Moderator Team Announcement

Site announcements from the moderator team go here.
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VillageIdiot
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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#21 Post by VillageIdiot » Wed Oct 23, 2019 5:22 am

Seems reasonable to me. Love the transparency.

Dargorygel, hate to have to tell you this but I think your eyes are failing.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#22 Post by Restitution » Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:29 pm

It just sucks for the live players. It's already hard to get a game, losing a pretty consistent player is a big loss. But that's on him, not the leadership.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#23 Post by FlaviusAetius » Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm

Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#24 Post by Restitution » Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:05 pm

FlaviusAetius wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm
Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I
I don't really agree. This is a volunteer-run site, there isn't manpower to run an appeals court. Final decisions are more efficient.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#25 Post by Nikola Maric Eto » Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:00 pm

If he would proceed playing under the same name so we can properly shame him, and wrote a public apology and a promise not to break the rules again (so we can break his balls :sick: :sick: ), I would give him a chance. Also, discipline is important. Don't know.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#26 Post by Maniac » Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:22 pm

Perhaps when you’ve run out of charlatans, fraudsters, thieves, robbers, layabouts, con-artists, trump fans and hipsters you might reconsider my application.

I’m still waiting for the call to serve.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#27 Post by Chaqa » Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:38 am

The day we'll really know this place is starting to jump the shark is when I become a mod. lol

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#28 Post by FlaviusAetius » Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:21 am

Restitution wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:05 pm
FlaviusAetius wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm
Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I
I don't really agree. This is a volunteer-run site, there isn't manpower to run an appeals court. Final decisions are more efficient.
Just give a punishment, no one is saying not to give one, but to make it permanent not only seems excessive but revengeful

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#29 Post by Octavious » Thu Oct 24, 2019 5:55 am

FlaviusAetius wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm
Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I
I appreciate the sentiment, but sadly sometimes it is necessary. Diplomacy players, by definition, are rather proficient at being deceptive and manipulative. Quite often cheats are not because they come from the stock of people who are bad at Diplomacy (and they tend to be the angry shouty people no one cares about) but every now and then you get a cheat who is good at the game, and invariably they are well known and popular and generally considered really great chaps and an asset to the site. The names of these people, Sargmacher perhaps being the most infamous, stick long in the memory, and left unchallenged would pose an enormous risk to the site.

Whether or not this chap is in the same league is for others to determine, but I would say Zultar's intention to review the situation in a year or so is more than generous. The mod team has never been whiter than white, and indeed contains within it the fine example of members who have crossed a line in the past but changed their ways and become a greatly appreciated part of webDip. But to have an active mod caught in the act is unprecedented. I think the powers that be are handling it about right.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#30 Post by Senlac » Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:58 am

FlaviusAetius wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm
Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I
But cheats always want “another chance” & have learned to expect it.

I once warned a salesman I’d get up & leave if he lied to me during the sales pitch & that I would ask questions to which I knew the true answer. He did & I quietly got up to leave. He got mad at me! Considering it wasn’t fair for me to expect complete truth in a sales negotiation. It’s the way the world has become, due to unjustified generosity towards deceit & cheating.

The mods are handling this correctly. Nothing wrong with permanent when appropriate.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#31 Post by BunnyGo » Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:24 pm

FlaviusAetius wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:49 pm
Banning anyone permanently from anything is never a good idea imo :I
This has been a big debate in the bridge world, where it's been recently shown that almost every major tournament for the last 2 decades has been tainted with cheating (something that was only whispered about for years). In that case, I'm fully on the side of "banned for life". The players have systematically cheated their way to ruin the game for everyone.

As an analogy (not what Magnetic did, I don't know the situation here as well), imagine if I and a conspirator had tacit agreements to pass intel to each other *always*. Whether we're fighting in a game or not, whether we're even IN the game or not. We know it'll be better for both of us long term; if we hear stuff (maybe even as I mentor someone I hear stuff about games I'm not in) and pass it to each other.

Non-diplomacy players might not appreciate how devastating just this agreement is (the same way non-bridge players don't understand how devastating it is to have an illegal signal that just tells each other how many hearts are in our hands and nothing else), but it completely ruins the game FOR EVERYONE ELSE. It destroys the community, and it is completely antithetical to any social norm required for communal gaming.

When someone breaks social norms like this, I can see lifetime bans as appropriate. To be clear again: I'm not speaking to Magnetic's case specifically, I don't understand the details, the person, etc. But in the bridge world, when cheats have been welcomed back, it is a signal to those who lost to them, fought to prove the cheating existed, and stopped attending tournaments because cheating was rampant, that it's somewhat tolerated and may (read: does) occur again.

Ostracization from society is a useful tool. Even if those who are friendly with the ostracized person interact with them in other settings.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#32 Post by Restitution » Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:28 pm

BunnyGo wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:24 pm
When someone breaks social norms like this, I can see lifetime bans as appropriate. To be clear again: I'm not speaking to Magnetic's case specifically, I don't understand the details, the person, etc. But in the bridge world, when cheats have been welcomed back, it is a signal to those who lost to them, fought to prove the cheating existed, and stopped attending tournaments because cheating was rampant, that it's somewhat tolerated and may (read: does) occur again.
Very well put, I agree.

It's also very important to deter cheating. One would hope that mods would behave ethically for its own sake, but given that they (at least sometimes) don't, having a really clear-cut and harsh punishment will deter any other misbehavior from them.

This is about watching the watchmen. It's harder to catch people in positions of power, so it's also imporant to punish them more severely.

My position on this changed like 100% since the start of the thread, lol

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#33 Post by Deeply_Dippy » Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:20 pm

With great power comes great responsibility - apparently.

I'm not in favour of lifetime bans, especially when they are impossible to enforce 100% reliably.

However, the site mods do also have to punish infringements and, when the offence involves a breach of trust - as this one has - that punishment will be severe.

For what it's worth, I would say that a year's outright ban followed by the option of a review is proportionate.

If Mag did come back, his stock would be very low and I would expect him to be kept on a close watch.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#34 Post by MadMarx » Tue Oct 29, 2019 4:42 am

This is an interesting situation, especially given the individuals involved...

A ban for life does seem extreme, from the outside-looking-in, but as they say, ignorance is bliss...

When I *completely* *lost* *my* * shit* during the last World Cup Finals, that situation seems to have been born from diametrically opposed expectations and a lack of information / communication. As Scarabus so eloquently summarized my personal opinion, “If you are in a position of power, you have to be whiter than white, or you may invite criticism.” While a different view of that World Cup Finals situation was difficult / impossible for me to wrap my head around in the heat of the moment, with a bit of time things can come into better focus, and admitting that others may have a somewhat plausible view of the situation can slowly become more of a possibility, especially as you weigh in your own ignorance / biases that factors into the equation... My guess is that Magnetic24 had reasons for doing what he did that seemed logical / reasonable to him at the time, positive reasons that outweighed the negatives, and perhaps at some point in time the powers that be will give him credit for meaning well especially if with hindsight Magnetic24 can admit he screwed up big time... Maybe...

Volunteering to enforce rules is an extremely difficult (and sometimes thankless) job that I do not have the DNA to even attempt... Cheers to those that are (and have been / will be) so generous / brave to do so, clearly your efforts are very much appreciated by many...

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#35 Post by WyattS14 » Tue Oct 29, 2019 2:31 pm

This makes more sense... I was wondering how I was able to take over a 220 bet Russia in a decent position.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#36 Post by Fluminator » Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:08 am

Good thing I was never a mod. I'd absolutely have rigged my reliability ranking to be above 100%

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#37 Post by Durga » Fri Nov 01, 2019 7:36 pm

@ me when jmo is banned 😂

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#38 Post by VillageIdiot » Fri Nov 01, 2019 9:44 pm

Holy crap, a MadMarx and a Durga and an Octavious sighting! This must really be a serious development indeed.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#39 Post by Hellenic Riot » Sat Nov 02, 2019 5:39 am

An appropriate response. While calls for leniency are understandable, think about this: For someone you work alongside to have been repeatedly and calculatedly deceiving the rest of the team not only is a black mark on those actions but will also have required everyone else to comb over literally everything he did - Because having done that, who knows what else he may have done?

Given how valuable people's time is, and the finite amount of it, this probably cost the whole mod team significant time, energy, and not to mention the damage to team morale... And that affects everyone on the site in unseen ways. Instead of that cheater in your game being banned before he ruined it, the mods were running fine toothed combs over one of their own. That new feature that gets pushed back. Even if it's just a slower response to an email query that means a phase goes through that ideally shouldn't have.

So not only did his actions directly affect the games that he was in, but they have knock-on effects everywhere else. There certainly won't have been any joy derived from inflicting such a harsh punishment, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary.

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Re: Moderator Team Announcement

#40 Post by Wusti » Sun Nov 03, 2019 4:56 am

I'd rather an ethical dickhead (like me!) than a likeable cheat anyday.

Since when does "being a nice guy" make an excuse for cheating? I think its hilarious that some people think likeability is more important than ethics.

Good call on the ban.

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