in Technology

Say it ain't so Joe

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In 1918 the Chicago White Sox threw or attempted to throw the World Series. They were paid money. The star of that team, Shoeless Joe Jackson was confronted by a young fan who asked the title question.

My rules are very specific and probably based on my experience a lot too tight. I do not take the concept of cutting corners lightly. I try not to blame others for things, and I work hard to live my life by my ethical rules. I was a baseball fan starting in the 1960’s. I loved the Cubs. I did, sadly, live through the steroid era of baseball, and that changed my love of the game. Cutting corners to gain a advantage isn’t something I support. I still love the Cubs, but I don’t watch baseball often. Every time you turn on a baseball game you are giving money to the sport that created the steroid problem. That isn’t something I am willing to do.

There is a glitch in Virily that allows users to generate a massive amount of Virils very quickly. That bug is something that I find disappointing. First, that someone spent the time to attack the platform enough to find the holes makes me sad. If you are truly a content creator, then it is your job to SUPPORT VIRILY not find holes you can exploit. There are so many problems with the platform which I would suspect those gaming the system are partially responsible.  I have been thinking about the impact of cheating (that is what the people using the bug to their advantage are doing) and the impact on me. The impact is huge for me.

Based on that I would like to propose three things going forward to make Virily a better place.

  1. All users that leveraged or used the back door to receive virils should have those Virils removed from their account. Additionally, if they have verified the user, they should lose that effective immediately (verified user means you get to share your posts directly on Virily, you don’t have to wait for the editors to approve them).
  2. A post from the Virily team that is tagged to the top of the site detailing the rules, and the results of breaking them going forward.
  3. A writers council, one that meets once a month, comprised of writers on the site whose mission it is to help those struggling with the issues, but also to work through and support the editors and admins as they deal with issues like this cheating scandal.

Ethics are you being responsible for you. I do not believe that I leveraged the back door that I learned about over the weekend. If I did, I would happily give up every single Ill Gotten Viril that I didn’t earn.

Thanks

Scott

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Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6 Comments

    • Thanks, Della. I worry that there are so many people that cheat the system, we don’t get to celebrate the success of those who truly have something amazing to share!

  2. It seems to be a vicious cycle then: the initial technical issues bring our ugly side to the surface and then your behaviour creates even more problems.

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    • I wonder, sadly if some of the technical issues are because of the number of users that are using the system in an unintended way. I wonder what the impact of that really is on the site overall.

      Thanks Ellie!!!!

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  3. 21 hours, 18 views, no comments. I agree entirely with your general thrust here, Scott. Indeed I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who doesn’t. A couple of comments:
    “someone spent the time to attack the platform enough to find the holes”. The hole we are talking about is impossible not to have noticed if your posts are of a particular type, since it is literally impossible to create such posts without performing the action 7, 8 or more times. Hence, it is perhaps not so simple to distinguish between those who deliberately abused the process, and those that validly used it, despite the fact that it was generating invalid virils.
    I first noticed this problem several months ago, and immediately informed Virily about it, as I could clearly see its potential for massive abuse. It is somewhat astonishing that the hole has been left unplugged until just a couple of days ago.
    Naturally, I will be very happy to have my invalidly-gained virils subtracted and to refund any monies they resulted in me receiving. I hope that this deduction happens across the board quickly, so that we can return to a more level playing field. Thanks for making this post.

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