182 réponses à ce sujet

[Demx]

I found what St. Cajetan posted here  intresting.

St. Cajetan wrote...

Crixt is referring to the threatened disqualification of forumites who used some BBCode voodoo to amass many more referral clicks than should have been possible. From how I understand it, by placing the exploit it your signature, each view of your post was counted as a referral link click.

[Mallissin]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Mad Method wrote...
No, if you have to ask, it's a gray zone

You were told it was a bad idea from the start. And then what you were told was verified.

"You're probably going to get punished for this."
"I'm going to do it anyway."
"What do you know, you are getting punished for this." 
"Why am I getting punihsed for this?!" 

How about this instead:

"Dude, I can setup my link in the IMG tag?"
"Uh, don't you think they'd know about that?"
"It's their site, they should..let's see if it works."
"Wow, it works. Cool. Let's see what happens."
A day passes.
"Ut oh, we're getting a lot of clicks, let's make sure this is legit."
"Yo, Bioware...we're doing this and this, is it allowed?"
Two days pass.
"No."
Five days pass.
All your tokens are belonging to us.

[the_one_54321]

Mallissin wrote...
How about this instead:

"Dude, I can setup my link in the IMG tag?"
"Uh, don't you think they'd know about that?"
"It's their site, they should..let's see if it works."
"Wow, it works. Cool. Let's see what happens."
A day passes.
"Ut oh, we're getting a lot of clicks, let's make sure this is legit."
"Yo, Bioware...we're doing this and this, is it allowed?"
Two days pass.
"No."
Five days pass.
All your tokens are belonging to us.

Stan told you it was a bad idea when you asked aobut it.

[Demx]

Mallissin wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

Mad Method wrote...
No, if you have to ask, it's a gray zone

You were told it was a bad idea from the start. And then what you were told was verified.

"You're probably going to get punished for this."
"I'm going to do it anyway."
"What do you know, you are getting punished for this." 
"Why am I getting punihsed for this?!" 

How about this instead:

"Dude, I can setup my link in the IMG tag?"
"Uh, don't you think they'd know about that?"
"It's their site, they should..let's see if it works."
"Wow, it works. Cool. Let's see what happens."
A day passes.
"Ut oh, we're getting a lot of clicks, let's make sure this is legit."
"Yo, Bioware...we're doing this and this, is it allowed?"
Two days pass.
"No."
Five days pass.
All your tokens are belonging to us.

Did you remove the link after you were told no?

[Mallissin]

Brass_Buckles wrote...
Yeah, if you got told, "This is probably a bad idea, don't do it until we answer you," then you shouldn't have.  Frankly you shouldn't have if you had to ask first.  You should have waited.  I know two days is forever in Internet time, but in real world terms it isn't very long at all.

No one said "don't do it until we answer you."

Woo never told anyone to stop. Even if he did, he's a forum mod. It should be coming from Chris.

http://social.biowar...92287/2#2018307

Chris, I should mention, still seems to be ignoring all messages concerning the points reduction.

[Mallissin]

Siradix wrote...
Did you remove the link after you were told no?

Yep! The moment I read the post I cleaned up my signature.

Edit note: I would have done it even sooner had Chris or someone at Bioware sent out an email telling everyone if was off-limits. Again, they didn't bother.

Modifié par Mallissin, 07 avril 2010 - 02:01 .

[the_one_54321]

Mallissin wrote...

Siradix wrote...
Did you remove the link after you were told no?

Yep! The moment I read the post I cleaned up my signature.

You're linking to the exact post where Stan tells you it's a bad idea, and you think that helps your case? 

[Mallissin]

I linked to show that what Brass_Knuckles said never happened. Again, Woo is a forum mod and "sketchy" doesn't qualify as "off-limits" in my mind. Later Woo mentions this was a personal opinion and not an official position from Bioware.

http://social.biowar...92287/7#2025146

So, yah...it helps my case. Chris should have been the one answering the thread. Woo got caught in the crossfire.

Modifié par Mallissin, 07 avril 2010 - 02:06 .

[the_one_54321]

Mallissin wrote...
I linked to show that what Brass_Knuckles said never happened. Again, Woo is a forum mod and "sketchy" doesn't qualify as "off-limits" in my mind. Later Woo mentions this was a personal opinion and not an official position from Bioware.

http://social.biowar...92287/7#2025146

So, yah...it helps my case. Chris should have been the one answering the thread. Woo got caught in the crossfire.

Well if that's the way you see it, I'm just going to say that I think you should have known better.

[Mallissin]

the_one_54321 wrote...
Well if that's the way you see it, I'm just going to say that I think you should have known better.

That's my opinion on the pyramid scheme threads, yet those are Bioware sponsored. Hence why I don't think those running the contest understand what's fair or unfair.

[Demx]

On April 1st

Chris Priestly wrote...

We consider this an exploit/cheating and are tracking it. Anyone found to use it will lose their tokens Tuesday morning before the auction begins.

Posting something and asking people to click on it is fine. Posting something that is going to automatically generate clicks for you without reader approval (willingness to click) is in our opinion tantamount to cheating and will not be tolerated.

To clarify because there seems to be some confusion.

Having a clickable link that is text that goes to your referral page, like what Deadbolt has now, is fine.

Having a clickable link that is an image that goes to your referral page, live what Rive Caedo has now, is fine.

Having an image that tries to load your referral page is *NOT* allowed as it forces the referral. The contest is titled "Get Your Friends To Click On Your Unique URL". The key word in that phrase is click. When you put the referral link in an image the person is not clicking anything but is instead unknowingly gives you a referral. We consider this cheating.

I take it you removed it on April 1st?

However, it looks like Chris said from the beginning you will lose your tokens because the image was forcing a referral unknowingly to the user.

[Feraele]

Siradix wrote...

On April 1st

Chris Priestly wrote...

We consider this an exploit/cheating and are tracking it. Anyone found to use it will lose their tokens Tuesday morning before the auction begins.

Posting something and asking people to click on it is fine. Posting something that is going to automatically generate clicks for you without reader approval (willingness to click) is in our opinion tantamount to cheating and will not be tolerated.

To clarify because there seems to be some confusion.

Having a clickable link that is text that goes to your referral page, like what Deadbolt has now, is fine.

Having a clickable link that is an image that goes to your referral page, live what Rive Caedo has now, is fine.

Having an image that tries to load your referral page is *NOT* allowed as it forces the referral. The contest is titled "Get Your Friends To Click On Your Unique URL". The key word in that phrase is click. When you put the referral link in an image the person is not clicking anything but is instead unknowingly gives you a referral. We consider this cheating.

I take it you removed it on April 1st?

However, it looks like Chris said from the beginning you will lose your tokens because the image was forcing a referral unknowingly to the user.

In other words..they were getting referrals without the user giving consent to click....so if say I posted in the thread they were in..they would automatically siphon a click off me without my knowledge or agreement to do so.  Hence folks ending up with 40 k or more tokens..as opposed to those that didn't cheat ..possibly coming in at 10K or thereabouts.

[Mad Method]

Brass_Buckles wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

Mad Method wrote...
No, if you have to ask, it's a gray zone

You were told it was a bad idea from the start. And then what you were told was verified.

"You're probably going to get punished for this."
"I'm going to do it anyway."
"What do you know, you are getting punished for this." 
"Why am I getting punihsed for this?!"

Quoted for truth.

Yeah, if you got told, "This is probably a bad idea, don't do it until we answer you," then you shouldn't have.  Frankly you shouldn't have if you had to ask first.  You should have waited.  I know two days is forever in Internet time, but in real world terms it isn't very long at all.

Quoted for being completely false.

Here is what happened: I started the first thread, using the image trick for a link exchange so that a link exchange could be operated without requiring people to get special add-ons or manually click 10,000 links or have to worry about people just adding their link to the exchange but never clicking or burning through as much of Bioware's bandwidth with our exchanges. Woo locked it as he found it to be "a little like cheating." I desisted. Time passes. Other people have now gone and blatantly sigged their image tricks, rake in points, and nothing has happened to them yet. I start a new thread asking Bioware for its stance on the matter and whether it's okay, since others are getting dramatically ahead and this made the process unfair. Stanley Woo responds that he thinks it's a little sketchy, but that he closes threads for being spam, etc. and that "Like regular links, I have little to no problem with people posting links to their signature blocks or in threads specifically designed to exchange links. Throwing the links around willy-nilly is what gets folks in trouble." Based on that, I decide that sigging the image is tolerated so long as you are legitimately contributing to the threads you are posting in. I put it in my signature. Priestly pops in the thread sometime later and mentions that he views it as an exploit and will wipe people's tokens. When I come back, I see this, and I immediately turn my signature into a regular link, edit my post, and leave. Others ask for clarification, the thread goes on, Priestly just locks the thread saying "People found using exploits lose all of the points they earned using the exploits."

Here I am, and I lost all my referrer points. Yes, I feel offended by the treatment.

As for others, I think Rive Caedo's metaphor sums up their predicament nicely:

Rive Caedo wrote...

This is that "herd mentality" I was talking about. I find it difficult to place blame.

To use a very odd metaphor:
There is a big pile of candy.
You are told to get as much candy as you can.
You see lots of people using trash bags to get the candy.
You, therefore, do the same.
3 days later you are told you were only supposed to use your hands and should have ignored everyone telling you to use trash bags

Modifié par Mad Method, 07 avril 2010 - 05:57 .

[Syrellaris]

Mallissin wrote...

Using words like "ergo" won't make something that makes no sense a rational argument.

There are laws regarding "skill contests", which the Bazaar has to follow or it's considered a "lottery", which are illegal. Part of those laws require equal treatment of all participants.

Ergo, I want my 2000 tokens back.

Those laws, due not in no shape interfere with contests rules, unless the rules single out participants based on religion, race, culture, certain area's etc. They do not cover the ways to penalize people that broke the contests rules.

Again, they had the right.

[Mallissin]

Syrellaris wrote...

Mallissin wrote...

Using words like "ergo" won't make something that makes no sense a rational argument.

There are laws regarding "skill contests", which the Bazaar has to follow or it's considered a "lottery", which are illegal. Part of those laws require equal treatment of all participants.

Ergo, I want my 2000 tokens back.

Those laws, due not in no shape interfere with contests rules, unless the rules single out participants based on religion, race, culture, certain area's etc. They do not cover the ways to penalize people that broke the contests rules.

Again, they had the right.

Stick to discussing the laws of your own countries. Over here, if a promotor singles out anyone and acts in a way that doesn't not effect all participants equally, it's considered a discriminatory action. I'm not talking about racial or religious discrimination. The word can be applied elsewhere.

Chris has yet to respond to anyone's PMs, even though he asked people to PM him with questions.

If I don't get an answer before the last day of the auction, I'll be writing a lengthy letter online for anyone to send to their State's Attorney detailing how this Bazaar was not a contest of skill, but an illegal lottery, because of the way the IMG method and other methods of cheating were handled by Bioware's staff.

Modifié par Mallissin, 07 avril 2010 - 03:51 .

[Mallissin]

Mad Method wrote...

As for others, I think Rive Caedo's metaphor sums up their predicament nicely:

Rive Caedo wrote...

This is that "herd mentality" I was talking about. I find it difficult to place blame.

To use a very odd metaphor:
There is a big pile of candy.
You are told to get as much candy as you can.
You see lots of people using trash bags to get the candy.
You, therefore, do the same.
3 days later you are told you were only supposed to use your hands and should have ignored everyone telling you to use trash bags

I think it's interesting you use a quote from Rive, since he's one of the ones driving the herd to use pyramid schemes and tools for their PC that helps the scheme, which I consider cheating. Probably not a good source.

[Sol Veracity]

Mallissin wrote...

Stick to discussing the laws of your own countries. Over here, if a promotor singles out anyone and acts in a way that doesn't not effect all participants equally, it's considered a discriminatory action. I'm not talking about racial or religious discrimination. The word can be applied elsewhere.

It's perfectly legal discrimination and not the least bit suspect in any reasonable court's eyes.  Bioware established a blanket policy that penalized, or at the very least attempted to, all who engaged in the illegal behavior.  There's no individual discrimination with unreasonable justification - in fact, it is quite reasonable.  Any court would see Bioware's actions as attempting to protect both the integrity of the contest and those who were disadvantaged by not acting illegitimately.

Mallissin wrote...

If I don't get an answer before the last day of the auction, I'll be writing a lengthy letter online for anyone to send to their State's Attorney detailing how this Bazaar was not a contest of skill, but an illegal lottery, because of the way the IMG method and other methods of cheating were handled by Bioware's staff.

Go for it.  This is obviously not a lottery; that much can be discerned from the contest procedures alone:

1.  Contestants must EARN the currency to bid upon items.
2.  There is NO ELEMENT OF CHANCE in selecting winners.

By all means, please waste our tax payer dollars by inciting complaints to Attorneys General.  They'll investigate the circumstances and reach the same conclusion as I have.

[cynicalsaint1]

Mad Method wrote...

Quoted for being completely false.

Here is what happened: I started the first thread, using the image trick for a link exchange so that a link exchange could be operated without requiring people to get special add-ons or manually click 10,000 links or have to worry about people just adding their link to the exchange but never clicking or burning through as much of Bioware's bandwidth with our exchanges. Woo locked it as he found it to be "a little like cheating." I desisted. Time passes. Other people have now gone and blatantly sigged their image tricks, rake in points, and nothing has happened to them yet. I start a new thread asking Bioware for its stance on the matter and whether it's okay, since others are getting dramatically ahead and this made the process unfair. Stanley Woo responds that he thinks it's a little sketchy, but that he closes threads for being spam, etc. and that "Like regular links, I have little to no problem with people posting links to their signature blocks or in threads specifically designed to exchange links. Throwing the links around willy-nilly is what gets folks in trouble." Based on that, I decide that sigging the image is tolerated so long as you are legitimately contributing to the threads you are posting in. I put it in my signature. Priestly pops in the thread sometime later and mentions that he views it as an exploit and will wipe people's tokens. When I come back, I see this, and I immediately turn my signature into a regular link, edit my post, and leave. Others ask for clarification, the thread goes on, Priestly just locks the thread saying "People found using exploits lose all of the points they earned using the exploits."

Here I am, and I lost all my referrer points. Yes, I feel offended by the treatment.

As for others, I think Rive Caedo's metaphor sums up their predicament nicely:

Rive Caedo wrote...

This is that "herd mentality" I was talking about. I find it difficult to place blame.

To use a very odd metaphor:
There is a big pile of candy.
You are told to get as much candy as you can.
You see lots of people using trash bags to get the candy.
You, therefore, do the same.
3 days later you are told you were only supposed to use your hands and should have ignored everyone telling you to use trash bags

This is exactly the problem I have with the treatment of this issue. I'm not mad that I lost tokens, I'm mad that we're being treated so poorly by BioWare's reps. This wasn't handled well, they could have stopped a lot of this by simply saying straight up "This is cheating don't don't do it" instead of leaving us with "It seems sketchy" as the best indication of an official stance for over two days after we straight up asked "Is this cheating or not?".

Then when we learned it was cheating, most of us took down our img links, and began asking for clarification on how this would be dealt with, and got stonewalled. I don't care what anyone thinks, up till Chris came out and said it was cheating on Thursday, any stance on the issue was an opinion at best. I had my reasons for believing it wasn't cheating, and without official clarification this was the best anyone had to go on.

All it would have taken is one post--either up front condemning the method before it spread and those of us using it gained a serious advantage, or after they called it cheating to clarify how the situation would be dealt with. Its not really fair, in my mind, that we were left hanging, because in both cases the information we were asking for was critical for determining how we should procede.

[Syrellaris]

Mallissin wrote...

Syrellaris wrote...

Mallissin wrote...

Using words like "ergo" won't make something that makes no sense a rational argument.

There are laws regarding "skill contests", which the Bazaar has to follow or it's considered a "lottery", which are illegal. Part of those laws require equal treatment of all participants.

Ergo, I want my 2000 tokens back.

Those laws, due not in no shape interfere with contests rules, unless the rules single out participants based on religion, race, culture, certain area's etc. They do not cover the ways to penalize people that broke the contests rules.

Again, they had the right.

Stick to discussing the laws of your own countries. Over here, if a promotor singles out anyone and acts in a way that doesn't not effect all participants equally, it's considered a discriminatory action. I'm not talking about racial or religious discrimination. The word can be applied elsewhere.

Chris has yet to respond to anyone's PMs, even though he asked people to PM him with questions.

If I don't get an answer before the last day of the auction, I'll be writing a lengthy letter online for anyone to send to their State's Attorney detailing how this Bazaar was not a contest of skill, but an illegal lottery, because of the way the IMG method and other methods of cheating were handled by Bioware's staff.

You go ahead and do that, because you simply do not understand your law. They punished you for breaking the contests rules, they did not in no way or shape, single you out from it. Infact, they punished not only you but all the others that broke the rule.

Again, the law does not interfere with contests rules. Writing an angry letter to your attorney will not only get you laughed at, but also penalized by court, when you lose your charges. Which I am afraid will happen, as your case has no stance.

[fleabagg wookiee]

my question would be what did they do to that guy who had 18k tokens and was obviously using a bot for auctions unless he wanted the same book set twice in a row and wanted it large enough to spend 9k a piece on it....

[Mad Method]

Syrellaris wrote...

You go ahead and do that, because you simply do not understand your law. They punished you for breaking the contests rules, they did not in no way or shape, single you out from it. Infact, they punished not only you but all the others that broke the rule.

Again, the law does not interfere with contests rules. Writing an angry letter to your attorney will not only get you laughed at, but also penalized by court, when you lose your charges. Which I am afraid will happen, as your case has no stance.

Arguments do not work this way. You do not get to aimlessly assert your justifications and beliefs about a subject you possess no knowledge of. If you want to discuss the law, research the relevant parts before opening your mouth. If you cannot be bothered to learn about the law, then you have no place discussing it.  It is simply unfair that every time your lazy ass posts on this thread to discuss the law, someone should tutor you on the relevant sections of the law and explain why you're wrong, only for you to repeat the cycle of not learning relevant sections of the law and proceeding to argue why they must be wrong. No doubt part of the reason you do this is because ignorance is an unlimited weapon with which a person can be attacked ad nauseum.

If you want to continue discussing the subject, please make sure your points are logical and rooted in a verifiable legal basis (ie. actual fact) rather than your own assertions and wishes of how the law should work. (One often defends those daintily as being "common knowledge" and "common sense".) It's more respectful to the person you are talking to; you are demonstrating a willingness to learn and a willingness to put some effort into your words.

Of course, if the entire purpose of your argument is to disrespect the other person, then please leave.

Sol Veracity, this goes for you too.

[Crixt]

I'm just sad that they took away more tokens than I got that way.

[Sol Veracity]

Mad Method, it's interesting how applicable your post is to you. Two major legal requirements of a lottery contest are an element of chance and some purchase consideration.

This contest requires neither. Way to go. Do yourself a huge favor and avoid further embarrassment by consulting Google.

Edit:  Your post is truly hilarious.  You managed to be wholly ignorant of the law while defaming those familiar with it.  Perhaps if you spent more time familiarizing with the subject matter than insulting your dissenters, you might be able to formulate some form of cogent argument.

If your efforts to research the matter prove fruitless, I will be glad to provide no less than three sources corroborating my claims and undermining yours.

Modifié par Sol Veracity, 07 avril 2010 - 07:43 .

[Mad Method]

Sol Veracity,

To the contrary, I have made no comment whatsoever on the legality of the contest because I am not knowledgeable on the relevant law. You, however, have decided to prove that my stance (I do not have one) is incorrect without bothering to perform the basic research burden to see whether it was actually my stance (said research burden being going through all four pages of this thread).

Thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts though.

Modifié par Mad Method, 07 avril 2010 - 07:49 .

[Demx]

So what are you guys going to do, since you claim it is illegal? Sue them to compensate for the lost of tokens? They are totally worthless outside this contest and you did not purchase any of them. The image trick is a cheat, cheats were always forbidden from the contest. The reason why this is viewed as a cheat is because it unknowingly forces one to give you tokens. Where as the link exchange doesn't, someone has to physically click the link.