The AntiPoint Vendetta

[allenb1963]

I'm going to do this in reverse by stating my line of thinking and then my suggestion, so please bear with me.

I have seen some members here loose AP's in a very rapid fashion, and I mean un-naturally rapid. I have also been told through pm's both here and on irc of members 'ganging up' on individual members that they have decided that they do not like and hammering them with negative AP's in an attempt to get said member banned. Looking at these two factors together, one lends credence to the other, IMHO.

JP put a lot of time and effort into the AP system to make it fair for all, and serupticiously cicumventing those controls to harm another member just because you do not like or agree with him or her is quite frankly dishonest and cowardly. Ganging up in this fashion is not only bullying, but it is also bigotry. Bigotry, no matter what your justification, is wrong. Racism, religious predjudice and gay-bashing are all forms of bigotry just as bullying is, and cannot be tolerated. As a proud member of this community, I object to one small group deciding that they have the right to dictate who stays and who goes in OUR community. JP, as the founder, is the ONLY person who should have that right.

So here is my question, and hence my suggestion...can the AP system be set up to recognize such patterns ( members a, b, c, d, and e have all assigned negative AP's to member z x number of times) and take corrective action ( a suggestion: reverse the AP's that z got when the pattern is recognized, then assign the same number of TOTAL negs to a-e as punishment for their misdeeds OR a message appears that states no more AP's may be assigned to this member for x amount of time)? It's just a thought, and I hope I'm not stepping on TOO many toes with this one, but it certainly seems like it would make an effective deterrent. JMHO

[Terr]

Here's another idea... Have the system recognize events when a bunch of accounts assign points to the same user at about the same time. I think this is another time to plug my probably-not-gonna-happen Gold Dot idea.

[valhallen]

But then it would be hard to say for certain that it was organised bullying!
I completely agree with what you are saying and it is a cowardly act but what is to say that a b c d e have not always found the peron in questions posts to be against the code of conduct of AO?
Take for instance some previous members of AO like GbinaryR - his posts where nothing short of stupid and am sure alot of the same people hit him with negs alot of the time for his posts which were little more than a waste of server space....now if your system was working then the people who had given him negs for (a) bad post(s) would find themselves being negged oO

It would be too hard to get a system that could distinguish between
coencidence - & bullying
deserved negs & bullying

its a good idea but I fear not feasable

v_Ln

[allenb1963]

yup...you're right Terr....to be fair, the system has to work BOTH ways.

[SynapticFailure]

i would be more concerned 4 new members who get hammered once by a senior member (with 100's of antipoints), pretty much ensuring the inevitable demise of their account. its a deep hole to crawl out of.
example:
allenb1963 :it would prob take 100's of antipoints to get you in the grey.
you hit me once and my green turns to grey.

[allenb1963]

I see your point valhallen, and upon reflection I fear I was remiss in divulging all my thoughts. Part of the abuse pattern appears to be assignments to old threads which could be figured in when the system is scanning for a pattern of abuse.



SynapticFailure: I've had some thoughts on that subject also, and you can view them here.

[valhallen]

I agree with your point about old threads - if a thread has not recieved antipoints when it has been new then people should not be able to dump on it later on

perhaps a system could be added so that once a thread is past a certain age - say when the <blink> tag comes into the date then that thread cannot recieve any more antipoints?

I know this will not help with the issue you are addressing but it would go some way to combating people hunting out old threads and using them to balance their points when perhaps the person who wrote in that thread has since became a more decent member of AO

v_Ln

[JCHostingAdmin]

I agree with valhallen's last post in saying that old threads should not be able to get antipoints based on the fact that people use it to balance out points or simply to give neggs. However, if someone saw say on of... Ennis's tutorials because they either just came back or are new and want to give it greenies, then that can't happen. I still agree with valhallen however.

[Terr]

Originally posted here by valhallen
I agree with your point about old threads - if a thread has not recieved antipoints when it has been new then people should not be able to dump on it later on
perhaps a system could be added so that once a thread is past a certain age - say when the <blink> tag comes into the date then that thread cannot recieve any more antipoints?

Suggestion Made Here

[lench]

what about monitoring how many AP's a person gives out and if most are negative and are dated pretty close together send them a warning