Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-29830913-20190102182331/@comment-27328974-20190121070934

Rodri &quot;Dante&quot; wrote: BUT HOW CAN I CHEAT...

WHEN THERE ARE NO RULES? There might not have been any explicit rules, but there were definitely implicit rules.

Let me make an example. Let's say somebody is speedrunning Super Mario 64. The goal is to beat the game as fast as possible (an Any%, if you will), no restrictions (read the ruleset here for an example). Now, let me present three people trying to get the record:
 * 1) Person 1: The person reads the rules and and sees that there are no restrictions against cheat codes, so they say to themselves "It doesn't say anything against cheat codes, so I'm going to use them!" This type of run, obviously, will never be accepted into the category, because, while there is no explicit rule against using cheat codes, this player is changing the implicit rules of the game: the game's mechanics themselves. The player is giving themselves an uncompetitive edge against the other players by inserting external code, using mechanics outside of the game (such as a cheat cartridge), to implement mechanics that weren't originally in the game (for example, a moon jump cheat, an invincibility cheat, etc.). This is considered cheating.
 * 2) Person 2: This person reads the rules, and while they don't read any restrictions against cheat codes, they know that runs using cheat codes will not be allowed. But, instead of playing the game themselves, they come up with another scheme: they make a Tool Assisted Speedrun (a TAS is basically is when you run a game through an emulator and you make a "recording" of the inputs from the controller to control the game through there. You would have access to a massive range of tools, such as save states, the ability to use multiple controllers, and the ability to control controller input frame by frame). This would also would not be allowed, since the person making the run would have an advantage over other people simply due to the fact that the inputs are completely inhuman and subsequently would not be possible to be replicated by any actual human. This would also be considered cheating.
 * 3) Person 3: This person is not an idiot. They know that using that using cheat codes is stupid, and making a TAS for an actual speedrun submission is unfair. There's also another thing about this person: they're good at running SM64. Let's say that they have been practicing this category for so long, that they stumble upon a revolutionary glitch, that would be sure to allow for faster strats. (Let's imagine it's a "0 key" exploit, or maybe even a way to implement arbitrary code using the controllers themselves.) The person succeeds at using the glitch to obtain the world record, and the run is legal... but there is a problem: this person does not give the technique away. The runner comes to the conclusion that, since the technique is so revolutionary, that other people could use it to beat their record... so they keep it to themselves, so nobody else can get the record. While this isn't cheating, it is very uncompetetive, and the runner would probably be shunned from the community.

You, Rodri, are one of these people (okay, not literally, but you get what I'm trying to say here). In your quest to make the last edit on the thread, you have done something that is similar in form as one of the examples I have made. You could've:
 * 1) Followed the example of the first person, and implemented external code. This would probably be in the form of using your browser's developer tools, like the DOM and Style Inspector, the Web Console, or any other way to implement external code to a webpage, I don't know. While there "weren't any rules", like the SM64 example, this would be considered cheating.
 * 2) You could've followed the example of the second person, and made a computer program/used a computer program, to somehow make more posts to the thread. While I really don't know how this would be done, I'm putting this out there just in case, because, like in my example, this would also be considered cheating.
 * 3) You could've followed the example of the third person, and you found a glitch with FANDOM's webpages that allowed you to make more edits, like keeping a tab open on the thread, before the 500 post limit was reached, to make new posts after the 500 post limit was reached. Also, yes, like in the example, this would not be considered cheating... but since you're not telling us how you did it, or other people lost the opportunity to take advantage of the glitch, you have an uncompetitive edge over everybody else, so we are "rightfully" shunning your claim to last post.

I took a long time writing this because I got lazy and I hope this covers everything I wanted to day, I'm to lazy to proofread it now.