I owe an apology to Bendog, Lina and almost everyone else who was offended last night. I'm sorry if you felt singled out or condemned because in attempting to be politically correct and speak in generalities I cast too wide a net. I never meant to insinuate that you were cheating or ignoring the rules of the road. My comments were directed at one person and one person only and in attempting to not name names the innocent got caught up in the backlash. It won't happen again.

I've been doing this a LONG time. I've played, written games for and/or hosted in trivia communities going back to AOL and Prodigy. When they priced themselves out of hardcore users I moved along and played on WOW (remember that one? probably not), MSN and a couple of offshoots of MSN when they went belly up, Chatgames and another whose name eludes me. Oh wait, Mind Probes maybe? When they too went the way of the dodo I tried a few others, ummm, Trivia-Wiz and some others on the Trivia web ring (oh geesh, remember when web rings were a thing? probably not) and not surprisingly they all had unique written and unwritten rules of behavior, standards we all agreed to follow. And going from place to place as they came and went, I never found it the least bit onerous. Their room, their rules and I could either choose to follow them or choose to leave. It's not rocket science.

In all those rooms with all those players hosting thousands of games and writing 50,000 ORIGINAL questions I've been accused of being too competitive, often abrasive, not singing enough, writing questions that are too difficult, not difficult enough, including too many categories about Peruvian Folk Opera, not suffering fools gladly or just being downright evil. And other than the one about the opera (we need MORE categories about Peruvian folk opera) I cop to every one of those. I most definitely am competitive (that's why we keep score people, but that's a different rant for a different time), my sense of humor is dark and abrasive, I'm openly and proudly evil and I most assuredly don't suffer fools gladly. And that last one tends to REALLY REALLY piss off the fools, but who cares what a fool thinks? Let em be angry. Of all the things I've been accused of, I've never knowingly been called completely stupid. Somewhere, deep inside, even the fools have come to the conclusion that I have at least one functioning brain cell.

And one brain cell is all it takes to differentiate between a person that reads slowly, types slowly, thinks slowly and needs to hit themselves with a blunt object to wake up the hamster that runs the wheel that powers whatever system allows them to remember who was the personal dressmaker for Klinger on M*A*S*H and a person that completely ignores the standards the rest of us follow and blatantly copies answers. And here's how a host that's been around the block once or twice and learned a few things knows. The tip-off is not in how quickly right answers appear, it's in the wrong answers. Seeing a right answer followed by another right answer 10 seconds later demonstrates nothing. It certainly could be a copy, but it could also be slow typing, slow reading, sleepy hamster, internet vagaries, whatever. It's the wrong answers that are the smoking gun. And to be clear, it's not close misses like guessing Frankenstein instead of Dracula or "Honey" when the right answer is the equally awesome "Seasons in the Sun". It's the outliers.

When in doubt and I want to be sure, it's easy to test. I might use an outrageously bad answer just to see who bites. If it's alliterative music (and anyone who uses that category owes me a royalty) and the right answer is Foo Fighters I might intentionally go WAY off the mark with Maureen McGovern. It's a reasonable assumption that any other Maureen McGovern answers are copies because so obtuse an answer would not appear twice in 10 seconds by random chance alone. And while it's possible one person might get lost in reading, skip the first line and somehow answer "Winston Churchill" to a question that begins "What U.S. President...?" (hey, we've all done stuff that stupid) if another "Winston Churchill" answer pops up 10 seconds later that's not even close to being a legit bad guess, of course it's a copy. And when it's the same person 10 times a game every game they surrender the benefit of the doubt over time. It's easy to see and to know and to identify what's what after 25 years of experience, even if you're as stupid as me. The really egregious copies stick out like they were typed in flashing neon letters. Once you see them, you can't un-see them.

And with the wisdom of those years and the 20/20 hindsight of recent experience, I'll make myself more clear and NOT follow Dragnet's rule of of changing names to protect the innocent. Protecting the innocent sometimes necessitates calling a spade a spade. Bendog, I and everyone else here know you're not copying. Lina, same to you, everyone that follows along and recognizes the unmistakable signs knows you're not copying answers. Rob, stop copying answers. That shit flew fine in Chatgames, but it doesn't here. The rest of us respect it, you should too.

Okay, I'm gonna say something. I know by the views people have read this.

I wanted to say something but felt out of place. Out of turn. I've only been here since say....2014 or 15?

Forgive me, but I read this and went WTF?

I don't care about anyone's drama or discord with someone else in here. To post it on the public forum which is for all of us, to me is likened to a Schoolyard Brawl. I got away from Elementary School over 25 years ago. Isn't private message a thing? I don't like this "call out" behavior, and as someone who was bullied in the past I don't stand for it.

I will take whatever punishment which may come from me saying this but it had to be damn well said.

Sorry if this is against your world view, but there's no punishment involved. Sounds like it would make you feel better if there was, makes it easier to determine who the bad guy is if they conform to some neat little stereotype you've constructed.

This "call out" as you call it was because all attempts to handle things in a more decorous way were ignored. I spoke to the Xerox-machine in question PRIVATELY many times and tried to explain things many different ways. All were rebuked.

I attempted to mention it during a game and again, tried to handle it subtly in a way that didn't call out any specific person. That was the mistake, instantly a bunch of innocent people got their panties in a bunch in the mistaken belief that I meant them. So, in the interest of fairness, the only way to protect the innocent is to name the guilty.