Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Issue: 76   Editor: Nyxxiful


Preventing Abuse ryneb
In recent weeks there have been many claims and complaints in the Game Forum of Moderators taking advantage of their position. Two of the biggest complaints are in regards to money and properties . Whether these claims are true or not have yet to be proven, but after an extensive discussion about the matter with both players and staff about what can be done to prevent abuse a wide variety of opinions emerged.

When it came to money the prevailing player idea for preventing abuse was to not allow Moderators to have money. The belief held by ILoveTheShortBus and many others is that Moderators only need to "ban, mute, and lock;" they have no need for money. This does make some sense as the main use for money in Bootleggers is to buy bullets so one can go on a killing spree. As we all know Moderators cannot kill so buying bullets is essentially useless to a moderator. The other main use for money is to play the game. Moderators still want to play the game even though they have a job to do as pointed out by VooDooDoll. They would be unable to play the game if their moderator account could no longer hold money. This means the only way Moderators could play the game is through a separate player account.

While it sounds like a perfect solution to make Moderators do their job on one account and play on a separate account, it has both positives and negatives. The positives are obvious; there would no longer be any claims of Moderators supporting specific people or being money holders since they would have no money. The negatives however are not so obvious. By forcing the moderators to play through a separate account they would no longer be able multi task between enjoying the game and taking care of their moderator jobs. All of the Moderators were players before they got promoted so naturally they want to still play the game as well as govern the game. Forcing them to switch between accounts would restrict the amount of time that they spend on their moderator accounts and make their jobs harder than it already is. It would also remove most of the big giveaways in the game. Nearly every single large giveaway has been sponsored by the moderators and it is because of their ability to hold onto large amounts of money. Anyone remember the Grand Theft Mania contest that the moderators sponsored last July? They gave away 30 million, 691 points, and a casino. That is just one example of the type of contests that would disappear. Buzz contests and random giveaways in the Off Topic Forum would be forever gone and no one can deny enjoying the chance at winning some money.

So what is to be done as disabling money holding by moderators probably won't happen?

One option could be making money transfers by moderators public knowledge. As MacTheKnifeV3 put it, "It would allow the players to see that nothing funky is taking place, without taking away the mod's ability to hold cash." Whether this is a feasible option or not is unknown but by being able to see what the moderators are doing with their money the community would know if anything inappropriate was taking place. The only downside would be for winners of giveaways who had the option of staying anonymous. But since it takes 4 hours anyway to search someone they would have plenty of time to either move the money or buy points.

The Help Desk Operator Coda had the best suggestion though; use the Help Desk. While it is not the glamorous answer most players are looking for, itÂ’s the best option available. We must keep in mind that speculation on corruption is pretty limited and that the majority of Moderators have never been accused of anything. It may take a bit more time for results, but with enough documented evidence of abuse submitted to the Help Desk even Sabin and BSF2000 cannot ignore it.

When it comes to properties there is clearly a need for change and this is agreed to by both moderators and players alike. Many players have been griping about the length of time that properties are held by the moderators and accusing them of holding them for so long to make money. The alternative that has been proposed by many is for properties taken from banned players to become state owned rather than moderator owned. Any money collected from these properties would go out of the game so regardless of the length that the property was state owned there could be no claims of someone holding onto them to collect money. Moderator Sweetie is fully behind this, "I think it would great if they would be state owned rather than mod owned in the case of taking away properties when players were banned. It would be awesome if for example if I banned you and you had a casino it would automatically be state owned until the appeal process is over." The only problem Sweetie saw with this was that over half of the properties might become state owned. She also has a plea for the players about held properties, "As a mod I wish players would understand there is a process to go through when taking a casino from a banned player. Some jump to conclusions and accuse the mod of being corrupt when its not the case."

While the money issue may never truly be solved because it is so complicated, there is a clear cry from both the players and staff for a change when it comes to banned player properties that should be addressed by the Administrators of Bootleggers.