"Or is there a way to get a mod to look immediately?"

I don't get what's hard to understand about
"DO NOT POST CHEATING ACCUSATIONS IN THE FORUM
Instead, e-mail the moderators at [email protected]"

@Double A - Incorrect. Meta means "outside of" and always allying is metagaming and when proven, can get the participants banned. The FAQ lists a number of things as examples of metagaming and this is one. Now there is acceptable metagaming too. Researching your opponents is considered completely acceptable metagaming, for example. Using prior experience to know if someone is trustworthy is unavoidable and completely acceptable metagaming as well.

But more to the point is "DON'T POST CHEATING ACCUSATIONS IN THE FORUM!"

@Double A: For weaker players it's a great strategy to band together against a stronger player. Altough i think every game should stand on itself, it is impossible to avoid some preconcieved notions about the other players.
If you don't want people to see who you are (immeadeatly at least): play anon games.

It becomes bad behaviour when you actually go meta. For instance: refuse to play (or ally) with someone only because he does not want to ally in another game.
Or: communicating in gunboat games (email or whatever) and obviously: playing with preset alliances, like real life friends fighting together.
And the slightly more sad people don't have friends, they will make multiple accounts to fight off their lonelyness... and boost their points in the process

@rlumley & Draugnar: Did De Gaulle make a cheating accusation? There's no link to a game and no screen names were posted.

Besides, I think it speaks to a larger issue, one I tried to bring up a week or so ago in another thread (http://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?viewthread=583410#583410). I asked if the mods were overworked and if there was a way to recruit more. It seems that they are overworked, but nothing was mentioned about recruiting more mods. Often, emails to the mods go unanswered, even though they mods do try to set things right by refunding points to victims of obvious cheaters. The thing is, the mods don't have time to respond to the messages, so even if they take action, the reporter does not know that action has be taken and assumes that her/his pleas have fallen on deaf ears or through the cracks.

Additionally, Figs responded in that thread with the idea that a good development suggestion would be to empower mods to annul games. That way, those of us who put more stock in win/draw/loss records than points can avoid cheater's skewing our records.

V+:

Or is there a way to get a mod to look immediately?

My answer was in reply to that.

@V+ - by virtue of being able to look at his current games, one could likely deduce which player it was who did this meta deed, so yes, he accused just without specifics. If I kill some one then tell you I've killed a person but give no name or specifics, is it any less a confession? Same thing applies to accusations. A general accusation of cheating without details is still an accusation and a moderately intelligent person can use deductive skills to find the accused's name.

@ Draugnar: Fair point. I guess I only play anon live games, so I didn't think of that.

@ rlumley: Let's say I'm playing an anon game and am on the business end of some obvious cheating. I post to the forum something to the tune of "need mod help in live game now," but I don't post any details. As luck would have it, a mod sees the post and immediately pm's me so I can give her/him the game info. Would that be kosher? Besides, De Gaulle followed the rule you quoted. S/he didn't post an accusation but merely asked a perfectly legitimate question, so there's no need to take the tone of "I don't get what's so hard to understand," especially when De Gaulle's post clearly demonstrated that s/he does understand.

@V+ - you realize that he couldn't have known it was the same player in both games if they were anonymous, right? Just pointing out the obvious...

@Draugnar: I'm not sure... look at the original post. It seems to me that De Gaulle wasn't talking about two games with one player but one game in which two players admit that they always play as allies. Couldn't that situation occur in an anon game?

It seems like on all the threads that are made about this kind of thing they always say that th FAQ didn't say anything. Why don't we add something to the FAQ and avoid a lot of these threads? It says right at the bottom of the FAQ "Didn't find the help/info you were after here? Post a message in the public forum, or in the sourceforge.net forum.
" I would think something to the lines of "well no, i didnt see anything that helped me with cheaters, i guess ill post a message in the public forum." Now i know you guys spam every thread they make, with the standard "DON'T POST CHEATING ACCUSATIONS IN THE FORUM!" But for a new guy that is just trying to help its kind of harsh.

@Frickin'Zeus: Exactly. New users should not get pilloried in the forum for trying to learn their way around the site.

I have just posted about cheating and named one of the accounts used by a notorious character from the past. I see nothing wrong with the post because it is not about a current game, it is a warning to let everyone around here know that a serial offender is back in town. It is a heads up rather than a specific accusation about a specific game.

I know that if I were just joining this site and didn't know about this particular character I would be more than pleased to be given such help in avoiding trouble.

rlumley, sorry i didnt bother to read ALL the posts here before mentioning it- why don't you put that at the top always then?
and the game was sus so i have reported it, but too late cos it was a live game...

thank you flashman, pls message me tips

@sqrg- metagaming = cheating.
@others - Not much chance of getting a quick mod response during exam season.
What would really help would be some support for the post-game cancel option.
If I put up a thread in the dev forum how many of you would sign up and support it?

Were that to be added, we'd be able to solve all these things after completion.
Now I know that still menas you've had a wrecked game, but at least it would be off your record

I think people cry "don't post cheating accusations in the forum..." too much.
Often new players are not exactly sure what constitutes cheating is on this site - but nonetheless feel cheated. I think its okay to clear the air about these issues in the forum.
There is nothing wrong the OPs post. It's a fair question, and a good question (especially for a newbie, because we oldies know that pre-game collusion is wrong).

I am not sure what it means, but i am sure if it meant cheat games were worthless once caught out either mid game or the end, it would be a good thing. I would sign. COuld you explain a little more please Figlesquidge?

would we get our points back too the ones we lose to cheats?

@figle: no really man? saying "metagaming = cheating" that is helpful to all the newbies here. Oooh if metagaming is cheating, now i understand what it is!

I was actually trying to give some examples of metagaming...

@ figle - while I really like your overall attitude and approach towards cheating, I think the postmortem cancel is a tricky path. You risk penalizing regular players who happened to be in a game with cheaters and did well. Or am I missing something?

I believe the first priority should be to have a good explanation of all forms of cheating (especially the different forms of meta/cross gaming) prominently placed. Hopefully it will also help explain to people why cheating makes no sense for them long-term - as they will never get really good in this game otherwise.

I've had a number of newbie players tell me they only play in games where they have some friends - because this helps them deal with other cheaters/teams - and it's very hard to explain them this solution only makes the problem worse. Not to mention playing with RL friends can be very tricky if they take it too personally when you stab them :)

@Ivo - I don't mean cancel every game with a cheat in it no.
However, as V says, lots of people take more pride in their %ages than points. If a game is wrecked by a cheat, and we catch it in time, we can cancel it. However once its finished that's it: it'll go on their profile and there's nothing we can do.

As for regular players who did well vrs Cheats - yes it gets difficult then. Suppose Russia & Turkey are a multi. They make a good start, but the others realise what's going on, kill them off, and England takes the win. Now, if you were England you would feel this result should stand, but how about Austria? For him, the game starts with his neighbours wiping him out, and he would have had no chance of escaping it.

Are these acceptable? http://webdiplomacy.net/rules.php
I would like to see each rule title made into an anchor, so we could link players directly to the right rule (ie as http://webdiplomacy.net/rules.php#metagaming) but apart from that seems ok to me. The only other thing is that it could do with being renamed - lots of people assume 'rules' means 'rules of diplomacy' not 'site rules'

Ack! Wrong thread (regarding my earlier post). I do want to point out that not all meta-gaming is cheating. Seeing that Chrisp is in a game and knowing you can count on him to not screw you unless it guarantees him the win (just an example, not necessarily true) and using that info is technically metagaming, but it is human nature and is not against the rules.

@figle - I agree with your points and examples, but I still think the solution has to be more robust and avoid making things worse. Yes, AUS will feel bad, but how is this ENG's fault (using your example)?

@ Draugnar - what you're saying has nothing to do with metagaming. Chrisp has a reasonable approach to the game, so he'll only stab when it makes sense - well, that's quite ok, isn't it?

Making alliances with good and reasonable players would always be more preferable than making alliances with someone who'll make a poor stab out of the blue and then proceed to die, giving the game to someone else.

@Ivo - agreed. And thats where the dilema comes in: which is more important? In a case like that the decision is a difficult one.
How about a more clearcut case: ITR are the same player and wipe out everyone else. However, this is a live game and finishes before we look at it. Coming back later, we agree it was unfair, and can return people's points, but not remove it from the record.

Figle, you can give me one million examples of cases when your approach will be correct. However, what's more important is that I can give you a similar amount of examples when your solution will penalize the wrong players - and, actually, I only need one use-case which the solution does not solve, to render it void as a general rule.

If you want a cheater-free community I firmly believe that the only realistic solution is a white-list based one. People are 'approved' only when they are cleared of cheating, have no CDs, etc. - if there's any suspicion they are not included in the whitelist. This way we'll gradually establish a good base of 'clean' players.

From a certain perspective, the current tournaments do this job well.

@Ivo - Acting on that knowledge in a game based on previous experience is metagaming, but it is acceptable metagaming. That is the point. There is acceptable (choosing Chrisp over hellalt as an ally cause you know their respective styles) and unacceptable (having an agreement with Chrisp to always ally when you are in a game together).

Well, my formulations are slightly different, but I adhere broadly to what you're saying :)

@Ivo - Maybe I should be clearer. I don't care that my solution is not perfect. It would go a long way to reducing the number of cases people are unhappy with, and any borderline cases can be looked at individually. Surely you don't think that just because there are cases when it would be unfair the feature should not be available?

Sometimes it is fun to play against multi-accounters. I was in a 5-min live game, where I think two or three of the countries were controlled by the same person( on different computers?). However he did not play very well as trying to get all the orders ready in that time frame was difficult. (There were several turns where 1 or mor of the suspected countries missed orders).

Eventually I had all three of the suspected countries against me (I was Italy, suspected countries were Austria and Russia and perhaps France) I managed to survive and my Ally England managed to win. The other countries CD, so I got more points out of it then I bet. It was somewhat of a challenge trying to defeat 3 against you.