Once upon a time I got a ban warning. Now I'm not gonna lie I kind of deserved it: it was in my early days of wiki editing and I copied wikipedia to write about 3D Realms.
Enough about me, let's talk about the people who cheat, yes those guys. Now I'm greedy for wiki points but I was scrolling around Giant Bomb and I stumbled on a user who had a huge amount of points who I had never heard about. So I clicked on him and discovered he had a huge amount of points on one page. I also click on said page ready to see something awesome but I stumble on an empty page. How in the world does someone get 78 THOUSAND points on a single page that is empty ? Go on the Jump Jack 2 page, you'll know what I'm talking about...
Also another guy is one of the highest ranking users on numerous pages but when you click on his profile he has zero points. Is the Wiki Point system maybe a little broken ? Or are people exploiting it and cheating ?
On a final note, lets pay are respects to the true wiki gods, aka Marino, Ignor and StarFoxA. You guys rule.
Once upon a time I got a ban warning. Now I'm not gonna lie I kind of deserved it: it was in my early days of wiki editing and I copied wikipedia to write about 3D Realms.
Enough about me, let's talk about the people who cheat, yes those guys. Now I'm greedy for wiki points but I was scrolling around Giant Bomb and I stumbled on a user who had a huge amount of points who I had never heard about. So I clicked on him and discovered he had a huge amount of points on one page. I also click on said page ready to see something awesome but I stumble on an empty page. How in the world does someone get 78 THOUSAND points on a single page that is empty ? Go on the Jump Jack 2 page, you'll know what I'm talking about...
Also another guy is one of the highest ranking users on numerous pages but when you click on his profile he has zero points. Is the Wiki Point system maybe a little broken ? Or are people exploiting it and cheating ?
On a final note, lets pay are respects to the true wiki gods, aka Marino, Ignor and StarFoxA. You guys rule.
I guess he got enough posts passed to go past 1k, and then just started adding and removing constantly from that page. Or something like that, not sure how the system works. Someone should go slap that user.
@Yanngc33: If mods become aware of point farmers, they take away all the users wiki points. That's why some users have a bunch of points on pages but no points on their profiles.
I've NEVER understood the point of Wiki point/Achievement cheating. It's just points that don't get you anything and most point cheaters are people who never post to the forums or anything like that, so it's not like anyone ever sees their score. It's not even like they have bragging rights since they didn't even play the game. I guess some people just like seeing a big number?? (No offense to OP since you've copped to it and reformed your cheating ways ;) )
From a couple threads I've seen before, I think they do it so they can get far enough along to screw up pages, like what happened to DaManGB. Which seems even more pointless. I guess the time investment couldn't be too high, but what a complete waste of time to spend however long it takes to game the system to where you can make edits without having anyone look over your shoulder, just so you can be a d*ck to someone you probably never met.
Despite being cheaters, there also guys, like me, who had a lot of points on a page, that got to be reformulated afterwards, and despite seeing very little of our work, there was a lot of our heart into the pages.
Cheaters usually get their points reset to zero and are banned from editing the wiki in the future. Unfortunately they still remain as top editors on the pages they used to cheat.
" Cheaters usually get their points reset to zero and are banned from editing the wiki in the future. Unfortunately they still remain as top editors on the pages they used to cheat. "
" Cheaters usually get their points reset to zero and are banned from editing the wiki in the future. Unfortunately they still remain as top editors on the pages they used to cheat. "
this is what bugs me the most. >< "
You mean how blazerx9x is credited as the top contributor on every major page on the site ? Yeah...that's kind of annoying :/
Just to be clear... Mods don't have the ability to remove people's points. We have to submit a request to staff in order to do that. Zeroing out someone's overall points is apparently fairly easy, but removing their points from individual pages is apparently not. I agree that seeing blazer's name/face on many pages (and the #1 editor in the "Games" section) is quite annoying. But hopefully the engineers will find a way to resolve this soon.
If you ever think you've found someone who's cheated or gamed the system for points, please contact a mod immediately. And do not remove the questionable content before you let us know. There is currently not a wiki history feature, so if you remove it, we can't prove anything.
" Copy/paste a long word processor document a few times in a wiki then erase it. Points omg. I didn't know people still cared about wiki points. "
You shouldn't encourage cheating. "
Dude, people were doing that shit like a week into the site's launch 2 years ago. I don't think its a massive secret how to game the wiki. And there's really no reward for it either beyond 5k. What kind of damage did this guy inflict when he games another 65k points? He wasted a bit of his life for points that means nothing.
@natetodamax: His forum posts, while not exactly good, aren't really so offensive that he needs to be banned from the forums as well. They are separate things.
@natetodamax: Not usually, as far as I know. I'm pretty sure they usually just stop using the site altogether. Depending what they did to get forum banned though, there may be reason to believe that they would cause harm to the wiki and might also be wiki banned for that.
" @natetodamax: Not usually, as far as I know. I'm pretty sure they usually just stop using the site altogether. Depending what they did to get forum banned though, there may be reason to believe that they would cause harm to the wiki and might also be wiki banned for that. "
Yeah someone who got banned from the forums would be seeking revenge and would probably vandalize the wiki.
@LordAndrew:@natetodamax: There are three possible ways to ban someone. Forum & Wiki Bans are independent of each other. IP bans just stops you from using the site altogether. Since the Whiskey Pass, if you're wiki-banned on one Whiskey Site, you're also wiki-banned from other websites (you know, just in case someone decides to get naughty with the other databases).
" If you ask me, these point farmers like the blazer dude should have been outright banned from GB because plagiarism is, you know, kinda bad. "
Minor cases of plagiarism doesn't warrant a direct permanent ban. Most of the people who submit plagiarized text are simply unaware of what they are doing wrong. If you inform them, more often than not they simply apologize and don't attempt it ever again. Of course, cases like blazer's are different.
@Gamer_152 said:
" I agree that a feature really needs to be introduced to wipe peoples' points counts on pages, it's quite a problem. "
The only way to get someone's name off the 'Top Contributor' list is to delete the entire account (which would be a bit extreme in blazer's case). Something similar happened on Screened and when the suspect account was deleted, the name automatically vanished from everywhere else on the site.
@pornstorestiffi said:
" @Axxol said:
" Wiki points are serious business. They iz like gold moniez. "
Yeah just like GB Achievements, 360 Achievements and Trophies. Its all bullshit. "
After you cross the 1000 and 5000 point marks, yes the points don't mean anything. But until you cross those thresholds, points are an important tool in keeping the wiki in order. Whiskey's wiki code isn't as robust as Wikipedia and we lack the necessary tools to handle vandalism. Until we get a comprehensive wiki history feature, points matter (to a degree).
Just want to point out that @Killjoi is a moderator on Screened. So he knows what he's talking about here, and not just making assumptions like I was. ;)
" I agree that a feature really needs to be introduced to wipe peoples' points counts on pages, it's quite a problem. "
The only way to get someone's name off the 'Top Contributor' list is to delete the entire account (which would be a bit extreme in blazer's case). Something similar happened on Screened and when the suspect account was deleted, the name automatically vanished from everywhere else on the site.
Yes and that's why I think we need a feature that will remove people from the pages top contributors without a deletion of the account.
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