rumor is avatar from a porno i always wondered thisdodged a bullet this time CrashinBoomBang but u wont be so nimble next time
uhm it does, because the hacker accomplished what he tried to and got public attention. if you ban them quiet without making a big thing out of it its different then to shout out "hey we banned that guy and that guy because someone hacked a skype account" and so on. things like the moleman will get serious and people might think about it as a possibility to reveal other ghosting actions. overall with hacking on a pokemon forum we got onto a new level of snitching.I dont get why people are mad at the TDs for using the hackers information to ban someone,, if they cheated they deserved to be banned, it really doesn't matter how they got the information. They don't support the hackers actions, but they had proof that they cheated so they were banned. This isn't going to trigger people into hacking accounts.
P.S. don't hack me thanks
I wouldn't say it as much as we are mad at the tournament directing team for taking action on this information, I just feel like it could have been handled in a more discrete manor. Either you wait until you have actionable intelligence on who performed the hack so you can come down even harder on them for committing a crime or you do things behind the scene. I think going public with this before you have the perpetrator could encourage copycat like attacks in the future. We don't want people's accounts getting hacked just to try and prove ghosting, if people feel like they can get away with it. One is unethical and against the forum rules, the other is a computer crime.I dont get why people are mad at the TDs for using the hackers information to ban someone,, if they cheated they deserved to be banned, it really doesn't matter how they got the information. They don't support the hackers actions, but they had proof that they cheated so they were banned. This isn't going to trigger people into hacking accounts.
P.S. don't hack me thanks
No, I don't think Zeb's paragraph is enough at this point, the use of the word "mainly" is concerning because it creates the need for a subjective look at each case rather than an objective one. Idk how I can make this clearer, if you provide an objective guideline for how you will deal with ghosting offenses and outline the punishments you will hand down then people who are trying to play by the rules will be less apt to find themselves in a bad situation (once again I'm not asserting anything about the ghosting incident at had, my post was a suggestion and really had nothing to do with the team Germany ghosting situation). Of course this will in no way stop people from ghosting as it is more of a crime of opportunity and if people don't respect the rules of play they are still going to ghost and nothing will stop them, my suggestions just aimed to help this issue. As for visibilty of these rules I literally suggested word for word to put them in the site-wide rules (since smogon is the hub for competitive PLAY) and to make it one of the banner announcement at the top of the page.I'm going to put this to you guys this way:
Had we obtained the evidence from an anonymous user, who did not explain how they got the screenshots, and the TDs reviewed the screenshots and Isa posted his verdict, with bluri claiming after the fact that he was "hacked", would that change your opinion of the situation in any way?
I'm 100% certain most of you would think bluri was making it up to try and play a sympathy card to lessen or remove the ghosting punishment on the German team.
As it stands, the TD team investigated the situation enough to learn that bluri was "hacked," (and I use parentheses here because all that was needed to obtain this information from bluri's Skype was his password, which while still illegal is definitely not as bad, in my eyes anyway, as DDoSing/doxxing/some of the other shit that has happened on this site, the harassment is a different story tho).
So the question was: does the evidence get ignored because of how it was obtained, or do we act on it considering the current ghosting problem that exists on Smogon?
I think the answer is pretty obvious, not because the TDs needed to make an example of a bunch of people, but because it couldn't be made apparent to the German team, and whoever else obtained the information, that what they did for this WCoP was right. They cheated, plain and simple, and the punishment needed to happen.
Maybe the decision was rushed out a little too quickly (it really wasn't, but maybe) before finding out who the hacker was, but the longer that this was held on to, the longer the players of the German team would have been able to play in current tournaments that they should not be playing in.
There's also the issue of, even if we knew who the hacker was and banned them on the forums (which is likely what would happen, considering the hacking + harassment), it's not like any legal action would happen to them. Reporting to Skype would do nothing, and this is definitely the absolute lowest priority any police body would be interested in.
As to Jayde 's point about Aldaron allowing ghosting to happen: he made it pretty clear what his definition of ghosting was back in the Bloo/Style ost thread, but to reiterate his definition was players basically playing for others (see: King/Limitless). But that was over 2 years ago bud, the definition has changed and the TD team is now stricter on punishing ghosting.
Zeb made his new definition for ghosting pretty fucking clear Genesis7. Maybe it could be made its own thread, that's not a problem, but it's definitely not "tucked away," it's right in plain view under the "Rules."
Ciele also made it pretty fucking clear what would happen should a team be caught ghosting in response to a thread with the title the question of what would happen.
Moving forward, I think speculating that users are going to start hacking each other to get ghosting evidence is stretching a bit too far. I've been a part of this community long enough to where I think I can make an informed decision on that well enough, and I've seen lots of people do really really stupid things here. Is it going to happen again? Absolutely, no question. But will it become a community problem on the scale of ghosting? I don't think so.
Smogon is a competitive Pokemon battling site, with a huge emphasis on tournaments. The TD team needs to protect the integrity of those tournaments first and foremost by stopping, preventing, and punishing cheating when it occurs. That is their job, and they did that here.
To sum it up: Stop. Fucking. Cheating.
no i'm pretty sure it still isit's time to update the meme guys
it's not spooky italians anymore
The stigma of ghosting germans got worse (didn't know it was a thing but lol alright) because they ghosted during wcop, not because some hacker created a scenario in which they cheated. Like it sucks that someone got hacked and if the TDs find out who it is im sure they'll be punished but their job isn't to be the cyber-police of smogon or to try the german team in a court of law to decide if they cheated in a pokemon tournament. If people don't want to be tourbanned or see their friends tour banned, then don't ghost lol its not that hardso I honestly find it infiuriating to watch the stigma of ghosting germans getting even worse from this shit.