Terrorist Player Moderators and Runescape's Mafia

[Alex_I]

The Problem: A few days ago, I was bored on Runescape and decided to start up a small dicing host friends chat with some friends. However, before doing so, I researched some things about dicing like the best places to go, best worlds etc. One thing I came across was very striking though. It was a person claiming that he had started a very small dicing clan when his friend was muted and then a member of a much larger dicing clan joined his friends chat and said "leave our territory before you too get muted". Now obviously, a Player Moderator gave out this mute because it happened instantly. Now, you can obviously accuse this guy of scamming and say he deserved it, but the threat he received is very interesting because it means that the large dicing clan has control over who gets muted. One can only infer that Player Mods are possibly being payed by the large dicing clans. A few days ago, I thought that this claim may have been a bit exaggerated, maybe they did indeed scam someone etc.

 

So, about two days ago, a couple friends and I are hosting dicing games. After hosting maybe 2-4 games each (not scamming anyone, at least I didn't :P), I notice that no one is joining the friends chat or showing any interest in our dicing. I keep on typing however, trying to attract customers. A few minutes later, I log out and then back in just in case something was messing up my chat. I then type something in and get the "You have been temporarily muted due to breaking a rule... You will be unmuted in 2 days etc." Immediately, I think of the guy I had read about and since I didn't think I had broken any rules, assumed I had suffered a similar fate. While no threat from some big dicer followed this mute, I did get on my second RS account and asked my friends if they too were muted, one of whom was.

 

I was furious with Jagex that this could happen to me. I assumed that an appeal would follow this temporary mute, but no. These P-Mod mutes are not appealable and according to the forums, Mods cannot really even be punished for falsely muting someone. I do understand the need for this auto-mute, if someone is threatening real life safety, account safety, or maybe RWT/bot advertising, but I think Mods should be held accountable for their mutes. I am still not certain, but the following should elucidate just how accountable Mods are for what they do.

 

Here it is, tonight, about 10 pm. I decide that my mute was just an unlucky occurance and that it couldn't possibly happen again. What do I do? I go try to host a dicing game. Not very many people even show interest in my game because I am alone in my own friends chat. But, after a while, I noticed that the messages and trade offers had ended all together. I logged out and then backed in, fearing another mute. To my dismay, I was once again muted, for another 2 days.

 

Now, I return to the question: Are Mods accountable for these mutes? Unless I receive some apology from Jagex saying that these corrupt moderator(s) have been demoted and hopefully banned, I will assume the answer is no.

 

My solution: One of the biggest problems, aside from the minimal accountability, is that aside from in-game Abuse Report which really sucks and does nothing, there is no real way to report problems (aside from bugs). I understand that Jagex is busy. I know they can't review everything that even their own Player Mods do, but in today's game where the chat censor doesn't exist, scamming is more prevalent than ever and dicing is one of the biggest money makers in Runescape (I need not even describe the botting/RWT problems), I think that Player Moderators' abilities to dole out insta-mutes should be severely restricted to extreme cases of abuse (like I stated above, this might include IRL/account threats and maybe RWT ads).

 

Obviously if Mods are told only to insta-mute in these extreme instances, there ought to be far fewer cases, these cases ought to be looked at by Jagex anyways, and thus Jagex ought to be able to review every Player Mod insta-mute, thus solving the problem of corrupt terrorizing P-Mods.

 

Now obviously scammers and offensive language users are still bad for the game, but in these lesser cases, I think that Player Moderators should be able to report them to Jagex so that they can review the abuser themselves and if they judge the person to be a rule breaker, they can issue an *appealable* ban/mute instead of the Player Mods' unappealable, unreliable, corrupt and countless mutes.

 

Thanks for reading any of this, I know it is long. If you support me please post and if you have any ideas of how to get Jagex to improve their obviously broken P-Mod system, please tell me!

[Kimberly]

This thread is back where it belongs in the Rants board. I'm sorry for accidentally making it disappear! XD

 

-Kimberly,

Global Moderator

[foofoomagoo]

I don't think this is a very big issue. My guess is you were muted, because you were advertising a dice game where people were breaking the rules.

[Mylez]

The problem is, Alex, that many players do believe Dice Game is a form of scam. I still see players regularly asking what Dicing actually is.

 

While I agree with you that Player Moderators can become corrupt, and controled I see no other real solution. Removing too much power willl only affect all of our game play, probably for the worse. Jages cannot moderate 100% of the reports from Player Moderators, it just isnt feasable.

 

It's tricky. There are many players who abuse Dicing, and while most of us know it isn't breaking the rules - Jagex warns players about it, and this causes uncertainty. I remember a user on these forums being muted by a rival Dicing clan, all you can do is learn from this. It's only mute, so I understand that the issue is more about principal, but is it really worth it? I can't see Dicing being around forever, it will soon be easier to get in to.

[The_Fray]

I don't think this is a very big issue. My guess is you were muted, because you were advertising a dice game where people were breaking the rules.

I think this is an issue, I remember another poster complaining about it before as well. If there are Player Mods abusing their power in order to gain an advantage in the game, then they need to be dealt with. I still don't even get why people dice, a chance to get scammed and lower odds than someone hosting the game. Why would anyone possibly want to do that?

[Hegelstad]

The house always wins in Dicing. Nevertheless, it's still a daylight scam.

[LitterBug]

The same way the house wins at casinos/lotteries/etc. It's not really a scam - there are the pitfalls, just some people don't adhere to common sense.

 

Regardless, if the PMod can just say that they were muting people since they were afraid that people might be "scammed" then there's no real action Jagex can take.

In fact, that'd be the PMod actually doing his job.

 

The only thing solution that I can see is that Jagex takes a stand on dicing, saying "Yes, it is allowed" (like stated specifically) at which point PMods shouldn't be able to mute anybody for this reason.

 

If it helps, go to the big chat, "find" or try to figure out who the PMod is and take it to him in a pm.

Try to get some sort of admissions/etc, and then report the user.

I've heard of PMods fired for a whole lot less (and a lot more random reportings)

[GuidesForScapers]

The problem is mass amounts of money + easily swayed, moronic moderators.

[Kevill]

Hello.

 

I think I can help address some of your questions, and then I would also like to ask you for some information, so

that I may potentially help further with the situation.

 

 

Question from you:

Are Mods accountable for these mutes?

 

Mod are accountable for every mute given, but I cannot fully answer this question

for this specific instance, unless I get more information, which I will ask below near the

end of my post.

 

 

----

A statement from you:

Unless I receive some apology from Jagex saying that these corrupt moderator(s) have been demoted and hopefully banned, I will assume the answer is no.

 

Whilst I can assure you that Jagex does their best to keep their [let's drop the term "P-Mod" and go for the real term] Volunteer Moderators

trustworthy, and fair ... Jagex would never tell you that any Moderator had been demoted/demodded (same thing) for any reason what-so-ever.

Nor would they even tell the other moderators that it had happened. So this would never happen.

As for the apology, I again need to ask a question first.

 

----

 

 

Now for my questions so that I may be able to help answer your questions further.

 

 

Your RSN is "Alex_I", correct?

 

What is the exact reason for your mute (what rule/subject)?

 

What is the name of the dicing clan whom's owner/leader/member entered your friend's friend chat and threatened

him with a mute? Also, what is the name of the owner/leader/member whom did the threatening?

 

 

That is all.

Thanks.

 

~Kevill

[Alex_I]

The problem is mass amounts of money + easily swayed, moronic moderators.

It doesn't tell me why I was muted because it is only a Player Mod mute, my only assumption is that it is for dicing because that is what I was doing both times while I got muted. And as for the threats, I said I had read about that happening to someone else, but that didn't actually happen to me.

[Alex_I]

:o I just received an appealable mute on my Account Management; it is just the P-Mod mute and I am still fully green bars in both categories, but here is the interesting part: their proof of me scamming has 3 lines of me advertising my trust game and I distinctly remember these 3 lines being so unsuccessful that no one even traded me. So, I was correct, I was muted on the "fear that I might scam".

[Carl]

The problem with these "Trust games", Alex_I is that not only do some have the potential to scam, but most of them advertising their clan chats are doing so with 3rd party software for their typing...To make life easier; you know it, and I know it. This is also another reason why one may be muted while innocently advertising, because their chatter is filling the text-box for anyone wishing to take part in a legitimate conversation is hindered by the spam itself.

 

It wouldn't be the first case where I have heard of other players being threatened to have their accounts muted... There was a case before which was discussed in the General Discussion section of the forums where one of these "Prominent" clans were alleged to be using Player Moderators to their advantage to "Wipe out" the competition... They too threatened other users.

 

However, upon visiting this specific location for days on end to find out for myself what was actually going on...Rarely was there a moderator acting on their behalf, if you will..And they were mostly just idle threats, sometimes they would call upon a moderator but that wouild be to mute someone auto typing their chat.

 

 

I'm not going to condone what you are involved in, so in that sense I can't show you any sympathy.

 

I'll just finish with the fact that all Player Moderator reports are reviewed, and wrongly placed mutes do get removed from those who may have accidentally been muted. It can happen due to human error where the wrong player may get the "Wrong end of the stick", entirely by accident.

 

It would be nice to know the location where this happened, though, if you can share that. :)

[GuidesForScapers]

The problem is mass amounts of money + easily swayed, moronic moderators.

It doesn't tell me why I was muted because it is only a Player Mod mute, my only assumption is that it is for dicing because that is what I was doing both times while I got muted. And as for the threats, I said I had read about that happening to someone else, but that didn't actually happen to me.

When i was a dice host i was muted 3 - 4 times a day at one point. ALL of those mutes were removed.

[Bxpprod]

:o I just received an appealable mute on my Account Management; it is just the P-Mod mute and I am still fully green bars in both categories, but here is the interesting part: their proof of me scamming has 3 lines of me advertising my trust game and I distinctly remember these 3 lines being so unsuccessful that no one even traded me. So, I was correct, I was muted on the "fear that I might scam".

 

It is an attempted scam, regardless of whether or not people buy into it.

[Alex_I]

The problem is mass amounts of money + easily swayed, moronic moderators.

It doesn't tell me why I was muted because it is only a Player Mod mute, my only assumption is that it is for dicing because that is what I was doing both times while I got muted. And as for the threats, I said I had read about that happening to someone else, but that didn't actually happen to me.

When i was a dice host i was muted 3 - 4 times a day at one point. ALL of those mutes were removed.

 

An attempted scam is money doubling which obviously is a scam, as no legitimate counterpart exists. On the contrary, dicing for the most part is legitimate. The hypocrisy I see with this is that Jagex allows large clans to exist and make trillions of gp, yet they crush independent hosts. You may say large clans are more trustworthy, but that is only true on the large scale; the one time I actually played dicing, I bet 1m with a large clan, with a ranked member. I won the roll and he logged out; no one else in the clan would repay my loss either even though the amount is minuscule compared to their profits. If you take independent hosts on the large scale, most are also legitimate.

 

Jagex has defined what a scam is; trust games do not fall under this category *unless* money is promised such as if 55+ is rolled etc. and is not paid after such an event occurs. Then it is a scam. But, legitimate hosting of trust games is within the rules of Runescape and certainly if Jagex's policy was to automatically assume advertisement of trust games is an advertisement of a scam before any transaction has occured, trust games would not exist. If this were so, by now Jagex would have explicitly banned trust games.

 

Personally, I would love to see trust games banned all together. Sure, my hatred towards big dicers is jealousy towards their billions of gp accumulated from little work, but for Jagex to offer this opportunity to accumulate these vast amounts of wealth only to large clans really is not right. They need to be explicit in their rules and either ban trust games all together, or not interfere with them except for their already issued caveat emptor. I know that Jagex doesn't condone gambling, possibly because a large amount of players are minors, but one viable (yet fairly unforeseeable) third option I see is installing a system of true random gambling (as opposed to staking which can involve some skill); this could be like dicing etc. where players have like a 45/100 chance of winning 2x their money. They possibly even could allow hosting of such events by clans with the new clan citadels AND player owned houses (to encourage more independent hosts) where there is a safe, "scam-proof" system.

[Kaida23]

Really? Another "I'm running a legitimate scam and was unfairly muted by a corrupt p-mod" rant? :blink:

Did you receive any threats from said mod? Or anyone else? Or are you just assuming that's what happened because someone else says it happened to them?

 

Did it occur to you that you were most likely muted for spamming the chat box, not for scamming? The real problem with dicing games is that, scam or not, the people running them feel the need to announce these games over and over again. Often, as mentioned before, using autotypers -- which is also against the rules.

 

I really wish Jagex would make a definite decision on whether or not trust games are scamming or not (what is "against the spirit of the game" supposed to mean anyway?), just so this kind of thing could finally be put to rest. :wall:

[999134]

I actually tried hosting once and lost 50m :thumbdown:, all in under 5m stakes ( 1 15m i lost).

[Carl]

From the gist of your last post, it seems like you're of the belief that Jagex are picking and choosing which "Clan" or "Host" gets in trouble, and allowing the larger ones to continue to exist... I can pretty much tell you that's not at all the truth. I'm sure they would rather none of this took place, than allow those have been doing it for a while now continue. They aren't picking and choosing victims.

 

The main concern about this whole thing, legit or not, is that if an innocent player decides to gamble his money with one of these "Legitimate" hosts and wins...He may think it's all a safe game and go and bet money with another person hosting it and lose everything because they aren't honest.

 

Any clan operating to gamble is going to encourage scammers and their own advertising along is setting a false image.

[Alex_I]

For those people saying I was "spamming" with advertising or an autotyper, I certainly was not using an autotyper. Also, I was doing this in world 2 and in the "proof for my mute", it shows 3 lines of me advertising over the 1-2 minute period they record from. Typing a message once every 20-30 seconds in World 2, is not even close to spamming, it is less than most people type who are selling/buying items. Without an autotyper it is kind of hard to be "spamming" in very busy areas in World 2 (unless you like repeatedly type @@@ etc.) considering the fact that every other merchant there is typing a message at least once very 15-20 seconds.

 

Edit: And yes, I do indeed know that I was muted for scamming because I finally received an appeal for the mute that has by now expired and it says for scamming. Spam is considered disruptive behavior. Just because some trust gamers use auto-typers to spam, does not mean that suddenly certain types of macroing and spamming are considered scams; they are still reportable and punishable as macros and disruptive behavior respectively and thus, people who do host trust games without auto typers, at least in very busy areas like World 2, really cannot be associated with spamming just because they are involved in a trust game.

[Alex_I]

Any clan operating to gamble is going to encourage scammers and their own advertising along is setting a false image.

 

That is not true at all. All of the massive dicing clans make legitimate money without scamming because the odds are in favor of the house. With the billions if not trillions of gp they deal with, randomness becomes much closer to the real 55% chance that they will win. Legitimate dicing clans stand to make much more money dealing legitimately because then they have a good reputation and thus more customers and higher paying ones (some people bet billions in dicing) than scammers who might make a small amount of money once or twice and then be known as a scammer.

[Carl]

Any clan operating to gamble is going to encourage scammers and their own advertising along is setting a false image.

 

That is not true at all. All of the massive dicing clans make legitimate money without scamming because the odds are in favor of the house. With the billions if not trillions of gp they deal with, randomness becomes much closer to the real 55% chance that they will win. Legitimate dicing clans stand to make much more money dealing legitimately because then they have a good reputation and thus more customers and higher paying ones (some people bet billions in dicing) than scammers who might make a small amount of money once or twice and then be known as a scammer.

 

 

Okay, so player A is "Legit" and running a gambling shop. Player B, who has no money to begin with...Watches as Player A makes a whole load of money effortlessly. Player B then decides to try his hand at just saying it's legit...Offering the chance to gain themselves some money at the loss of others.

 

You're telling me that this doesn't happen?

[GuidesForScapers]

Any clan operating to gamble is going to encourage scammers and their own advertising along is setting a false image.

 

That is not true at all. All of the massive dicing clans make legitimate money without scamming because the odds are in favor of the house. With the billions if not trillions of gp they deal with, randomness becomes much closer to the real 55% chance that they will win. Legitimate dicing clans stand to make much more money dealing legitimately because then they have a good reputation and thus more customers and higher paying ones (some people bet billions in dicing) than scammers who might make a small amount of money once or twice and then be known as a scammer.

 

 

Okay, so player A is "Legit" and running a gambling shop. Player B, who has no money to begin with...Watches as Player A makes a whole load of money effortlessly. Player B then decides to try his hand at just saying it's legit...Offering the chance to gain themselves some money at the loss of others.

 

You're telling me that this doesn't happen?

Loss of others != scamming.

[The_Fray]

I can understand what the OP is going through, dicing clans have made a ton of money exploiting the idiots that play their game. The OP wants the same opportunity to make money by taking it from the fools willing to throw away their money. Yet these dicing clans are using unfair means to keep others off their "territory". I agree with the OP on this, everybody should have a fair opportunity to host these games.

 

I don't quite get why people are calling dicing scamming. Jagex has not banned dicing and probably does not plan on doing so. I can't really say I am really against these dicing clans anyway. The morons that are getting cleaned by these dicing clans deserve to lose their money.

[I_am_Geed]

What I dont like out of this is that dicers give pmods a share to keep other dicers out of their territory.

 

If im ever a pmod im forming the pmod riot squad to strike back at these corrupt [wagon].

[neogilgamesh]

When it comes to gambling, hosts are selling entertainment. The possibility of a player making a fast buck adds to that entertainment. The house edge that any legitimate host operates with is the cost of fun, so anyone that thinks dicing in and of itself is a scam even when hosts pay winners need to relieve themselves of that mindset. Since people have been calling dicing clans on using player mod muscle to protect their turf, I wonder if they resorted to doing it covertly (not making threats, just doing it). That's just a thought, I'm not asserting any truth to that as I have no proof.

 

Jagex is apparently divided on the issue. No amendment to the scamming rule to prohibit it, for the most part one post in the account help section "Don't lose your Stuff" warning you that such games carry the risk of scamming being the most prominent acknowledgement that it's going on. Dicing is so lucrative that if they flat out ban it now, their forum mods will be very busy handling all the ranting, especially with no rants forum anymore. It seems fairly obvious that the solution that will please as many people as possible would be to make a secure way to handle these wagers. Any host with no intent to scam will have no objections using a secure feature, dicing clans lose the ability to muscle the little guys out, and gamblers can gamble without fear of getting scammed.

 

As for Jagex not supporting gambling, gambling has been ingrained into Runescape since it's inception. Every drop that isn't 100% comes from a virtual roulette wheel (come on baby, daddy needs a new pair of claws), staking is very similar to dicing it's just supported ingame (people advertising their stakes do whatever they can to skew the odds in their favor, this is exactly what the "house edge" is, if not even more egregious than dicing). Gambling is even part of combat mechanics. Every attack is accompanied by 2 dice rolls that determine if the attack hits and a 3rd dice roll to determine the damage done.