We have learned that certain individuals targetted a Flash that was on it's way to winning Review Crew Pick and mass voted 0 on it. They claim the author used alts to do this to their entry, which ended up winning Review Crew Pick as a result of their mass voting of 0. I have investigated and the author of the Flash that was knocked out of contention did not use alts to attack their entry. He gave a score of 5, which was a fair score. He recevied multiple review scores of 0.
Those involved have been review banned.
We are getting sick and tired of users pulling crap like this to alter scores so they can win and entries that should win do not.
In the future we will take more serious action.
From this day on any user who has found to purposely swing a score will have their accounts terminated.
All we ask is users vote and review honestly. It's easy to tell if a user is giving and honest score, or if they are intentionally giving a biased score.
We may also crack down on groups that mass together and vote 10's to increase their chances of an award.
Why should some group with an average submission have 30 some members all vote 10 on it, when another Flash artist who doesn't have a group behind bim submits something better and gets 8's and 9's and doesn't win, when he may have if it wasn't for the group voting all 10's on their entry.
If it means I have to remove every member's account of these groups, so be it. If they want to strong arm their way to awards and ruin the Newgrounds.com experience for the users who are using our system properly, fuck 'em.
Any user who associates with groups like this be warned.
If these groups were ethical they wouldn't even vote on or review entries submitted by members of their groups.
Meaning if a Clock or a Lock, or a SS member submits an entry, no other Clock, Lock, or SS member should review it or vote on it until after the weekly awards are over.
Now, I know these groups will say that if they would do this there are lots of people who hate their groups and vote with a negative bias against them. Well, if these groups would stop with their mass voting I maybe inclined to go after users who vote and review with a negative bias.
Let's not forget the negative bias against these groups is a result of the way they all band together and inflate their scores and sometimes gang up to bring down the scores of their competition.
