FellatioGate - Board Game Site's server hacked revealing documents and emails

Internationally reputed boardgame database BoardGameGeek suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents concerning its prominent hobby analytical tool, the Fellatio-Scope (TM). The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among boardgame skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent board game critics and at worst, damning.

The electronic break in itself has not yet been verified by the director of the website, Scott Alden, but an unname sources from close to Alden, wearing a chicken hat, revealed exclusively to the obscure boardgaming shockblog Fortress Ameritrash that "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

The emails contain an array of discussions including what appear to be concerted efforts to withhold data. Just as troubling is conversations that allude to potentially manipulating fellatio data to “hide the increase” of fellatio in board gaming in the last decade.

Some of the excerpts of emails within the archives (edited for brevity, emphasis added):

From Daniel Karp (witholding of information / data):

Dear Aldie and Derk,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the code that I wrote for doing theFellatio-Scope composites. I did this knowing that Aldie and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

From Matthew Monin (modifying data):

The Fellating record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that Scott said. I took a look at the original reference – the fellatio proxy we looked at is cock size, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong, unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Daniel, does this sound right to you?

From Scott Alden (modification of data to hide unwanted results):

I’ve just completed Daniel's trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 10 years (ie from 2000 onwards) hide the decline.

From Scott Alden (failure of computer models):

The fact is that we can’t account for the surge of fellatio at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The data published in the August 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more fellatio: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

From Daniel Karp (truth doesn't matter):

Perhaps we'll do a simple update to the fellatio-scope? As to the issues of robustness, we actually emphasized that (including the '06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations.

From Matthew Monin (using a website to control the message, hide dissent):

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use the website any way you think would be helpful. Daniel and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

If the emails and documents are a forgery, it would be an extremely large one that would likely have taken months to setup. No doubt much more will be coming out about these emails and their possible authenticity. Stay tuned to Fortress Ameritrash for updates as more information becomes available.

Update, 10:30am – Since the original publication of this article, the story is gaining steam. There are reports that a spokesman for BoardGameGeek has confirmed, "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the website has been made available on public websites.”

Analysis of the emails and documents in the archives continues. We must stress that the authenticity has not been proven however there have been no denials of such by the climate center. Some of the more recent revelations include:

From Scott Alden (destroying of emails / evidence):

Matthew, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Daniel re the fellatioscope? Derk will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Melissa and get her to do the same? I don’t have her new email address. We will be getting the other admins to do likewise.

From Scott Alden (forging of dates):

Daniel, Good to see these two out. Derk doesn't appear to be in CC's online first, but comes up if you search. You likely know that the press will check this one to make sure it hasn't changed since the Fellatio-Scope close-off date July 2009! Hard copies of the report have arrived here today. Matthew - try and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with.