Good afternoon,
Earlier today I was asking after some clarity regarding the situation around the Ubers Open where some users were tournament banned for 1 year. In the absence of an active thread to question the issue, I was advised by the TD on hand to create a thread here to inquire.
My question relates to the severity of the punishment. The facts of the situation as the public knows them are those contained in TonyFlygon's post, quoted as such:
"The TD team has evidence that a group of users worked together to rig the tour, including entering multiple alts into the tour, playing games in call and deciding the outcome of the games prior to a set's conclusion. In the process of our investigation we have removed alts and found evidence that multiple finalists were involved in this scheme, as well as multiple users already banned from Smogon."
Based on this information provided I am questioning the decision to offer a 1 year tour ban as an appropriate punishment. The facts as they are provided speak to a massive, collective effort of match fixing going far beyond that seen of an average cheater, into the realm of conspiracy in scale to rig the outcome of the tournament. The degree of cheating occurring here is enormous and enough to invalidate the tournament as a whole, as evidenced by the TD decision to declare the tournament to have No Winner. Real world analogues to the relative scale of the situation could include the 1919 Black Sox scandal or the match fixing efforts of Pete Rose (MLB) and Tim Donaghy (NBA).
As such, it seems to me that the punishment does not fit the crime. Cheating of this scale should, in my opinion, carry a permanent ban from Smogon tournaments, or if this is adjudged to be too severe, to carry at least a multiple years sentence. A one year ban would seem to do little to disincentivize cheating of this scale by users who were motivated to cheat like this in the first place.
When I raised this concern in discord to the TD on duty, the response I received was that they did not understand where I was coming from because I "1. Didn't know the facts, 2. Would be going against precedent, and 3. Wasn't in the authoritative body making the decision."
Considering this, I have the following questions for the TD team that I would appreciate some degree of answer towards, as far as can be publicly revealed.
What factors led you to determine that a 1 year ban was an appropriate punishment in this case, as opposed to a more severe action?
Are there additional factors that have not been revealed to the public that mitigated the punishment?
Do you believe that the precedent was appropriately applied to this situation, or should a different precedent have been set?
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to what I feel is a reasonable concern as pertains to the future risk of this kind of cheating.
Edit: as an additional point of clarification, the ruling post by the TDs implied that the users banned for 12 months were guilty of all crimes stated in the post; if this is not the case this would also be an appreciated point of clarification inasfar as how it affects the perception of their punishments.
Earlier today I was asking after some clarity regarding the situation around the Ubers Open where some users were tournament banned for 1 year. In the absence of an active thread to question the issue, I was advised by the TD on hand to create a thread here to inquire.
My question relates to the severity of the punishment. The facts of the situation as the public knows them are those contained in TonyFlygon's post, quoted as such:
"The TD team has evidence that a group of users worked together to rig the tour, including entering multiple alts into the tour, playing games in call and deciding the outcome of the games prior to a set's conclusion. In the process of our investigation we have removed alts and found evidence that multiple finalists were involved in this scheme, as well as multiple users already banned from Smogon."
Based on this information provided I am questioning the decision to offer a 1 year tour ban as an appropriate punishment. The facts as they are provided speak to a massive, collective effort of match fixing going far beyond that seen of an average cheater, into the realm of conspiracy in scale to rig the outcome of the tournament. The degree of cheating occurring here is enormous and enough to invalidate the tournament as a whole, as evidenced by the TD decision to declare the tournament to have No Winner. Real world analogues to the relative scale of the situation could include the 1919 Black Sox scandal or the match fixing efforts of Pete Rose (MLB) and Tim Donaghy (NBA).
As such, it seems to me that the punishment does not fit the crime. Cheating of this scale should, in my opinion, carry a permanent ban from Smogon tournaments, or if this is adjudged to be too severe, to carry at least a multiple years sentence. A one year ban would seem to do little to disincentivize cheating of this scale by users who were motivated to cheat like this in the first place.
When I raised this concern in discord to the TD on duty, the response I received was that they did not understand where I was coming from because I "1. Didn't know the facts, 2. Would be going against precedent, and 3. Wasn't in the authoritative body making the decision."
Considering this, I have the following questions for the TD team that I would appreciate some degree of answer towards, as far as can be publicly revealed.
What factors led you to determine that a 1 year ban was an appropriate punishment in this case, as opposed to a more severe action?
Are there additional factors that have not been revealed to the public that mitigated the punishment?
Do you believe that the precedent was appropriately applied to this situation, or should a different precedent have been set?
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to what I feel is a reasonable concern as pertains to the future risk of this kind of cheating.
Edit: as an additional point of clarification, the ruling post by the TDs implied that the users banned for 12 months were guilty of all crimes stated in the post; if this is not the case this would also be an appreciated point of clarification inasfar as how it affects the perception of their punishments.
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