BuzzerBeater Forums

well, since this concerns GM's etc, i'd like to point out a couple of things:

concerning Transparency:

I'm a big fan of it, i really am. however, i forsee this problem, and it's a pretty big one:

If everyone knows how GM track down cheaters, then the Cheaters will find a way to work around it making it even harder for us to track the cheaters down. Just think of it like this:

If you went out and drank 2 glaces of wine, you got to much alcohol in your blood ( for the sake of the example, please don't start arguing about the fact that if you wait long enough, you'll be fine to drive). If you know where the cops are doing the alcohol controls that evening, then you'll plan a route that will take you to your destination without encountering the cops, thus driving under 'minor' influence of alcohol without having to pay a fine.

We can apply the same example for cheaters. If Cheaters know how we bust them, then they'll just work there way around it so that they can avoid detection or will insert enough proof in an attempt to convince the GM's that they aren't cheaters.

So for that obvlious reason ( next to others such as giving a guy a second chance without people pointing fingers at him etc), we can't have more transparency. I understand those who want more transparency, but giving it will end up in guy's finding a way to work around the methodes we got to determine wheither a guy is cheating or not. GM's aren't professionals and if you'd want professionals, prices for the Supporter would probably need to be raised and more would have to purchase it.

I think that this fact alone should be enough to convince you that we can't give you more transparency. Futhermore, if we tell you which GM banned a certain person, then his friends could very well give that GM a very hard time. That GM in particular wouldn't be able to punish those friends because he's then directly involved, and thus you could argue about clouded judgement.

I've been called many things since i became a GM. I've even had to watch how 2 personal friends of mine got banned ( One of them is ammongst the most honnest people i know and is the last guy i'd suspect of cheating. yet the evidence pointed in the direction of cheating).

I'm fairely sure that some occasionally, a guy will get banned even tho he's a fair player. Just as i am sure that some cheaters have yet to be caught dispite having played for 10 or more seasons. There isn't such a thing as a flawless system. Yet this system used now seems fair enough and i'll support it untill it's proven that there is a serious flaw in it.


And for those who argue that a better system should be installed to report people, i've got the following to say:

Most managers report players or other teams, by just quickly writting a sentence without adding proof. That means the GM's have to start digging hoping to find something. The best example that can be given here are managers who report outragious transfers. Most report the transaction happeneing, yet they forget to include the skills ( i remember having mailed to a certain person about that problem. His name starts with a W and is 5 letters long. He also has posted in this topic already. But since that mail, he has taken the effort to add the skills of the player he reports, so i should thank him for making our jobs as GM slightely easier in that particular case ;). Once a player is sold, we have no way of finding there skills anymore untill they get TLed again ( at which point, we can't even see if he's been trained or not while he was with that team...) I've mentioned all this, just to point out that people will often report something, provided they don't need to spend to much time in making the report. If they got to spend time adding info the to report, more people would tend let it go by because they don't want to spend time making that report.

R~

GMs should be able to see the skills of players reported. I knwo there is a conflict of interest if you could just see any players skills...but its basically impossible to evaluate and catch bad transfers if you can't see skills...

that7s just dumb if you can't look up a palyers skills....
maybe they can make it possible but everytime you query a given plaeyrs skills it is logged in connection with teh specific reported case AND the GM...so like there woudl be log of which players each GM had queried the skills of. IF some GM was looking at all the players of his opponents, any other GM should be able to see his log of which players skills he looked at...and well naturally if he abused the priveledge, he'd lose his power.

when are you going to determine if someone abused it or not? only a GM would see it and thus you'd need another GM to check if a players skills got asked up or not. Just imagen the damage that could be inflicted upon U21 and NT players... you could get those skills and pass em on as a GM. you'd end up getting the boot sooner or later, but in the meanwhile, the damage would have been done, i somehow, i doubt that you'd like that idea...

This is the problem with not having someone professional to do some GM work and workwith/monitor/help GMs. Yo uguys don't have enough power at the end of the day to really effectively do your job. If you had somebody to lead you (and police you a little) then that would also mean they could be a bit more lenient and give you more power. They could aslo probably select a few more people to do the GM job overtime on a trial basis....keepoing those that worked well and sending those that blundered back to normal status. Overall you could probably have a larger volunteer force with one pro overseeing them. They really would only need 1 guy to do it. If the funds aint there...they aint there I guess.

former GM Foto had one intension when he became a GM leader ( yes we do have some GM's who are more equal than other GM's :P) he wanted to weed out the inactive GM's and replace them by active ones. Cheat ticket numbers that have yet to be processed, aswell as processiong sign ups have been at an all time low. cheating tickets get processed much faster than they used to. same goes for the Sign ups. So we might not have professional guy's, but we're doing well with what we got. And the GM's continuiously make propositions to the Devs to make tools so that we can catch cheaters more easely. Believe me, we are doing our best for BB ;)

your posts were a great first step for me. Talking about you as an organization, talking about general problems, possible moral problems humanizes the GM figure.

It is obvious that a ban list should not explain anything just the general rule broken, something like "multiaccounting". And you made obvious that it should not say who banned the cheater. I think that level of transparency would be harmless and again would help to humanize and help the community to understand part of the real labor the GM does. Also it would be a better persuasion against cheaters.