Contest Investigation Findings and Corrected Results

[Lucius]

Little to add here, other than that the moderation team, both collectively and individually, didn't see the point of cheating either, hence we weren't looking for it. The situation necessarily changes.

[Claire]

In ccase there was any remaining doubt: @LaLia, @HBK, @Interception, and @LeNa90 all logged in and immediately logged out again today within one minute (9:39 to 9:40 AM) before LaLia created the @Mirabella account to complain in chat. So even for the two accounts where we didn't have 1 to 1 IP matches so far and relied on more indirect evidence, we now have explicit confirmation.

[Claire]

I just started the cleanup of inflated ratings. We will remove all ratings given by @HBK, @Interception, @LeNa90, @Harlekin86, and @TheDarkAge, but not those given by the original @LaLia account.

The Community Favorites board was unaffected by this. I also just went through the popular stories board. There, several stories were affected. Two dropped below the 30 threshold because of that. But nobody's stories (but @LaLia's stories) will be removed from the Popular Stories board because of that.

Stories that dropped below 30:

• BOoB by @Claire
• The Highlanders by @Shocker

Other affected stories in the popular stories board:

• Amy's Treatment by @skuttrusk
• The Srange Case of Henry Banner and Danica Carew by @Claire
• Faithless by @AdmiralPiet
• The Good Samaritan by @Vile8r
• Fugitives by @Shocker
• Späte Genugtuung by @Claire
• Milk Run by @Shocker

All of these stories lost at least 1 rating point.

Going through all of the stories in the public stories board will obviously take some time and we won't list every affected story here for the sheer number of stories we have to check. But should you notice one of your stories losing rating over the course of the next few days, it will be because it got a rating from one of the aforementioned sockpuppet accounts

[Shocker]

@Claire just a suggestion, but I wouldn’t bother weeding through all the public stories. It doesn’t hurt anybody giving those authors a leg up towards popular. It’s completely understandable and laudable that you are aiming for full transparency and clearing this up, but at one point we will have to move forward.

Just for clarification that is not a complaint about the adjustment of my own stories, it’s an attempt limiting the work ahead of you.

[RapeU]

@Claire just a suggestion, but I wouldn’t bother weeding through all the public stories. It doesn’t hurt anybody giving those authors a leg up towards popular. It’s completely understandable and laudable that you are aiming for full transparency and clearing this up, but at one point we will have to move forward.

Just for clarification that is not a complaint about the adjustment of my own stories, it’s an attempt limiting the work ahead of you.

It only took about an hour. It would have been a much more daunting task if the forum was as old as RavishU.

[Labaal]

How long till we are able to update /edit & remove stories and topics again ?

It would suck if the entire site was in locked down due to one bad egg

[Claire]

@Labaal The site isn't in lockdown. You can do all of these things. the only person unable to these things is @LaLia and we hhave removed her stories as she requested.

@Shocker Most of the ratings were focused on 20+ rated stories with a few more in the high 10s. Checking everything below 15 was really fast because there were barely any ratings to delete.

[RapeU]

How long till we are able to update /edit & remove stories and topics again ?

It would suck if the entire site was in locked down due to one bad egg

We haven't disabled anything or locked down the site at all. You should be able to post, edit, and rate like you normally would on any other day.

[Labaal]

Ok thanks for the clarification
I know this may seem sudden but I think I'm going to delete my stories and just be around here as a lurker ,my comments will still be up but I think I'll erase the stories. I apologise for letting you down but I no longer feel comfortable knowing how much IP info is out there
I hope you'll understand

[Claire]

@Labaal This is of course perfectly okay even though I'm sad to see you go.

I just want you to know that IPs aren't tracked here more or less than anywhere else on the internet. Honestly, probably less compared to most places like twitter, instagram, tiktok or YouTube. If you ever watched a YouTube video and got an English ad, then that most likely happened because YouTube concluded based on your IP that you are from an English speaking country. The moment you as a VPN that places you in the Netherlands, you might Dutch advertizements.

The difference to big companies like Google and Amazon is that our forum here does basically nothing with this data. It's not being sold for advertizement purposes or analyzed etc. The only thing @RapeU is required to do is to hand over the IP data to the authorities in case of a legal investigation.

Anyway, the key point is: This forum is in no way unique in how it saves IP data. This happens on basically every site you visit. If this makes you feel uncomfortable, that's fine. Just be aware that on whatever social media plattforms you use this data is collected, stored, analyzed, used, and sold aggressively.