Good morning friends,
I'm going to try and address the questions that have been brought up here from a personal perspective, but please let me know if there's something we haven't yet responded to or that you'd like addressed. I know we might seem like a faceless organisation but we're individual users of the league just like you, trying to do the right thing for everyone, so I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can.
A ban/suspension wasn't really considered as part of a potential punishment as we saw nothing malicious about this, it was his first punishment and there was nothing that would negatively affect other users or teams. You could argue that the extra 15-20 TPE or so helped his team at the expense of others but I don't think anyone's league experience was negatively affected by him doing it.
Noble was suspended for 2 weeks for modifying claim threads and covering his tracks to gain 73 TPE, but it was his second offense. All other instances of cheating haven't had suspensions attached. If Faded had a previous punishment and clearly hadn't learned from the last time, then yes a suspension would have been on the cards.
However, it's since come to light that some of his casino winnings came from a user bet where he likely knew that he was guaranteed to win. I definitely consider cheating someone out of their own money a step above everything else so far, so I would support additional action.
Who knows, though the way it's played out wasn't something we ever expected. Faded was vehemently denying everything even after being informed of the impending punishment and had drummed up support among some users that HO were going after him, so if anything, I expected a stout defense from him and his supporters questioning how we could punish someone without any hard evidence. No doubt there would have been a subset of other users that sided with him if there was even a sliver of doubt. The admission of guilt immediately afterwards was unexpected and has changed the narrative completely.
It's been a little demoralising to me personally to see people who were on the heck HO train for going after Faded now saying the same thing for not suspending him.
Agreed 100%. We're taking steps to make sure that relevant access/permissions are taken away as soon as possible when someone leaves a role, whether that's under our jurisdiction or others, as well as setting up periodic checks on things like YouTube to make sure no one has access that shouldn't.
For all you department heads and GMs, please use the 'Job Changes' channel in the Management Discord server when someone leaves a post going forward!
Fine amounts are a weird one (both in the ISFL and in real life). For some they're extremely punishing and therefore effective, for others they're a drop in the ocean and aren't a deterrent in the slightest. I would be open to exploring modifying fines to be more along the lines of '$7M or 50% of the user's bank balance, whichever is larger' to make it a better deterrent for all. But will have to see how the rest of HO feel about that one (feel free to share if you have opinions on that or an alternative that works better!).
88 was definitely on the table. I personally voted for 44 for a few reasons. One being that even though we knew it was virtually certain that he cheated overall, we could not be certain that he cheated in each one of the 11 instances.
The other reason, and the thing that makes this one different from the other cheating punishments, was that there was no actual smoking gun evidence. I understand the sentiment that we as HO should 'borrow some balls' as Adam so eloquently put it (btw Adam, there are those in HO with big balls already who were vocally supporting 88, so we don't need a full set ty), but I personally was conscious of how this unprecedented punishment would be received, especially as we were expecting a bitter reaction from Faded, his supporters and from those who would question how we could levy such a harsh punishment to someone with no hard evidence. But as I said earlier, things look very different now that Faded immediately heel-turned and admitted it.
I don't see it like he's just been told to put the stuff back on the shelf with no repurcussions. I see it as someone saying 'Here Faded, have 2-3 free TPE', and he went out of his way to steal 4 instead. Now that he's been caught, he's not getting the original 2-3 TPE that everyone else got. He's now permanently missed out on 11 weeks worth of predictions that he'll never be able to get again in this player's career. If he'd done them normally, he'd be around 25-30 TPE better off than he was before retiring.
I think other members of HO might feel differently about this but my personal thinking is that if whatever the offense is, if it's not malicious, not trying to hurt anyone, not negatively affected someone else's experience in the league and is their first offense, then I wouldn't support a site suspension. Maybe that's too simplistic to work for all punishments but it feels right to me. As for precedent, applying it is a tough one as things change and details are different. We will try to point to other cases to justify why a certain level of punishment is appropriate, but we won't hesitate to deviate from it if there are differences in the exact nature of the case, which there almost always is.
Let me know if you have a question about anything else and I or someone else will try and address them as they come in! But please be gentle, I'm a sensitive soul probably in the wrong line of work.
I'm going to try and address the questions that have been brought up here from a personal perspective, but please let me know if there's something we haven't yet responded to or that you'd like addressed. I know we might seem like a faceless organisation but we're individual users of the league just like you, trying to do the right thing for everyone, so I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can.
(06-18-2021, 12:06 PM)Z-Whiz Wrote: blatantly cheating should be a ban
A ban/suspension wasn't really considered as part of a potential punishment as we saw nothing malicious about this, it was his first punishment and there was nothing that would negatively affect other users or teams. You could argue that the extra 15-20 TPE or so helped his team at the expense of others but I don't think anyone's league experience was negatively affected by him doing it.
Noble was suspended for 2 weeks for modifying claim threads and covering his tracks to gain 73 TPE, but it was his second offense. All other instances of cheating haven't had suspensions attached. If Faded had a previous punishment and clearly hadn't learned from the last time, then yes a suspension would have been on the cards.
However, it's since come to light that some of his casino winnings came from a user bet where he likely knew that he was guaranteed to win. I definitely consider cheating someone out of their own money a step above everything else so far, so I would support additional action.
(06-18-2021, 12:43 PM)Memento Mori Wrote: I wonder if a suspension would've been better in that the reaction would've been lessened, and Faded would have some time to cool off. People have done some pretty bad stuff which has been largely forgotten about after they've returned from a suspension.
Who knows, though the way it's played out wasn't something we ever expected. Faded was vehemently denying everything even after being informed of the impending punishment and had drummed up support among some users that HO were going after him, so if anything, I expected a stout defense from him and his supporters questioning how we could punish someone without any hard evidence. No doubt there would have been a subset of other users that sided with him if there was even a sliver of doubt. The admission of guilt immediately afterwards was unexpected and has changed the narrative completely.
It's been a little demoralising to me personally to see people who were on the heck HO train for going after Faded now saying the same thing for not suspending him.
(06-18-2021, 02:20 PM)SwankyPants31 Wrote: Beyond what people have already said regarding this warranting a ban, I think the lesson here is we should buckle down on making sure people have permissions/access taken away in a timely manner when stepping down from a job. With how many people I hear about still having access literal months after resigning from their positions, the most shocking thing here to me is that this didn't happen sooner.
Agreed 100%. We're taking steps to make sure that relevant access/permissions are taken away as soon as possible when someone leaves a role, whether that's under our jurisdiction or others, as well as setting up periodic checks on things like YouTube to make sure no one has access that shouldn't.
For all you department heads and GMs, please use the 'Job Changes' channel in the Management Discord server when someone leaves a post going forward!
(06-18-2021, 03:56 PM)SwankyPants31 Wrote: The fine is pretty much negligible.
Fine amounts are a weird one (both in the ISFL and in real life). For some they're extremely punishing and therefore effective, for others they're a drop in the ocean and aren't a deterrent in the slightest. I would be open to exploring modifying fines to be more along the lines of '$7M or 50% of the user's bank balance, whichever is larger' to make it a better deterrent for all. But will have to see how the rest of HO feel about that one (feel free to share if you have opinions on that or an alternative that works better!).
(06-18-2021, 03:44 PM)Oles Wrote: Can we talk about the fact that HO took the 44 tpe away, and then linked to punishments in which the tpe removed was double what the person in question illegally obtained? I know it doesn't matter now since he retired and all, but he really should've lost 88 tpe at the minimum if HO was trying to keep the precedence of losing double the amount of tpe. Doesn't really matter now since he retired though
88 was definitely on the table. I personally voted for 44 for a few reasons. One being that even though we knew it was virtually certain that he cheated overall, we could not be certain that he cheated in each one of the 11 instances.
The other reason, and the thing that makes this one different from the other cheating punishments, was that there was no actual smoking gun evidence. I understand the sentiment that we as HO should 'borrow some balls' as Adam so eloquently put it (btw Adam, there are those in HO with big balls already who were vocally supporting 88, so we don't need a full set ty), but I personally was conscious of how this unprecedented punishment would be received, especially as we were expecting a bitter reaction from Faded, his supporters and from those who would question how we could levy such a harsh punishment to someone with no hard evidence. But as I said earlier, things look very different now that Faded immediately heel-turned and admitted it.
(06-18-2021, 11:21 PM)GlimsTC Wrote: To be honest, I don't really see the removal of this stuff as a punishment. To me, it's like robbing a grocery store, returning the goods because you got caught, and the staff saying "returning the stolen goods was punishment enough". He wouldn't have had this stuff to begin with if he didn't cheat, so it's not like an actual loss in the end, at least in my opinion.
I don't see it like he's just been told to put the stuff back on the shelf with no repurcussions. I see it as someone saying 'Here Faded, have 2-3 free TPE', and he went out of his way to steal 4 instead. Now that he's been caught, he's not getting the original 2-3 TPE that everyone else got. He's now permanently missed out on 11 weeks worth of predictions that he'll never be able to get again in this player's career. If he'd done them normally, he'd be around 25-30 TPE better off than he was before retiring.
(06-18-2021, 11:12 PM)GlimsTC Wrote: The one thing I want to add, is that since HO operates off of precedent, does this mean we can expect cheating of this level this to never result in a suspension, or is this something that'll be case by case? And if so, can we get an explanation on where the bar is for that at some point? Just seems like there's more in favor of attempting to cheat than there is against cheating at this point
I think other members of HO might feel differently about this but my personal thinking is that if whatever the offense is, if it's not malicious, not trying to hurt anyone, not negatively affected someone else's experience in the league and is their first offense, then I wouldn't support a site suspension. Maybe that's too simplistic to work for all punishments but it feels right to me. As for precedent, applying it is a tough one as things change and details are different. We will try to point to other cases to justify why a certain level of punishment is appropriate, but we won't hesitate to deviate from it if there are differences in the exact nature of the case, which there almost always is.
Let me know if you have a question about anything else and I or someone else will try and address them as they come in! But please be gentle, I'm a sensitive soul probably in the wrong line of work.