Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

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pacman000
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby pacman000 » April 15th, 2018, 10:19 pm

Yes. I suppose they want to punish him, but this only results in a database with more errors.

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scotland
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby scotland » April 16th, 2018, 8:21 am

VideoGameCritic wrote:Am I the only one annoyed that ALL of Billy's records are expunged including those that were witnessed and totally legitimate? I mean, if you want to toss out the controversial scores, that's one thing, but even steroids users in baseball got to keep their records!


pacman000 wrote:Yes. I suppose they want to punish him, but this only results in a database with more errors.


I am going to politely disagree. If you steal or embezzle, its not enough to just put the item or money back. There has to be some sort of penalty to discourage other attempts. In this case, *all* his records are going to be ignored, legitimate or not, and any future attempts at records will not be recognized either.

In essence, his penalty is being declared persona non grata for purposes of holding records. Sort of like Lance Armstrong, if you decide to cheat and not ever confess to it, then you can expect a pretty radical penalty to protect the entire sport or institution.

Now, we the community know who he is, and any money or notoriety or access he has gained likely still remains. If they make a King of Kong II, he'll be part of it and will get some sort of payday there too. To people who write books on the history of video games, they can make their own decisions on if Billy Mitchell has a role there as well. He can also write his own book, or do talks, etc, and continue to make money playing Donkey Kong, maybe moreso than ever.

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pacman000
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby pacman000 » April 17th, 2018, 1:18 pm

I agree there must be a penalty, but I see this as going too far. I'm more concerned with the records being accurate than with any punishment for bad actors.

I suppose I see the records as history in-and-of-themselves; deleting a fraudulent record would be a correction; deleting a legitimate record would be an attempt to change what really happened. You can't change do that; if someone gets a score, & it's verifiable, it should be recorded.

What to do about folks who commit fraud is another matter, one which I don't really know how to solve... Maybe require more proof for someone who has committed fraud in the past. Maybe ban serial offenders entirely. But only because there would be no real way to know if a serial offender had legit records, not as a punishment.

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scotland
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby scotland » April 17th, 2018, 2:51 pm

pacman000 wrote:I'm more concerned with the records being accurate than with any punishment for bad actors.I suppose I see the records as history in-and-of-themselves; deleting a fraudulent record would be a correction; deleting a legitimate record would be an attempt to change what really happened.


I understand where you are coming from here. People argue about all sorts of things, can't we at least have the correct facts. If Billy Mitchell had the first perfect Pac Man, then that's what the record should show. I understand totally.

For me, just because Twin Galaxies and Guinness decide to white-out Billy Mitchell doesn't mean they erased what happened - just the recognition of it by those two agencies. They set reasonable rules that scores should be made on authentic equipment, and he attempted to defraud them. Their reaction is warranted and appropriate.

However, people writing books, or making documentaries, or whatever can put Billy Mitchell wherever they please. However, to the extent that Twin Galaxies and Guinness are 'official', he doesn't count. So, are they attempting to delete a legitimate record, to change what really happened? No. What they are is denying him recognition of the record in their accounting of records. They aren't going around like some old Egyptian pharaoh carving off their predecessors hieroglyphs from monuments - instead they are just deleting him from their set of monuments.

It is a problem no matter what they do. Removing his older legit records does make their accounting less accurate and if they do it often enough, people may crown something else as 'official' - but not removing those accounts also tolerates a cheater, and people would often be asking about those records legitimacy. After all, once someone is a known cheater, the bar is raised to accept anything they have submitted.

GTS
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby GTS » April 17th, 2018, 5:17 pm

There are probably a lot of other records still left in the books that are suspicious. Perhaps they may want to consider removing them all, and starting over again. Now records could be recorded with more accuracy since people can record things easily now. Then again, there have been people who were caught speeding on speed runs.

Wallyworld
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby Wallyworld » April 17th, 2018, 6:00 pm

Billy Mitchell has been caught cheating red handed. If you didn't strip all his records you would literally have to do investigations into every score he has on the leaderboards. He has over 20 scores on the Twin Galaxies leaderboards. If I ran Twin Galaxies you better believe I'm not going to investigate all of these just because some sleezeball decided to cheat. Who has time for that?? No sir, he's getting banned and all scores removed case closed.

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pacman000
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Re: Billy Mitchell's Scores Removed, Including Donkey Kong

Postby pacman000 » April 17th, 2018, 11:35 pm

Actually, I probably wouldn't remove the score. I'd just record the challenge to it. That way someone could run a query on my database using whatever standard of proof they decided was good enough.

GET SCORE AND NAME WHERE PROOF = VIDEO AND GAME = DONKEY KONG AND CHALLANGE = NONE

I might be taking the word "record" too literally; as more of an historic document than an achievement. Something to be kept for analysis even if it's proven false by any reasonable standard.

I guess I don't want a video sport's authority; I want something more academic. Hope that's not too weird. :)


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