Posted by gillispie on 10/28/2022 8:14:00 PM (view original):
i just just want to say (and then ill shut up), i do generally agree with you guys... it seems pretty serious. probably more serious than the guy who threw that NT game against himself or his friend or whatever it was - in my book anyway. and that was a pretty serious case. i think this guy more likely than not should be punished, *especially* with your information about how this has been going on for some time. i do try to push back on extremes on both sides (the 'he definitely shouldn't be banned, its not against PFG', to he definitely should be banned). but if im being honest with myself, that is largely because of my own agenda outside this particular instance (to see these issues dealt with, with a bit less raw anger and a bit more understanding towards both the nameless offender and towards CS - even though i am definitely anti-cheating overall).

but bottom line, this one does seem pretty darn serious, i agree with you guys there! and that this sort of behavior should come with consequences as a deterrent. and that this guy caused real harm.

I'm with ya, it's probably better to err towards "let's get all the facts first". If I ever get arrested for murder, I hope youre on the Jury. And I agree, it's not all black and white. And situations matter when it comes to punishment.


Now with that said.. BURN HIM!!!

My opinion is that I agree with what you’re saying in theory. But the problem is, the punishment NEVER fits the crime here. Ab90 got banned eventually, for doing the same thing he always did over and over and over and over. So is it ok to cheat once twice and three times but not four? I understand the gray area. A coach who’s been warned about teams being closer than 1000 miles, then ends up with a team 1025 miles away, THAT is gray.

This is, “oh wow look what I found! (Rubs hands together). I’m gonna be able to dominate. I’ll start small and maybe no one will notice…….. wow I’ve had some success pulling this off and no one’s noticed this……. Ok I’m going all out and I’m gonna offer every recruit there is, and I don’t even care anymore! Screw it”.

I’m ruthless. You cheat, you just need to be gone somehow. No need for it. At least this kind of cheating

The more I think about it, the more I'm mad that I was competing against a stacked deck (Nova in Allen). It is like how many guys did I back off over the years because of this? And how did that change my recruiting strategy?

And how many guys did ingo after that then i knocked down a mid major off because i wasnt battling St. John's? It's that unknown...

I always wondered why ab90 disappeared. Now I know. His teams blocked me from more than one D3 title. I never paid enough attention to realize he was dishonest.

Close the recruiting loophole ASAP and remove him from Texas and Villanova like yesterday.

As far as anything beyond that, I don't know. I find cheating offensive. I'll just leave it at that.

Posted by gillispie on 10/28/2022 6:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 10/28/2022 6:32:00 PM (view original):
You're a good dude Gil. Perhaps a little naive, but a good dude.

for what its worth... i think the same about you :)

i generally agree with your post, that ramifications are probably in order for this guy. but probably not if you happened to find 1 of 100 people who is doing this, unless perhaps they find the other 100 and apply a consistent punishment. it would be really hard to justify a full ban for all 100 though, and it would be unfair to ban-stick this 1 guy and ignore the other 99.

if YOU were doing this, without reporting it to CS first, i would probably support banning you. and i would expect the same for me. you guys never like my argument that a 15 year old kid who doesn't read the forums and never read the FPGs, can't reasonably be held to the same standard as you and me. i'm not sure why. life is complicated, almost everything is shades of gray, not black and white.

i get that we were all taught as kids that to be fair, you hold everyone to the same standards. but by age 10 or so, the massive shortcomings in this approach should start to be too glaring to ignore. at least by age 20. or 30. its kind of like how liberals would full on rage at conservatives for being anti-gay marriage a mere 10 years after their own presidential nominee was anti-gay marriage. not everyone evolves at the same rate. everyone comes from different backgrounds, has different advantages or disadvantages and different innate abilities. holding others to the standard you think yourself should be held to, its just an absurd philosophy. we are all idiots trying to find our way through a universe we barely understand... and we all want some compassion when its us who plays the fool. its too hypocritical for my tastes not to afford this to others in turn.

Gil, I agree life is super complicated, look at what happened in GD. But this is a pay for site, these are paying customers, and there is no room for cheaters here. I'm in full agreement with an axe if what Benis discovered is true. What you are saying I agree applies to life for sure, but we also do not know this person in life, we know his name on a website. If this was a gambling site and people were directly losing money, there would be no question here. Instead, people have potentially legit lost happiness or fulfillment or just lost damn recruits and because of that games and possible titles if we wanted to talk about the compassion part, this was not a victimless HD crime. For any action he made, it was negatively effecting those around him. (If true)

If he wants another chance fine, he can screen-record his recruiting sessions and publically post them discord for a certain amount of time after his recruiting is over to not break Fair Use but also to prove that he is not cheating. That would be my solution other than ban because I just can't trust someone like this anymore and I want to enjoy my time on this site too as does everyone I'm sure.

Burn him.

It will be interesting to see how, once the loophole is closed, this will impact recruiting for everybody else. Some of us may have been victims of other coaches exploiting this to some extent and never even realized it.

Posted by tecwrg on 10/29/2022 9:53:00 AM (view original):
It will be interesting to see how, once the loophole is closed, this will impact recruiting for everybody else. Some of us may have been victims of other coaches exploiting this to some extent and never even realized it.

I agree, this is the greater unknown.

I do think the initiative and analysis by Benis needs to be rewarded. Most online games are self-policed. In this case, Benis did WIS a huge favor identifying a substantial flaw in the logic, whatever its nature.

The offender, should be made to pay, whether a forfeiture of his credits with teams he used to accumulate them or loss of the career progression in those worlds, it doesn’t really matter to me. There must be something more to punishment than “Hey, that wasn’t cool,” from the admins and some public shaming by all of us.

Posted by gillispie on 10/28/2022 6:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 10/28/2022 6:32:00 PM (view original):
You're a good dude Gil. Perhaps a little naive, but a good dude.

for what its worth... i think the same about you :)

i generally agree with your post, that ramifications are probably in order for this guy. but probably not if you happened to find 1 of 100 people who is doing this, unless perhaps they find the other 100 and apply a consistent punishment. it would be really hard to justify a full ban for all 100 though, and it would be unfair to ban-stick this 1 guy and ignore the other 99.

if YOU were doing this, without reporting it to CS first, i would probably support banning you. and i would expect the same for me. you guys never like my argument that a 15 year old kid who doesn't read the forums and never read the FPGs, can't reasonably be held to the same standard as you and me. i'm not sure why. life is complicated, almost everything is shades of gray, not black and white.

i get that we were all taught as kids that to be fair, you hold everyone to the same standards. but by age 10 or so, the massive shortcomings in this approach should start to be too glaring to ignore. at least by age 20. or 30. its kind of like how liberals would full on rage at conservatives for being anti-gay marriage a mere 10 years after their own presidential nominee was anti-gay marriage. not everyone evolves at the same rate. everyone comes from different backgrounds, has different advantages or disadvantages and different innate abilities. holding others to the standard you think yourself should be held to, its just an absurd philosophy. we are all idiots trying to find our way through a universe we barely understand... and we all want some compassion when its us who plays the fool. its too hypocritical for my tastes not to afford this to others in turn.

The guy in question in this cheating scenario was already in D1 before even i arrived 9 Earth years ago. I recognize his username as having coached Wake Forest for like 50 years. Why does he get a mulligan? Why sre the rest of us continually held to different standards. Assuming he's been made aware by Benis and HD admin of being caught , he should address this here in the forums.

It's about enabling jerks... it's about no accountability for those jerks taking advantage of peoples' goodwill and patience... it's about jerks just flat out cheat. It's about setting an example for the next jerk that comes along.

It's about a group of reasonable people having to placate others who refuse to grow up and evolve, and continue to resist, for years, decades, etc, despite all evidence that they're wrong.

It's about that first group of generally reasonable people, after expending loads of energy trying to patiently talk sense into the a-hole group, eventually saying, ok, F this, enough is enough, time for these a-holes to STFU and grow the F up.

And if i'm reading this right, he's getting tons of extra AP's... so it's not just being able to unlock the players quickly, it's also about feeding crazy amounts of AP's to his targets throughout the recruiting process.

For every X amount of AP's, it's regarded as the equivalent if extra Home Visits or Campus Visits. Holy sh-t, wtf?

Dude collected some sweet silverware in Naismith at Wake Forest since around when 3.0 started.

This is nuts, and makes me wonder if others know about it as well as Ive had my suspicions in one of my long time worlds on other coaches doing something goofy. I even left their recruiting "region" yet still see them on my recruits for some reason. Not as extreme as Benis' case but definitely peculiar. Probably is nothing but now that I know some kind of loophole exists how can I not be skeptical now?

I really hope its more than a hand slap punishment, that would be bogus, like others mentioned it really affects other paying customers.

I don't mean to jump to his defense, but am pretty sure this guy hasn't been using the exploit for long. I was in a conference with him in Allen for a while and never noticed anything out of the ordinary. I'm a very observant coach and didn't notice anything wrong. I think any possible repercussions for him should be less severe since this could be the first cycle he's used this in. I'm interested to see what the glitch is, honestly.

Posted by npb7768 on 10/29/2022 10:23:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 10/28/2022 6:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 10/28/2022 6:32:00 PM (view original):
You're a good dude Gil. Perhaps a little naive, but a good dude.

for what its worth... i think the same about you :)

i generally agree with your post, that ramifications are probably in order for this guy. but probably not if you happened to find 1 of 100 people who is doing this, unless perhaps they find the other 100 and apply a consistent punishment. it would be really hard to justify a full ban for all 100 though, and it would be unfair to ban-stick this 1 guy and ignore the other 99.

if YOU were doing this, without reporting it to CS first, i would probably support banning you. and i would expect the same for me. you guys never like my argument that a 15 year old kid who doesn't read the forums and never read the FPGs, can't reasonably be held to the same standard as you and me. i'm not sure why. life is complicated, almost everything is shades of gray, not black and white.

i get that we were all taught as kids that to be fair, you hold everyone to the same standards. but by age 10 or so, the massive shortcomings in this approach should start to be too glaring to ignore. at least by age 20. or 30. its kind of like how liberals would full on rage at conservatives for being anti-gay marriage a mere 10 years after their own presidential nominee was anti-gay marriage. not everyone evolves at the same rate. everyone comes from different backgrounds, has different advantages or disadvantages and different innate abilities. holding others to the standard you think yourself should be held to, its just an absurd philosophy. we are all idiots trying to find our way through a universe we barely understand... and we all want some compassion when its us who plays the fool. its too hypocritical for my tastes not to afford this to others in turn.

The guy in question in this cheating scenario was already in D1 before even i arrived 9 Earth years ago. I recognize his username as having coached Wake Forest for like 50 years. Why does he get a mulligan? Why sre the rest of us continually held to different standards. Assuming he's been made aware by Benis and HD admin of being caught , he should address this here in the forums.

It's about enabling jerks... it's about no accountability for those jerks taking advantage of peoples' goodwill and patience... it's about jerks just flat out cheat. It's about setting an example for the next jerk that comes along.

It's about a group of reasonable people having to placate others who refuse to grow up and evolve, and continue to resist, for years, decades, etc, despite all evidence that they're wrong.

It's about that first group of generally reasonable people, after expending loads of energy trying to patiently talk sense into the a-hole group, eventually saying, ok, F this, enough is enough, time for these a-holes to STFU and grow the F up.

i know nothing about the coach in question, never heard of him, but i agree with you that him being around a long time is a big factor against him.

if i was CS, my priority would be fixing the loophole. i would message the dude right away, tell him to knock it off, that judgement was pending, and ask him to explain himself and how he was doing this (even if it seems clear, always best to solicit that info). then i would go investigate two things, 1) how long has the dude been doing it, and 2) how widespread is this in the community. its not that any combination of #1 and #2 really makes the guy's actions ok, but there could be a bigger situation, and its kind of important to get your arms around that sort of stuff.

anyway, i agree that a slap on the wrist is unreasonable. serious punishment could be removal from 1 or more teams, a temporary or permanent ban, etc - i guess i am much less opposed to the idea of banning this guy than i am opposed to the idea that CS should immediately commit to banning the guy, before they've put the fire out or investigated. they need to go fix this loophole ASAP, gotta put the fire out. this dude can sit on the shelf for a few days while they investigate the loophole, how to fix it, and how widespread abuse is. but i agree this is really serious and there should be consequences.

one thing i really wonder is - will CS tell us if they find out a dozen folks have been doing this?

Posted by cubcub113 on 10/29/2022 12:54:00 PM (view original):
I don't mean to jump to his defense, but am pretty sure this guy hasn't been using the exploit for long. I was in a conference with him in Allen for a while and never noticed anything out of the ordinary. I'm a very observant coach and didn't notice anything wrong. I think any possible repercussions for him should be less severe since this could be the first cycle he's used this in. I'm interested to see what the glitch is, honestly.

This was definitely not the first time he's used this glitch. There's a reason I decided to look into this further. I've recruited against him for a long time now and have noticed odd behavior for quite awhile.

But whether he's done it 2 times, 5 times, 20 times, I don't think it really matter.

Edit: you were at Louisville when in BE. Swenske doesnt venture outside his 500 mile radius from NYC so that's probably when you didn't really notice. Since I'm at syracuse, we're going for the exact same players every season.