Legitimate Play and the Future of Sporcle

Comments

LockednLHospital

10 days ago

My fellow Sporclers,

I am deeply concerned with recent developments concerning the manipulation of numerous statistics across Sporcle. There appears to be a macro, bot, and/or well-determined individual, clearly recognizable when examining the all-time Triviamasters leaderboard today, that is exceeding the limits of what constitutes legitimate play on Sporcle.

I encourage the community to keep an open mind about what “legitimate play” means. Sporcle means something different to all of us, and we all interact with the site differently. At the same time, I think almost all of us can find common ground on what clearly isn’t acceptable.

This occurrence raises numerous questions concerning the purpose of statistics, the satisfaction of making progress and working towards goals, and the ways that a community can existentially create shared meaning in a tumultuous world. I have my own feelings about this, and I encourage others to share their thoughts. Personally, this issue makes me think about how the years of effort I’ve put into the site can, in one sense, so easily be devalued. I also wonder about the purpose, structure, and future of Sporcle.

For example, I believe that this trivia community should be concerned with advancements in AI that seek to undermine the artistic expression of quiz-making, the ability of community members to authentically interact and share ideas/experiences, and also the ability of users to set and achieve personal goals. The manipulation issue that I’m referring to today seems to be a simple macro, but it alone can destabilize all trackable statistics on the site. Without a unified community stance on what is and isn’t acceptable (and a series of associated precautions), sophisticated AI will cause much more damage.

Since you know me from being on Jeopardy!, I can sign my actual name,

Rhyne

LockednLHospital

10 days ago

(Caveat: If this abuse-of-play situation is an extreme case of a person who doesn’t eat, sleep, or do anything else but click the same mouse sequence for several consecutive days as part of a speedrunning-esque challenge, then this type of play still presents problems within the community. The associated statistics are such a departure from the norm that they necessitate the creation of a separate category to cover that style of play. Even if that is what’s happening in this instance, the points I raised above about Sporcle’s future are still valid.)

durhamfan

10 days ago

Eh. I don't value my achievements in relation to others. If I go from one of the top 1,000 users on the site, to out of the top million because of bots/cheaters, I still get the same enjoyment out of the site. I like playing and making quizzes, not being better than strangers.

mokos

10 days ago

Rankings/standings are kept because people enjoy them. Always have, always will. It provides something to chase and that is good for people's interest in the site. When you take away their value it negatively affects the site and its most loyal players. @durhamfan I understand your lack of interest with regard to your place in the standings, but the main topic here isn't other players beating you. It's gaming the system to artificially inflate numbers. And in this case it's almost certainly not a player but a bot or something similar. The numbers that user is putting up are not real. They can't be. It's a shame that our "meh" attitude toward cheating has permeated our lives to the extent that we see obvious garbage like this and we just don't care.

7orangessss

10 days ago

There are also some glitches with some of the stats. For example, the person with the highest level on Cabbage Tickler, the badge you get for playing 1,000 Just For Fun quizzes, as about 600 levels on it, which means they would have had to played more than 600,000 quizzes, yet they only have 200,000 quizzes played on their profile.

RotherhamAndrea

10 days ago

@LockednLHospital This type of seemingly impossible daily plays has been happening on-and-off by a small group of Sporclers for several years, so it's not linked to recent advances in AI. I just checked back and I first reported it via email not long after I joined Sporcle in 2019, and have subsequently reported it by email and in group posts (like this one) over 20 times since then. Every time I've had the same reply - we've investigated it and there's is no evidence that they have done anything wrong.

It used to stress me out but I made the decision last year to remove myself from Public Leaderboards. I now just set myself personal targets (eg: x amount of quizzes per day or reach a given score by a certain date etc) so I don't need to worry about how other people choose to play.

bhenderson79

[Sporcle Admin] 10 days ago

@RotherhamAndrea - In the specific case of today's leaderboards, we just took a look and DID find evidence that a user is scripting plays via some sort of bot behavior. A block has been put in place to prevent that user from continuing this pattern.

But it is in fact true that in the vast majority of these situations, when we look into the details it appears to be people manually and legitimately playing huge numbers of games. When we find it to be the case that people are using scripting of any sort, we will put a stop to it as soon as we're aware of it. But otherwise, there's not clear place to draw a line as to what constitutes 'excessive' plays from a real person.

LockednLHospital

10 days ago

Just to clarify in case it matters for anyone else reading this at a later date: the account "played" one single quiz yesterday over 10,000 times.

RotherhamAndrea

10 days ago

@bhenderson79 Thank you for confirming that Sporcle does take these allegations seriously, even if the answer isn't always the one that we (I!) want to hear. Out of interest, when something like this happens are the plays deducted from the players total or is it just a matter of preventing it from happening again? I guess that ultimately no matter what Sporcle does to try and prevent 'cheating' some people will always find a way around it.

Hejman

9 days ago

I just want to give kudos to HQ here with a personal anecdote. Several years ago I had a quiz that, although published, had no real reason to be garnering any substantial additional plays. And yet, it was getting a solid chunk of plays every single day. In the same amount. At the same time of day. In the exact same pattern. It just didn't add up and wasn't logical in any way. I reached out to HQ and they spent weeks trying to track down what was happening before finally discovering the IP address of the bot that was generating the plays. They blocked it, and the mystery plays stopped.

From @bhenderson79's comment here, it appears that happened again today. All we can expect is that HQ will take situations like this seriously and intervene where there is sufficient evidence to do so - and that's exactly what they're doing.

Hejman

9 days ago

As a follow-up to my earlier comment, I did not mean my response to diminish the concerns that @LockednLHospital has raised here. If the Sporcle community doesn't point out the scripts or call out the bots, then HQ simply won't have the time to police the Sporclesphere entirely on their own. I've seen a number of threads rightly raising concerns about AI images in quizzes, and I've pushed back on the concept of using AI in quiz creation, but this is the first time I think someone has raised the concern of AI accounts. So kudos, also, to @LockednLHospital for thinking globally about the issues.

roger4

9 days ago

Thanks for starting the conversation @LockednLHospital . To start, I know how I rank in comparison to others on this site doesn't matter. My Quizmaster ranking, for example, does not in any way affect my sense of self-worth. BUT ... competition is fun and (as it might benefit the site itself) leads to increased gameplay. If I see someone topping the daily Showdown leaderboard with 50 wins, I might buckle down and go for it. If someone is playing the same quiz on rapid repeat (bot or not) and is at 347 wins, I'm going to log off and kill my time elsewhere. As a rule, I prefer when people don't cheat and avoid activities where nefarious behavior is prevalent. But that's just me. Thanks.

HELLO8964

8 days ago

I apologize for causing this discussion and everything and will go back to playing how I used too. How long will this"block" be on my account.

RotherhamAndrea

8 days ago

@HELLO8964 The fact that you're asking the question indicates that you are intending to go back to 'cheating' if the block is lifted. If you were planning on playing properly then you wouldn't need the block to be removed at all. @bhenderson79 (for information).

DarkAppraiser44

8 days ago

@RotherhamAndrea I think they mean the account was completely blocked from playing quizzes - including normal plays.

RotherhamAndrea

8 days ago

@DarkAppraiser44 The Admin comment from 31st July says "A block has been put in place to prevent that user from continuing this pattern." According to their Stats they played 1,795 quizzes yesterday (1st August) and they've played a few today, so it's not completely blocked.

DarkAppraiser44

8 days ago

@RotherhamAndrea Oh! Interesting, seems like it's still a case of playing the same quizzes over and over for hundreds of times... but at least legitimately this time?

mokos

6 days ago

@DarkAppraiser44, @LockednLHospital stated above that they played one quiz over 10,000 times in one day. I don't see how that's even possible. I really appreciate admin dealing with it.

delawaretikigod

6 days ago

I greatly appreciate this thread and the thoughtful posts. While I admit to monitoring the leaderboards, I am more interested in having sporcle in my life as a human endeavor as opposed to ai/bots/scripts. Over the years I’ve enjoyed following creators to see what new quizzes they’ve come up and seeing players’ engage with those quizzes. I hope it can stay that way.

Zipcity

5 days ago

I will continue to advocate for the removal of the ability for people to hide their play history. There's zero reason for anyone to have the option to make that private and every time I see it I assume there is some sort of cheating behavior happening. There are already some people who obviously manipulate the clock in some way, but that's a separate issue.