Honestly, I agree with what Slash is doing. I think that he has already said enough, but I would like to show that he's not alone and I agree with all of this.

The BBB (Barracks Bulletin Board) will be a nice and easy way to keep track of the current NG situation. Yes, you can go to the portals and check the situation for yourself if you want to, but it's also good to check that thread now and then to have an idea of what's going on. And if you were inactive for a couple of days, for example, you can go there to catch up on what has happened during your absence.

The violations list will also come in handy, it's good to keep a record of things, especially because you'll be able to easily see if there's any reiterated offense done by the same person. And the preliminary investigations thread is not new at all, but it's also a way to talk about rule breaking users without taking it all to this thread.

About the "current NG situation", it's indeed pretty bad. People stealing awards is nothing new, but that doesn't mean it's not important. If a spammer steals any award, yeah, the flash will be deleted, but there's people who lost the chance to win an important award because of that.

And even about less important awards such as the Turd of the Week, it's really sad to see people trying to get it on purpose. Yeah, they are only getting an award saying that the flash is indeed shitty, but the turd wasn't meant for that. I remember that when I was a noob, a long time ago, I always used to watch the turd of the week. As the FAQ says, it was always funny (in a bad way), and I also laughed at it. But no, now that doesn't happen anymore, all because of some stupid people who think it's funny to get it. It really makes me angry.

And you just can't ignore that child pornography was uploaded. Thats one of the biggest offenses, not on Newgrounds, but in the Internet. Real people actually go to jail for that, you know? There are just no words to describe how fucked up someone must be to upload that to any place, and to consider it funny.

Yeah, you may say that no-one cares about all of this. But we do, and that's why we are a part of the EGB.

If I may add my two cents: (which goes a long way!)

The reason why I joined the EGB was to help keep the crud out of the portal by being a fair judge and by working with other members of the EGB to do the same. In the past week or so it seems that we have been seeing a lot of negative activity on the portal, including CP and the spamming of our thread. Any one of these things would be an annoyance, but when they all hit at the same time, well, it's like falling on an anthill - getting bit at from all sides, and as soon as you squash one, another takes its place.

It may sound a little melodramatic, but Slash was right in upping the DEFCON level. We don't know if this was all a series of unrelated coincidences - or if it was (is?) a coordinated assault on the portal. So he's rallying the troops and we're all going to be a bit more vigilant going into the weekend. That's what we signed on to do. Hopefully, it will all blow over soon, and we can get back to business as usual.

As for the unintentional download of CP to your PC: Lizzardis was right - just clear your browser's cache of temporary files and cookies, and that should be just fine. Unless the FBI is looking into your life for some other reason, this single CP incidental image is not enough for them to even think about getting a warrant and bother you. What is wrong is that minors who also looked at that crap would have been subjected to it as well - and that makes the Fulps liable for site content. All we need to hear is that the FBI is monitoring this site, and no one is trying to prevent illegal material from being uploaded - or deleted immediately. They could close the site down in a moment if that came to pass. Which means the bad guys win.

I like this site, and when other people abuse it, I will do what I can to make it right. And, no - the sky isn't falling - Slash is just doing his job, as we all should. We're all on the same side here, and in the end, we're all here to do the right thing...

*Salutes*

At 6/26/09 01:12 PM, SCTE3 wrote: Staying as concerned as possible if I see any future file swappers known I will report them here or in private if needed.

I second this.
I've also perused the Preliminary Investigations, Primary Violations list, and Reporting guidelines.
If I have any questions regarding either category, or its contents I'll contact Slash immediately. Other than that, these spammers are quite the cheeky bastards, aren't they? Kiddie pornography, award stealing and spam in general, it feels like DEFCON 2.

At 6/26/09 11:19 AM, Lizzardis wrote:

At 6/26/09 06:59 AM, SlashFirestorm wrote: I'm starting to get rather irritated.

Why?
They are awards, yeah OK then cool. "Someone else could have had them" Well yeah they could have.....But they didn't. Its only spam, I mean Jeez. I personally think your going WAY over the top with this!

Turd is one thing: it's supposed to be the worst of the week, and with the Ducks it usually comes pretty close. The problem is when they steal Underdog, supposed to be an unknown that appealed to reviewers (unlike stolen Underdogs, which are lost with no reviews and then given 30 reviews of 10 by a few users on multiple accounts), and even worse RCP, which I'm pretty sure would be up there with Weekly First on a regular basis if nobody mass-reviewed.

Once spam is submitted and gone off the front page, no-one cares about it any more. Even when it has "stolen" an award, people still don't care, I mean its not as if you get money. Its a pointless image on a web page which you "win" in a sense......

Spammers are nothing but Internet attention whores who find it easier to get negative attention than positive attention. Award stealing is a way of getting that attention.

Besides who wants to be branded "the turd of the week"?

Brand a spammer anything negative, he'll wear the label with pride and say "I pissed them off so much they gave me this label!"

Anyways, I was looking through yesterday's Obituaries after seeing that the first in P-Bot's post had Daily Second (and a mention of a fileswapped Daily Feature in that Barracks Bulletin Board), and I found what I think was the DD's stolen Daily First. And looking at the reviews, once again, it's a stolen Touhou-related submission. I have a bit of a suggestion for everyone, take it as you will: some of us should familiarize ourselves with the Touhou Project, its characters, music, fan culture, that sort of thing. It seems to be a favorite of Flash thieves: Find Touhou, steal Touhou, nobody will flag because only a certain segment of the community (semi-active low-to-mid-level users who only have the vaguest idea about the Whistle and even less about Flash thieves) would know what it is and where it's from. Positive publicity for nothing, no noticeable backfire, or for the Ducks, steal an award and piss everyone off. I'm just one dude, one Whistle, who happens to understand both Newgrounds use and Touhou. I'm only on so much, and I pay as much attention to the BBS and to userpages as to the Portal sometimes. It would be best if someone else were to familiarize himself or herself with Touhou, so as to increase our chances of getting these when they're still Whistle fodder.

WHOO WHEE! Wow that was a lot to read, anyway, you really need to look at the scope of things in the grand scheme scale Lizz. The flash and art portals have been under attack, and it is out duty to keep them clean. And about the Tohou flash, I saw that around 1 am this morning as the top in column of Today's Best down at the bottom of the page right hand side. When I looked, I thought I saw [DD], I didn't think nothing of it, then I looked again, WHAM! [DD] had hacked MiyamoSama's account.

At least I think they did, not really sure though, I gave that link to Wade over AIM and I told him that I think her account had been hacked. So within an hour he subsequently deleted the account and the flash. I tell ya, Slash is doing a good by re-implementing these measures, the [DD] have escalated well beyond hateful/unsuitable/stolen/etc. flashes just like serial rapists or serial killers escalate sometimes without warning. So we need to step up the plate and get these low life bastards.

I'll get those links bookmarked in a minute Slash. Good goin' man.

At 6/26/09 03:57 PM, SlashFirestorm wrote:

At 6/26/09 03:46 PM, SCTE3 wrote: Oh yay for morons, another ZONE-SAMA thief
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/50 1097

Successfully flagged.

I'm not sure if they're all just under the illusion that Newgrounds is where you upload liek teh kewl flashes you find or have malicious intentions, but hopefully it'll end tomorrow when Zone-Sama uploads it for real.

Finally, another one taken to Wade. Now, we should never give spammers/ portal thieves the benefit of the doubt, they are guilty until they're proven innocent.

Also I'll be leveling up tomorrow. :-D

Visualize it. ;)

****DEFCON ALERT****

SoulMaster had shown this to me, LordZeebMork is able to get into the secure rooms of the private forums. THIS IS A MJOR BREACH IN SECURITY!! DO SOMETHING SLASH!

At 6/26/09 06:45 PM, Lizzardis wrote:

At 6/26/09 06:35 PM, SlntCobra1 wrote: THIS IS A MJOR BREACH IN SECURITY!! DO SOMETHING SLASH!

They have been able to do that for a while. We have a snitch in the EGB AND the NGPD. Its someone who is in both the NGPD AND the EGB private forums. There is only a select few, maybe around 8 of them including myself. Would you like me to write up a list?

There's no perfect forum, especially the free ones (where you pay nothing and they give you a domain which depends on they). So they being able to see the secure rooms is not something completely impossible, but if they were able to see a conversation between Puddin and Cobra then it makes me worry.

Right now the only thing I can think about is one of you being infected with a troyan, just because I can't think of any other thing. That conversation was on AIM, right?

Yes please do make a list. Then we can root through them and rat out the little bitch. I showed the link to Krev and this is what we just talked about:

krevzabijak (6:53:28 PM): :|
DragonMaster368 (6:53:34 PM): yea
krevzabijak (6:54:20 PM): puddin alt
DragonMaster368 (6:54:47 PM): since when would Puddin have LordZeebMork as an alt?
krevzabijak (6:55:08 PM): He got his log, either an alt or puddin gave it to him or someone he knows by proxy

Wow! the spammers have been so bad this week I too noticed Daily First by DD they are a real concern and are sick. The awards are all important no matter what they may be in my opinion. I miss the days when the award was legit and not hacked by spammers. How does LordZeebMork manage to keep his account? he has broke so many rules. Shame as some of his workj is not bad. By the way I'm shocked by the tragic death of Michael Jackson.

Sorry for the DP, but yes Ismael, that was over AIM. Last night/early morning today.

****STOLEN FLASH ALERT****

• 

  by <deleted>

  Under Judgment

  (Ages 13+)

Original:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/flash-tu b/meowth-cartoon-2.php

I can't believe how easy it was for you all to be at each others' throats on this. Even I'm a bit amused at the thought of people acting paranoid about "a breach in top security" and "someone's a spy." Honestly, maybe it's time to cut down on watching those sort of movies. Basically, everything that Slash said is true, the secure rooms are to keep idiots out of, and not the average Joe. I mean I could even find a way around it, and I have absolutely no computer background.

AIM/MSN/any other chat is the best way to go for touchy subjects that I will not mention here. Oh, and I have to talk to you, Slash about this too. my AIM is on my account.

At 6/26/09 06:57 PM, phantomlassuk wrote: Wow! the spammers have been so bad this week I too noticed Daily First by DD they are a real concern and are sick. The awards are all important no matter what they may be in my opinion. I miss the days when the award was legit and not hacked by spammers.

pff, it's entirely too easy to steal awards, as I proved a while back. too bad none of the other DD dailies have spawned as much drama as the original.

How does LordZeebMork manage to keep his account? he has broke so many rules. Shame as some of his workj is not bad.

lmao, damned if I know. my guess is that I have shit in a few collections and a fuckton of BBS posts, and I'm not that active so the admins don't really care about me.

although it's pretty obvious that the mods want me to get assed since they keep trying to permaban me from shit and deleting everything that even mentions me. it's sort of funny.

also your accounts have shit security, just so you know

Just thought I'd let everyone know that the [OO] Owl Orchard is up to their old tricks again. At least when they spam, it's nothing too horrible, unlike the [DD]. The [OO] just merely make useless crap. The [DD] is the real issue here.

At 6/26/09 10:30 PM, SlntCobra1 wrote: Just thought I'd let everyone know that the [OO] Owl Orchard is up to their old tricks again. At least when they spam, it's nothing too horrible, unlike the [DD]. The [OO] just merely make useless crap. The [DD] is the real issue here.

It's not bad, but everyone of the underjudgement submissions is a Owl Orchard flash. Now several months back i was able to get into there forums and find out that sometime in the future they would spam the portal... this may or may not be the full full scale thing now i think we should watch before it gets to out of hand.

And guys i see that i have been not posting and i have been just watching what is going on. I am back and i want to start being a very active member again. But i will try to be what i was before, i will be watching the portal once again.

Yeah I also noticed them in the Portal, nothing too serious yet but I'm on guard, as should all of us. I'd also like to note that I reached Pvt. 1st Class a little while ago. Keep marching forward!

At 6/26/09 11:01 PM, SlashFirestorm wrote: Well it's all non-abusive stuff, so it's all good. I actually did a Portal run and voted on everything...been a long time since I've done that, heh. Maybe I'll actually get a few B/P out of it.

I know what you mean i havent been to the portal in days. For you it may have been months :::nothing wrong with that but it gets tiresome after doing it for so long:::. It's not abbusive but they were considering it as a attack. Malicious intentions turned into no more than a annoyance.

Congrats on the rank up Canimefan. I know what you're saying Buster and Slash, I just thought I'd better keep everyone on their toes by letting them know the [OO] is back in action. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reportin' fer duty. *salutes*

Just a quick FAQ question that others may be able to help with, sirs. I was wondering if anyone has noticed that whistling abusive reviews seems to have stopped since the Art Portal was in place. Anyone happen to have a guess as to why?

*stands at attention*

At 6/27/09 12:04 AM, Jagos wrote: Reportin' fer duty. *salutes*

Just a quick FAQ question that others may be able to help with, sirs. I was wondering if anyone has noticed that whistling abusive reviews seems to have stopped since the Art Portal was in place. Anyone happen to have a guess as to why?

*stands at attention*

Thank you for your interest here, Jagos, but you're just a little ahead of yourself. It's good to see that you have a silver whistle, but in order to join the EGB, you need to be a rank of Private or better (2,500+ B/P points). Might I recommend that you start in the NGPD first, and build up your ranks, whistle and positive posting - and if you keep up your good work, once you reach Private, stop by here again and request membership from our leader, SlashFirestorm.

Keep up the positive attitude - hopefully we'll see you again in a few months or so - when you're ready and qualified.

*Salutes*

Wow it has been a LONG time since I last posted...

First up I love the new EGB Bulletin Board in the forums. Over the last couple of months I've found it increasingly difficult to keep up with what is going on here, as I'm inactive for quite long stretches, and reading dozens of pages at a time is just a bit too much. So the Bulletin Board is perfect to get me right back into the swing of things, great idea!

I've missed a lot of the spam that has been occurring, and there is little I can do about the art portal anyway (as I a) have no art, b) am so horrible at art I would never consider submitting any, and thus c) will never be scouted!), but I have caught the odd attack in the portal. Rest assured I have been weighing in with plenty of 0's where appropriate!

And I apologise for my prolonged absences (all is explained in my profile as always). It is everything I can do to deposit my experience regularly (and I'm missing plenty of days entirely), and gaining B/P is a real struggle. My target of 30k blams feels like it is going to take me decades at this rate (I'd love to have Supreme Commander in both saves and blams, mmmmm). I do try and keep up here, but by the time I have read through the pages I've missed I usually don't have time to post- with luck the Bulletin Board will make that a little easier!

Generally keep up the great work! This place has evolved a great deal in recent times, and now more than ever puts up a stand against spam of all kinds, not just within the portal. I've never seen so many links to rule breaking flash coming in so regularly before (probably an indictment of the state of the portal as much as the great work done by you lot), but it's nice to know that this club is still a force in making Newgrounds a better place. I just hope I can stay active enough to help, though no matter how busy real life gets I'll always keep poking my nose back in here on occasion.

*salutes*

At 6/27/09 12:17 AM, SlashFirestorm wrote:

At 6/27/09 12:04 AM, Jagos wrote: Reportin' fer duty. *salutes*

Hello there! I'm the Barracks Recruitment Officer, Supreme Commander Slash Firestorm. While I'm glad to see your interest in the Elite Guard Barracks, I must regretfully inform you that you do not meet the admissions requirements.

To be considered for the Elite Guard Barracks, you must be of Private rank or higher (2500+ B/P), and have an advanced whistle (Bronze or higher).

Anyone over the rank of Security Guard (400+ B/P) can apply to the Newgrounds Police Headquarters, where they can work on their B/P'ing, whistling, and other skills until they reach Private.

Just a quick FAQ question that others may be able to help with, sirs. I was wondering if anyone has noticed that whistling abusive reviews seems to have stopped since the Art Portal was in place. Anyone happen to have a guess as to why?

People are still whistling them, and as far as I know, review mods are still cleaning up the abuse they find. I'm not quite sure what you're referring to?

Thank you sir. Mainly I was noticing that it seems no one is getting blam points for whistling abusive reviews. I thought I might talk to the higher ups before finding a place of my own. It seems people are really only getting points (right now at least) only for abusive flashes such as the dreaded DD. Just thought I might bring it to everyone attention.

Thank you for the direction, I'll check out the other places. *salutes, marches off*

****STOLEN FLASH ALERT****

Stolen version:

http://www.newgrounds.comportal/view/501 190

Original:

• Unsuitable Submission

  This submission contains age-rated material and requires an account to view.

I think Wade may have been checking the validity of the original. I hope the original gets through. That's the best I could speculate.

At 6/27/09 01:30 PM, SlntCobra1 wrote: I think Wade may have been checking the validity of the original. I hope the original gets through. That's the best I could speculate.

How did this happen? Thats almost funny how the original gets flagged and the stolen one passes and everyone forgets. I think wade would know who is the original here since his work is stolen all of the time. I would not worry too much over this, wade can get the job done right.

At 6/27/09 01:13 PM, SCTE3 wrote: It doesn't matter now, The stolen version passed and the legit version got flagged. What the hell?

That's crazy >:( Apparently the spammers flagged it, but at least they are going to get garbages whistles, and possibly their accounts are going to be deleted.

Stranger14 reporting for duty!

At 6/27/09 02:40 PM, SlashFirestorm wrote: (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT QUOTE THIS WHOLE GIANT THING)

That cracks me up every time I see it. And I didn't quote the whole thing, I just took that out.

Got 20 blams yesterday, been a while since the last time I got double digit blams

Also if the OO can put in more effort...