It's possible and easy for you to lie to yourself. If you cheat on a test and get a higher score, you start rating yourself higher, and conveniently ignore the fact that you cheated. This illusion of being a better player makes you feel good about yourself.

See http://bit.ly/xvtXVI "People don’t know when they’re lying to themselves"

Mankind is pretty shitty, isn't it?

It also dazzles me. What I think is that the cheaters trick themselves into believing they're some kind of victims of the system. "I would have won this game, if player A would have given me the chance to (...) that would have yielded a better result for both me and player A ..." so next time I'll cheat, because obviously I should be playing in a higher echelon and with all the hindering around, I'll never get there by playing fairly.

I think people just don't like to fail. They'll do anything to avoid it.
"Mankind is pretty shitty, isn't it?" (WZ) Yes.

I figure it's the same psychological trait that makes people use sock puppets in flame wars. I vividly remember what happened at Wikipedia when I reported an article as POV, essayistic and "too be deleted". The author had fought down 2 deletion efforts before, using a large number of sock puppets who supported his view and got extremely aggressive. The sock puppets were pretty elaborated, he even made them participate in a few other discussions to disguise them as "active users". It took me quite some more energy than the subject deserved to deconstruct the system, eventually succeeding.

It should be allowed to unmask people who act like this on the internet because we all know what these people do in their jobs/with their positions...

You're not thinking big enough. It's not soloing in a game, the game's just part of it, a means to an end. The game they're actually playing has expanded to include beating the system and sticking it to the man. With the Mods watching over us, beating "them" becomes part of the game too.

And there are no penalties for getting caught.*** You played the game, you got caught (lost) and got banned; so you create a new login and you play again and this time you play better.

***Of course, if the Mods tracked you down IRL and posted your home address on the forum it would be pitch-forks and blazing torches time. Gangs of irate WebDippers would be coming at you from all sides. You'd get a chance to try your real Diplomatic skills.

First of all it should be pointed out that cheeting is a lot more rare than it first appears. Out of Wernazuma's 24 games, for example, it seems like there was only one game is which multi style cheating actually took place. The other games with a red cross just happened to be a game in which someone who cheated somewhere else decided to play (it being rather hard to multi on your own). I've played near 100 games and only recall a couple of incidents of cheating. It doesn't happen very often.

An important point to pick up from this is that most multis don't cheat most of the time, and from this we learn the primary reason for the existance of most multis....

Shame.

A lot of players care an awful lot about their statistics, and a long list of defeats can be extremely embarrassing. So some of these players decide "sod it... I'll set up a new account and wipe my slate clean", and at that moment they technically become a multi. A few may then think to themselves "I'm having a run of bad luck recently" or "I want to try gunboat and I don't really know what I'm doing", so they get tempted to revive their old account for a few practise games that won't change the stats they actually care about.

Then, one day, it occurs to them it might be interesting to play both their accounts in one game, and in a moment of madness they try it (maybe because they've become extremely frustrated with the game and desperately need an edge, maybe because they've had a bad day at work and want to take it out on diplomacy players, maybe because they just can't gather enough people to start a live game... who knows?) .....

and they get caught....

and both the accounts get banned...

and suddenly you have dozens of old games with players that have a red cross next to them, and it makes the site look really bad, even though only one act of harmful cheating may have taken place.

I think the cheater who does it for the glory is extremely rare. I think the vast majority of cheaters are the sad and the desperate who just want a set of stats that won't make them look like complete no-hopers.

"Mankind is pretty shitty, isn't it?" Yeah.

Octavious, that was a great description. It also shows you believe people are inherently good. On that issue, I'd side with achillies27, but I'm glad there are guys like you.

Behavior isn't a simple thing to be deconstructed into a direct, simple motivation, and it isn't just a small set of people who cheat (I don't mean just in webdip, I mean generally in RL) Behavioral economics is about understanding why people make the financial decisions they do.

Here's a fascinating talk by Dan Ariely - http://bit.ly/KXlplY talking about some of his research. Worth a listen.

You're wondering in a strategic game of power that's completely free to play why people would find ways to grab more power, fairly or not? It's pretty clear, no?

There are also those who cheat (commit a crime) and want to be there to witness the crime scene later or brag about it. To that end, I will look through everyone's record who has posted or will post on this thread. :-)

Having dealt with some cases of cheating, what's more interesting to me is how some players rationalize their cheating or think that somehow their cheating is more forgivable or a non-issue than other kind of cheating or their cheating is ok but the same kind of cheating but done by other people is not.

What's the big deal if me and my best friend ally in every game we're ever in?

That's my favorite example of what zultar's talking about. In a lot of those cases, they think "What's wrong with sticking with the known quantity in a game like Diplomacy?" Without seeing that what's wrong with it is that they'd be the first ones pissed if they ran into someone else doing it.

It's funny that you and your best friend can do that. Some of my besties play a lot of games together and find often that they can't fully trust each other (in the most amusing ways).

WELL, interesting topic for me, as I just got out of a game where the 2 players who won, played EVERY game together, but are claiming that it is an not done on purpose.

It was a metaphorical me and my best friend. I don't actually have friends.

Great name 'Metaphorical Me'! Can I use it in my next multi?
Oh shit. Now I've given the game away :~/

LOL @Timur

I think part of the reason for this phenomenon is paranoia, which tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many innocent things can look like cheating of you're already suspicious. The fact that two players often play together could just be they usually come online at the same time. If country X doesn't play logically allowing another country to win, it could just mean the player is an idiot. Primed with this paranoia some players will decide that the only way to get a fair game is to cheat.