Audit Log To Prevent Cheating In Online Leagues
 

What does OOTP offer to give transparency into whether ratings had been manually edited by a GM who has commissioner access in an online league? Does OOTP provide an audit log for this?

I don't see how the OOTP Team fits into this, it is responsibility of the Commisioners to not cheat their GMs, if they do so they should be kicked out of that position or users should go to other more reliable leagues...

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I think the question is legit, are there controls or audit trails that other members can see that show whether player data (potentials) have been changed.

Otherwise, how do the rest of the league know if a commish has changed anything, and thus kick him out the league as you say?

Also, as he is the commissioner, its most likely his league and the other players would most likely just need to leave in the case of a cheating commish.

Hmmm... well, if a commissioner is also a GM, and if he wins more than average, some people will think he's cheating. If there's a log with no evidence of cheating, the same people will think he figured out how to beat the log. Seems the only answer here is that commissioners not be GMs.

I have to concur with Brad on this. Barring someone who would risk consequences (e.g., close friends or family members), I'd probably not play in a league where the commissioner is a GM. It's not that everyone cheats. Far from it. Of course, I have no doubt that many leagues have been run ethically with commissioners that play. It is after all, just a game, and the fun of it should dissuade people. But it's an unnecessary concern that might get raised and tend to undermine what would otherwise be a fun experience.

I don't play in a league, though, so I could be way off base. (No pun intended.)

If you can't trust the commissioner in your league, then don't play in the league. It's as simple as that.

What reason would someone be commissioner in a league if he's not a GM? Who would take on all that work keeping everyone organised, recruiting, etc? The reason people usually are commissioner is because they want to play as well... most leagues the commissioner is a GM too.

Double post ---

I agree wholeheartedly!

Its not impossible to find. Its not the norm, but it happens.

This has been a request in every game that has online leagues. Its a good one too. Yes, ideally, you find a league with a commissioner you can trust. But new players cant always do that and they may bounce around through several leagues and get disheartened. Some people also wear tin foil hats regularly and ALWAYS think the commish is cheating. An audit log is the best solution for all parties.

I agree with the above poster. One way to do this would to be for a symbol to say that the player was manually edited. Like a * next to the players name or rating, or in the history file, and the commish could add a player note to explain why the manual edit is done to cover off those situations when an edit is warranted either by league rules (participation points leagues) or a commish trying to rebalance teams in a league that’s gone way off balance in competitiveness and needs to recruit and retain new GMs.

This allows any owners to have certainty that any edits in online leagues are flagged. You could even have a toggle in league settings that allows one to toggle edit tracking on or off ( a checkbox?).

There are ways to do this in order to give players this kind of control, it’s just whether the devs feel it would be worth their time programming it in. I think it’s worth it because I think that it would attract more players to online leagues and increase the social element of the game without being to intrusive.

PC assistance
 

sorry thought was on new thread

Commissioner cheating to help his own team? There are worse things.

Why one time my team was the Treasure Island Pirates and the Commissioner said I couldn't have Jose Gaspar as my manager because he wasn't a real manager. ??? I guess I couldn't mix a unreal manager in with a unreal team and unreal players...

I've been dicked over by a cheating commish before. It's not fun.

It would be nice if we could audit ratings changes.

I'm a Commish and i would still like this.

Nothing to worry about if you're on the up and up.

All honest commishes would.

As a commissioner and as a player I have been asking for this type of thing for awhile. It won't necessarily prevent all cheating but it would make it much tougher.

It also would give assurances to someone who thinks there might be something fishy going on.

From a commissioners perspective it helps too. Invariably when a commissioner/gm does well someone brings up the question as to whether he may be cheating or not.

I do agree that you should leave a league if you legitimately think/know the commissioner is cheating but making that judgement call can be very difficult without someway to differentiate between a lucky/skilled commish/GM and a cheating one.

We've heard this requested before, and would agree that it would be great to have. But as someone who has worked at a previous company and added an audit log to a fairly complex database, I can tell you that it's a hellova lot of work to do, moreso if you need to make sure the audit log is tamper proof as well, so I don't think this is really a realistic option in the near future, unfortunately.

Not to oversimplify the development that goes into it, but I don't think it is as complex as you make it out to be. All in-game changes are submitted back to a server and updates are made to that player in the database. It shouldn't be a monumental effort to log that change out to a separate table in the database before the update is made. It shouldn't matter even if your database table is relational. The log entry can just be something as simple as having (ChangeSource, ChangeMade) field, with the ChangeMade field as a text blob containing a key value pair for the: Field, ValueBefore, ValueAfter.

ChangeSource | ChangeMade
IPAddress:98.xxx.xxx.xxx | {BatterPower,50,60}

I have the knowledge to be fairly confident in saying that this shouldn't be a big development effort. Now whether the OOTP sees enough value in furthering the online league experience to prioritize this is a separate matter.