The iRacing protest system is ludicrous bunk. Some of you would be shocked by some of the things I’ve learned about the protest system. It’s a broken system that is used to micromanage the membership for the sole purpose of maintaining the iRacing image.
For one thing, any member can make up a private message or email out of thin air and get you suspended for it. According to iRacing, “We do not have access to open forum PMs for other members.” So they just take the protester’s word for it. Members can even protest alleged emails, so you can just make up some nasty stuff and file a protest. If you get annoyed at some other member on iRacing during any official session, just make up a phony email in which the member attacks you in some way, and submit a protest.
I don’t mean to come off sounding as though I’m encouraging this type of activity. My point is, iRacing just takes these people at their word. They have no way of verifying any private message or email. I can assure you, there are people on the iRacing service who have engaged in this dishonest activity. So the next time you have words with some imbecile in an official session, be aware that said imbecile can simply make up some phony attack, type it into the text of a protest, and, voila, you’re the villain.
The protest system is really just a PR campaign. It encourages prospective members by making them feel that they won’t be wrecked or cheated in iRacing. We all know that isn’t the case.
So what’s the solution? iRacing needs to get off the wallet and hire a part time live steward or two. The stewards could monitor official races at random. Knowing that there might be a steward watching would be a moderately good deterrent. However, the best solution would be to have a vote-to-kick system, similar to the one built into the rFactor multiplayer system. Then the protest system could still be used to protest teams or groups of members who gang up to kick other individuals for no reason.
iRacing had created a great racing simulator, but they have a long way to go in their pathetic efforts at dealing with people, and there’s no indication that they have any plans to work on that.
Hi,
I like the vote-to-kick system but to elaborate, to allow all drivers in a particular race the option to boot a driver out of a race.
Now a certain # of drivers would needed to boot this driver before he could be removed from the Race (ex:14 Drivers in a race, 12 would be required for that Driver to be booted from the Race)
Ray