22 replies to this topic

[ninjaMooCow]

Just curious on the community's thoughts on this.

 

I know a couple of people have approached me and been pretty disturbed that someone is using one of their friend's names.   It happened to me this morning, and I am not comfortable with allowing people to use the names of my friends.

 

community thoughts?

[The Once and Future King]

Sometimes people might pick a name that happens to be the same name that someone else chose without knowing that they have the same name as another person.

[VoidWhisperer]

I think if it is intentional it should be be bannable. I used to have some problems with multiple people doing this to me.

[Digresser]

I think copying a name AND tag of another player (I keep running into someone using bfl`Satan who is not the well-known Pyro) shouldn't be allowed as that is clearly deliberate impersonation. As for names alone, I think people should be required to answer honestly if they are "such-and-such player" but I don't think it's possible or practical to stop duplicate name usage alone, since there are many players who use the same name. Forcing people to be accountable for their answer, however, would lessen attempts of players to cash in on or sully another player's reputation.

 

I'd also be happy to see people being prohibited from using established team tags (especially Plat/Prem/Invite), since this leads to the same issue. A recently banned hacker on TF2Center was able to avoid detection for quite some time because he was using the tag of bonus! which is the tag of an NA Plat team.

 

I wouldn't like to see either as harshly punished offenses (really a warning would probably do) unless the player continues the impersonation.

[ninjaMooCow]

I think if it is intentional it should be be bannable. I used to have some problems with multiple people doing this to me.

 

It is bannable if you are TF2C.

[VoidWhisperer]

 

I think if it is intentional it should be be bannable. I used to have some problems with multiple people doing this to me.

 

It is bannable if you are TF2C.

 

 

It happened before I became mod.. then once after but the guy stopped after I threatened to ban him.

[ninjaMooCow]

You are more patient than I am.

[flip]

This should obviously be bannable..

[ninjaMooCow]

To TOFK and bunny's points,

I'm not going to ban someone because their steam name is "tree" and so is someone else's.

 

How about we discuss aliasing as someone "with intent to impersonate."

[The Once and Future King]

To TOFK and bunny's points,

I'm not going to ban someone because their steam name is "tree" and so is someone else's.

 

How about we discuss aliasing as someone "with intent to impersonate."

 

How exactly are you going to read their mind to find out if they intended to impersonate or just happened to pick that name because they liked it?

[TheMattgician]

Well you can't be sure, but if someone's naming himself TheMattgician for example, there's a 0.001% chance he picked it (trust me, nobody's stupid enough to use that name). It really depends on how common the name can be. There was someone called Masternoob who was banned for impersonation, but it turned out he picked the name himself (we checked his previous alias on Steam). I forget what happened there, but it's not inconceivable for someone to pick Masternoob as a name.

Basically, it's not impossible to judge, you just have think of how likely it is the person has that name regardless of the other player with that name (the null-hypothesis!), and perhaps look at previous alias.

[flip]

what TheMattgician said. It's pretty obvious whether someone is intentionally impersonating someone else. two people named flip, no big deal. two people named TheMattgician, it's probably an imposter...

[The Once and Future King]

Does the Mattgician have some kind of right to that name?

Why is he the only one allowed to use it?

[Digresser]

To TOFK and bunny's points,

I'm not going to ban someone because their steam name is "tree" and so is someone else's.

 

How about we discuss aliasing as someone "with intent to impersonate."

 

The problem with that, Stephanie, is it can get really murky. You mods would really have your work cut out for you proving intention for names alone.

[ninjaMooCow]

The prime example is someone not satan calling himself "BFL SATAN".

 

Intent existed the second he tagged up.  I'm not going to be the "tag police."  But I know it when I see it.

 

There was this one time, when Robbie Rotten, cleverly disguised as Rottenbeard, sailed into town and took the kids on a fake treasure hunt.  Impersonators make me so not happy!

[The Once and Future King]

Sounds like some more "Big Brother" type nonsense to me.  I mean what was this guy trying to do as "Satan" that was so bad, is it just that he used the tag and name or did he actually do something malicious?

 

Unless people are copying profile pictures and descriptions it does not really do any harm, and even then it really doesn't do any harm unless they are trying to use this other persons likeness to coerce someone into something or scam someone or the likes of that (and really if someone is not smart enough to click the name on TF2C and check the convenient link to their UGC profile to see if this BFL Satan is the real one whatever happens a  result is really their own fault.)

[TheMattgician]

Well people who impersonate other people usually do it to make the original person look bad. It happened a whole lot with MasterNoob. Obviously if the impersonation isn't hurting anyone, then no biggie. When people use the same name as mods, it gets confusing for other players, which is one of the reason it isn't allowed.

[Digresser]

Well people who impersonate other people usually do it to make the original person look bad. It happened a whole lot with MasterNoob. Obviously if the impersonation isn't hurting anyone, then no biggie. When people use the same name as mods, it gets confusing for other players, which is one of the reason it isn't allowed.

 

This. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Jake accused of hacking because of hackers who have used his name (including on TF2 Center). There have also been other impersonators of Jake who have done it simply for the attention (one was recently exposed on reddit offering to mentor somebody while claiming to be Jake, formerly of the Syndicate).

 

When I've seen fake bfl`Satan, he's joined up as Pyro, played poorly, and talked trash. Quite a few people were most likely left with a bad impression of the real bfl`Satan, who a fantastic player and person.

 

Maybe you could use the following criteria for allowing people to report impersonation:

 

1) Person is using the name AND tag of a different player

or

2) Person is using the name AND avatar of a different player

or

3) When asked if they are the player whose name they share, the person in question falsly claims that they are

 

I really dislike it when players use the tags of teams they aren't on, especially the higher division teams. I'm not sure if that would fall under impersonation or not, however, a player doing this could damage a team's reputation.

 

You'd probably would want to make it clear that people requesting action against impersonators should check the links for the user's steam profile and UGC and/or etf2l history before reporting; it's those places where you can see most of the story. You'd also have to make sure the rule covered times when people deliberately added a small difference to their impersonation, such as using "StabbyStabbey" or something.

 

Again, wouldn't want to see harsh penalties, except for repeat offenders.

[ninjaMooCow]

The point here is that without some sort of rule, I can't even ask the impersonator to change.  (But I did recently.)

[Digresser]

Is there any way this thread could be moved to Suggestions?