Introduction
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The point of this (long) thread is to post some guidelines on how to report abuse, cheating, etc and group it all together in the advisor blog so that people can refer to this instead of constantly having to repeat the same things over and over. It’s a first version and mainly reflects my views on things. Other advisors might have another view but I will try to see if we can come up with a text that includes all opinions.

Making a report does not guarantee action. You can be wrong or the thing you reported is just too light to ban for. Or your evidence is just too thin. Keep in mind that it’s always risky for a moderator to ban only based on a report. He didn’t see what you report so he only relies on the data you give. You would not like to be banned either because someone simply wrote you did something bad. So you need to put your case well together and give as much information as possible in order for the moderator to do some research and try to find out if your claim is credible enough.

Reporting chat abuse
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Kdice is full of people with a short fuse. Half the games, people use words like moron, fuck, etc. If we are going to ban every swear word, Kdice will run out of players in just one day. Even saints fucking swear.

That doesn’t mean nothing would get banned. I am just asking to grow a thick enough skin to play around people that swear or write offending things when they lose. But there are limits to what is acceptable of course. One “nigger” or “gay” or whatever isn’t enough to ban but if someone repeatedly uses them in a clear hateful way or really stalks someone to keep harassing, then you have a case.

So it’s your task to prove the seriousness of the chat abuse well. Just a chat log is not good enough. People can fake those in 2 seconds. So you need screen captures. It’s so easy to do so there is no excuse for not posting them. There will be no bans without pictures. If you want something being done, you need to make the effort of proving it well. It’s also better to post more than one screencap, especially if it can prove something went on for a long time. 1 cap + writing “and it went on for a long time” is much less convincing than 4 screencaps. Multiple screencaps also take more time to fake well so it increases your chances of getting a ban.

Asking witnesses to back up your claim will also help your case. If other people witness something, ask them to confirm what happened in the forum. Any person’s word will do but you can understand that a player’s word that I know means more to me than the word from someone I never saw play. So try and ask in the chat if someone is watching with a few medals. I am pretty sure I know most of those players and I know which ones are trustworthy.

So here is the easiest procedure to upload a screencap

*press printscreen on your keyboard
*paste this image into a picture edit program like paint and save it
*upload it through a free picture sharing service like www.tinypic.com

When you post images in the forum, paste a direct link to it (including the .jpg or .png extension) so kakku man’s forum script can display the picture directly in the post.

A short video capture of the chat will be your best evidence. It’s not obligatory but if you want your best shot at a ban, a short video of the chat window is your best bet. I will explain how to post videocap evidence in the “report pga” section.

Reporting offensive avatar or account name
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The same “grow at least a minimum thickness of skin” applies here.

Please save us time and post the link to the profile (http://www.kdice.com/profile/######) together with the account name:

If an avatar or name offends you for a specific reason (local political stuff, racist signs, pictures of certain criminals, something with a meaning in a language other than English etc) but that reason is not obvious for everybody in the world, explain what the problem is or otherwise the moderators might not understand what the offending thing is.

You can report a fake imitating account (capital I instead of L and stuff) or a parody of a known name (or an insult of a player) but it’s best if the players whose name is being abused reports it. Not everyone would indeed be offended by it. Feel free to report someone elses fake accounts but maybe it’s best to go find the person in question and ask him/her if (s)he takes offence to what you want to report.

Reporting pga or proxying or account sharing
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These serious offences are hard to prove without a mod seeing it with his own eyes. Never expect a ban simply because you said so. So you will need a very good case. Unless you can post really watertight proof by videocaps of entire games, you will have to give as much info as possible so that a mod can look into it.

Post pictures of clear pga moves or people confessing, find eyewitnesses, link towards player profiles (with multiple pga reviews). Sometimes even pictures of the last 10 games of players can contain circumstantial evidence of 2 players playing the same games and finishing high together. The better your total evidence, the more chance a mod will look into it.

And give the investigation some time, it can take over a week before a mod can catch 2 accused players together and check if they indeed pga.

Illustrating pga with only a few pictures will rarely be clear enough to prove it. A video recording of the game is your best type of proof for serious offences. Another example: for handing over IM chats where people confess to proxying, funnelling, pgaing etc, these chatlogs are best posted as a video capture (much harder to fake than a log or screencap). I know recording and uploading a video takes some time but it also shows the advisor you are dead serious with your claim.

There are other free videocap programs in http://kdice.com/discussion/topics/44802937 but I can recommend Camstudio the most. It’s a very good, easy to use, free, open source solution where you even can select the Kdice region of the screen only to save diskspace : http://www.camstudio.org/CamStudio20.exe

I used the settings of 10 frames per second, 60 quality and 0,75 time/quality to result in descent quality video. I recommend installing the program and doing some tests of the settings in advance so you won’t screw up the moment you want to capture something fishy.

The settings I used need about 10Mb per minute of Kdice game (only the Kdice area captured) so a typical Kdice game would be 120 - 200 Megs total. With a free divX encoder (http://freedivxconverter.com/) you could easily reduce the size to 1/5 of the avi size so 25 – 40 Mb for one game. Those filesizes are easy to upload to youtube or with the help of free file uploaders such as http://www.rapidshare.com/ or http://www.megaupload.com/ or http://www.mediafire.com/ or http://filefactory.com/

General things
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* If you see a pga and want to give that player a bad review, post the names of the people paging in the review and do it for every player involved. If you just write pga player and that player gets investigated, your review won’t help much. The reviews are there to check if there is a pattern of that player to pga with the same players over and over.


* Be patient when you report something. Ideally a mod should respond in your tread that your report is under review but that won’t always be the case. Trust me, all threads will be read (without a guarantee of action though). If you feel you made a valid cheat report but nobody responds or you see no action, you can bump your thread after a few days. Repeated daily bumps won’t help though, to the contrary.

* Try to be polite in your posts. Reports that come with negative attitudes like “but I doubt the mods will do anything” will have a much smaller chance of success.

* You are free to argue a bit with a mod or try to gather extra evidence but respect the fact that an advisor will not ban if he honestly thinks he can’t ban based on your report. You might be right with your claim but if it can’t be proven enough, it’s safer not to ban.

* Don’t do bannable things for fun if you want to be safe. Sharing an account (even just sharing the login info) may be funny. Showing off you can proxy by sitting 2 accounts might look cool too. Just be aware that there is a risk of it being banned on principle. Bragging and joking about illegal stuff can be funny but if you push it too far it can be taken as true and don’t complain if it gets banned.

* You don’t have to report right away. You have to do some self evaluation of the evidence you have and put yourself in an advisors shoes. Will there be enough to ban on? If it’s not sure and it’s nothing urgent, you can do part of the moderator’s job and do extra research. Follow the players, try and get better evidence before you post the report.

* Cheating or other abuse can be banned. But repeated reporting of fake evidence or clearly wrong reports can get you banned by me too. People can be wrong or offended too much, you will never get banned for one wrong report. If it becomes too often, you will get warned not to waste moderators time. People who fake evidence will get a ban right away.