"It's Unprofessional"

This blog wasn't really planned; just a spur-of-the-moment post. Lately I've been shown some comments posted around the web about the staff on Rescreatu. A lot of them claim that we are way too strict and harsh. But tonight I was told of a comment calling us "unprofessional" because of this:

Yes, there are times when staff members will get playful with the system message. It's all in fun, it draws the attention of users not normally very active in the chat, and makes the 'scary red letters' a bit less intimidating when they do have to be used for an official reason. I suppose we could be more like oh I don't know, Neopets? And convert to an autoban system? Where even the most benign words and phrases will earn a ban? But where is the fun, the personality, and the connection to the other users in that? There is none.

Staff members of Rescreatu are not professionals. We're semi-paid volunteers. We are users just like you. Users who chose to take on the extra responsibility of helping maintain and develop the site. None of us have a background in professional moderating (whatever that is!). We have the same personalities we had before becoming staff (which, by the way, personality is a highly important factor in hiring decisions), the same sense of humor, and the same love of the game and the community. We strive to keep that connection with the userbase friendly, welcoming, and comfortable, by not being stiff and "professional".

I encourage everyone on the staffing team to stay true to their personalities and to continue to be playful like this. It would be highly disappointing to see a team of stiff, miserable staff, who are unable to be themselves, all because a very small minority thinks that is what "professional" should be.

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More behind the scenes (part one)

(I've had to split this blog post into multiple parts because of its lengthiness. Additional parts will be coming up soon.)

What I would like to show you is the process that we go through when an account becomes suspect of cheating on Rescreatu. The first clue usually comes about when we are doing our daily reviews of the logs, and come across something like this (click for full size):

The arrows indicate transfers that cause suspicion. In this particular example, the red arrows are all transfers between the same two accounts, and the green arrow is a transfer between two accounts which are already known to be separate users who are not cheating. Whether or not the users making the red arrow transfers are cheating or legit is not known yet, so next, we check out the profile for "immediate" clues (click for full size):

In this example, the username displayed on the profile is the same as another username that has registered on the same IP address. Both are blocked out in red. However, these were not the usernames involved in the suspect bank transfers. Another username that was registered on the same IP address was the one involved; it is blocked out in purple. It is now time to dig deeper. We compare the transfers of each account in relation to the other. I am not going to post screenies of that part here; what was revealed indicated that everything gained in two of the accounts is being transferred regularly to only one account. At this point, experience tells me that cheating is happening, but just to be sure, more digging is necessary. The next step is to take a look at the login history (click for full size):

All but the last two digits of the user ID have been blocked out, so that you can see there are indeed three different ID's involved here. The second blacked-out column is IP addresses. The third column shows the date and timestamp that the login was attempted. As you can see, all three accounts involved were logging in and out of each account repeatedly, mere minutes or even seconds apart. The times that they logged in and out coincide with the times they sent items, pets, and TU from the spare accounts to the main account. The example only shows logins from one date, but the entirety of the login history shows the same pattern. This is the final proof needed in this case; cheating has definitely occurred and a ban is issued. 

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Rumors!

Recently, it has been rumored that "users are hunted from the day they join the site to the day they leave"; and that the name of the department, "Support", is misleading because this activity does not support the users. A lot of concern has been generated over this and a few other statements. Hopefully this post will clear all that up!

When a new user is noticed on site, they are absolutely checked out. The word "Support" in our department means that we maintain the site and its users by providing what is needed and taking action where necessary. Wouldn't you agree that checking out new users is something that is needed? If BobbyJoeSue shows up on the chat 2 minutes after joining, advertising their hatches for sale, would you want to buy those hatches if the user's former account BillyJoeSue was just banned for scamming? Support is being provided to all of our legitimate, honest players when new users are checked out. If nothing is found wrong, we move on.

Another statement claimed that we are forced to perform "witch hunts" daily or the job is considered not to be done. This is an extreme exaggeration of the truth.

Part of the daily support staff duties are to monitor the bank and activity logs. It's a very simple duty to perform; you simply hit a button and review the 200 most recent logs in these areas. This needs to be done several times a day since the logs are limited to such a small amount. The reason this is part of a daily staff duty is because it is very easy to spot someone who is signing up as many accounts as they can and transferring the 10K from all the extra accounts to their main account.

If a support member is neglecting to perform this duty, then yes, they are slacking on the job. Finding cheaters and removing them from the game supports the honest players.

A third claim was made that users are not given any evidence found for their ban, and are threatened to be banned again if they persist in asking. Again, this is an untrue statement.

Copy-paste evidence will not be given when asked. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that the information is too confusing for the user to make any sense of it. (The next blog post coming up will show some screenshots that will make it clear why.) A summary of the evidence absolutely is given when a ban is made and the user requests it. This can be verified by Patrick, who receives a copy of every email, back and forth. Never once has anyone on the Support team threatened to ban someone over asking for evidence or questioning the decision. The only time there is a problem is when drama over the ban is started in the chat or the forums. At this point, the rule about not discussing bans would be enforced.

It is completely understandable that you guys would be concerned when reading these false statements. As you can see, however, those things were not presented in a truthful light.

Coming up next! We will be showing screenies of the process of reviewing logs when it is time to make a ban. You will be able to see why mistakes in banning rarely happen, and yes, sometimes they do happen. The ban is reversed in that case, happily. See you soon!

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Time for a resurrection!

Well it was not intentional for this blog to become inactive for nearly two years, but it did. It is well past time to revive this and get it going again.

We have a post planned that will show you some inside info soon! In the meantime, if you have ideas, questions, or concerns, please post or drop a note! We will be answering. =)

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