Discussion Forum

Various ways to deal with cheaters

Obviously there's been a bit of a surge in cheaters on the deckbuilder site. While dragging out the big ol' Banhammer is an obvious choice, I think some other things can be done to at least slow these losers down.

1) User moderators. I know Gary was considering something along these lines. I won't even pretend to know the politics of doing this or the mechanics behind it. I do think that even if a moderator had the power to not necessarily BAN a deck/user, but "Hide" them and alert an admin, that could make a huge impact.

2) Comments per second lock. I noticed this is implemented already here on the forums. If you try to post a comment too quickly after another one, a message pops up and stops you. This won't STOP comment-spammers, but it will make it a challenge for them, that's for sure.

3) Deletions per second lock. I think this one is self-explanatory. This should help to leave the cheating evidence open for all to see a little longer.

Posted 25 January 2011 at 22:20

14 replies

I think that there should just be warning 1, warning 2, BAN!

But these methods would really help right now, I give a thumbs up to all of them. And congratz to you, Sure Why Not, for centenial deck and for making Article Writer...i'm not sure if this is a little late...but I just joined the forums, though have been on the vault months :P

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 02:34

Thanks, for both things. I hope something is done soon about this batman69 guy. It's getting out of hand.

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 03:50

I agree. I have the day off on Friday (or half of it at least) and I will be looking into a solution then, I can't promise a fix as I have a busy weekend but I will try my best.

Rest assured, I AM going to do something about this, thank-you for your suggestions. :)

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 09:28

Thanks Gary. Sorry this sucks so much :(

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 10:13

I'm all for the banhammer. Societies throughout history have always weeded out unsavory members. I like Night Angel's suggestion -- 1, 2, BAN (rehabilitation just don't work!).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AfIQ2AogLLc/TLHS69ofqXI/AAAAAAAAALg/mDp50HYkNDI/s1600/banhammer1.jpg

At any rate, Surewhynot, I like your ideas on the topic. Hiding potentially harmful / unwanted content until administrator intervention. Though I am still in support of the documentation I suggested before, I don't expect that to be implemented any time soon (it's all good, Gary, we're all busy!) but in the meantime, even a rudimentary moderator system would go a long way.

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 17:27

On Friday I will try and get something in place that we can easily mark a deck to be hidden from the homepage. If I have time I will try and get some sort of moderator system in place that will be able to hide/bury decks.

I can't help thinking that maybe I can fix the initial issue by deducting score/rating from a deck for having a comment deleted. maybe just deleting the initial score that the comment added to the deck would keep everything balanced...

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 23:12

[QUOTE=Gary]On Friday I will try and get something in place that we can easily mark a deck to be hidden from the homepage. If I have time I will try and get some sort of moderator system in place that will be able to hide/bury decks.

I can't help thinking that maybe I can fix the initial issue by deducting score/rating from a deck for having a comment deleted. maybe just deleting the initial score that the comment added to the deck would keep everything balanced...[/QUOTE]

That would help to an extent, and any bit is a step forward. However, this won't stop those cheaters with no understanding of shame and simply don't delete their comment spam. =/

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Posted 26 January 2011 at 23:55

I think Surewhynot's initial idea (comments / deletions per second lock) will also help to kick this off to a solid start. The lock-timer can be a bit more restricting in the meantime, to buy you some time to implement a functional moderator system. Something like 30-60 seconds between comment related actions should not be too inhibiting to users making multiple relevant comments, as it should take at least ~30 seconds to write a response. Whereas, for the trolls & spammers it just means they have to dedicate 10-30 minutes to boost a deck, as opposed to near instantaneous.

Only thing I'd be cautious of here, is implementing it such that it does not cause a user to lose their comment text if they attempt to post too soon. As that would be letting the few ruin it for the many.

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Posted 27 January 2011 at 13:32

Right guys, I've got a few seconds to explain this as Gen shouts at me to hurry up!

As promised I did work on the view deck page this morning. I've put in place a system that 1) Forces a comment to be longer than 10 characters and 2) checks to see if you've posted in the last 60 seconds and if you have, denies the post. The post is not lost, you simply get a message above your post saying you've already posted in the last 60 seconds.

Only drawback is that I did rush it and I'm not happy uploading it just yet. I've let Ian know and sent him the code so he'll take a look later today, check over it and then put it live if it's ok.

Anyway, I must go, it is her Birthday after all! :P

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Posted 28 January 2011 at 11:54

I didn't know what the heck you guys were talking about until I saw Batman69's profile. Probably ought to use that as a learning example with all of the things wrong with the decks:

1. Add a Finished Date and use it for the New Decks page. Yeah, I know I just suggested this, but this is actually part of the solution for this. Part of the abuse is the fact that the deck comes in right away on the New Decks section without any cards.

2. All Finished Decks must have land.

3. All Finished Decks must have at least 40 cards.

4. Comments should be at least 10 characters (after TRIMming the string).

5. The self-comment to other person comment ratio should not go over 10:1.

Also, how the #$@# does this guy get a 600 points rating? Did 600 people actually mark it as "liked"?

In any case, even with the automatic protections, all of this does require human resources to handle, and liberal use of the banhammer.

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Posted 29 January 2011 at 03:17

Ian was busy at the weekend too, I didn't know this.

I'll upload the changes tonight when I get home, unless I get a bit of time at lunch! :P

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Posted 31 January 2011 at 09:39

In addition to the changes the other day I've just added a new feature; you can now see a post count next to each user on the comments section so we can easily see multi-accounts too. I quite like this one and the best part was it only took 15 minutes! :)

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Posted 05 February 2011 at 10:52

I noticed that you can bump your deck up to the top by commenting on it yourself, I actually inadvertently did this while talking to someone about how to make my deck better. If a chat window was added this would solve the issue of this inadvertently occurring for people not trying to cheat.

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Posted 16 October 2012 at 10:20

The new site stops this happening, you won't be able to bump your own decks. Likes are likes and comments are comments, you don't get additional likes for comments (stupid idea, my bad, sorry)!

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Posted 17 October 2012 at 19:36