"why, then, is a more malicious action being treated with less severe repercussions"
I don't think that's what's happening here. I think it's just officially saying that, regardless of why you cheated, it's going to be treated as cheating, and since cheating is a ban-able offense, cheating for the purpose of "testing" the mods is a ban-able offense as well.
@Chrixiam Simply put, poeple who cheat to "test mods" are wasting mods' time. And as Komrade said, they often do it to call out on said mods, a malicious intention if you ask me. But I see your point in the aspect of letting each community decide on their on how to treat these runs. Though in the end, I think each community should realize that banning cheaters is the right decision.
It's too bad this wasn't enacted sooner. There's some cheaters that got away with it before lol.
and still post runs.
And my point was that a moderator should watch the run, all the way through, before verifying it.
Yeah they should watch it but some mods don't thats the point idk why they don't tho ^_^ they get 3 weeks they should take there time to watch it :) I understand skipping to certain bits in longer runs but at least it's still being checked :) I can see the argument on both sides but personally I am glad this rule is in place for the most part. If any mod of a game sees this rule and really hates it could just remove the run themselves and not say anything I guess idk, but its a nice solid rule :)
Speedrun.com should probably add a third status to runs, something akin to "approved but not fully verified".
Let's be honest, moderators won't be able to watch all the submitted runs in full, and paying attention to all the details during the full run. They can and should do basic checks (does the run seem correctly timed, is the skill level on some random portion consistent with the claimed time), but they often just can't watch it all. Things like splicing can get through this.
Rather than aiming for an ideal-but-impossible standard of "all runs are fully verified" ; allow the moderator to mark a more accurate verification status for the run :
- Rejected (checked and the run was invalid)
- Approved (basic checks, seemed ok, but not thoroughly checked)
- Verified (fully watched, and checks against known cheating techniques)
For runs approved before adding the new status, they should default to "approved" - easier for moderators to mark them as verified if they indeed were fully verified than trying to track down in old runs those that have been only quickly approved but are marked misleadingly as "verified" - a verified run is always approved but the contrary is false.
"Approved" times would appear normally in the leaderboards, but they'd be some indication somewhere about their moderation status (not in a way illegitimizing the run : innocent until proved guilty). Then, a second moderator or a community member would be able to know that the run has only passed basic checks and would be able to check it more fully if they wish so (because they have time to do so, or are suspicious).
It may also be useful that a run can be marked "verified" by multiple moderators, the system displaying who has done so. One full-verification would be often plenty, but for WRs and such, it may come in handy.
[quote]Let's be honest, moderators won't be able to watch all the submitted runs in full, and paying attention to all the details during the full run.[/quote] The amount of times I see this terrible excuse for lazy moderation is incredible. If you can’t watch runs closely, then don’t be a moderator, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t have the time to watch runs in full, then don’t be a mod and let someone who has the time take over. No shame in being busy and not being able to fully watch runs, but you shouldn’t be a moderator.
This is why mods often say that for slower runs, they might not watch them in full or as closely, but for top level runs they always do. This is often a nice compromise. But to say that mods don’t have the time to watch a run in full is just an excuse to let lazy moderation slide.
I just went through this with a community I’m a part of - the moderation team made this exact same excuse and I warned them it was lazy moderation. Guess what happened - spliced runs made it through. Don’t be a lazy moderator, watch the run in full and pay attention to some details like loading, audio, etc. especially for top level runs. Sometimes splicing is incredibly hard to catch and a mod won’t see it during verifying, and that can’t be helped. That’s why some spliced runs are caught years later, when another set of eyes catches some obscure detail that gives it away. But the main point is that not watchning a run in full isn’t normal, it’s lazy and bad moderation.
It depends entirely on how popular the run is.
As a Super Mario Odyssey moderator, sorry, but it's unrealistic to expect us (which is about 3-4 of us who verify daily) to sit through several 1 and a half hour runs. It's even worse when we have people submitting 9 hour runs. It's extremely unrealistic to expect us to sit through the whole run, especially since we'd have to do a good portion of it on regular speed considering there have been multiple people who have tried to speed up their run via editing.
Unless I'm misinterpreting, if so, sorry.
You'd be right with a game like, say, Tomb Raider, or really any other game that doesn't get 30+ submissions daily and isn't a run that's several hours long.
Should we be watching segments of the run at the minimum? Absolutely. Can anyone expect us to watch the run in full? Hell no.
@starsmiley [quote=Timmiluvs in his last post]This is why mods often say that for slower runs, they might not watch them in full or as closely, but for top level runs they always do. This is often a nice compromise.[/quote] What you just described for SMO is exactly why communities of mods have this compromise. If you’re not closely watching a run that’s 155th on the LB or a run that’s 9 hours long, that’s okay because that game gets a lot of runs and for runs that low on the LB it’s understandable. But you should absolutely be watching top level runs all the way through. People don’t usually splice runs at 155th on the LB, they splice something for a top time. That’s why those runs need complete focus.
This isn’t saying that slower runs don’t matter btw, but it’s the same reasoning behind some games not requiring proof until a certain time. When games get a lot of runs, watching every single run fully is unreasonable, but the mods should still pay close attention to the top level times.
Let's be honest: these people talking about testing mods are just no-life trolls.
The reason we have videos attached to runs is that ANYONE can go back after the fact and re-verify them independently.
You really want to test mods? Go watch the videos yourself.
You'd be surprised, @Timmiluvs. A lot of our spliced runs, or seemingly spliced, were around 300th place.
Although that isn't counting the idiots that think it's funny to submit WR runs without proof.
[QUOTE]The amount of times I see this terrible excuse for lazy moderation is incredible. If you can’t watch runs closely, then don’t be a moderator, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t have the time to watch runs in full, then don’t be a mod and let someone who has the time take over. No shame in being busy and not being able to fully watch runs, but you shouldn’t be a moderator.[/QUOTE]
Look, I'm not saying that it wouldn't be better if all runs, including the 200th, were all watched in full by at least someone.
I'm not saying that top3/top10/... (depending on the game's competition, etc) runs shouldn't be treated with much more cautiousness (which mostly means full-watching).
I'm not saying that some games shouldn't get more moderators to get a more thorough verification.
I'm not saying that there are not some real lazy moderators who approve blindly.
What I'm saying is that your ideal of all runs being fully verified before approbation WON'T happen. I don't say you must like it, I don't say that I like it, I say this is an objective reality you can't get around, because of human nature, time constraints, etc.
Just look at this if you want to be disheartened about the level of check for a lot of runs : https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/45e1en/a_question_to_speedruncom_moderators_how_do_you/
Read it, and come tell me again if you think you can really get >90% of SRC moderators to only ever approve a run they have watched in full.
Rather than saying "either each run must be 100% verified or let waiting undefinitely", which in practice leads to "lightly checked run are marked the same way as fully verified runs, and other moderators/community members have no way to know which is which" ; my proposed system allows a much better correction : 1)other mods/users can know which run to look at with more attention (especially, another mod can do full verifications for runs lacking it) ; 2)if a mod were to mark as "verified" a run which don't follow the category rules (in a way which pass through light checks), the community can see he's not fit to moderate and have him ousted, which should mostly guarantee that the "verified" label is only applied when truly warranted.
[QUOTE]I just went through this with a community I’m a part of - the moderation team made this exact same excuse and I warned them it was lazy moderation. Guess what happened - spliced runs made it through.[/QUOTE] This doesn't surprise me in the least, and I'm not saying they shouldn't have done a better job.
But the goal of my proposition is precisely to catch them at a higher rate and sooner in similar situations.
[QUOTE]What you just described for SMO is exactly why communities of mods have this compromise. If you’re not closely watching a run that’s 155th on the LB or a run that’s 9 hours long, that’s okay because that game gets a lot of runs and for runs that low on the LB it’s understandable.[/QUOTE] Well, that's my point. Those runs should be marked in a "approved but not fully verified" state.
I didn't advocate in the least being careless for times on the top of the leaderboard.
It was to get an improvement in that kind of situation : [QUOTE]Should we be watching segments of the run at the minimum? Absolutely. Can anyone expect us to watch the run in full? Hell no.[/QUOTE]
I think another issue is that for a lot of games, no one wants to be a mod and no one wants to put in the time to watching all the runs in full and doing full Fourier analysis of the sound to look for hidden discontinuities. To say, let someone else be mod, I retort for a lot of games, maybe even the vast majority, no one wants to do it and one person grudgingly accepts the task. So the choice isn't always good mod vs. lazy mod. It's often lazy mod vs. dead leaderboard.
If you're getting overloaded, you should add more moderators. Or verifiers. I don't care how many submissions you're getting, you should always be watching the full run, regardless of place.
If you're watching six hour runs that doesn't mean it needs to take you six hours to watch it. YT and Twitch innately support double speed playback, which means a 6 hour run is 3 hours to watch. You can slow down to normal speed or slower if you spot something that might be off. Or if you download the recording you can go even faster with most video players. And you can take more than one day to watch a run, too, if need be.
That said, I would like a third possibility where a run can show up without being explicitly verified. This can be used for many reasons, but while I recommend it not be used for your point, Alayan, it could be used for that too.
This is all getting away from the point of the thread, which was that fake submissions are going to result in site bans. Which I always have supported.
You can't seriously argue that all runs must be watched, and simultaneously encourage moderators to watch it on double speed.
I watch runs submitted to boards I mod.
In the background, muted, at double speed while I play hearthstone