Dear valued members of FreeVPS Directory & Discussion,
In this brief public announcement we would like to inform you and make a statement regarding a very recent subject: misuse of the reputation function of the forum.
1. Abuse of the reputation function
Very unfortunately, we’ve not only come across misuse of the reputation function but also massive abuse, recently and several times in the past. Certain members (who shall remain unnamed for privacy reasons) have been found creating multiple accounts to give their main account a huge amount of reputation points for all of their made posts/threads and/or also to give out reputations to other accounts (investigation led us to believe that the other users who have received reputation from these multiple accounts are most likely their friends/referral accounts).
With such heavy abuse cases these members have violated many of our forums rules. They’ve taken advantage over other hard working members who earn their reputation in legitimate manners with quality posts, tutorials or other good contributions. Very important: multiple accounts are totally forbidden! Taking advantage of others and cheating the system is absolutely not welcome and will be punished.
This issue is not new to us. We have had many cases of this in the past. The most recent case occurred about two weeks ago. The member and their multiple accounts have been banned and their VPS has been instantly terminated. We’re not happy when we have to take such extreme measures but it seems that some people are literally asking for it to be done.
In addition we’ve also had cases where certain members have been asking/begging for reputations in private messages in exchange for reputation points in return. This is also against the rules of asking/begging for reputations/money/points and so on. Thankfully we have received reports by some of the members who have received such private messages. This did not directly occur recently but rather far in the past but it is still something worth to be thought of/to be mentioned as an example for abuse.
2. Misuse of the reputation function
The other issue we have discovered recently is misuse of the reputation function. This isn’t directly abuse of the system – more indirectly. As you know the reputation function of MyBB is used here, as an unified system to thank people for their work, to agree with them on a statement, like their tutorials/good contributions. It directly contributes to the points and score system we use. The contribution value is small however. The reason for this is listed in point 1 above. Reputations used to be valued more in the past but constant abuse has led to downranking of reputation points in the calculation process for score.
Now to recent issues. We found a lot of reputation points being handed out on posts that have had no quality to receive a reputation. We have even found reputation points at very offensive posts/trolling posts. This is not acceptable. We do not tolerate awards for trolls and people who start fights with others. Other types of issues with reputation were that there have been many reputation points handed out without any comment at all. We have been thinking and thinking why these may have been handed out but it was absolutely impossible to find out. They could have easily been reputations that might have been part of point 1 from above. Last but not least we found out that certain members always exchanged reputations between each others just to bump their reputation count up with comments like “Welcome to the 2xx club” (meaning: here you have some reputations and welcome to the 200+ reputation points club) or “I don’t like odd numbers” (meaning: here you have some reputation points because I don’t like to see you having a reputation with an odd number). This is more or less totally unjustified. It is just like playing around but not more.
It shocked us to see that this has been done by senior members with a lot of posts, a high score and many contributions. One of these members has always been caught in the past engaging in fights (actually even starting them). Apparently some people think they can do what they want here and get away with it without any consequences. The same person has attacked some of us personally after we have reminded them of their bad behaviour/rule violations.
We hope that you understand the situation and understand us. Please always think twice before giving out reputations and add meaningful comments to them. We hate to do what we have to do when it can be easily avoided. We are very sorry for the cause inconvenience that some members have experienced recently. Follow the rules and no action will be required.
We do not want the reputation system to be abandoned as a result of this post, we want it to be used sensibly so that all members are treated fairly in the scoring system.
Thank you very much for your understanding.
Yours sincerely
Administration & Staff
FreeVPS Directory & Discussion
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