About the April Fool's Joke

[Jordan]

I believe a thread is needed to clear up and explain exactly what happened today. Also, there needs to be clarification of what exactly was part of the joke and what was not.

Duke originally started his thread about leaving as a joke. Then Der Alta jumped in on it with some friendly sparring to make it more convincing. It was all totally uncorrodinated. I then woke up this morning and discovered what was going on, as it was explained to me by an email from Der Alta. I got in on it too, claiming that I wasn't aware of an April fool's joke. Unfortunately, I had to give a presentation today so I was unable to stick around and see what developed until around 3:00 PM today.

During the time I was away, and while the joke was still in progress, GTPlanet member sUn took advantage of Super Moderator Jon's account. Using the account, he banned a good number of users and edited and deleted signatures and posts. Sage, sn00pie, PunkRock, Der Alta, and Duke recognized this abuse and stopped (banned) Jon's compromised account from doing further damage. Apparently, sUn banned himself. I have had discussions with both sUn and Jon. sUn admitted to banning the accounts with Jon's Super Moderator permissions, and this is confirmed with IP addresses. We cannot prove that Jon is not actually impersonated by sUn in the IM conversations, but Jon is responsible for the activites of his account (as stated in the AUP), and both have been permanently banned.

sUn and Jon have caused a serious amount of damage here.

If you are having any trouble with your account or have any issues that you would like to discuss this issue, feel free to PM me or email me from this page and I will help you however I can.

Once again, I apologize for the way that all of this has turned out. It was and should have been a harmless April fool's joke, but unfortunately there will always be someone out there who has more sinister plans.

A few questions have been raised about Captain Coffee. This is Duke's alternate "testing" account, and he used it today to help clear up some permissions errors. It did not have anything to do with sUn, Jon, or anything else bad today.

 

[Famine]

You had us all worried there for a minute. Glad the site's okay - although it looks like there's even MORE work for you lot to do tidying up after sUn.


On a site I moderate - one which is subject to occasional psuedo-legal threats - we took the entire site down and replaced it with an official-looking solictor's letter, detailing complaints against the site and asking for those with grievances to fill in their details so that the solictors could get in contact with them.

If only it wasn't for that pesky Data Protection Act, we'd be having an awful lot of fun right now

 

[PS]

From an unbiased point of view, sUn shouldn't even be ON GTP- he's at school right now. So maybe someone hacked into his account and once they saw who the mods were, hacked into theirs. I don't know, I was at school.

 

[skip0110]

I'm pretty disappointed and sickened by what happened...I went to bed seeing Duke's friendly and humorus thread, woke up assuming that things were the same only to realize that ti had degenerated into a total and utter mess.

I thought the mods, in their wisdom, would have maintained a tighter control over what occured. You won't see me posting here very much any more until I see an increase in maturity, all around. There are places for fun (conversation forum, etc.) and other places where less tolerance should be allowed.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Can I have some phycological councilling that you offered? I mean my faith in people on the net is gone. I feel like you're all 50yr old men trying to take advantage of little ole me. I never new the net was so deceteful!



[EDIT] I remember the picture he posted and all the "I'm God" talk.

 

[LoudMusic]

I seem to have lost my Super Mod access. Would you mind adding me back to the group?



Cheerio!

 

[PS]

And I had to start this new account, PS. It appears PublicSecrecy got banned, so y'know...It'd be nice if things got back on track.


But in all seriousness, how did we isolate whatever went haywire?

 

[G-T-4-Fan]

From an unbiased point of view, sUn shouldn't even be ON GTP- he's at school right now. So maybe someone hacked into his account and once they saw who the mods were, hacked into theirs. I don't know, I was at school.

See what posts he is going to make after he sould come back from school, and for anyone that thinks GTPlanet is acceseable from old school computers: I bet they don't have any hacking software, so I think sUn is not the one to blame.....

I'm also sorry for my agresive post on the "previous" thread after I heard it was a joke, it just sounded to agressive, I know..........let's forget the confusion, and stick to the joke, but did the mods get banned by the "sUn" person or was THAT FAKE?!! I think I still have a reason why not to believe this hacking story, maybe the mods are just ashamed that they banned inoscent members just to let the joke look good.....BUT I DON'T KNOW someone COULD have hacked the place, it's just that theres ANOTHER "good" explanaition for this all

 

[Robin]

I don't get at all what happened...was there a joke that went wrong?......as GTP truely hacked.....cos it looks hectic around here......

.......this proves april fools and the internet dont go well!

 

[Solid Lifters]

I thought the joke was great this year! Good job to those who participated. I so wanted to join in, but thought not to be an interloper. Next year, maybe?

It's too bad sUn had to ruin the fun by going way overboard with his "jokes." I thought it was still part of the act, but the mod signatures he modified were a little too crude and very inappropriate. That's when I started to have some doubt if this was still all just a April Fool's joke.

 

[Sage]

I thought the mods, in their wisdom, would have maintained a tighter control over what occured.

Well, the problem is, most of us didn't even realize we'd been hacked until Duke told us. For example, since Der Alta purposely worked with VipFREAK to "ban" him, I thought he had done the same with the other people who got "banned" (and you have to remember, it's kind of hard to just ask him, since he's at work ).

So, I'm sorry for the mess, but I think the mistakes we made were mostly out of our power. If I had known so many people were banned, I would've paid more attention (and taken a whiff of the BS), but I wasn't aware of that.

 

[DRIFT GOD]

i read most of the posts in that topic and decided to stay out of it, its good to here everything is back under control now

 

[Blackbird.]

I was very perturbed about this whole ordeal and a bit sketchy that it was just a prank but after seeing quotes off of the moderators and the moderator's modified signatures I was beginning to believe it was a hacker. For awhile I was scared, sad to say.

 

[Jpec07]

If only it wasn't for that pesky Data Protection Act, we'd be having an awful lot of fun right now

If you duplicate something that's even one pixel off from their designs, though, the DPA is invalid (because the code isn't the same). Heck, if I wanted to I could legally copy GTP, just changing all the coding and such so that it's not an exact replica. Jordan would probably kill me for it, but it'd be legal in a court of law.

Anyway, I thought the joke was funny. Cheers to the masterminds.

 

[G-T-4-Fan]

See what posts he is going to make after he sould come back from school, and for anyone that thinks GTPlanet is acceseable from old school computers: I bet they don't have any hacking software, so I think sUn is not the one to blame.....

I'm also sorry for my agresive post on the "previous" thread after I heard it was a joke, it just sounded to agressive, I know..........let's forget the confusion, and stick to the joke, but did the mods get banned by the "sUn" person or was THAT FAKE?!! I think I still have a reason why not to believe this hacking story, maybe the mods are just ashamed that they banned inoscent members just to let the joke look good.....BUT I DON'T KNOW someone COULD have hacked the place, it's just that theres ANOTHER "good" explanaition for this all

Well, I guess I've lost some SERIOUS faith too in GTPlanet, realising after reading my post again, I guess I just saw this faith-loss after reading my actuall post, it just affected me

 

[cardude2004]

I don't know what to believe anymore. I think I may wait until tomorrow to come back. This has all confused me and made me kind of mad and worried. I was more worried before when I thought I would lose my account to a moderator when I didn't even do anything to them. I don't have any trust right now. Bye until tomorrow.

 

[Jordan]

I thought the mods, in their wisdom, would have maintained a tighter control over what occured. You won't see me posting here very much any more until I see an increase in maturity, all around. There are places for fun (conversation forum, etc.) and other places where less tolerance should be allowed.

Very true. There was a very bad level of judgement here on the part of everyone involved, and perhaps helped me understand why I have never personally initiated any type of April fool's joke on the site. We, as the leaders of the site, abused your trust in us and for that I am ashamed. I can't speak for the others, but I would like to personally apologize to every member who was mislead or confused by my posts.

I don't get at all what happened...was there a joke that went wrong?......as GTP truely hacked.....cos it looks hectic around here......

GTP was not "truely hacked". "Hacked" is too strong of a word. If someone knows a moderator's password, the account has been compromised, not hacked. This has been taken care of now and you don't have anything else to worry about, you have my word.

I'm also sorry for my agresive post on the "previous" thread after I heard it was a joke, it just sounded to agressive, I know..........let's forget the confusion, and stick to the joke, but did the mods get banned by the "sUn" person or was THAT FAKE?!! I think I still have a reason why not to believe this hacking story, maybe the mods are just ashamed that they banned inoscent members just to let the joke look good.....BUT I DON'T KNOW someone COULD have hacked the place, it's just that theres ANOTHER "good" explanaition for this all

Please, no conspiracy theories. That is simply not true.

 

[CrackHoor]

He banned a good number of users and edited and deleted signatures and posts. This, obviously, was not planned or intentional by anyone on the moderator staff, and was a serious breech of security.

Yeah, I figured it was all a joke until I got banned!

No lingering emotional damage, just part of the online wackiness. Thanks for the clarification, Jordan.

 

[VT]

Maybe next time just a simple script changing all the posts made on that day to pig latin or something?

 

[G-T-4-Fan]

Please, no conspiracy theories. That is simply not true.

My trust.....I'm just more suspicious right now...maybe it's smart to just ignore half of what I say till tomorow:tup: I just NOTICED myself being suspicious, just has to disappear over the night............

 

[G-T-4-Fan]

Maybe next time just a simple script changing all the posts made on that day to pig latin or something?

Hehe lol That might be a better idea,

Gotta go to sleep now, bye

 

[Blackbird.]

Very true. There was a very bad level of judgement here on the part of everyone involved, and perhaps helped me understand why I have never personally initiated any type of April fool's joke on the site. We, as the leaders of the site, abused your trust in us and for that I am ashamed. I can't speak for the others, but I would like to personally apologize to every member who was mislead or confused by my posts.

You haven't totally lost my trust in your guys just shaken it. But some members have lost total trust and sad to say some have left.

 

[PS]

Maybe next time just a simple script changing all the posts made on that day to pig latin or something?

Nah, Lorem Ipsum would be funnier. All Lorem Ipsum quotes start with the words "lorem ipsum,"

That would be a good one.

 

[VT]

The VT Computer Science department has a forum and last year they made it so that everything was displayed in leet speek for April Fool's. That was funny.

 

[ExigeEvan]

We, as the leaders of the site, abused your trust in us and for that I am ashamed. I can't speak for the others, but I would like to personally apologize to every member who was mislead or confused by my posts.

Oh come on Jordan, no need to sound that glumb about it. To most of us it was a great laugh, it just confused a few newbies that's all.

Anyway, a few hours barred from GTP probably did them some good, certainly would do me some good (that is not a queue to ban me )

[EDIT]

You haven't totally lost my trust in your guys just shaken it. But some members have lost total trust and sad to say some have left.

Dude grow up... It's the blimming internet!

 

[Blackbird.]

Oh come on Jordan, no need to sound that glumb about it. To most of us it was a great laugh, it just confused a few newbies that's all.

Anyway, a few hours barred from GTP probably did them some good, certainly would do me some good (that is not a queue to ban me )

Well some of us, one being me, were in total confusion. I was in a rush and IMs were flying all over the place that you've been banned I've been banned. It was all too much for me to comprehend and I see that I was banned, so I was quite scared what was happening and I had to leave. I was thinking hard on the way to my destination.

Oh come on Jordan, no need to sound that glumb about it. To most of us it was a great laugh, it just confused a few newbies that's all.

Anyway, a few hours barred from GTP probably did them some good, certainly would do me some good (that is not a queue to ban me )

[EDIT]
Dude grow up... It's the blimming internet!

Oh I'm fine. I'm posting as regular, just a bit shaken up. But some truly have left.

 

[Famine]

DPA

You misunderstand - we were getting people, who've repeatedly threatened to sue the site/hosts/owner despite having no grounding at all, to enter their personal details on a form. Sadly, we cannot collect and store those details under the Act, but it does mean we know who fell for it and can poke fun mercilessly.

 

[Azuremen]

Well, good thing my gullible self slept though most of this it seems. I seem to have avoided any trouble with my account.

Good to know everything is under control now. Still, April fools' jokes always seem to get out of hand, just because everything outta the norm is considered a joke.

And thank you Jordan for making it clear what happened; this way I don't hear random details through out the day.

 

[ExigeEvan]

so I was quite scared what was happening and I had to leave.

Scared of what? Okay you're a premium member, but you're money will be payed back.

You're not going to die, you're not going to have a terrible disease, you're not going to suddenly seem attractive to a cliniclly obese, facially challenged and highly obseessed women. I can't imagine what happens when your pet dies? You wear black for a week?

 

[Blackbird.]

Scared of what? Okay you're a premium member, but you're money will be payed back.

You're not going to die, you're not going to have a terrible disease, you're not going to suddenly seem attractive to a cliniclly obese, facially challenged and highly obseessed women. I can't imagine what happens when your pet dies? You wear black for a week?

Maybe I actually care about the well being of this site. I've been here for 3 years and sadly yes I go to here everyday but it's a place where I can talk have fun and play games. Maybe you don't. I don't care. Why should you?