What should we do about bullshit?

Here's a great example: http://konghack.com/member_profile.php?m=5659

Thought it would be smart to submit every fucking 4byte value as a separate hack to get insane points.  I've started deleting them, but this assclown has way too many.  They've also managed to submit an assload of hacks I don't have time to test.


So, here's my proposition.  You can submit a hack, but you won't get any points till at least 5 accounts vote for your hack as working.

This leads to a bit of a conundrum.  

If we don't award hack points till 5 people +vote the hack, we would have to remove the 5 posts needed to vote so everyone can vote.
If we remove the 5 post limit on voting, ass clowns will start downvoting all of the hacks again.

Right now, points are awarded when you submit the hack.  If you update it 50 times, you don't get any additional points.
If we award points at +5 working, you would get points every time it hits +5.  If you updated your hack, the counter is reset to 0, so you could get another 150 if 5 people +vote your hack.
This also means some douchebag could submit a bullshit hack, use a bunch of other accounts to +vote it, edit their hack to reset it, rinse and repeat to get a ton of points for nothing.

I'm just trying to keep the bullshit down and make things easier.  What should I do?

Maybe you can limit what can be concidered for points until it is approved? That'd, however, create a rather large workload for you. Another way people get points is submitting games that have already been submitted under a slightly differant name. But, to be honest, you're always going to have people cheat the system.

I think the two most effective methods would probably be to create a limit that can be submitted withen a particular time period and the idea of approval before points are given for whatever it is (games, hacks, SOLs, .ect)

I've made a mistake once about a double submission, but I beleive I rectified it. But yeah, you'll always have people trying to cheat the system unfortionately. Hope this helps, but, it probably won't...

Can it be "Disable" the hack if gettng, said, 10 down vote?
"Disable" means, point is deducted from submitter, the entries not displayed at Hack list, but submitter still can edit/delete his hack entries.
1. it is compatible with current system;
2. for normal hack, down vote is more like a notification for update, seldom reach a high down vote, but  if the number of down vote do go that high, and update is not done for whatever reason, I think it is fair to deduct the point from submitter;
3. for abused/annoying hack, I think members able to vote can make his decision, let the community decide.

bye~

The use of an automated system of checks and validation is always prefered over manual work, but considering the small scale nature of this would, it not be viable to give certain higher up members the ability to "mark" as submitted hack as working, bullshit, or point gouging? Not as though it would require a large amount of effort.

Or you know, change the point system.

basically what he said but downvotes flag the hack as "not working/patched". I would be careful with points deduction because a small group of people or even dummy accounts could lead people that make hacks to be point dropped. That's what I would do
 

Well, I believe that the heart of this problem is that you used to have this saying "submit each hack in a different form", which in turn meant that people could actually read it as "Submit a value hack for each one of the values in different hack posts" and they would feel happy because you've just kind of endorsed their own dumbshitness.
People who actually do other kinds of hacks than just Value hacks have been complaining for a while that value hacks and AoBs give the same amount of points while one requires a lot more of work than the other (AoB, Root Finding x Value Hack).
Now, about the number of votes... that's kind of biased I think. I myself like to play old games (meaning that I hardly ever play the games that are coming out right n0w) and when I feel like it, I hack them just for the fun of hacking it or w/e else. The problem of this is, however, that if I were to not be awarded with some points until people, even more if it were 5 people, voted for them... that would kind of kill any motivation for the points.
Still, that's just my opinion.
At the same time, I can see how that would work as a great way for preventing people to abuse the system of points and getting loads and huge amounts of it. But I don't think that's the best solution for this problem, simply because there are hacks here for games that people hardly play or never will play or simply don't care about hacking the game and because of this won't ever vote for them, or let's say it's a Root Hack for an old AS1 game (Mud and Blood 2 and Co.) and people can't actually USE it because they never learned how to hack with roots. Would it be harsh for people who hack those because people are simply not able to use them and therefore downvote a perfectly working hack?
Of course, this is all hypothetical, but restricting points awarding this way would actually generate a rush to the newest games and also would make people creating different acounts for the points, and while this could be deterred by creating a system in which you can prevent people from making new accounts to vote their own hacks as you suggested, I believe that the best solution would be, as it has already been suggested, to have someone/someones to review the hacks that are being submitted and see if they're worth anything or if they're supposed to be trashed.
While we don't really have enough people for doing this kind of work, it still seems to me to be the best way for you to control what is good and what is waste. Unless, of course, you could make a scrypt that recognized that a hack has already been submitted, or that someone is spamming hack-submittion, that people could very well post a whole bunch of Value hacks or Root Names into a single submission. If you can do that, then you can solve this problem easely, but if it was that easy to have it then we wouldn't be having this problem right?
In the end, we really need someone to check the quality of hacks and this someone should have the power to award people for their hard/easy work accordingly.

• Points per upvote on your hacks: 25
• Points per hack vote: 15 (no more than 150 a day)
• Points per hack submission: 0

Pros:

• Encourages users to update their hacks, as that will earn them more points
• Discourages submitting bogus hacks.
• More hacks for popular games?
• The post limit for voting is still in place => fewer erroneous votes, harder to abuse

Cons:

• No immediate reward may demotivate users.
• Fewer hacks for less popular games?

That's an interesting solution for the problem. And a very good reflection too.
If people only get points on account of other's vote, then it would mean that people who can make Hacks and want points would all flock to the popular games, kind of creating a war for who is the first toi make a working hack. This, however, does not address the problem with people who submit a whole bunch of value hacks (as our infamous, now banned, member did) for the same game in different hack submittions.
At the same time, it would make making hacks for non-popular and/or old games a serious altruist endeavour. Hoping that people acknowledge your efforts can be just as hard as waiting for people to vote your hacks in popular games.

I was thinking along the lines of what KongregateHack said.  Instead of being awarded for submitting the hack, get points when people use it.

Some hacks get 30+ votes on them, especially for new games or the game of the day.  That's 750pts for what you would have previously only earned 150.

Increasing the voting points and putting a cap sounds like a great idea.  When I get back from this xmas stuff, I'll get on it.

Anyone have any objections, questions, comments, concerns?

I figured tripling the points each vote gives might encourage people to vote more. It certainly wouldn't solve the problem but it's a start.
 

What if all the abuser's hacks were removed and then filtered and resubmitted by users. This process could be handled similarly to the way data mining was handled.

Either:

1. All the hacks are moved, by game, to a temporary table in the database.
2. A user requests a job and is assigned all the abuser's hacks for a single game.
3. The user submits one or several hacks after comparing the abuser's hacks to the current ones, testing the hacks and sorting/merging them.
4. A moderator reviews and rewards (and, if necessary, improves) the submission and accepts or discards it.

Or assign a select group of members to handle the data mining, which would eliminate the need for double-checking.

If I'm not wrong, dataming was a project that TIM had and that had people (workers of the company that TIM works) to review the mining. The difference here was that people were actually being paid to do the job, one way or another. It's not like we have people getting paid to review hacks. So, once again, it would have to be volunteer work, which I'm not agaisnt, but the gist of the idea is this when I said to have someone review the hacks.

My only worry is that which I've said before, people who submit hacks for old or/and not popular games. Those people wouldn't get any points whatsoever, since people would not even get to see their hacks much less try them.
However, if you just want that people stop submitting hacks to old and not popular games then that solution is perfect. I only fear that those games would be left aside. It's an ok solution, but I don't think it's the perfect one.
I still believe that having someone to review the hacks and award them points would be better. If not review them and then allow it to be seen by other people, then at least to award people with points.
In the end, I don't see another way to fairly reward everyone.
Also, I aprove the idea of awarding points for each positive review of a game, but I think that being the only reward for submitting hacks is unfair in itself for not contemplating all the sort of games, which are the majority of them aren't popular and never will be. Which doesn't mean that they aren't worth hacking.

How about a comprimise between the two systems?

1) No points are immediately rewarded for submitting a hack.
2) Each vote awards the submitter 25pts.  Each vote is now worth 15pts.
3) If a hack goes without votes for 7 days, a notification will appear on the site for staff to review hacks.

This is kinda a best of both worlds scenario.  If the hack isn't used in a week, it'll show up in a list for us to deal with.  If it is voted on, then it's voted on and handled by the system.

Any staff that "reviews" a hack will also earn points.  I'm not going to leave them out for doing work for the site.  How about an even 100 for staff that vote on a hack a week after it sits idle?  It's incentive to the staff to review, and it keeps older hacks in the rotation, and it should keep out the riff raff.

I'm going to start working on an achievements system soon.  Votes, hacks, posts, topics, reviews, etc. all up for grabs.  That's a different discussion though. :)

Sounds good to me. Now we just need to think of the new value for the hack submission and we're good for it I believe.
Since people will now get points for the hacks, then reducing the amount of points that you can get from the hacks sounds logical. In case a hack hasn't earned a single vote then how much points would it be worth?
I was thinking of something of about 150 points as a set value for hack submition. Now we could have three scenarios I think:

A)The hack has achieved 150 points (6 votes) and therefore he could earn a bonus for submitting the hack. (How about 75 points on this case? Since the person has not got enough points for it) This would total 225 points, which isn't that much but it's good enough no? Or we could make it so that the person also gets the full 150 points for submitting the hack (300 points in total) and the hack would be considered as "safe" for it to continue living.


B) The hack has not enough votes for that in a week, be it not even a single one or enough for it to complete 150 points, then it could "auto-complete" to 150, in case the hack has earn at least 1 vote? (Though I think 1 is still not really enough for it to be marked as "valid hack", I guess 3 would be better?) In this scenario then the hack could be marked for review and once the staff has marked it as "valid hack" then the person could be awarded the 150 points.

C)The hasn't scored a single vote in 7 days and someone has to review it. The hack is considered "valid" and is therefore worth the 150 points. The staff who marks the hack as valid is then awarded points for doing his work as a "hack moderator" (100 points or something around that value as TIM suggested).

D) The hack hasn't earned a single vote in 7 days and is reviewed by a staff as a not valid hack. The reason for this could be that there's already another hack for this, the hack doesn't work, the hack has been stolen from other place, etc. The hack is then marked as "not valid" or w/e, the hack is still in the database but it won't show for others, that is, if the hack doesn't work, so that the said person can fix his hack. If the hack is not valid not because it's outdated but because it's been stolen, submitting the same hack that another person has submitted (but not if it's a hack that does the samething but through another means, which I think would make the hack valid nonetheless(?)), a hack that has never worked and probably never will, then the person could either get a warning or banned depending on the severity of the charge.

Well, that's some of the scenarions that I could think of, but I think those illustrate the cases that would be possible under this system. The only thing that isn't portrayed in this system, and consequently in any of the scenarios that I've described, would be if the person is submitting value hacks one after the another, for the same game, meaning, the person is spamming hacks. In this case, I think TIM would be more than agree that this person should be banned right? (Or if you're feeling nice and it could be the first, and only, case that the person does this, be warned or something of the like.)

+1

Does "reviewing" include rewarding the one who submitted the hack? E.g. giving 0-100 points extra for effort.

Edit: what Tsumi said, except I'd like a dropdown menu from which the staff member can select, say, 25, 50, 75 or 100 points. Also, I think 100 points for one review is a bit much. Reviewing a hack doesn't take very long. I think 50 is reasonable for a start. It can be increased if need be.

Edit2: if a hack needs 3 upvotes in the first week to be deemed valid, then that's 75 points right there - and probably more later on. If not, and it is a valid hack, a staff member will upvote it (25 points) and give it X points. If it's a simple hack, it really isn't worth more. If it's an AoB you'll probably get 50-100 points. That's a minimum of 75 points for an AoB, and the average AoB will yield more.

I don't have any objections, if this won't bar me from reviewing games in the future