myself be treated this way because of other people's manipulation. Because they decide off their own bat that they don't like me and they want others to hate me to. Messaging newbies and telling them how horrible I am, when honestly they should have the right to decide for themselves. You can hate me if you want, if you and I have had a fall out that you can't recover from, that's fine. I understand. But please, just let others decide for themselves. If they choose to hate me too, cool, that's fine. But manipulating others to hate me and the other staff team isn't fair. I may be biased but not including myself in this, I honestly I feel like we have the kindest, and friendliest staff team I've seen since I've been here. And honestly we're have always been super open to feedback, we always say if you have a concern come to us in dms and we'll do our best to help you.

We legit work our asses off to make you guys happy, slaving away over rule updates, iotms, ioty, events and other things to try and ensure you have a good time. So to go around telling people that we're terrible? I just don't think that's fair. We legit sit in vc waiting to see how you guys react to everything we release, geniunely hoping that you like it. So if you wanna sit their and think we're demons, and that everything we've said here is bullshit. Fine. I just want you to know that we're human and you're actions/comments affect us more than you realise.

This being said, I don't want this thread to be entirely negative. So to everyone who doesn't treat us this way. I want to thank you, thank you for making all of these difficulties and hard work worth it. It's you guys, that keep me here, grading your crazy magics (insert doggokek) and working my butt off in hope to make this a fun rp for all of you.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. And please don't take this as an oppurtunity to attack, we're just trying to clear the air so we can all move forward.

Much Love,
Nessa

From my understanding, this is an open discussion, so I'm gonna toss in my two cents and then yeet.

This is honestly one of the most ridiculous incidents I have ever seen since I've been here on FTRP—and I have been here for a very long time. If you couldn't tell already, I'm not as personally attached to the situation or its circumstances like our administrators are, but I also don't have to deal with the absolutely exaggerated, disproportionate amount of backlash and drama they have to solve because of it either, so what's following are completely my own opinions.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened that had resulted in similar backlash, but it is definitely the first time it has happened over something as incredibly trivial as this. Staff teams from the past and even now have been antagonized, vilified, or even as far as demonized for simply doing their jobs. Although this likely will not change, as having any setting with people with any amount of authority over it is just a breeding ground for conflict no matter the circumstances, but what does change is how the staff treats and handles it. FTRP's current staff team is one of the best I have seen, and FTRP has never seen this little amount of drama and toxicity in a long time. I have had the pleasure of meeting such hardworking people and it's absolutely absurd to hear that people have been misinforming others on things that honestly have nothing to do with them.

But again, I'd like to emphasize how absolutely, terribly, incredibly trivial this entire situation really is. I genuinely think we are bound to have cheaters in some shape, form, or fashion in any contest that has to do with popularity... or really just contests in general. And to be perfectly candid, I wasn't surprised to find out that people have been warned, banned, or otherwise punished for breaking rules I otherwise expected to be broken. What I didn't expect was something as normal as this to suddenly result in an open discussion, several redos of contests, and announcements regarding a contest of who should be on the front cover of a magazine for an anime roleplaying site. It's honestly ridiculous, and I know the vast majority of the community just wants it to blow over because it's honestly not worth brooding over about.

And I'll stick to what I said—it's not worth blowing over about, so I won't. But what's very upsetting is seeing our scrumptious, crispy, warm-hearted administrators emotionally and mentally exhausted for having to explain themselves and their actions for something that should've been private and had nothing to do with anyone outside of the person being addressed and the staff members addressing them. This is a conversation that had no business happening because the drama and qualms that stemmed from a little magazine should have never happened to begin with. It's disappointing to not only see people cheat but to create unnecessarily problematic circumstances at everyone else's comfort, staff included, at the expense. While it's great that FTRP has changed many things over the years, and many new and creative people have brought fresh ideas to the table to better the experience for ALL of the members, it's unfortunate that the way people behave in these circumstances and the whole culture of antagonizing staff for doing their jobs hasn't changed a bit.

TLDR; u boys dun goofed, but I luv u anyway.

gg that's it, bye.

Honestly, just a couple days ago, I had posted a hiatus thread, due to burn out. But, When I learned that anyone would sink so low as to cheat something like a poll for a magazine that a good number of amazing people, including @Nessa Cordelia Lux work their asses off for, I was shocked, heartbroken, and more than a little confused. Mainly because, as Markus stated, what's the point of cheating it? Given the rules for being a featured mage, you're pretty much guaranteed to get on there eventually. But also because you'd think folks would understand that this is meant to be a place of fun, an escape from the harshness of reality. And honestly, finding out about both the cheating, and the way staff were treated, I'm more than a little disappointed. I'm still doing the hiatus thing, but I felt as though I had to put my 2 cents in here.

Also, I do have a suggestion or two to go along with this. Perhaps we could make the magazine polls an in character event? One where voting with multiple characters wouldn't really be cheating if said character had a legitimate reason for who they vote for, if it's someone outside of their guild. Just a thought that I figured I'd put out there.

In any event, I do hope that those who were caught can learn from their mistakes. And that they remember all the good stuff staff take the time to do for us that you don't really have to do.

I'd like to put in my two cents, mainly cause I went from nobody to a GM as a result of this whole thing.

Cheatings bad. Hands down. Shouldn't be done, and punishment should be handed out as a result. That being said, now that I can see both sides, this situation sucked. Misinformation was dealt out copiously. I think, from what I've been told, know and seen, this was the result of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the rules. Unfortunately, instead of being verified, that information was then distributed out as truth. It was used as a vindication of feelings that incited other people. This ended up being the massive mess that we see now.

I don't want anyone faulting staff and I don't think anyone should fault other people either. This situation, if prolonged unnecessarily, will not serve any purpose other than to rip this site apart. Or at least cause what has been built up over the last several months to come crumbling down. Nobody wants that. After all, the whole reason this all happened seems to stem strongly from people wanting to protect others. Staff got vilified due to hurt feelings. Maybe it could have been avoided if people had sat down and talked instead of rushing off. It's impossible to say and now it's in the past.

I wish I could give some mystical advice that would make it all better. That would smooth the situation over or at least soothe the hurts. But I can't. And I doubt this situation will simply go away either. I can only hope, given time, the site will band together and become stronger for all of this.

Sorry for my rambling nonsense.

Hey, so, I literally just registered today and saw this thread. I'm new here but, I've been RPing for a good while and one thing or two things I read in the previous posts that was familiar to me was people causing drama and starting shit with staff. On just about every RP site I've been on, there are at least a few members who almost always give staff shit for "doing their jobs" because, more often than not, people are immature and stubborn. They want things to go their way or the high way and if that doesn't happen, they'll throw a temper tantrum. That's not to say staff should have to take their shit or anything. It also doesn't mean the staff is necessarily wrong or right either. However, this is just part of what it means to RP. There are always gonna be shitty people who try to drag you down for one reason or another. It would do y'all a great deal of good if you could better learn to not let it get to you. I know that can be easier said than done but, when you think about it, its the internet. Taking anything seriously on here won't do you any favors. Also, about the cheating stuff mentioned, yeah it's dumb and people shouldn't do it but, again, another part of life, don't get so worked up over it.

That's just my two cents on this as a complete noob and unrelated party. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Sorry if I did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I thank everyone who took the time to read this, and put in their input. I agree with pretty much everything that was said, as a whole it was entirely unneeded mess, but there was much we felt the playerbase deserved to know. The entire ordeal could, and should, have been much simpler.

With that in mind, I am going to be closing this suggestion and archiving it.