Rule Violation Reports (New forum)

[Agnaa]

Reverting and typing up a warning now.

Due to their previous 3 infractions being months ago, I'm content at leaving things just there for now.

EDIT: Done.

 

[TheShape03]

Reverting and typing up a warning now.

Due to their previous 3 infractions being months ago, I'm content at leaving things just there for now.

EDIT: Done.

Thanks, two more things you forgot to edit:

Lubdan's "Peak Human, Subsonic reactions" speed was also something user added without a CRT, the speed of that key should be Superhuman as it was before. Michael's intelligence is still listed as "Average", it should be "Above Average" again.

 

[Agnaa]

Fixed 'em.

 

[Antvasima]

I would be in favor of extending a ban to permanent based on sockpuppeting, yes. I disagree that hateful speech should be a permanent ban from the get-go, however. It is a serious matter and one possessing of a seriously slippery slope.

Well, it depends on how hateful it is. There an enormously great difference between "I disagree with certain aspects of this due to a rational logical basis" and "I absolutely hate and consider these people as being "Less than human" excrement to the point that I think they should be systematically exterminated". The former does usually not even involve any actual hatred, so I do not want us to turn too draconian and trigger-happy.

 

[Antvasima]

Vandalism.

I've left them an instruction and blocked them for a month. Other staff members can feel free to change that.

That was outright extreme trolling vandalism, so I blocked them permanently instead. That is the kind of member that is only here for the sake of causing deliberate harm.

 

[Antvasima]

I don't think it's a very serious vandalization, but this user changed the intelligence and speed levels of this character without a CRT. While writing this I also saw that he also made changes to these characters without a CRT xd.

Reverting and typing up a warning now.

Due to their previous 3 infractions being months ago, I'm content at leaving things just there for now.

EDIT: Done.

On the other hand, this was an extremely minor good faith issue, as intelligence levels are usually quite easy to discern from the available information within these statistics sections, so as the person who mostly wrote our intelligence standards, I have corrected quite a lot of blatantly self-evident errors within them myself as part of my ongoing wiki cleanup duties.

As such, I do not think that any punishment is necessary, but it obviously isn't good if any of our members who do not understand our intelligence standards extremely well, and are not highly trusted and responsible high-ranking staff members, begin to change the intelligence ratings as they see fit.

 

[Antvasima]

Thanks, two more things you forgot to edit:

Lubdan's "Peak Human, Subsonic reactions" speed was also something user added without a CRT, the speed of that key should be Superhuman as it was before. Michael's intelligence is still listed as "Average", it should be "Above Average" again.

Oh, they changed other statistics than intelligence or stamina. That is different then.

 

[Agnaa]

Yeah, they weren't just changing intelligence/stamina in sensible ways, they were changing ratings, often in ways that weren't sensible (above average intelligence for being a high school student that's a fan of horror movies) or which broke standards (giving multiple speed ratings for the same key, without any distinguishing factor, such as being travel speed or only being a possibly).

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Never mind then, and thank you for helping out.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Well, it depends on how hateful it is. There an enormously great difference between "I disagree with certain aspects of this due to a rational logical basis" and "I absolutely hate and consider these people as being "Less than human" excrement to the point that I think they should be systematically exterminated". The former does usually not even involve any actual hatred, so I do not want us to turn too draconian and trigger-happy.

I'm aware of the definition of hate speech.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I just want to make a general public statement regarding that we cannot just sweepingly consider any and all of it as instantly permanently bannable. People should still be allowed to have rational non-hateful viewpoints.

 

[Dark_heroes]

Oh her, it's been a while since I've been here. Well, anyway, I'm here because of the Dartspider. With whom I have been familiar for 5 years. He asked me to convey something, since I have contacts with him outside of the wiki.

"Well well. Written by DarthSpider. I see Vergil got banned for one reason or another. To be honest, I did not expect this to happen, because I only thought about it once, for five seconds, when I made myself coffee. At that moment, i said to "no, this is nonsense, it is unlikely that he will be banned because of this." But it turned out that there are really many factors.

Okay, let's get down to business. Vergil and I are brothers. I am senior. We both began to sit in the community of power levels since 2017 (Technically 2014, but it was very insignificant and in a super small group on the VKontakte social network), on the VKONTAKTE social network. More precisely, I have been sitting there since 2017, he has been sitting there since 2020. One day, I decided to tell him about the fandom community wiki, and he was surprised that the power level community has been around since 2011 (Actually, much earlier). But because of the terrible English and the fact that this is a completely different network, he did not dare to go there. In addition, my opinion was authoritative for him and he almost always agreed with me, and because of the love for the same projects (However, he does not like Hazbin Hotel), we always discussed the same topics. We both grew up on the same cartoons and games and movies, we had the same TV discs. I think it's understandable why.

When I was banned, Vergil was very unhappy with it. However, after a while he said that he wanted to sit there himself. I didn't mind because I'm not his father, however, he asked me to teach him how to make blogs for calculations and so on and so forth. Font "Impact", text stroke, photoshop. He got all this from me. Russian scans are... An indicator that we read manga in Russian, lol. It doesn't matter what language is on the scans, if they are used for calculations, it's easier.

For this reason, we are sitting on the same imjur account. We literally live in the same house and he plays games on my laptop (Because his GeForce 210 is weaker than She-Hulk).

It shouldn't surprise you that we both love Atomic Heart, because this game literally blew up the Russian Internet, because it's the only full-fledged Russian game that came out. I bought it, he played it.

He did the design of blogs in the image and likeness of my blogs. Although I warned him that it was strange to write "let's start" everywhere, because it is literally a copy of what I do. But he said that no one would care about this, and he did everything according to the template, literally copying my blogs and replacing the text and pictures with his own.

In fact, if you need, we could even record a video in real life.

Oh yeah, about "getting a job". Okay, I confess, at that moment I wanted excitement. I told my brother who DBZ was (because I had a contact with him before) and decided to take over the management by writing to him on my own behalf some things. But it was for laughs. Okay, my fault."

From myself (This is not his quote anymore) I will only add that I don’t want to get into this, but yes, they are really different people. Vergil's VK page is "Li Taixuan" (In Russian, Ли Тайсюань), and I'm not allowed to post DarthSpider's page here (I can only show it if you really need it, as he said).

 

[ByAsura]

Personally, I also thought the arguments about liking the same media and uploading Russian scans were weak, but he's admitting to committing a rule violation anyway by letting a banned user use his account.

Darth at least should still have his perma ban in place regardless, since what he's doing is sock puppeting with less steps.

 

[Damage3245]

Personally, I also thought the Russian scans argument was weak since they're literally Russian, but he's admitting to committing a rule violation anyway by letting a banned user use his account.

By itself, pointing out that these two apparently separate users both used Russian scans and both uploaded images with Russian titles is not strong evidence, but it was on top of all these other indicators that they were the same person.

As Spiderr said:

But it turned out that there are really many factors.

 

[Dark_heroes]

All the words of Dartspider will be written in the "so designated" section.

"I only took control in that moment with the DBZ. It was a very short moment."

 

[ByAsura]

If true, I'm not sure about the rules on that.

Also, can you provide screenshots of these convos or something?

 

[Dark_heroes]

"Screenshots of what? Like, a screenshot of me and him sitting at the same laptop or what?"

 

[ByAsura]

No, I'm talking about you, Dark_heroes.

Provide us screenshots of Darth's supposed messages or something so we're not just taking your word for this.

Edit: Also, one of the first posts Cyber made strongly implies that he's only familiar with Spiderr in VK.com.

 

[Deagonx]

I don't think we should even entertain this. If a screenshot of Google translate is uploaded to DarthSpider's imgur account at 16:03 and then posted here by Vergil at 16:03, then they're the same person.

 

[Agnaa]

The classic "it was my sibling" defense.

There's not many ways to gain evidence either way of this sort of thing, since that argument renders most evidence inadmissible. All that's left would be having separate social media accounts, or participating in voice chats at the same time, both of which are able to be faked. Or things that are heavily onerous, like requiring them to show distinct government IDs which we can verify.

As people who moderate a website that bans sockpuppets, we can decide to either let that excuse run free with zero evidence, giving an easy out to any sockpuppeters, or we can ban people unless there's extra evidence exonerating them, resulting in a few bans of innocent people.

I think, all things considered, we should go for the latter option. Sorry Vergil/Darth, but your excuse is too convenient and would let too many sockpuppeters run free.

 

[Antvasima]

Agnaa makes sense to me here.

 

[DarkGrath]

Is anyone going to bring up the fact here that we established DarthSpidrr and Vergil don't have matching IPs?

This whole story they've concocted is based on the idea that they live in the same household and are using the exact same laptop as one another. They even directly claimed this in the story itself.

For this reason, we are sitting on the same imjur account. We literally live in the same house and he plays games on my laptop (Because his GeForce 210 is weaker than She-Hulk).

If so, why wouldn't their IPs match? For two people to connect to the same website on the same computer in the same household and on the same internet, yet have two different IP addresses, that would have to mean one (or both) are using a VPN (or different VPNs) on the computer specifically when connected to the website. The only reason why two people using the same laptop would use a VPN while connecting to the same freely-accessible website, and either switch to a different VPN or turn it off when the other person is on the laptop, is if they were intentionally going out of their way to conceal their identities. Frankly (and with stress on how often I avoid using profanities in reports like these), that's bullshit. It's not two people on the same computer deciding to use a VPN only when the other one is using the computer - it's the same person trying to hide their identity. That's exactly why someone would use a VPN on a website that openly uses IP checks to cross-reference users.

 

[Antvasima]

DarkGrath also makes very good sense above.

 

[MrKerf]

Snip

To be fair, that's not really the case. We in Russia commonly use VPN all the time, since most of the sites are blocked anyway (you can notice me sometimes complaining about wikidot).
For example, I have both a regular VPN, that I rarely use but that always works on all sites (and when used - it stays on till reset) and a browser extension, that works half the time, but faster and more commonly used to my interests (like, to see youtube images and all).
So, point is - if brothers have different interests aside from vsbattles, there's no wonder that IPs don't match, since they use different VPN-ish apps.

The Imgur account argument is not the best either. I don't know how you all use your Imgur accs, but I doubt that there is anything personal there. It isn't an email to have multiple ones. Especially with vs debating, especially when it was mentioned that they working together on some of them, like Atomic Heart, and calls to it. Which, from personal experience, requires a lot of images.

Also, Agnaa doesn't make sense to me, sorry Ant.
What extra evidence to being innocent? What's up with innocent until proven otherwise? Here even the so-called classic "it was my sibling" doesn't work since different IPs.
Besides the "go seek work" thing, which was admitted, I don't see any actual evidence of sock puppeteering.
Thank you for reading my not-so-in-depth guide to Russia computer management.

 

[Deagonx]

The Imgur account argument is not the best either. I don't know how you all use your Imgur accs, but I doubt that there is anything personal there. It isn't an email to have multiple ones. Especially with vs debating, especially when it was mentioned that they working together on some of them, like Atomic Heart, and calls to it. Which, from personal experience, requires a lot of images.

That's not the issue here. It's fine to post a scan that someone else posted on their Imgur account, the issue is that this was Vergil's own DeepL translation entry. If they weren't using the same computer, this means that for some reason Vergil sent it to Spider for him to upload it to his own imgur, then sent the link back to Vergil, who then uploaded it here, all fast enough for both to register as having occurred at 16:03.

However, his defense given above essentially boils down to "this is someone I know in real life who isn't me but uses my computer and thus, was posting on his own account but when he went to imgur it was logged into my account, but there's no IP overlap because we use VPNs in Russia."

Sorry, not buying it. If we were to accept this as a defense we would essentially never be able to ban anyone for sockpuppeting for any reason, even IP overlap. It's a very far-fetched scenario to begin with. The evidence is quite damning.

 

[MrKerf]

However, his defense given above essentially boils down to "this is someone I know in real life who isn't me but uses my computer and thus, was posting on his own account but when he went to imgur it was logged into my account, but there's no IP overlap because we use VPNs in Russia."

Let's see what he actually says.

"...after a while he said that he wanted to sit there himself. I didn't mind because I'm not his father, however, he asked me to teach him how to make blogs for calculations and so on and so forth. ...For this reason, we are sitting on the same imjur account."

Basically, it is their shared Imgur account. Family one, if you wish. And that's it. I am not saying that Vergil did that crazy scheme you're describing, I am saying that he uploaded it to Imgur and then here. And that's okay. Cause you're no Imgur police.

 

[Deagonx]

Kerf, I let your above comment remain because it provided the VPN information, but you aren't permitted to act as Spider/Vergil's RVR lawyer and continue arguing that the evidence isn't sufficient. To be frank, I absolutely don't buy the "it's just a different person who lives in the same house as me and uses my computer and we share an Imgur account and have identical interests, I swear!" and I don't think anyone else should either.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Yeah, I agree with DarkGrath, while it is possible for 2 or more people in the same household to be users here; I do not think it's in the best favor and the last thing we want is a repeat of the Sera Ex situation. It is still more likely to consider them a single person trying to conceal identity.

 

[Damage3245]

One of Cyber_VERGIl's first posts on the forum is asking when his "friend" DarthSpiderr will be unblocked as he wants to make threads with his "friend".

Why wouldn't he be able to find out directly from his "brother" when he'll be unbanned?

I too agree that it's currently too suspicious to unblock them.

 

[DarkGrath]

While input from non-staff members is frowned upon in the RVR, the ultimate purpose of this ruling is to protect necessary RVR discussions from being sidetracked by needless posts which do not meaningfully contribute to the resolution of any given report. Kerf's comments have been non-staff, yes, but they have also provided relevant context and a warranted defense. While my stance on the matter has not changed, shutting out an important line of inquiry here is inappropriate. I will be restoring MrKerf's comments.

 

[DarkGrath]

And to clarify my stance - the story provided as an explanation has holes, and with it, an extended and contrived series of events that all had to occur the exact way claimed for this instance to be plausible, with no such evidence of any aspect of these events nor any clear means to patch these holes. All of this, and then the alternative explanation is that all of these independent factors pointing towards them being a sockpuppet are simply explained by them being a sockpuppet.

Needless to say, I agree with the latter. The alternative here could be used as a precedent to denounce countless other cases of blatant sockpuppets, and our (rightful) inability to violate people's right to privacy means it's not in our realm to gather personal data to make any deeper verifications. We assert that an account is a sockpuppet account when the clear weight of the evidence is such that the alternatives are unreasonable to consider, and that's exactly what we see here.

 

[Deagonx]

I agree, I don't think it's plausible. IMO I believe we should've stopped at "they're claiming to be two different people who share an Imgur account."

Maybe I'm out of touch or something, but I don't believe that's a thing people do. I'd honestly be more open-minded if a user in good standing came forward and said "Yes, I gave my Imgur login information to someone else for them to use instead of them making their own account or just posting without an account" but for some reason these types of scenarios are only ever proposed in cases of suspected sockpuppets. It's not enough for someone to just say they believe it's plausible, I'd need someone to say they actually do that.

 

[Phsccarvalho]

Yeah, the edits themselves varied- some were definite rule violations, but others used as evidence were comparatively very light. I'd consider the deleting of staff warnings to be a more worrying offense, and must wonder if the problem is less the editing of profiles and more just not respecting our rules in general. If he was warned for any similar behavior in the past, a short ban may be in order, I think.

Still, if we are overall decided on just an editing ban, I support the notion, I think mid-length serves our purposes given the count and in addition to the "ignoring staff warnings" bit. Kneejerk number, since this appears to be what Agnaa is fishing for here, 3-6 months of being disallowed from editing mainspace.

I would like to report @Kirinator07

I was having a discussion between characters in the top 10 non smurf thread of each tier.

And when told about the weakness of the SCP that Kirinator was defending, he apparently edited the SCP profile to remove that weakness on the same day, without binding a crt.

Link to the edit he made

 

[BestMGQScalerEver]

I would like to report @Kirinator07

I was having a discussion between characters in the top 10 non smurf thread of each tier.

And when told about the weakness of the SCP that Kirinator was defending, he apparently edited the SCP profile to remove that weakness on the same day, without binding a crt.

Link to the edit he made

I would like to just post this from this page and nothing else to make it easily accessible to staff. https://vsbattles.com/threads/warning-tracker.155503/

Kirinator07: 25

• Categories in userspace: 2 (First Warning, Second Warning)
• Changing a profile without a CRT: 7 (First Warning, Second Warning, Third Warning, Fourth Warning, Fifth Warning, Sixth Warning, Seventh Warning)
• Creating low-quality profiles: 2 (First Warning, Second Warning)
• Deleting staff warnings: 2 (First Warning, Second Warning)
• Improperly formatted edit: 12 (First Warning, Second Warning, Third Warning, Fourth Warning, Fifth Warning, Sixth Warning, Seventh Warning, Eighth Warning, Ninth Warning, Tenth Warning, Eleventh Warning, Twelfth Warning)

 

[Propellus]

Wasn't he supposed to be banned from profile editing but that was never applied?

 

[Antvasima]

I also think that MrKerf's posts should remain here, and feel sorry for our Russian members who want to be able to enjoy the same kind of entertainment and online friendships that they could before their government started to block everything outside of their own borders.

Is it reasonable for us to at least let Vergil's account remain unbanned here? As MrKerf said, the options for regular Russian citizens have been greatly diminished during the last few years, so shared family accounts are likely rather commonplace, and I do not want to help isolate regular Russian citizens from the outside world.

 

[HammerStrikes219]

Wasn't he supposed to be banned from profile editing but that was never applied?

Agnaa, I believe, was the one to make a warning about this on his wall on the wiki.

In fact, he did so.

I've now left a notification for a 6 month editing restriction.

 

[Antvasima]

Hmm. Do you have anything to say in your defence, @Kirinator07 ?

 

[HammerStrikes219]

Hmm. Do you have anything to say in your defence, @Kirinator07 ?

Btw, just to add more to this, it seems Kirinator also deleted the message by Agnaa regarding that edit restriction.

 

[Damage3245]

Is it reasonable for us to at least let Vergil's account remain unbanned here? As MrKerf said, the options for regular Russian citizens have been greatly diminished during the last few years, so shared family accounts are likely rather commonplace.

No. We don't have any reason to believe that story.