In a game that has chat, it's pretty much effortless to catch most cheaters because they're so bad at it. It's always the same exact pattern. One player has the maturity / speaking capabilities of a 2 year old, and another player doesn't speak at all. Or they both have the first trait, or both have the second trait. Then they pull off some grand strategy that is far beyond the norm.

"I personally reviewed the case you're referring to. The reason we told you there was no evidence is because there was no evidence. I'm sorry, but we simply cannot ban players for being good at gunboat games, which is the only thing against them."

Actually, you could continue to monitor it still. You possibly can't ban somebody for being good at gunboat games once. But if they are good at (anonymous) gunboat games again and again, always in cooperation with each other, a statistical inference is easy to make.

Nor is sufficient cooperation in even one gunboat game necessarily such poor evidence that it doesn't warrant this kind of future monitoring.

@semck

Please refer to my first post:
"When you first emailed us, there was not enough evidence to do anything, which is exactly what we told you. Clearly, we didn't ignore you, because we continued to look into the case and eventually banned the players (once enough evidence was available)."

@Draug

Yes, we could change our stock response. however, I want to be careful not to insinuate that we think the player is guilty and we're just waiting for them to slip up.

@Lando

If you felt we were being dismissive, I apologize. However, you sometimes have a very demanding attitude towards the mods, which doesn't help. You are our most active reporter and so we've become more relaxed in our attitude towards you. This doesn't mean we aren't looking into your cases, it just seemed meaningless to send you the same stock email every time.

@ Rokakoma,

i am a little surprised by your claim the mods has to cancel games when cheating claims ware made during the game when multi's did really got involved. In our last game you as a player refused to cancel a game because your in a position to win the moment my neighbours got banned. Why do you want to let a moderator cancel the game the moment you as an involved player reject to cancel/draw?

@ Victorius,

as I told you, and as I stated above, when the cheater(s) do not benefit from playing multi, it's arguable whether it should be canceled or not. In our case, I already had 14SCs, when they were banned, and further more, they were not even trying to stop me, though they have had the chance.

If a multiing player is simply idiot enough to let someone win a WTA game, I would not take that away.

Specificly in our last game, please feel free to file a claim to the mods, I will accept their decision without further arguments. As I stated, there are many games where it should be investigated individually, and those where the cheaters didn't get anything are certainly among them.

Even if the cheaters dont come out victorious and somebody was screwed over because of them, its still a problem. Its not only a problem if they win. If the game was played unfairly in any way, at any point in the game, its a problem, regardless of the outcome.

There's a lot of results oriented mindsets floating around.

Playing with cheaters sucks; we all know this. Everyone, including the mods, has had some interaction with a cheater.

There are a few problems with retroactively cancelling games.

First, it would have to be automated. The mods simply don't have the time or energy to go through hundreds of games to cancel them. This would require a lot more coding than people would think and I personally believe there are better things for Kestas to be doing to improve the site.

Second, under what circumstances would a game be cancelled? What if someone one in a game there was cheating? Yeah, it sucks for the people who were eliminated, but is it right to revoke someones win just because they were unknowingly playing with cheaters?

Third, would only multiaccounting games get cancelled? What about all the metagaming incidents? Should those be cancelled too? What if people aren't doing well, so they start to cheat to try to get the game cancelled?

As you can see, there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed. If you'd like, we can always discuss it, but it isn't a simple issue to solve.

What about the following suggestions:

Retroactively cancelling games would be too much of a hassle at this point and there are too many factors to account for that it is not practical to consider. However, what about canceling recent games -say within three to four weeks- where the cheaters benefited either in a win or a draw? This will set a limit as to how many games you (the mods) would have to consider and if someone won, despite cheating from others, I don't know if it's fair to take it away from them.

As to the issue of how much work it takes to determine if people are cheating, could the mods delegate some of the work to a committee of respected volunteers who would determine if cheating seems a likely occurrence based on how the non-anon or finished game(s) played out. They would not have access to any of the mods' powers (IP addresses and whatever else), only the mentioned games and the players' game records? We as a community (Draugnar can enforce this until the end of time if he thinks it's reasonable) then would encourage people to send information to the committee first and the recommendation would be sent to the mods. The mods would then have fewer cheating accusations to look at and would have more time/patience to respond to the accusations as well as to the committee's members. Moreover, the community would then feel like there would be some legitimacy to the process and/or they have some way to protect/improve this environment.

Honestly, we don't have the proper infrastructure to cancel games in the past now. If we were to retroactively cancel games, it would have to be on a going-forward basis (if that makes any sense).

Honestly, our case load is currently fine. Cases take a while not because they're too many; rather, we communicate with every suspect, no matter how guilty they seem. This is why a case that could take 10 minutes often takes several days.

I don't think having a committee would do much to speed up that process and it seems to me that it would create unnecessary bureaucracy.

Also, I think it would be very unfair to only cancel some games. If we were to do this, we'd have to do all of the past games, or say "as of XX/YY all games will be subject to cancellation if cheating occurs".

This just highlights what Foucault says about people subscribing to bureaucracy as a structure because it, seemingly, distributes power to those that it is not necessarily required for adequate function.

@ Rokakoma

Like i already told you, the only reason you got to 14 was because i was the one between the multi's and you wasnt. Its was very obvious they played a strange game and it got them banned during the game instead off after. So i do think it is a little strange you want to get games canceld the moment its damaging your game pleasure while you happy continues the moment somebody els got screwed and your benefitting.

And i think it is a little corny to throw it on mod decision because as a long time player you know very well they say a possible cancel is a player decision, someting you clearly refused to do for over a week.

Oh dude, that was creepy, I just typed essentially that quote into my final paper not 2 minutes ago.

@ Victorious

On the one hand I also got screwed a few times, when I didn't get back my points and someone else did, who was not cheating. Just think about games, where someone doesn't make the first move, otherones benefit. Statistically these cases get into balance.

On the otherhand, the name of the game is Diplomacy. Protecting my interests inside the game, and outside (for eg. on this forum) is considered part of the game for me. I can live with the results, I have played really fair in some cases (drawing at 17SCs with clear win situation, drawing early at NMRs) and I haven't played that fair in some other cases, probably in yours.

But guess what, that's part of the game. As it is also part, that cancelling past games is difficult, and that's also part someone has to quit because of private reasons and screws many others' games. It's life, and I do not consider these as cheating, but I admit it's not fair. There's a well defined line between cheating and fair play. And that line is written down in the rules.

If someone is able to get back his points, good for him. He was diploming well with the mods, or with the other players to reach cancel. There's no Big Brother around and won't be. If our game bothers you, I'm sorry, I played by the rules, I won by the rules, I sleep well, I would do the same again. You can be mad at me, you can be angry, irked, whatever, but I suggest you to move on and just start your next game.

I am not whining about hour game. Like i said, enjoy your win, we both know how you got it.

I am saying however, i found it a little bit hypocrit you are telling the mods to do someting (cancelling games) you refuse to do the moment you are profiting as a player.

And i do want to beat you some time in another game the moment i can join new games again. :)

hour = our.

Victorious, call it hypocrit, or unfair, whatever, I call it diplomacy outside of the games.

And I will gladly play with you anytime. Currently the top 100 GR game takes a lot of time from me, and I'm not planning to join any soon, but 1-1 gunboat may work, those take less time. ;)

@Sarg, that presumes adequate function, which is debatable.

I used to play live games more often, but due to a string of live games of anon gunboat games, I've decreased significantly. I sent emails and documented cases/moves/seasons and nothing happens: no explanations and those two folks kept on playing. Others have felt/experienced the same here. Now I know that mods are busy and they have other things to do and I am not here to complain as they have been helpful to me a number of times, but it's hard to say that some of the actions or explanations are satisfactory. I know they are not required to explain nor do they own me an explanation, but it does feel unsatisfactory when one takes the time to do the research into the games and one does not receive a response.
If they look into all the moves that others think indicative of cheating and found them wanting, then could they not send an email back saying that? Supposedly the mods have already done the research and so a quick reply should not be such a hassle or time consuming.

We can also do a quick survey for the people who have submitted cheating accusations to see if they thought the mods gave their case a fair shake. Surely the data would only help us to decide what would benefit the community the most.

Sorry for some of the typos and grammatical mistakes.

@zultar

We try to reply to every email we get. I'm sure we miss a few, but that doesn't mean we didn't look into the case. People can always re-email us if they think we've lost something.

If you want to take it upon yourself to make a survey, go right ahead. If it's well done, I'll be sure to take time to look at it. It may be helpful to us.

In reporting things to you, what kind of evidence should we include in our e-mail?

well, i can live with what you are saying. And i did enjoy to make the game two years longer then expected by you :).

Back on topic, i do agree with you that i would like to see the very screwed cases canceld. And i dont think it will be hard, some of those games are so obvious, you can do it with one look at them. Cancel those and let the other games be.

I am also wondering, is it possible to make accounts disappear? Because the sites rating system is getting screwed by all banned accounts i think. for instance, im in the top 8% of the sites 7000 players. But if there some 1500 accounts from banned players, i would be in the top 11 % of the 5500 players. So i do think we all have inflated self-images on this site. We all play against people who are self-overrating and i am one of them. THATS NOT THE WAY TO DO THINGS<

@Victorious - You should also realize that percentage is bogus because it is based on available points, not toal points, and even points in general are biased because there are people out there who point farm. Until recently, GR was the way to go for a better estimate of where you fall. But it didn't get updated this month and I don't know when it will be updated again.

General Question: What successful strategies are there available to actually 'point farm'? Trolls: I mean WebDip only.

Play lesser players in PPSC games is one very successful way.

Intentionally go into a PPSC then hold your own and promise to give someone else the win if they keep you in for the strong second.

i knos about the GR, and i think the missing month is hiding my peak. But i was just wondering if accounts are there to be there forever and ever. Or do they get erased after, say two years?

Maybe there should be an discussion about a way to count all those points gained because of all the players regaining after going below 100. Or is it a "been there, done that" discussion?

maybe removing 3% of the poins each month? some kind of inflation system?

or even better, win a lot of WTA games :)

and another strategy, play an world game, wait till some stronger player cd's (happens a lot strangely) ask someone to replace him on the forum. (or just wait till someone searches for it, happens a lot), and stab him blind.