by ᗢᘏᓗ » Mon Jul 03, 2023 4:09 pm
i don't know about selling the site, but i'm seconding what everyone else is saying. transparency seems to be a reoccurring issue here and at the very least i hope that higher ups can take something from this. the overall grievances here did not originate from this situation alone, after all. i understand that there is not a lot that an average moderator or AA can do or even disclose, so in most of these situations i understand the lack of comment from them. it's not their duty to disclose what they aren't allowed to, or what they don't know or understand in the first place because they are not told. i see a lot of users pointing fingers at regular staff members for things like this but the truth is that they don't have the authority. they don't give us answers because they can't.
hiring coders would be a great idea for the site itself just to keep things smooth and assist nick when he's unavailable, but i don't think that will fix the core of the upset here, and i'm not referring to the compromised accounts situation. like i said, that's not the sole problem, although it did seem to strike a match to the gasoline that was already being spread around by preexisting issues so it serves as a good example. hiring new coders would not fix lack of transparency. hiring any amount of new staff of any kind under the current admin's guidance won't do anything because those individuals simply don't have the authority to disclose these things no matter who they are. as far as i can tell, only the admins of the site do, and it's up to them and them alone whether or not anyone under them can give us any closure no matter what they may or may not know. they can lock threads if they believe that things are getting heated (make sure you're being nice to everyone, guys! it's the epic thing to do!) or if there are multiple threads discussing the same thing, but in this situation i believe that's the extent of their authority aside from incredibly vague responses to questions that they probably don't know the answers to either. that, and their own personal opinions on the matter, which don't give us much aside from insight to what their thought process is during situations like these. lack of transparency like this is what causes panic.
it is not the fault of nick, or any staff member, that there was a data breach on a site that they have no involvement in, but the fact still stands that multiple accounts were being compromised over a proportionately short period of time which led to a mass reversal of trades with (as far as i'm aware, since i only know vague details of the matter) little to no compensation or real explanation for the situation, affecting not only the hacked users but a very large amount of users who were nothing more than bystanders to the chaos. a lot of users were affected by this, and even those who weren't involved at all still caught wind of it. those who didn't hear it from the affected users heard it from friends, those who didn't hear it from friends heard it from the forums, those who didn't hear it from the forums heard it on external sites and platforms, and so on. people found out that their account could be at potential risk from the community, not the staff, and that's a lot of people's issue here. the trust between the userbase and the higher ups is wavering because of things such as this. people are becoming tired because this isn't a one time thing, which leads to threads like this one (and the 2020 "sell cs" thread and many other similar threads) to pop up.
i do believe that this was being looked into before the outcry began, but as other users have said, just a simple "we're aware of the current issue and there is no need to worry since we are actively looking into it" would suffice, or better yet, a quick visible reminder for users to make sure they're staying secure and potentially change their passwords if not. we don't need to know the nitty gritty of what's going on at that time behind the scenes, we don't need to know all of the details, we just need to know that the issue is already known and that we can relax knowing it's actively being looked into. a lot of the panic came from the uncertainty of whether or not anything was going to be done or even if anyone in higher positions cared about their panic.
saying nothing just leads to the only source of information being from word of mouth, gossip from fellow players, a game of chickensmoothie telephone between users trying to figure out what's going on and in the process potentially blowing everything out of proportion with speculations. this is all we can do if we don't really understand what's happening.
don't get me wrong, i understand why your first instinct would be to keep it on the low until there's a proper fix for the situation. you want to fix it before you announce it, so that way no one can exploit the problem before it's patched up, right? most services and companies do this to protect their users, it's extremely common. however, if that's the case, why are we even allowed to discuss it in the first place? it's being openly discussed in more than a handful of threads without being hidden. that would be the opposite of keeping others safe and only spreads panic because it's reaching more users without any official statement on the matter aside from replies that come several days later that wouldn't have even appeared if not for the uproar the community has been making. it was also said that there was no announcement because it might cause panic, but that doesn't make sense to me either because of the same reason stated above. all this delay did was keep more users oblivious to the fact that their accounts could be at risk (while other users are panicking and airing out that there was indeed an issue, which defeats the purpose of keeping it on the low). the inconsistency is going to contribute to the lack of trust between staff and userbase because it doesn't make any sense and might sound more like an excuse than an explanation regardless of whether or not that's what it actually is. things like this are not new (given how far back complaints like this go) and as far as i'm aware they are not uncommon either. i'm not entiely keen on the site being sold because of the reasons that other users have already stated but i do believe that there is improvement to be had in our current state and i hope that users being vocal about things like this will help to get us there so we don't have to entertain the idea of CS belonging to anybody else in the first place.
so yes, we can tighten the site's security, but keep in mind the site security is not the one source of people's discontentment. threads like this one, calling for something as drastic as selling the whole site, do not exist because of a security breach, or even because of the miscommunication in this one particular circumstance. this much disdain did not come from one situation alone. i think that's something we should all remember and take into consideration moving forward.