So nice to know that I'm not the only one who implements "The Great Purges"

I lopped off over 20 heads a couple of weeks ago. I'm still waiting for my tip! I have to think you tip at least 20% on that sort of thing.

I was on a team that lopped members after a month of non participation. On my current team we had a "team hopper". He asked to join us, left after 3 days, then went to 3 teams in under 24 hours. We got curious and decided to have a bit of a nose around and found he had been on 10 teams before us and we tracked him through 7 teams after us in a matter of about 3 weeks. Now that isn't not finding a team that fits. Changing like that isn't even giving it a fair chance. We did wonder if he was trying for some sort of record, like being in every team on FT or something.

nycdmc: Thanks for the compliment, you are most kind. I don't think I should be giving up my "day job" anytime soon though! lol

Dave: Well up here, tipping also means lopping and an arborist makes $18.00/hr to start (with no gratuity). But I'm sure there's money to be made SOMEwhere in there : ) My "tip" for the day is always "never bet the number 3 horse in the 5th race" ~

Christinap: no that sort of behaviour can't possibly be construed as "looking for a good fit". I can't think of a good reason for it either, but at every level of society there are folks that don't quite settle into a pigeonholed "norm" (whatever THAT is lol). Interesting (from a "what makes you tick?" perspective) though - did anyone actually send that person a note asking why? And if so, was a reply ever received?

I rather like Wesley's criteria. Only one month before deletion seems a bit harsh to me (but then again I'm not a team leader - nor do I want to be - and have no real experience in trying to deal with such situations). Somebody on the team, ultimately, has to make a decision as to "limitations". It might help somewhat, for some teams, if the criteria are explicitly posted in the recruitment blurbs. Many teams probably do that already, but for those that haven't in the past, it might be worth thinking about doing. Yes, I realise you don't want people to be scared off, but on the other hand, if you have set rules, they are probably best stated "up front" as it might save on a lot of exasperation in the long run.

The team that graciously allowed me to join doesn't seem to use any "purging" method (if they did, they'd have kicked me out for either a) being boring or b) rarely earning team points FOR the team). AND all the friendly folks there are VERY good at reporting that they will/may be away for whatever specified period of time.

All that (long-winded stuff) being said, I can't see any problem with deleting folks who join, then don't participate at all (in any way whatsoever) and never give a response/reason for it.

Jakeroo: You are most welcome, thanks for the laugh..lol

Christinap: I'm wondering if I know who that "jumper" is. A few months back, I received a note from a player asking if he could join our team. I must admit, I was excited and flattered that he actually made the request..lol. So I opened up the team to let him in, sent him all sorts of information, my team gave him quite the warm welcome and everything seemed to be going great and then he vanished without a trace, within days of joining. No "Dear John" letter or "Dear Dawn" letter as that is my name. So as you said, I was curious and decided to "tail" him. I have since lost track of all the teams that I saw him on all within quite a brief period of time. I was beginning to think perhaps Terry posted a new badge for "Most Teams Joined in the Shortest Amount of Time".

Jakeroo: You are anything but boring. I may not post here often, so you don't really know me, but I read here all the time, and I have found posts from you both informative and entertaining. I would never kick you off my team.

Christinap or anyone else, if you notice this type of behaviour then please report it to us. It isn't unknown for some teams to send 'spies' to join other teams and to then report back. Such behaviour is not acceptable and Terry will be taking steps to prevent this happening but until that happens let us know, you can use the Contact Us on the main page then one of the administrators will be able to check on the team hopper.

The Wild Mutant Noggins had a person join a few weeks ago and then later that same day, joined a different team. That person's account with FT has since been closed. However, the alias still is listed in our new members list (even after going to another team). Is that person counted in any way toward our team member counts?

Any chance of getting a "Team Membership History" to go on the profile page?

That's a good and valid idea Mehaul.

I had one join my team for less than a couple hours. They are on another team now. If it was an effort to spy on my little team...someone is paranoid!

I wonder if when team leaders become able to clean up the message board, if we could also get the ability to delete the so-called new member's name off the front page. It bothers me to see the name there and they were only on the team long enough sneeze.

Not just the spying issue is involved. Associated with my question above about whether they are continued to be counted has an effect on shifting teams from one league to another incorrectly. You want to inflate a team's membership number and boost them from small to medium so your small team advances in that segment, drop a fake member on them.

They're not counted... we have a couple of former members on our list and they're not included as "active". I wish they could be deleted from the list though, it looks odd having them there.

How about fixing this (counting people after they're gone and allowing access to intimate exchanges) the other way around. Put a hurdle in at the start of team membership (if leaving is so easy, make joining more difficult). That people don't get counted nor participate on a team until a certain amount of time has passed. That would be: join FT and respond to an email and you're in clickety-click. Join a team and a countdown clock goes tickety-tock until 5 days have gone by then you'd be allowed access to team personal items. This would actually be enhancing the system in place now where leaders can make the ability to join a team as closed, by letter/invite or open, bippity-boppity-boo.

Right now the system of team membership is like a free ride transportation system. To get folks to acknowlege there are rules to be followed, ceding some of their wealth is generally used to symbolize due notice and a positive reply to the notice of the obligation to follow those rules (one of the seldom thought of aspects of paying a fare beyond supporting the maintenance of the system). What wealth do folk bring to this site and highly value so that a sacrifice of some of it would be a certain acknowlegement? Time. Charging time does the trick. If someone is willing to spend 5 days waiting for membership to take effect, it would be a more sure sign of willingness to follow the rules. Ask people to pay the fare of time before becoming a team member. The shifty might find the cost too high.

How are people meant to know if a team is right for them? Suggesting that players should not be allowed access to 'team personal items' (presumably message boards) for five days seems ridiculous. What is the newcomer meant to do in that five days?

It is quite possible to join a team, take a look at the message board content, and form the opinion that this is not the team for you; you have no way of knowing this before you access the boards.

There may be a very small number of people who abuse the system. I'm a bit worried by this talk of 'phantom' players joining teams just to learn their tactics (sorry, what?!), or to spoil their statistics. Is there a little paranoia creeping in here? This is trivia, and it's meant to be fun.

If there are such people, Sue has suggested that Admin should be informed of them. That seems like a perfectly reasonable proposal. Why put restrictions on the movement of all players between all teams just because a seemingly very small number of people are abusing the system.

I would say the only changes necessary are to remove players who subsequently leave from the list of new members showing for each team, and also, when an account is deleted, that player name should be removed from team lists; I believe it still shows if the player deletes their account without leaving their team.

Unfortunately in this world it is always the way, that a few spoil things for the many.

I think things work as they are. If you spot one of these "jumpers", then by all means report them, but bear in mind that just because someone stays in a team for a very short time, it doesn't necessarily mean they were in to spy.

I don't want to buy a gun, I just want to play trivia. If someone says I have to wait 5 days to be sure I'm sincere and of good character before I can join a team, then that team is not for me. Come on, we don't post the Colonel's seven secret herbs and spices or the location of the crown jewels on our message boards (at least my team doesn't!). It's FUN trivia.

I think it would be strange to have someone who is new join a team and then not be allowed to take part. Normally, the beginning is when a person reads the boards, gets a feel for the group and then finally starts to jump in and participate. That quiet period allows a new member to learn what the group is like. Not allowing new members to get to know the group for five days would be further extending that period, and then if the newbie were to discover that the fit is not a good one, the person would end up leaving anyway.

Does this proposal include a requirement that new members' scores not be counted toward the team's points in the trial period? If so, that is a double whammy for the poor newbie.

If not, then those "jumpers" who supposedly want to hurt another team's stats, would still be able to achieve that goal, whether or not they could read the team boards.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that for a typical person who just wants to join a new team, the wait would serve no constructive purpose. I really don't believe there are that many people switching teams to hurt others or achieve some different nefarious purpose. Those who are doing this should be reported, which can happen with or without the waiting period.

Sue

edited for clarity

Searching the wild Mutant Noggins message threads for the prior postings of an ex-member, I ran across a welcome to (censored) by several of us in Feb. Then a day later, one of our mates noted the player had gone to (censored). Six monthe go by and the same player does a switch to us and right back again to that other team. This cannot be a case of shopping around and not finding a proper fit. That jumper is no longer a FT member. But how much was the other team involved? Does the "new" membership every six months benefit that team in some way? Artificially inflating their membership numbers perhaps? So it seems that team hopscotching is a tactic at least one team may have employed.
Sue, that aspect of quickly joining a team and registering a poor TvT score or some tactic like that wasn't even on my list of why that action could be a viable reason for the switching. Thanks for the new angle (coming in and being part of point contribution right away).

I think the best way of preventing jumping would be a simple timer:

You cannot join a team if you have done so in the last seven days.

Meaning: If you want to leave a team and head elsewhere, no problem. If, then, you want to go back home or find out your choice was a bad one, you can leave your new team, but not join your former or a third team until a week has passed.

This won't put any stops on regular, planned team switches, but it will prevent any malicious hopping or shopping around without even giving things a try.

(If we want to make things more beginner-friendly and prevent abuse by high-level over-competitive folks, the criterion could be "gain a level or 50,000 points, whichever comes first" instead of "wait for a week". I know that's a mean one.)

Wes

Requiring people have to 'spend' time searching for new teams seems like it would help those to find a good fit. One hinderance I see in searching team data (and spending time beyond reading the team name and seeing their standings in the site team competitions) is the lack of ability to see thread topics, but not the threads themselves. Perhaps a system like the 'pinning' leaders can do to certain topics could be used to show a public list of team topics/games that are discussed/played but not actually read the postings themselves? So, when we go to a team's homepage, we'd see who's new and online, team site standings, team point leaders, team thread topics and finally, joining info. A system like that would help cut down on the "don't fit here' types of reasons for in and outs on teams.

It didn't come from me, actually, dippo mentioned it on this thread, as have others on other threads in the past.



I must admit, I don't see this as a huge problem and I think the abusers can be dealt with one on one instead of putting hurdles in there for everyone. I love my team, but it is not a competitive group. We support each other with friendship and humor and try to do well in the competitions, but never at the expense of making people feel bad. It's the only team I've been on, but I can see how I might have wanted to change if I had joined a group based on the group description and then the actual give and take turned out to be different from what I'd imagined.

Sue

That is your post that I was referencing. But it doesn't matter much as you also say.
This is really gone away from what Terry was announcing as new team stuff. I asked for some change to prevent hopscotching and it's getting away from that and into a debate I never intended to pursue. The acts are being performed whether by individuals on their own or by team design. In closing, we are not supposed to accuse others of cheating here and for doing that, I apologize.

No apology needed for my quarter, mehaul! And I was just not trying to take credit for having come up with the idea of malicious quiz playing. I was referencing what the others had said.

In any case, what you've said is right, the discussion has gone far off the initial topics. I tend to take a theme and run with it--over to the next country!

Have a great day.

Sue

Is there an ETA?

"On my current team we had a "team hopper". He asked to join us, left after 3 days, then went to 3 teams in under 24 hours. We got curious and decided to have a bit of a nose around and found he had been on 10 teams before us and we tracked him through 7 teams after us in a matter of about 3 weeks. Now that isn't not finding a team that fits. Changing like that isn't even giving it a fair chance. We did wonder if he was trying for some sort of record, like being in every team on FT or something."

He's been on so many teams he is starting to repeat himself. At least you had contact with him. He never responded to a welcome thread or a PM from me. He just joined us again...I deleted him.

Ok time to fix "team hopping". Trying to think of a good way to solve this issue..

How about "one team change per week" max allowed? The system simply won't let you join a team if you're over the limit.

A week sounds good to me Not so long that people feel they've lost their right to chose, or for anyone to feel shackled.

I wouldn't want people to think that team changing is a sport, though. What if we said that we would like everyone to find a home at FT by joining a team that fits them. We understand that it isn't possible to find the right fit necessarily on the first try, but in order to make sure you give your new team a chance, you won't be able to change teams more than once a week.

And losing team points if you change teams a lot of times in a short period might be another deterrent....

Just brainstorming here...

The only problem I have is there may be some folks who join you may not want to be on the team for a week. A week is a long time in FT. For me, FT time is akin to dog time. (One year = seven dog years) I'm thinking more like 3 or 4 days.

One change a week is a bit restrictive. If you decide to leave (or are asked to leave) your current team and join a new one, then that is your change for the week. If you don't like or don't fit in to the new team, you are either stuck there or in limbo for a week.