1,000 bans is pretty good. But I think you should come back, at least until that number is over 9,000.

jmo isnt the hero we want but he is the hero we need.

RIP pw

Actually, i think this is badly worded, to the point of not making any sense.

Saying someone has been banned for multi-accounting (or cheating in general) is not an accusation. It is a statement of fact about actions taken by the mods.

Now if the intention is to protect relatively innocent players who created a second account due to lost passwords, then fine. You could be seen to be creating unnecessary drama at the expense of an innocent player and taking the reputation of the site down.

If on the other hand this is being used to protect the actions of mods from being discussed in public, then that is rather over-stepping the position a trusted community member should have, imo.

Mods are not employees, dictating some corporate policy to paying customers.

We are a community, and mods are members of that community who hold some responsibility due to the trust they have earned.

somebody tell a joke

If pro is the opposite of con

What is the opposite of progress

Trump?

The purpose of the rule prohibiting public cheating accusations is partially to filter out spam posts that should otherwise be reported directly to the mods and partially to protect players against having their reputations tarnished, whether the accusation made against them is true or not. It is wrong to state that something cannot be an accusation if it is a fact.

In that sense, yes, technically, calling any former or current cheater a cheater, no matter how widely known it is, could be classified as a cheating accusation. However, just as we do in all situations, the moderators hold a certain degree of discretion over the enforcement of the rules. If the purpose of a thread is to call out a player as a cheater, tarnish their reputation, and put them permanently on display, then yes, no matter who that is, that is a cheating accusation. If the purpose of a thread is to have a constructive discussion regarding cheating and the story of someone who cheated in the past comes up as part of a constructive discussion, that is not a cheating accusation. The metric of whether or not something is an accusation or not, therefore, is self-explanatory: is the statement accusatory? If the answer is yes, then it is an accusation. If the answer is no, then it is not an accusation. This is clearly subjective, but making subjective decisions is exactly why moderators exist.

The thread in question was locked because we interpreted it to be accusatory, where its purpose was just as much to call out a player and tarnish their reputation, whether in truth or not, as it was to air a legitimate grievance regarding a rule or have some other sort of discussion about cheating. Disagreement over whether or not the post in question was accusatory is fair and welcome, but the moderators interpreted this way (inb4fascists) in no small part due to the fact that an example was made of one and only one player in an attempt to tarnish their reputation when the matter could have easily been discussed without making an example out of any one player at all.

We already gave the OP of that thread permission to repost the thread without making accusations as we would be happy to have a discussion on the merits of our free CD takeovers. Of course, anyone is welcome to open this discussion as well. I, for one, would be happy to talk about it.

- webDiplomacy Moderator

P.S. idk wtf pw was talking about with that password thing

So ixnay on the accusationsnay. Nuff said and say no more, evermore and all that raven stuff you know and such and such as she said, ya know?

That is well and good. My issue was with the usage of the word accuse, and the common legal usage (which i suspect i picked up from tv legal dramas, possibly americans ones) of being in a state of uncertainty. The accused is not yet convicted, not proven guilty.

I think the dictionary definition does not back me up on this point. So i should perhaps withdraw my complaint.

However the wording of the rule could be clarified. Based on what was said above, the mods will lock threads which are used to explicitally tarnish a person's reputation - in particular with respect of cheating.

For the sake of example: I can claim that MadMarx's reputation was undeserved (it wasn't) and attempt to tarnish it, but i can't claim he cheated (even if that is true - and it isn't) in order to tarnish his reputation.

In most countries with libel laws, truth is not libellous. You can't make a cheatin accusation on the forum, for good reasons. And the mods don't publically 'name and shame' cheaters for us to hate on - this also seems fair enough, as it would be tantamount to bullying.

I would like to see the rule as written clarified to better represent these 'mod interpretations'. Is that a fair request?

On a related note, I recently reported a case of a large group of metagamers who apparently invite players into games without telling them that two thirds are friends in real life and then they either strategically CD or agree amongst themselves to ally and draw. This amounts to a scam at best and a massive multi issue at worst (since some of these friends have accounts but don't actually play making it easier for their buddies)

I haven't posted about this because mods are looking into it, but I do feel that it is a civic duty to warn others that certain players are engaged in this scam. However, the rule prevents me for warming other community memebers, meaning that others are certainly getting scammed into their "private" games and being taken as easy marks.

Ogion - If the moderators are investigating it then any games those players are playing in together will be paused until the investigation has concluded, and cancelled if the cheating is actually happening. As such, there is no danger of players getting 'scammed' while the mods are looking into it, so there is no need for you to post a warning.

Ah. I didn't know that. I should have guessed you guys are in top of it