Some portions of the community have been pushing to allow some banned players to return. As a team all the mods and admins have discussed this and come to a decision. We are willing to try this out as a test. Recently we were contacted by an older banned player asking to rejoin the site. This player caused no problems whatsoever in his year being banned and has been completely forthcoming in his admissions of cheating on the site in the past. He has completely admitted that what he did was wrong, in violation of the site rules, and deserving of a ban.

Therefore, we are willing, WITH community approval, to allow this member to make a new account on the site. After returning this player will be watched by the team excessively to ensure no rule violations occur. If this went smoothly the team would consider trying this out with other banned members. Though let me be clear that making new accounts once banned or certain levels of cheating and conduct with the moderator team during investigations will exclude certain banned members from this opportunity.

Please read Agent K's statement below and feel free to ask any questions or bring up any concerns you have about this idea. I will also be posting a more comprehensive list of the accounts used by Agent K and his friends so everyone can make their own unbiased opinion on this matter.


"Whew boy okay here we go. I will provide a big summary of what went
down over the past 4 years.

It started out as a big group of our friends at college. One of these
(Bearnstien) introduced Diplomacy to the rest of us through the board
game and then we actually came across the website. So we created
accounts and began playing games together (mainly live games). At the
time, we did not really know the entire community rules and would just
play games together, ganging up on whoever pissed us off among each
other the most at the time. After we started understanding the rules,
the actual game, strategy, the actual diplomacy part etc, we began
playing in real games with phases and actual communications.
Bearnstien, much more seasoned at the time, would periodically ask to
join up in a game with him. We wouldn't necessarily start out as
allies, but in dire times (and again, not fully playing by site rules)
an alliance would form. So yes, this was extremely unfair.

Time passed but I forget the exact timing but there was a point where
Bearnstien reached 8th in the ghost rankings. Our group looked over
his game history and basically said 'what the hell' who is person 'x'.
That is when the entire multiaccounting began. He artificially had
been inflating his ghost ranking. So of course being the arrogant and
immature college students at the time not really caring whether or not
we were playing fair games we did the same. If I recall correctly, it
was also in response to another group of metagamers we encountered
regularly (I think eeezfly and jireland or something like that) plus
the fact that trolling the forum in response to cheating accusations
became quite ridiculous. So to summarize, in response to cheating
accusations, our group would just conjure up some new pawn accounts to
either play games together without the instant cheating assumption or
to inflate our points.

Another big part of the scheme was the direct result of our group of
friends calling each other out on the forums. Since we knew who was
metagaming with who and what accounts, it was quite easy to call
direct attention to a sketchy game. So I am sure you can imagine that
as soon as one of our friends called out another, they would in turn
call out someone else, resulting in a huge spiral. It then
degenerated into calling out other players in the forums. (as a small
aside, some of these players were in their own little ring, such as
master ninja)

So anyways, after our initial fascination our group didn't have as
much time for diplomacy but we still would have impromptu live games
every now and then using any of the random accounts we had lying
around that had slid under the banning radar. The only person really
still playing (at least competitivly and well) was myself. I am not
trying to brag but through the entire ordeal I had actually learned
how to play diplomacy well as evidenced by some of my games in the
GFDT and ghost ranking challenge games. These games I played clean
and straight. The first time I ran into trouble was when at lunch one
day with our group of friends I mentioned something like "yooo I'm at
ghost ranking 'x' in the top 25". They were surprised that I was
still playing so of course they decided to screw with me and started
some forum about my previous metagame encounters and calling for my
banning yada yada yada. It also made a semi-revival among everyone to
start up playing again. So I had a lapse in judgement and decided to
play some games with them and essentially help them start out.
Obviously that is against the rules I am not trying to hide that fact.
I did deny wrongdoing in the past because I didn't want my account to
be banned since a) I had already progressed far in the rankings, b)
had done well in high ranked games and had established a nice
reputation for myself and c) had a really sweet account name.

The exact details are kind of hazy about what games or which friends I
was essentially cheating with at the time, but I do know that I was in
one of the GFDT games as well as an extremely high pot game with
MadMarx and other top tier players. I ended up getting banned but was
reinstated so I could finish my high games, but the damage had already
been done. We ended up cancelling the game and I took a pretty long
break from diplomacy. So I think that after the break I came back and
played in another challenge game with rdrivera and someone else as
england and that brought back an interest. After that game I don't
think I played for a while (I may be wrong) but then last year got
roped back in when some of our group said we should start playing
again. So again, another instance of cheating and playing with our
friends. The live games became few and far between with whatever
accounts had survived the second round of bannings and my main account
agent k became banned last spring i think. Yes, I tried to excuse the
banning and claim my innocence but I was in the wrong. After that I
hardly ever played except for the random live game. We all graduated
and as far as I know, no one else is really playing. I did check out
the site and noticed that the mods swept through the system and banned
almost all of our random accounts we had ever created.

So again, that was extremely long winded. If you have any questions I
can try to answer them. My main reason for initially emailing was
just so that I could come back and play some competitive games. I
admit that some of my games on my history are tainted so that was my
reasoning for either creating a new account and telling you guys what
it is so you can track me, unbanning Agent K and allowing you to watch
me there, unbanning Agent K and wiping my games record so that my
identity is still intact but the tainted games gone, or just keeping
me exiled which I would understand based on the extensive history of
problems our group has caused. I will admit that a big part of
wanting to come back is because of working on a computer regularly and
remembering the rush and challenge of sending messages and playing
people and stabbing the shit out of them.

So to summarize, we were a bunch of college kids who enjoyed playing
diplomacy with each other and screwing around and just being annoying
on webdip by metagaming and creating bogus accounts. My case in this
was that I started out using Agent K as part of our group to screw
around but eventually got good and played some actual real games and
did well. It was basically half Agent K being a good player and
playing by the rules in the big games and walking a straight line and
the other half screwing around in live games and other games with our
friends not following site rules, if all that makes sense.

So yea, I will try to help answer whatever questions you have and
won't argue whatever ruling you decide.

Sincerely,

K"


-jmo and the WebDip Mods