Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Yes, I am a poster at Neodaq but I have been following PPT (especially the pet and petpet matching topic) far longer than I have been a member there. It was actually one of post here at PPT that I learned about Neodaq. However, I haven't really been inclined to join the forums until now. You guys have made points that I wanted to address to that's why I'm here posting my arguments and not at Neodaq's. You yourself have pointed out that you don't like people reading PPT and then commenting about it in other forums. I believe that it is better as we can dialogue with each other as directly as possible. With that I hope that my being 'a new member' doesn't hinder you from reading and understanding my points of argument as I've done to yours and others. And though I post at Neodaq, I am not their representative. My opinions and arguments that I've stated are mine and mine alone.

I don't think "swift action" is a phrase I would've used. If TNT has been swift, they would've responded to it sooner (like months ago?) and then we wouldn't have users complaining. As it is, they haven't really handled it very well as there are a lot of confusion and questions on the matter.



I think you missed my point. I answered to someone who said "that companies can deny customers for no reason." And well, you're examples states reasons why companies can't extend their service. Though reason for the 3rd one is quite ridiculous.


As per TNT's definition, no I don't clearly understand it as I would like to. Having "unfair advantage" can be interpreted in a lot of ways, such as having this and that technology that can on up you from the game. And sometimes, TNT's wording of rules can leave so much speculation as to what is really they don't want us to do.



If GreaseMonkey isn't the problem, then why are those who have GM were frozen such as psycho_chick's niece? If TNT wanted to deal with the script that uses GM, then deal with that script and that script alone. If they have a problem with GM, they could've announced that they don't want it and us users could've been warned beforehand. Fine, it's their site and they can do whatever they want to do with it. FINE. Really, I get that and it doesn't have to repeated again and again. However, their actions doesn't mean it doesn't affect us. It does or we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. In the end, I believe they could've handled the situation better.

I think you've missed the part where I say



It was deliberately ridiculous as you seem to still be arguing the fact that we somehow have gained a right to have that service when this isn't the case. Producers have rights too, and they can excercise them as they see fit. One of those rights is the right to deny service to people they don't want to for there own personal reasons. This usually ends up being places like pubs refusing service to people they don't think should be drinking, but it is in no way limited to that.

Another example might be the fact that somebody at a video store does not want to hire out a video game console to somebody who looks suspicious due to the risk of it being stolen. Most stores will circumvent this by making people leave deposits on new consoles, but that's store policy (for the reason explained below), not law.

Most consumers have this assumption that because they use a service or good, the supplier must bend over backwards to meet their every demand, its not the case. Producers have just as many rights as consumers do, they're just not as well known as the Consumer rights as most people aren't producers and have no need to learn the Producer rights.

The producer has the right to refuse service to people if they feel like it. Provided this isn't because the person is of a certain race that they have been discriminating against eg, it is legal. As I said before, 99.99% of producers will never do this, as it discourages customers from returning and encourages them to spread word to other customers about poor service.



An advantage that you have over others due to something that TNT has not expressly said is alright or is not implied directly through Neopets willing and voluntary actions.

AKA: Having your computer do anything you can't do manually with the same amount of effort

EG: It is not an unfair advantage to have Flash as it is required for parts of the site.
It is an unfair advantage to make flash go slower by editing Flash's settings to allow you to score more points in games such as Volcano Run

An example of an unfair advantage:
Being able to find your profit margins faster than others, thus being able to get items before others without the necessity to memorise the prices for each item.


As I've said before, Neopets acted like they did to stop a potential problem. You guys are complaining about an invasion of privacy just for looking for a single image, how would you react if they went through and looked at all the scripts you run through greasemonkey to see what they were called and what they did? Not all cheat scripts will be named something like "ImproiveNeo", I could write a cheat script (well, no I couldn't due to lack of knowledge about JS ) and call it "Readsmyemailsforme"

Obviously Neopets couldn't assume that scripts will be named to make their jobs easier, so they'd have to go through every script run by every person that has greasemonkey everytime they used the Shop Wizard. Not only would that require a metric buttload of resources, it'd be near impossible to write a script that checked every script run by anybody for anything malicious when Greasemonkey isn't limited to Neopets.com. There are codes that help you cheat at other games, which Neo would have to distinguish from codes used to cheat on Neopets and whatnot. I mean, we have an uproar about an image, how bad would it be if that were the case?

They acted under the assumption that people running scripts while on Neopets were cheating. Its not a correct assumption, but in the case of people using ImproveNeo, they were right.

Sorry about that, typing late at night can lead to errors in my logic, what I was referring to there is the fact that only a select minority of people have been frozen for using GreaseMonkey, and at times Improveneo. Which seems a bit harsh.

Another issue I would like to raise is that if TNT don't have time to look at every "Cheating" program or whatever, how did they find out about GreaseMonkey in the first place? If they had time to look into the related forums and identify W3 as having ImproveNeo on his site, and using GreaseMonkey, why wouldn't a warning (GreaseMonkey cannot be used on the shop Wiz - which appeared for all people using GreaseMonkey on the Shop Wiz page), which was suitable for the majority, be used for all people using GreaseMonkey? Seems underhand is all.

And with the comments about the nice-ness/trustworthy-ness of people, I'm sure that both PPT, the Daq and other related forums all have respected members of their community, and just because they don't post in other forums, or only post on some subjects, making assumptions based on simply that, not looking at the whole picture as it were, can give one-sided views of people. (A Barrister whom discusses the law and crimes does not make him/her a criminal for instance (Another extreme example I know)

Can't we all just get along?

I hope my comments haven’t seemed to harsh/forceful, (and I apologise for any comments made by me on the Daq forums (Jonnyh) that PPT'ers may find offensive), it's just that this matter seems to be quite close to my heart.

Jon

I think we both have come to the point that where we are both repeating ourselves. However, I don't think you have clearly understood what I'm trying to explain. I think you missed the parts where I've already acknowledged that the companies do have rights to do what they want with their business as long as it is within the legal parameters of their location. But as it is, as consumers, we also have rights to question it. People who are denied service by any company have within their rights to question why and to actually be given answers. I am not saying that they should do every single thing demanded to them.

As for your second point, I haven't missed it. I do believe I have already said enough regarding this matter. Replying to it would be just a whole repetition of what I've said before. I am still standing by my belief that
1) TNT didn't handled this situation very well
2) They have unjustly iced one of the long-time and respected players of Neopets
3) ImproveNeo isn't a cheat, as per my interpretation of TNT's TOS. (Unless of course they comment about this matter in the Editorial)
4) We, as users, have a right to complain/comment about what they're doing with the site.

I don't see any slamming of PPT members on the Neodaq forums. If you can point out one spot where there is slamming of PPT members, I will gladly take care of that post.

Well, everyone clearly has a different opinion on this matter. Maybe we should agree to disagree on this? In the end it's TNT who decides wheter Improveneo is a cheat program or not, what we think/believe doesn't change that.

I do however wish TNT won't freeze any more people over this. Alot of reliable and well-known sites, like neodaq and neoitems have advertised this program. A lot of players (especially younger onces) wouldn't think a program that is advertised on such a site will be a cheat program. I believe a lot of players who downloaded ImproveNeo were under the assumption that it was ok and weren't breaking the rules deliberately.

When I read about the program on Neoitems I thought about dowloading it, but it seemed too fishy for me. But it was advertised as a program that wasn't against T&C, a lot have people must have believed that. I alsmost did too.

I'm not computer savy, but isn't there a way for TNT to block ImproveNeo without blocking greasemonkey?

I may be new here, but I have been a member on the neodaq forums for over a year now. That has allowed me to gain a wealth of knowledge on improveneo, and I can easily say that what you just said is complete BS.

I assume that you were talking about DIRP. DIRP was actually no different from a normal wiz search. If you double clicked/highlighted an item and pressed Shift+D, a box would appear that had the first 5 wiz names in that group. It would look something like

bob123 xxxitem 1 12345NP
bob1234 xxxitem 1 12346NP
bob12345 xxxitem 1 12347NP
bob123456 xxxitem 1 12348NP
bob1234567 xxxitem 1 12349NP


This is exactly what would appear in the green box. The only difference from this and the shop wizard in another tab, would be that Improveneo would send these prices to iPricing, which would give us an average price of a certain item. This in turn was made into a graph, and also sent over to neoitems for their use.



And fructy, I believe it would be very hard to block improveneo without doing a complete rehaul of much of neopets.

Actually, TNT has been silent on this issue. We've asked for a while, no response. After a while, nothing had happened from them, so we took that as a good sign. And, there was nothing in our posts, at least on the daq, neoitems, and iPricing that show that we were trying to hide this from TNT.

A few pages back I kindly asked for proof that someone actually wrote Neopets about this. I have looked through Neodaq, Neoitems, and improveneo's forums (until it was shut down) and no one ever said "Yes, we have written TNT" So, if I missed that post, please provide a link for it, like I asked a few pages back.

And according to my interpretation of the Webmaster's post on the Neoitems forum, some people did not want Neopets finding out about the program.

Daner asks:
"Has anyone actually written Neopets and asked them if this was considered a scam/cheat? If anyone has seen them answer it in the editorial could you please post a link?"

Webmaster replies:
"Neopets won't say it is ok to use. The best we can hope for is that they won't say anything at all. There is no way for them to know that you are using it since it all takes place on your computer."

Mac adds:
"No, nobody has ever asked Neopets about this."

And no one of authority (meaning Mac or Webmaster) ever wrote anything to the contrary. And one would think that it would have been important enough to have mentioned it if they had. Similar questions were asked by members of the improveneo forums and littlemac replied in a similar fashion but unfortunately, I can no longer access that forum (if it truly still does exist) to give you quotes.

That's cool. Your "new member" status won't prejudice me whatsoever. I hope you didn't take anything personally.


I honestly and firmly believe that the right people at TNT did not find about it until just recently. Like I said earlier, it isn't their job to search out new programs, read forums, etc. They rely on their users to point illegal activities out to them and they indicated that in a recent editorial. My guess is that a user who questioned this program finally got through to the staff person or persons who could actually do something about it.

And, I would like to add something here. One would think that a creator of a program would have gotten the approval of a program before tossing it out to the masses. I know that the creator has no legal duty to do so, but ethically he does. Because he put hundreds of accounts at risk by doing what he did. The terms and conditions clearly say 3rd party programs are not allowed to be used. Littlemac's program is a "3rd party program" so that right there should have made him question the legitimacy of his program. People in various forums asked him if he had gotten approval. So those users were questioning its legitimacy. That right there should have made him want to get approval because it would be in the best interests of his followers to do so. Neopets could have easily frozen everyone using ImproveNeo, but they didn't. As far as I know, only two people have been frozen, w3 and psycho_chick's neice. I feel bad for w3, I really do. Perhaps because of his popularity and the fact that his site was promoting the program, his freezing was used to publically warn others. It is a shame that he allowed littlemac to put this account at risk like that. And it is a shame that littlemac didn't feel some sort of obligation to his followers to make sure this program was approved by Neo before implementing it.

And, I keep hearing people saying we would have never used this program if we didn't think it safe. And we didn't think that it created an advantage over other users. The point isn't whether YOU thought it created an advantage or whether YOU thought it was safe, the point is whether NEOPETS felt it created an advantage and whether NEOPETS felt it was safe. They own the site. They make up the rules. It is their game. If you don't want to follow their rules, don't play the game.



I was mulling this over in my mind last night while asleep. As far as we know only two people have been frozen over this. w3 and psycho_chick's niece. I have already given my theories as to why TNT froze w3. And I honestly believe that psycho_chick's niece may have been frozen for reasons other than having GM on her computer. Think about it logically. To the best of my knowledge, no one else who was using GM or ImproveNeo got frozen. No one. Out of the thousands and thousands of people who use GM, no one. So, if Neo was going to freeze for having GM on a computer, don't you think we would have heard of a mass freezing spree? This makes me think that perhaps the niece was frozen for other reasons. Many restockers and big mallers have recently been frozen for having automated programs. And they weren't using GM.

I know that your niece is only 10 and 10 seems so innocent, but psycho_chick, you might want to make sure that she didn't accidentally get involved with the wrong people and possibly download some program that maybe she shouldn't have. I say this because I have a kid who at the age of 10 was playing Neo and, at the time, she knew all sorts of people who were liars, cheaters, and schemers. I didn't find out about this until recently, but she used to hang out on RS sites and was given the opportunity, on several occasions, to download autobuyers. She was a smart enough cookie never to do so, but they were readily available to her. In addition, I was very good friends with a person here on PPT, who, at the age of 10, had used an autobuyer and had been frozen for it. So, kids who seem innocent may not be. I am not accusing your niece of any illegal activity, but it is good to check out instead of automatically assuming that it was GM that caused the freezing. It could be entirely coincidental.



Oh, come on, AQ, you know right where they are on your forums. Must I quote people? OK, here's one quote: " It's interesting to see the general, perhaps narrow minded views of people over there on some topics. Just some wondering on my part, it seems that PPT has generally belittled the comments about Internet privacy." Anyone wanting to see the posts on Neodaq about this can look here:
http://www.neodaq.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13555
The negative references to PPT are scattered throughout the posts found on page 13.



Wow, I am famous. How cool is that. Funny how littlemac takes our posts and puts them on his website in such a way that we cannot respond to them. And just in case he is reading this, he says that he didn't take down the forum nor the screenshots. But, gee, I can't find them. Anyone want to give me a link to them?



Aww. the_dog_god, our secret's out. I often forgot to say just how awesome I think you are. Great minds think alike.

I've been thinking what Morningstar is thinking. If TNT were freezing people just for having Greasemonkey on their computer, there would be a heck of a lot of people being frozen, since it seems to be a pretty popular add-in. Instead, the only person we've heard about so far being frozen for having Greasemonkey is psycho_chick's neice. This makes me suspect that psycho_chick's neice's freezing probably has nothing to do with Greasemonkey. That's not to say I think it was justified, since many freezings aren't, just that the timing may well be a coincidence.

Actually, I have good news on this (well, good-ish news) in that Maya's father has been in contact with a few members of the staff (I'm not positive who). Apparently they said something about scripts and mentioned that that, combined with having GM, led the account to be suspicious. (or something to that general effect. It was a really garbled voicemail from a 10-year-old passing on technical information SHE doesn't really understand from her father... oh boy, the barriers...)
Supposedly, they're "reviewing" her account.

Actually, she DID get her first account frozen for an autobuyer. She had no idea what it was (it was a year or two ago) but she read that it "bought things for her" and since she had just broken her arm, she thought it was a great idea.
Afterwards, we sat down and talked (it was a great lesson on "cheating" in general, actually) and she's been SUPER careful with this account. That's why it bugged me (and her) so much.
BUT like I said, all may be okay after all.

Lesson on the day? Maya says: Don't play neopets on the computer your dad uses to build webpages and stuff. It's dangerous.

Psycho chick, that's great news! I will be crossing my fingers for your niece.

Morningstar, I must've misread something. Please accept my apologies.



Oh, come on, AQ, you know right where they are on your forums. Must I quote people? OK, here's one quote: " It's interesting to see the general, perhaps narrow minded views of people over there on some topics. Just some wondering on my part, it seems that PPT has generally belittled the comments about Internet privacy." Anyone wanting to see the posts on Neodaq about this can look here:
http://www.neodaq.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13555
The negative references to PPT are scattered throughout the posts found on page 13.


Page 13 has no negative references to PPT. Sure, ansky mentioned PPT threads, mc_crazy mentioned ToS and Fan forums, but that is about it.

I suggest you look again at ansky225's post made 1/27 at 7:02 am, mc_crazyme's post at 8:30 am, jonnyh's post made at 5:24 pm (which I quoted), eggwalterpunk's post at 8:07 pm, and ansky225's post made at 8:09 pm. Negative references and inferences made about the PPT forums.

???




I understand your point on this one. I might disagree with it, but I see how a ppt member might take.


I'm afraid I don't see the other two. Can you please quote them?