I don't know where a thread like this would belong, so move this thread at your discretion. I was going to wait until tomorrow to post this, but there's no harm in making a thread about your stances on subjects such as this. This gets people talking, and the main point of the TdV is to increase activity. I don't see a rule anywhere saying stuff like this isn't allowed, but I have no doubt in my mind that some people will find a way to get me in trouble for making this thread. I'm just going to cut to the chase: The TdV is broken. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there were things about it back then that were huge issues and have been fixed now. However, there are still many things wrong with the TdV, some of those things even make me wonder why they haven't been fixed or addressed yet.

#1 - Staff Corruption

I'm not saying the staff are corrupt. We all remember my DQ not too long ago, yeah? Remember how all of that went down? For those of you who don't know, I was DQ'ed for reasons that many people agree, were just plain stupid. It took about 4 days of discussing the DQ for it to finally be lifted. The fact that the DQ was actually forced down upon me in the first place is enough reason to realize there's something wrong. t only took about 3 of the staff members, that's right, 3 staff members out of the countless staff on the site, to force a DQ down upon me. A lot of the staff that didn't participate in the discussion told me that they would have put a stop to the DQ if they had time. In addition to this, it is very likely that some staff voted FOR the DQ just to get me out of their way in the competition. This is obviously not fair to whoever is receiving the DQ, and it can have heavy consequences, even if they eventually get it lifted. Like I said, it took about 4 days until the DQ was finally lifted. Look at the competition right now, if you will. If I was never DQ'ed, then I probably wouldn't have to be panicking almost every day to get my score up. Not to mention favoritism between members. I won't go into detail about this, but it's obviously there, and some members are being treated unfairly due to this.

#2 - Green Jersey

You knew this was coming. The big one, the issue with the Green Jersey. Staff are available to many more types of CP actions than regular users such as myself are. You may bring up the argument that regular users like me have won the Green Jersey before. That's cool. But can a regular member like me dish out around 200 actions in about 30 minutes to 1 hour? No, they cannot. That is almost exactly what happened last night, and as expected, many people are outraged, including myself. Staff have a clear unfair advantage with the Green Jersey, and they can easily rack up a 7-pointer with ease, while people like me are struggling to get counted for actions. I am surprised this has not been taken care of yet.

I'm not making this thread because I'm a sore loser, I'm making this thread because the system is flawed. There are issues that need fixing, and they need fixing bad. That's my take on things, and I think there are a lot of people that agree with me. Please feel free to post your opinions/comments/whatever you want down below.

Meh, I might as well weigh in.

As for this thread: it isn't bad in and of itself. You'll likely draw at least some scrutiny due to how it focuses on how the TdV issues affected you specifically, and how it's worded.

The issues: I love you, man. I really do, and honestly I'm pulling for you to win. And I was wondering what good it would do to lift your ban four days after the fact with how heated the competition was.

Still, I have a few problems with this point. Namely that I agreed 100% with your DQ. Sorry. I get the argument, please don't reply trying to explain because I heard it so many ways I could explain it in my sleep. Lol Still, it was spam in at least some sense of the word.
However, as I said, I have been pulling for you since your DQ was lifted because hey, you're in there so you might as well try.

The green jersey: I disagree with the arguments that I've heard (again, over and over) that staff should somehow be handicapped in TdV to balance it out. Why? Because they work hard for free to make this site run for everyone and thus even make the TdV possible. Literally we're arguing against the unfair advantage they have in a contest that only exists because they work hard to help the site exist.
However I do agree that the green jersey is broken. When the TdV and CP VCS were merged it fixed the red jersey (seriously: longest post was not the best idea), improved the blue jersey, and broke the green jersey beyond belief.


To the idea as a whole: yes, TdV is broken. It's a work in progress though. Like a game that's being beta tested: issues are found and reported, and ideally they are removed later. There's a lot of behind the scenes discussion to fix these problems every time one pops up. Don't worry: we ARE listening.

Oh and one last thing: it's just flat out disgraceful that at least one staffer is so willing to leak all of that information like they apparently did to you. It's a violation of trust and protocol to share staff+ information. I hope whoever did so sees this and realizes they need to abstain from it in the future.


Best of luck on winning, man. You can do it.

Eirinn :

Thanks for the honest reply. I won't reply to the things you said not to reply to, I just wanted to make a quick comment about the part where someone leaked Staff info.

In my opinion, may just be me, but I think I should have the right to know the details, as it was a huge move that everyone had their eyes on because of the severity of the issue. I'm going to have to applaud them for giving me the details, knowing what the consequences may be.

Thanks for honoring my request, though it only applied to the DQ. I don't mind the green talk.

And I can understand why you feel the way you do about the info leak, but think of it like a jury (drastic of an example as that may be): they deliberate in private, despite the one on trial being the one who most deserves to know. So it is with DQ talk: those ranked above them talk privately and hand the results of those deliberations down to the one in question. I have to abide those rules too, so I fully understand the frustration, especially since you don't get to say why you did what you did since it's entirely too easy to be misunderstood by a slight misstep. I've been warned once and even DQ'D once since I became a local, so I feel your pain. Know that I'm not speaking as a high and mighty or looking down on you because of rank differences (basically our rank differences mean that I get to spend a third of my time on a site meant for fun, cleaning up after others xD I'm a glorified janitor. All forum staff are). I would never do that to you or anyone else.

Still, all staff know that revealing info that's on a restricted level can lead to a demotion. And while you can see it as sharing what they felt you had a right to know, you could just as easily view it as them breaking the trust of every member with a rank of staff or higher, because that's exactly what they did. At the risk of sounding dramatic, anytime I hear of staff or mod info being leaked (especially mod info) I feel a little betrayed and hurt. It's so frustrating working like we do just to find out that someone is working against what we're trying to do — handle site issues in the most drama free and proper way that we know how.
We're not perfect, we're just trying our best to make the experience for everyone here as good as it can be.


Oh and to be fair, the guy that was accused of trying to get you removed from competition was good enough to stop competing even after you came back and began closing in on him. I think he was misjudged, but I can't blame you for feeling the way you do, since the info leaked to you was likely biased against him.

Firstly I have to echo Eirinn on your DQ. Incase you didn't know so already (judging from someone leaking staff information) I was one of the people who voted for your DQ. Frankly it wasn't as black of white an issue as some can make it seem. You did go against our warning about reading threads more carefully (even if that was accidental that doesn't really change things) and while you could argue people wanted you gone from the competition the fact remains that there was a clear rationale for why you should be DQed. I'm not saying that makes me or the other people who voted automatically right, but this wasn't some sort of one sided issue.

The Green Jersey I see your point on and the thing is me (and some other staff/non staff members) have brought this up in the past. The green jersey is unfairly balanced towards staff members and while one can argue that staff deserves the advantage for the work they put in that really ruins the point of having a site wide competition for everyone since it makes it unfair. People complain that only staff is competing but this is one of these things that discourages people from even trying in the first place. Will something be done about it? I'm honestly not sure. It's ultimately up to convincing David (since this is his site and his competition) and the rest of staff and with how busy he is both on and outside of the site I don't really think we have the right to set demands about things that need to be fixed right now. But if the green jersey remains unaltered then that decision needs to be respected, either keep competing with that in mind or don't compete at all.

The thing is I'm pretty sure you know full well of the green jersey's state before entering the competition.This is not news but knowledge that has been circulating around for many TdVs which you've been around during. Yet you still decided to enter competition knowing that it would likely affect your results. Additionally while you say this is not you ranting because of losing, that seems kind of hard to believe considering the time frame you've decided to make this point during. If you were truly just interested in getting your point across you would've waited until after the TdV has passed.

Eirinn :

Yeah, I guess I can understand what you mean when you put it that way. I'll be sure to thank "that guy" to have stopped competing after that whole incident happened once I get a good chance to. Thank you for your reply(s).

Zlinqx :

I can't really give an explanation as to why I decided to post it now. I'm not a sore loser, but I do need to let my thoughts out on things that I find unfair and unbalanced. Even though I knew it was unbalanced, I still wanted to try. And look where I am now. Wouldn't you want to try even if the odds are against you? Thanks you for your reply(s) as well.

EDIT: I decided to post it now instead of tomorrow since there's really no harm done if I try to add this to my score. I never said I was completely giving up.

Lexatom : I'm not saying you shouldn't compete if that's what you want to do. However making a thread venting about the unfairness of the green jersey just around the time the competition is ending with you neck in neck with another member for the overall jersey does not exactly help your case.

Lexatom : As a staff member I can agree with this quite a bit, while I'm not sure about staff corruption because as far as I know I don't know many people who are that mean to do stuff like that intentionally or maybe just doing it as a mistake.

One thing I can agree on is the Green Jersey, that is a very good point as staff members have access to a lot more site actions then regular and trusted members do. Thus they have a very huge and somewhat unfair advantage in the Green Jersey.

These are good issues you pointed out, and I hope that they can eventually be remedied as I generally want TDV to be as fair of a competition as possible. 

Yo, Dre, I got something to say.

I have an awful lot to say, too, and I'm going to back it up by saying, first off, I stand behind you, regardless of the consequences for doing so, it's not that I think you are faultless. You have a lot of them. You are annoying, (unintentionally) rude, and at times, you act a bit entitled. But despite all that, I still love you, and think you are like the brother I wanted, but got traded at the baby store for some blonde haired twat.

I've been with you, throughout the process, since you got DQ'd. Before the DQ, we spoke a bit about the TDV, but I wasn't exactly a big competitor, I was more focused on just having a good time. But talking with you, and hearing about your excitement got me excited about the TDV, and wanting to participate. Because in my opinion, you understood the TDV better than anyone else in recent memory, you understood that it was a fun game, and little more. You were a little too focused on wanting to win, but you are like 16, so it's forgivable, it's not like I expect you to have my maturity, or geeo's.

Your excitement got me excited, and for the first time in years, I found myself in the thick of a competition, this time for the yellow jersey (I didn't want to steal your thunder in the TDV after all. So if you want something positive to leave this TDV with, it's that you got me to do something that about a hundred different users have tried, and been unsuccessful with. You got me, Leggy, to want to give a s*** about the TDV, and compete. It might not mean anything, especially since I probably just won yellow by like a point or two, something you would have won, regardless, but I hope it means something to you, that I genuinely appreciate what you brought to this TDV. Excitement.

Now, I'm not going to ignore your points.

I'm not staff, but I have informants. As a result, I know the story behind your DQ very well, and I'd imagine, so do a lot of normal members of Vizzed who are not staff. The funny thing is, these people, leaking staff information aren't even in the wrong, even though the rules say they should be. And do you know why that is? Because it seems as a group, we're losing confidence in the staff to work together towards a unified result. It gives us the end result of an unfair DQ (very ticky-tack). I don't have any disrespect for those who chose to DQ you (sans perhaps one, but another story for another day). Everyone is entitled to an opinion. What I want to focus on is the lack of any real fair discussion on the topic, considering how out of the blue it seemed to me, a fellow competitor in the TDV. It clearly was done to the benefit of one user, and etc, I wrote a huge post about this already, that you can read in the Dump if you are inclined.

To skip to the meat of it, I too believe staff corruption played a part, although the member in question has been demoted (or quit) which sets a good precedent for the future, if you do something wrong, you get punished. And removal from staff makes perfect sense. It also plays in a bit with your comments about the green jersey. As it stands, the staff has a ridiculous advantage in the TDV. They can sandwich more (take a look at Eniitan in the How are you doing/what are you doing/etc threads, as she has multiple cases where it's her about 10 times in 20 posts), they can flat out do more CP Actions than a trusted can (without mentioning staff actions only they can do, in excess), and they have access to the CP logs, which is great for monitoring CP spam, but it's not something a normal member can see. Recently we had a question of whether CP had been scummed, and it would be great to see that info, but if the staff protects it, there's no way for us to see it.

I don't believe staff competing in the TDV is wrong, but they have a lot of obvious advantages (like the green) and then some less obvious ones (the ability to seemingly DQ whoever the f*** you want, since I don't think David has enough time to investigate cases as closely as they'd be needed). Essentially, I think the TDV is as close to being rigged as it can get without actually being rigged. That's not me denouncing it, because I denounce it enough. No, this is me stating the same thing I've said for a few years now. The green jersey sucks, the staff advantage sucks, and as a result the thing it influences also suck.

What bothers me, is you lost the TDV by 1 point. You were DQ'd. Even if you had one less day on your DQ, odds are, you'd have been the TDV winner, and that doesn't sit right with me. We've never had a user, who was still legal at the end of the TDV lose a TDV in this manner, and I do not think it is acceptable.

I'm really hoping David does something for you, because if he doesn't, I'm going to lose a little more faith in the TDV. The TDV should be about the fun of it all, and taking a realistic, and honest look at what's right and what's wrong.

And it kind of boils down to this, I think the competition is run poorly, and needs better management. That's not on David, either. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Lexatom :
legacyme3 :

I feel like something needs to be made clear here since whoever leaked info to you might have angled it in a certain way. The person in question who reported lex for going against our warnings (which I think everybody knows about at this point but I'll refrain from using names regardless) was not the person who pushed for lex to get DQed. In fact it was never even mentioned in the post nor did that person post voting in favor of the DQ when it was suggested, said person simply made the rest of staff aware of lex actions. I don't see what is inherently corrupt about competitors reporting other members if they're not directly pushing for a DQ, the person didn't lie about lex's actions or tried to make it seem worse than it actually was. I think every staff competitor has reported members in the past and frankly I don't see how that's inherently wrong considering that is part of the job. The fact remains that it was something the rest of staff needed to be made aware of to decide on whether it was a violation of TdV rules.

After the report was made, almost an entire day passed before the verdict was made and by that point several people had voted in favor but no one against and frankly a lot of members like myself and Eirinn were against the DQ being lifted. The people on staff who were against it, only made their dislike of the DQ known after the decision had been made. So this wasn't that member "abusing their power as staff" by pushing for a DQ. Nor was it David making rushed decision since time was given to let staff express their disagreement yet no one did. If the person participated in the vote themselves or tried to angle it a certain way to try and get people to vote for the DQ then I could see your point. However presently it seems like the blame being placed on this person stems from a personal dislike more than anything.


The mod+ also specifically have a DQ thread for staff members so don't think that staff members are any more likely to get away with breaking the rules or abusing their powers simply because they have access to the DQ thread. Incidentally this is part of the reason information is supposed to be restricted, hearing something from another member often leads to people getting a biased and/or incomplete account of events, that leads to drawing conclusions ahead of time in turn spawning drama because people don't see both sides of the argument.

Zlinqx : What do you know, you evil staffer?

Zlinqx :

"I don't see what is inherently corrupt about competitors reporting other members if they're not directly pushing for a DQ, the person didn't lie about lex's actions or tried to make it seem worse than it actually was."

I'll PM you a screenshot of the one who reported my actions that explains why he did it, from himself.

The Green Jersey is really, really broken.

This discussion has been going on ever since I became a Staff member for the first time and that was in the summer of 2015. There were proposed ways to fix the Green Jersey, however to my knowledge none of them has come to fruition. This is coming from someone who has been Staff and yes, did all this work for free. Green Jersey dominance may be a benefit of some sort, but not a fair one and one I'd like to see axed asap.

And this TDV in general... ohhhh boyyy... it's been one of my least favorite TDVs honestly. I'm not gonna open that can of worms (at least not yet) but bleh. There'a a reason I stopped caring about the TDV.

Okay,I am going to play the indifferent card here.

You are complaining about a virtual item. An item that has no real value other than a trophy. Yes,the staff will generally have the advantage,but it is an item that does nothing for you. Maybe I do not get it. Now,if you were screwed out of a trade or Viz or a game,then you would have a right to say something. I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill,honestly.