I agree with PE, even though he may never know :-)

The defense would like to call Sandgoose to the stand. Please take a seat Sandgoose.

"Admins can see pm's, that means abge and yebellz"

As an aside, I think it would be nice if this was explicitally stated in the rules of FAQ. I'm sure this is something that many people were not aware of (including myself). Obviously, it was understood that the owner of the site has the capability of checking in on our PMs but explicitly allowing admins to do it is another beast.

"As for you and Frank ,if you are discussing gunboat games and making alliances because you are friends and not because of reasons in the game then yes, you are metagaming and should not play with him. You seem like a logical person, if something doesn't seem fair to you, then avoid it. "

Did you bother reading the hypothetical situations I was asking about? Quite clearly there was assumption of a non-anonymous game. Did I say that Frank and I talk about ongoing gunboat games? I clearly did not so I ask you why you felt the need to mention it in your response?

"Fair enough PE, it is something being discussed, but for the time being players will have to use common sense and ask questions when they are unsure. "

Why is it "fair enough" when PE asks but when I ask I have 4 or 5 mods losing their shit?

Another example of the bias contained in our mod team, I guess.

You and Frank are some of the most well-known gunboat players. Since you did not clarify the game parameters, I don't think it was unreasonable to reference gunboat games.

As you are still able to post, I wouldn't say any of the mods "lost their shit". You decided to derail the thread when you criticized a mod for personal reasons unrelated to this thread. Don't blame us for ignoring your more valid points.

Burn him at the...er....

Delete his data and double-overwrite the disc before burning IT at the stake!!!

@Lando
I'm not following was the discussion you had with Frank about a gunboat game or a full press game?

In regard to your hypotheticals, Lando - if you and Frank talked about the merits of moving to Ska outside of the game context, I don't think it would be punishable to try and predict that move. Its as though there were a strategy discussion on the forum, or at a F2F game and you used that knowledge in a later game. Doing research on a player is fine. Forming alliances for reasons outside the game, however, is clearly against the rules

For those of you who are upset about the result, i appreciate the concern but i view the punishment as light. Losing points is not really important. I still don't believe what i was doing was wrong. I allied with someone I thought was a strong ally. In reality I believe the only way to completely eliminate this issue is to make all games anonymous. If you have played with someone else in your game something from those previous interactions will play into your alliance plan. That is just the way humans work. I was an easy minion in one of my early games, the guy who won played me like guitar. The next game we played he expected the same thing to happen and formed an alliance with me. This would be meta-gaming in the strictest sense. But, the point is that the site administration thinks I was cheating. I took my punishment and I won't break that rule again. It doesn't matter what I think about the actual issue.

Related to this thread, If anyone wants to see my press with my brother or anyone else you can feel free to do it. However, I would ask the mods to maintain their agreement to not discuss bans and punishments with the community. If this is not a current agreement then please proceed. I just thought I had read you post that you would not discuss the details of your rulings.

That being said, I appreciate that they didn't take me down to 50 or ban me for 2 months or something like that. It is like getting arrested and losing your court case, you may not agree with the judge but you sure as hell do what they ask you to do.

"Forming alliances for reasons outside the game, however, is clearly against the rules"

So, is forming an alliance with a player based on your review of his past games against the rules? based on this statement I would assume no, however, using common sense I would assume it is.

@Lando .. If I may jump in, you all might just happen to know I've been banned twice for unrelated offenses and umm, I'm still here. I don't know how easygoing you are on people that enjoy a service you provide, but when they get banned twice and are still here, I find that quite "respectable." Again, I don't know what your definition of the word is, but forgiving and respectable are similar to me…

@jmo/gf/abge/admins+mods .. I agree with both PE and Lando in saying that the metagaming rule is unclear. It does, like you said, cover the parameters that are usually involved, but it doesn't cover on-site metagaming, as Lando described, where a player looks at another profile and tries to guess as to whether said player will actually stab them or ally with them. I personally don't think that is metagaming at all; if it's a non-anon game, that's something to which you've left yourself open. Make of it what you will, but to me, it is a bit unclear, and if that is relevant, it's not a bad idea to amend it.

@smcbride .. I have personally always believed that the word "sorry" is the most powerful word around, more than any other. I don't say it because I'm a soft guy that will let anyone off for anything, but because anyone who isn't perfect - (krellin excluded...) - has had to say sorry before, and anyone who has said sorry before knows that it takes a hell of a lot of guts. I've fucked up on this site before and been told "do it again and you're gone…" and that's why I haven't and won't do it again.

If you don't think what you did was wrong, you might take into consideration what these guys have said, though read between the lines a bit: one of the flaws in the world is that something doesn't have to be explicitly wrong to appear implicitly wrong. What you did here looks wrong, and while I'd love to say I trust everything you're saying - I mean, why would someone admit to something they don't think they did otherwise - but from the outside looking in, I can't see anything more than your word to steer me away from that conclusion.

Seeing that I only play press games, I would say its fine to review past games. In press, you can look at past moves all you want, but its completely subjective once you get in game and judge a person based upon their press. Gunboats might be slightly different and as someone unfamiliar with them I can't say exactly how that case would apply to gunboats.

One lesson I've drawn from this entire conversation is that the meta-rule must be amended by: "if you know somebody else in the game personally, you'll have to disclose that information on the game's Global chat."

That's a suggestion I'd push for, red.

So you come on to make a public apology thread *cough* denial thread, and then want to complain about this being public fodder. smh...

Talking theory at some point in time with frank about gunboat strategy and then guessing at what he may do in a later non-anon game is not meta gaming.

It can certainly be argued that what scmcbride and brother were doing was the same thing, but honestly the only way you can truly say that is fair to the other players is if they had disclosed it beforehand. It leaves the rest of the board to trust that they are saints. It's a lot easier to negotiate with someone you know in person its a lot easier to twist the arm of your brother too. There is no way scmcbride has the kind of record this duo touts with any other player he has allied and found reliable on this site. Don't you think there is some correlation.

Oy! What the fuck?! I go away and do real work and you all get to yell and piss on the mods without me? :-)

For what it's worth, while it is a grey area, I think it should be clear to everyone that real life relationships can have an undue influence on ingame activity. More than online relationships. I piss off abge, I don't give a fuck. He is a friend and I'd be sad to not chat with him if he took it personally, but I'd still fuck him over in game if it meant I got a win. I piss off my wife (who doesn't play so no need to even bother trying to find a non-existent user ID) and I have to live with that for some time to come. So if she did ever join anddecide, I would only ever act as an advisor with an upfront disclosure to everyone in game that I was helping here and would never play in the same game as her.

It's a simple thing if you think about it.

I'd like to confess also to continuing an anonymous gunboat game after someone CD'ed. I didn't realise it was against the rules, I think it should be made clearer in the Rules that as soon as anyone misses a turn you should immediately leave the game, maybe leave your house, in certain circumstances leave your country because you are less than human if you don't do that, in fact you could be half-crocodile half polar-bear and you will attract verbal abuse to your inbox from the other person in the game that tried to win also but lost. I find the correlation between you beating someone and then receiving verbal abuse from them quite high ...... *bad loser*

No, you aren't a bad loser. Some people need CDs to win. Just makes you a bad player, not a bad loser.

@bosox
"What you did here looks wrong, and while I'd love to say I trust everything you're saying - I mean, why would someone admit to something they don't think they did otherwise - but from the outside looking in, I can't see anything more than your word to steer me away from that conclusion."

I apologized because i had too. Not because i think what I did was wrong. Most of my frustration is with the vagueness of the rules and the way the mods handled our communications. I have a lot of the mods on a personal basis, but the way they adjudicated my situation made me bitter. Especially since they made some statements that made it seem as if I were intentionally breaking the rules. I guess what I should say is that I didn't think I was breaking the rules. However, I was. That is what they ruled.

Why I thought I was not breaking the rules was this line "If you are worried that you can't stab someone because you want to stay friends, then that's fair enough but you can't join a game with them.” We both stabbed each other, it didn't dictate our games. Clearly the mods have a more stringent interpretation then I did.

@Gen Lee
"So you come on to make a public apology thread *cough* denial thread, and then want to complain about this being public fodder. smh..."

You are right there was some denial but I addressed that with what I replied to bosox. You guys can say what you will I was just asking the mods to be consistent. If they want me to disclose additional information or stop commenting on this thread I will. But, I think they should abide by their aforemention unwritten agreement to not comment on the proceedings of these "hearings".

" It's a lot easier to negotiate with someone you know in person its a lot easier to twist the arm of your brother too. There is no way scmcbride has the kind of record this duo touts with any other player he has allied and found reliable on this site."

I agree with this it is easier, but it doesn't change our intentions. I have allied with bosox because he is reliable. This is a board game it was made with the intentions of playing with friends. You are going to use your knowledge of the players in your game to influence your decisions. I do agree with the suggestion that if you play with someone you know that you post it publicly in the global chat. I think that would be fair.

Is signing up his wife and daughters for accounts now... -->

A well phrases public apology get's you off the hook. Hell, that or apparently just announce your intention to meta in global before a game and all is forgiven. Groovy! Damned Catholic church and their culture of selling indulgences has ruined us all!!

(wipes crumbs from his mouth...) "Well...mumble mumble...I didn't really steal the cookie, because I probably would have had one after dinner anyway, or something... (starts reaching for another cookie while mom stirs the pot on dinner...)

I have seen so much meta-gaming on this site. To try and avoid the friends not being enemies thing which is technically meta-gaming I play anon gunboat games so people can't collude, but I've seen some well known players collude on this site and in gunboats, I've reported about a quarter of the cheating I've seen, I think I was one of the first to call out Mr PopularMarcher after checking his history, he was allowed to carry on for two years.
If you think the Mods are going to take the piss why would you report any more instances of meta-gaming, have the Mods gone power crazy all of a sudden?

I don't think they are power crazy, I think they have the best interest of the site in mind. I just think they could work on their soft skills. It would also be nice to have a spelled out process for how these sorts of things work.

@krellin, I am biased because I am benefiting, but not every criminal gets the electric chair. They punished me, I am now known as a cheater by the community and I lost half my points. Also, the rules do not state you can't play with someone you know. I think that is at the crux of the issue. The mod interpretation of the rules was more strict than my interpretation of the rule. Similar to constitution interpretation, there are strict constructionists and loose constructionists. The only person that matters is the administrations interpretation. Unfortunately we didn't see eye to eye on the matter. Fortunately, unlike the constitution amending the wording of the site rules should not be difficult.

@Lando, I don't really understand where your hostility is coming from. I respect you as a player and for the work you put into the SoW series and various tournaments. I've had several conversations with you about gunboat press rules, and I feel we reached a decent understanding there. The other moderators and I are always willing to have a discussion about anything that isn't clear about the rules. I've mentioned so several times in various threads, that if someone doesn't understand a rule they are always welcome to email the moderators and ask. So all that considered I do not understand why you came onto this thread uninterested in waiting for one of the moderator team to reply to smcbrides post before you post something like "The moderators should be apologizing to you and also compensating you with extra points for the fact they have been douchebag assholes to you."

If you feel we are incompetent then go email Kestas and ask for an appeal. It's as simple as that. If you don't feel we are complete morons then have a civil conversation with us about the problems you see. This goes for everyone.

@nigee, all emails we receive about meta gaming and multi accounting are looked into.

@smcbride1983, you stated that you and your brother stopped playing together because you didn't want anyone to think you were metagaming. If you truly thought you had not done anything wrong or close to metagaming then it never would have occurred to you or your brother to stop.

@everyone, if you are not sure if what you are doing is metagaming then ask, do not wait for someone to report you because they feel what you are doing is unfair. Consider that covered under rule 9 as well as the metagaming rule.

9. Follow common sense
The rules above are mainly ones which might not be obvious; just because a specific rule isn't given here doesn't mean moderators can't stop people ruining the server for others!

@Jmo
"@smcbride1983, you stated that you and your brother stopped playing together because you didn't want anyone to think you were metagaming. If you truly thought you had not done anything wrong or close to metagaming then it never would have occurred to you or your brother to stop."

You imply that it was willful collusion. Like we were saying, man we have gotten away with all these bank robberies we should stop now before we get caught. I realized it after the fact. I thought, damn, I have been winning and drawing a lot in these games with Chris. I wonder if this is because we know each other or if I am any good by myself. So I stopped playing with him. I found that I was pretty good and my win/draw ratio stayed the same. Then I saw the public forum posts about brothers playing and getting banned, I think it was sargmarcher specifically, and said, well damn we better not play together or we will get banned.

If you look at the history Subutai hasn't played recently so most of these decisions were made by me.

@jmo I sent you a PM which will help explain things to you in greater deal. In response to your specific point above;

I appreciate that you and I were able to discuss and clarify the rules in regards to gunboats and specifically the SoW. However, I think the fact that the person whom has played the second most games on the site has a different interpretation of the rules than a moderator (who has a different interpretation from another moderator) implies that there is a great issue at play.