I don’t think you can generalize. The reasons may be different and depend on individuals. Some possible reasons that come to mind
user wants to feel strong
user wants to play against strong human players, but with his normal rank they would not accept
user has lost many games in a row and wants to end on a positive note
user seeks approval from others
user wants to learn by imitation
user thinks their opponent is cheating
etc.
Or combinations of these things.
Obviously trying to understand why a person feels the need to lie about their level is important, however, I don’t think you can generalize. The reason we give a warning before banning (usually) I think is this. We would prefer that the person stop cheating.
I am even more against it. It would expose too much to the moderator banning that user (and you don’t imagine what some trolls can get up to I think) and some people might recognize that user.
In my experience about half, or a little more, of score cheaters do stop cheating after a warning (I know because I always monitored warned cheaters for months afterward). I regard that as a positive statistic.
That will never happen, nor should it I hasten to add. OGS recently stopped identifying the mods who claim reports, and at least two mods don’t acknowledge the reports they close, so the trend is in the opposite direction.
I didn’t actually know that but for the sake of mods with a more visible profile I am glad. There are a tiny minority of persistent miscreants who have lost all sense of perspective (if they ever had it).
It is certainly better for the site not to lose valuable moderators to the vitriol of that tiny minority.
[Edit]: and we’ve probably drifted off topic a bit. Sorry.
Ironically, I proposed that very change about two years ago or more (after receiving death threats from two different trolls) and met a wall of disagreement. I guess something has changed since then.
Actually, it is possible that ‘person x has been banned’ is meant by moderator nnn. Yes, the subject has been diverted in another direction. I think it seems that the issue revolves around a point where moderators are sensitive. If there is a disagreement or mutual demands, this can be discussed and what is possible. I’m talking about a general situation.
All of these sum up to insecurity and/or amorality. A ban log is one of the ways to help people feel more secure, there may certainly be other ways to achieve that, too. A moral high ground for the site can be achieved also: removing addspace from the logo would certainly be a start.
There’s a saying: “If you’re afraid of a wolf, don’t go to the forest”.
I agree with this. It’s a real shame that the amount of effort and good results (banned or warned botters) is not more visible.
The problem is that the amount that you could sensibly put in this thing is very limited.
It may be a saying, but it’s not applicable.
This is more like “if you’re in the forest, take great care, because there are wolves”.
I guess it’s actually nice that the community in general is largely unaware of just how bad some of the trolls out there can be. When you know that there are nut-jobs even in “Online Go” who will take things into real life and make them truly nasty, every caution is warranted.
I think it’s impossible to eliminate reasons for cheating. If it was possible it would’ve been done on chess servers already, I bet.
While I don’t doubt there could be some flashes of inspiration and good ideas, I just don’t expect an idea to come where every cheater (or potential cheater) reads something like a trust agreement and realises
If a person finds it fun to win by any means, they probably won’t be discouraged to cheat unless they’re caught, and maybe not even then.
If a person has a goal, like a rating to achieve and they can’t get there by themselves, or not quick enough, they might cheat - there’s no real way to remove that goal unless you remove the rating/ranking system.
The moderators are spending a huge amount of time and effort trying to combat players using an AI to play games. I appreciate their effort, but people have to realize that playing online is very different than playing in real life. It is very easy to mislead people online. That should not be a surprise to anyone. We simply cannot trust any ranking system where the players are in an uncontrolled environment.
There are organizations (AGA for example) where people play in real life under circumstances where there are safeguards against cheating.
Maybe we should have two ranking systems: Once which is an “unmoderated rank” which is based on a person’s online play and another “demonstrated rank” which is based on play in controlled environments. Players should be able to understand the difference and then we can remove the large onus placed on the moderators right now.
That’s what we have, except I don’t think one should just accept the proposal that online play should be unmoderated.
I’m not sure why the only option being considered when a problem can’t be solved is to just give up.
I mean you can’t stop people from being insulting in chat generally, or doing anything they have the freedom to do. You can give them warnings, bans etc - you don’t just decide to have a completely unmoderated website because of that.
If you can’t stop climate change you instead try to limit the impact it will have, limit the amount of the temperature increase. At least that’s one option instead of giving up.
If you can’t stop people committing crimes you don’t just dissolve the police force, legal offices or reform committees and other institutions aiming to prevent crime.
I am simply trying to eliminate the huge effort the moderators are putting in. To me, that is a losing battle. To me, people need to design and implement a real solution to the problem, not implement some halfway non-working solution. That applies to every scenario you mentioned.
There’s one rating for online play, and one for in person play and you attach or understand that rating in whatever way you see fit.
You can see the online one, which is server dependent, as incorporating various things that people can object to, be that extra time controls, long or short, different boards sizes, aids that are legitimate like joseki or analysis in correspondence or potentially undiscovered disallowed aids.
It doesn’t mean that it should be unmoderated though, since it’s useful for matching people with similar skills.
Not everyone has or wants an AGA/EGF etc rank in order to demonstrate some official strength however.
I mean everything is really a losing battle. Pumping up your bike tires if they’re going to go flat again anyway. Washing clothes if they need to be washed again.
In order to lighten the moderator load, if that’s the aim, it’s better to continue to come up with better detection methods, more ways to discourage cheating and explaining why it’s harmful for the general feeling of online play
I mean maybe a message before your first game on the server could say “hey - don’t cheat, we don’t think you will, but please don’t”, but it could be ignored or just seen as annoying. It could still be done though.
I don’t believe the answer is just to allow it because it’s possible.
I meant to integrate the in-person play ratings into the site. I don’t see that here. You have to go to the external source to get it.
Let’s agree to disagree on this topic.
The mods are doing a lot to help the community. I sincerely appreciate their efforts. We can all have differing opinions on what the problems are and how to solve them, that is OK.
For the record, I am totally against divulging any security measures and other techniques to the average user. It would be like sticking a post-it with our PIN and full name on the ATM screen!
Many game companies use bots that work in similar prototypes and systems for this. İ think this is not new information. There are even those who have advanced systems in this regard. Maybe these moderators can also quench the workforce. Perhaps such a request can be made from artificial intelligence programmers.
Is this why you don’t indicate on people’s profiles that they’ve been banned?
Looking at one user’s profile, allegedly 6d, I see that every single they’ve played has been cancelled and they suddenly stopped playing in April. Its easy to guess that they must have been cheating and got caught and that may also explain why one or two of their moves seemed oddly bad compared to the rest of their moves.
But there are other profiles where I can’t tell what has happened. One user stopped playing in March. Is it because they’re busy in real life and will be back soon or is it because they got banned (for rudeness in this case). An indication on people’s profiles would clarify this sort of situation.
that but for the sake of mods with a more visible profile I am glad. There are a tiny minority of persistent miscreants who have lost all sense of perspective (if they ever had it).
