Anime-Beta TNG

cutiebunny wrote:During the submission process, we noticed that the image files were being accessed. In short, someone was scanning the image folders on the site's server and looking for changes every 20 minutes. While they were not able to see the images, they were aware of how many entries were in each category. This means that they could wait until the last day and make their submissions based on what categories had fewer items. This person waited until the day before the end of the submission process to enter.

That sounds completely surreal.

Lovely entries guys. Seems to get harder and harder to pick favorites. Good luck to all those that posted artwork!

cutiebunny wrote:
Now that the important part of the announcement is over with, it's time to air some dirty laundry.

I think I saw this on the telenovela "Al Diablo con los Guapos"

Lots of great entries this time around! I think it'll probably take me a few days to actually vote, so I'm glad we have a whole week .

Ditto what others have said about the "incident" behind-the-scenes... kudos to CB for her handling of the situation -- I think it's the fair way to go . But now... let's just have some fun, after all, that's what these awards are supposed to be about!

iceman57 wrote:

cutiebunny wrote:During the submission process, we noticed that the image files were being accessed. In short, someone was scanning the image folders on the site's server and looking for changes every 20 minutes. While they were not able to see the images, they were aware of how many entries were in each category. This means that they could wait until the last day and make their submissions based on what categories had fewer items. This person waited until the day before the end of the submission process to enter.

That sounds completely surreal.

It’s the things you CAN’T come up with that are real

The last time I done such "refresh assault" was to get two tickets for a sold-out concert. That was a good reason (and worked)
But for a community contest, with nothing else than a handmade trophy to win, heh?! Where's the motivation?

The set up and the entries are top rate.....can't wait to vote

If asked- I think it is unfair that one of the "culprits" is named outright and the other is not, but c'est la vie

Thanks for your hard work and well handled cutiebunny

If asked- I think it is unfair that one of the "culprits" is named outright and the other is not, but c'est la vie

Amen to that! Both should be called out for their bull$@%#. I just can't believe how pathetic people are. Sounds like they need to get out more. There's more to life than just a graphic award.

As for entries, awesome job y'all!

Goldknight wrote:

If asked- I think it is unfair that one of the "culprits" is named outright and the other is not, but c'est la vie

Amen to that! Both should be called out for their bull$@%#. I just can't believe how pathetic people are. Sounds like they need to get out more. There's more to life than just a graphic award.

I tend to agree that both should be called out publically, naming one and not the other isnt right, actually their whole action is kinda pathetic
But more importantly, the submissions are excellent, voting was really really hard!!
Good Luck to all that entered!!
[but they all looked like winners to me ]

Awards are ready anytime, just requires winners and category name on them

I agree with some of the above posters; at the end of this contest, both culprits should be unmasked. Although many of us can make conjectures regarding the identity of the second individual, it seems slightly unfair to let Zetsuai take all the public shame for what was most assuredly a two-person job. Given the extent that both of these people were willing to go (cheating and blackmail, wtf?!), at the very least, they should both be banned from participating in the coming winter cel contest.

ReiTheJelly wrote:(cheating and blackmail, wtf?!)

that's exactly what I thought when I read the posting from cutiebunny ... (O.o) ...
I wrote her a pm 2 days ago, but no answer yet ... I wanted to wait for an answer before posting something here, but since there are so many writing about it ...

I was rather hoping to discuss this after the voting portion was over. I wanted to focus on the positive aspect of the awards before I, and the rest of the forum, addressed this issue.

I also figured that anyone who gave it more than a moment's thought could have already figured out who was the culprit without any additional information. There were a total of four people involved in the inner workings of the awards this year - myself, Zerospace, Gabe and Iceman (awards/graphics only), and only three of those people were provided with access to passwords and the coding. I don't understand coding. The only thing I know about CSS is that they are three quite tasty letters in my alphabet soup.

The primary reason why I did not publicize the other person's name is because they were the whistleblower. Had they not gone through the logs and brought it to Zerospace and my attention, it might never have been discovered. The awards process would have run through its entirety and it's possible that, using the same system, this could happen again and without the organizers' knowledge. Additionally, I also wanted the rest of the awards to run as smoothly as possible. What would prevent the culprit from deleting entries and/or the entire platform?

However, if the forum decides that they not only want the names of both people involved, but want to bar them from future participation in any awards, I will abide by that decision and make both names public. While the handling of cheating is up to the sole discretion of the organizer per the established rules, I believe that any decision affecting future awards should be up to the community instead. As I said earlier, I wanted to wait until after the awards to address this. I propose on running two individual topics afterwards, both with polls ( so that you can remain annoymous). They are -

1) Should the culprits be allowed to participate (submit artwork & vote) in future awards, and if a temporary ban is selected, how long that ban should be in place?

2) Should the culprits be allowed to help in the organization (Coding and organization) in the future?


Of course, if you feel that any additional topics addressed to this should be made or would like changes made in the wording of these topics, please let me know.

Zetsuai wrote:that's exactly what I thought when I read the posting from cutiebunny ... (O.o) ...
I wrote her a pm 2 days ago, but no answer yet ... I wanted to wait for an answer before posting something here, but since there are so many writing about it ...

Really...you're going to play the victim card here? Really?!

BTW..you wrote the PM on September 7. It's still the 9th here. At least give me two FULL days to get back to you on it.

But, since you elected to go this route, here's an excerpt from your PM.

yes I looked during the last week about 2 times a day at the categories
I was simply curious what's there this year ... my occupation is being a software tester, so searching for peeks is my job ... so yeah you can blame me for that but what your wrote about "every 20 minutes" is ridiculous since I don't have so much time at work ...

Regardless of whether you 'peeked' once or every twenty minutes, you still peeked. And that constitutes as cheating. Now, if you had contacted the organizers prior to the start of the submission period and asked if you could test the system, check for possible security risks, etc., we might have allowed that. But I never received any email or PM asking if you could do this.

and if there is someone else who took a peek, why is only my name written there???

To my knowledge, it was just you who 'peeked' as I'm sure both individuals checked quite thoroughly before the start of the voting period. If others were involved (and you have names and proof), please let me know so I can delete their entries/votes and publish their names. As I said in my return PM to you, any knowledge you have on additional cheating could be quite helpful in forum's decision as to whether or not you should participate, in any form, in future awards.

why not posting this part of my pm:

when the awards page from zerospace was used for the first time back in 2008 I wrote an email right away pointing out every weak spot ... especially that everyones eMailaddress and IP was not protected ... I always point such things out not only in my job ... and on such a page particularly because my data was visible to everyone aswell ... I never got an answer on my email, but nearly all weak spots I pointed out were closed except for the submissions itself, so not my fault that they were still open 3 years later ...

after you haven't blacked out this part:

my occupation is being a software tester, so searching for peeks is my job ... so yeah you can blame me for that

by the way I got the coding as betaawards08.zip back in 2008 to check
the time when I wrote about all weak spot ...

oh and you still haven't told me who the one is that I blackmailed and for what???
would love to know that so that I can ask her/him???

Zetsuai wrote:

my occupation is being a software tester, so searching for peeks is my job ... so yeah you can blame me for that

by the way I got the coding as betaawards08.zip back in 2008 to check
the time when I wrote about all weak spot ...

OK, I gotta call BS on this.

You never emailed me -- your only reply was via PM to thank me for sending it. I never heard another word from you re: that code. So, please don't lie. I've had absolutely NO problems with you, Zetsuai, and I don't want to start now, but I don't appreciate you trying to save face by making this somehow MY fault. So, please don't try to blame ME for your inability to control yourself from "peeking" -- just because I left the door wide open doesn't mean you should walk through it!

Security wasn't even a thought on the original site. I coded the site based on a very simple assumption: that these awards were for fun, and that to truly "hack" that site, that it would require skills above what most Beta members have. And I still think that's true even now. Let's face it -- most folks here use Rubberslug and outdated HTML to make web sites, so I really didn't think all that security was truly necessary, and if someone really wanted to bother to hack the site... well, that's just childish and sad. Who would bother to hack a site that hosted a simple, fun set of awards?!

In 2009, prior to the first sketch awards, I made a few behind-the-scenes alterations to the original site source to improve the security in the event that a sneaky prior organizer decided to try and be cute and view the log files and tickets it keeps on votes, entries, etc. I thought that was far enough -- blocking full access to the entry images folder(s) wasn't even a consideration, as I never expected anyone to "peek". I guess I was wrong to assume that most of the people here are honest. This whole thing has given me numerous ideas for how to block exactly this sort of access, but I just don't care to and have long considered that code to be in the vault, never to be worked on again.

Remember people... This isn't an online banking site, nor a site that stores any personal data beyond email addresses for contact purposes. There should be no need to be so anal about security, as it is used maybe twice per year and it is hosted in different locations every time.

Here is bonus trophy, free of charge.



Now more seriously, if there are backdoors in Zerospace code and considered as a problem, why not turn all back to an old school e-mail management hosted on Rubberslug as early contests versions.
Then, what are positive aspects (security...) and non positive aspects (extended labor work to process, difficulty to cast votes...).