.

you're not going to get much attention this way

I think that it is possible for us to identify the remaining 5 cheaters on our own. From an outside perspective, I can already see one of the Cheaters - Illinois. Ruffhaus has claimed to have found 3 of them. From that information, and with cooperation from other players, we can extrapolate the most likely candidates for cheating.

We can also, with reasonable certainty, exclude certain players whose long history with us gives them credibility. Ruffhaus, Mapu, GOD and Defiant are respected members of VDip and I highly doubt any of them were part of the cheaters.

The risk to affect an innocent player is too high. I´d not like to make this guesses in public! Besides that, they are not ruining our game, the MODs are! They are the arbitrary rulers who decided to sacrifice us to show mercy to a band of cheaters! And dont even give this community an explanation for this atypical decision!

Thanks for explaining it better Gumers, the other thread wasn't so clear. It wasn't clear at all, actually.

I've been reading that Global and the Mod said:
"Unfortunately, due to a severe case of metagaming in this game which involved seven players, the Moderators have decided the best course of action would be to cancel this game. Six players were eliminated as a direct result of the cheating, and many more have been eliminated or have underperformed with this as a considerable factor."

Seven cheaters?!? Tons of players eliminated or "underperforming"???
I'd ask immediately to have the game get canceled! What sense does it make, Gumers? The game is screwed, it's totally meaningless.... It wouldn't be the way I want to earn my points... wouldn't you feel shame having other VDip users thinking this is the way you earn your points?

Yesterday, watching a movie: the policeman rang the bell, the woman opened the door, he said someone shot her husband, she reacted beating the policeman.
It looks like you're reacting like that woman, Gum.
Cheaters made of your game a fake, not Mods.

C'mon, slow down ad sleep on it. I understand you're angry they told you that the game you played so long was a fake game, but you're overreacting.


@Halt
I'm here since before you (and before Gumers) and I have to say that I assume Mods had good reasons to give some cheaters a second chance. In my experience, they're all expert players and usually handled issues very fairly.
They volunteer for keeping this site clean, and we should be happy they just discovered and took action against some cheaters. Our next games will be better. We should thank them.

Why don't they say who the cheaters were? What I could imagine, after spent 1 minute thinking, is that it wouldn't really be a real second chance if everybody knew who they are and the VDip Ku Klux Klan could lynch them. So your effort in trying to ruin their job and guess who the cheaters could be looks really counter-productive. Also since you don't know why they decided to give them a second chance.
Sorry Halt. I really don't understand what your post is trying to achieve. You look like you think you can manage this site better than Mods Oli choosed. Some of them is here since old Olidip.com. And frankly, I wouldn't understand your curiosity about the cheaters even if you were in the game.
Mods know who they are and that's enough for me.

And who are those mods? Why they dont reveal themselves? BEsides captainmeme, I dont even know who took the decision!

The Moderators are:

Oli
Fasces349
Kaner406
The Ambassador
CaptainMeme

All of them except The Ambassador were involved in making the decision to do with your game.

Well... It´s over now, your shit decision was implemented and the game was cancelled. My last comment is: You were wrong. No matter what good things you´ve done in the past, in this case you exposed all the arbitrariety and lack of democracy in this site when you listened only to the cheaters, while the victims were not heard a single time befor you took tis biased decision.

Gumers, think about it from another angle for a minute. What about the the honest players that got defeated because of these cheaters? Would it be fair to them for this game to go on their record? 20% of the players were cheating. The mods had no choice but to cancel the game. It's frustrating to put so much time into a game and then *POOF* it never happened, but they did the right thing.

I have proposed to listen to thise players and would accept the decision of the majority, but the mods answered that this site is not a democracy and canceled the game amyway... They have only listened to the cheaters! The innocent were never listened! If we have the right to speak before the decision was taken, it would be much fairer to all involved!

A poll with all players not cheating would be the best way to decide the fate of the game! Not a decision of a small group who were influenced by the cheaters and not even listened to the innocent punished by them!

As I mentioned in the now erased global forum of the subject game it is the absence of transparency here which is creating the bitterness and anger. I think that the moderators had an extremely difficult task here, and I respect all of them as unbiased arbiters of the game. However, after a meticulous investigation they took a very cowardly approach to a very serious problem. I stand with Gumers in requesting that the cheaters be named, and that we as a community know the extent of their involvement, their punishment, and their criteria for being banned or allowed back. The players of this game deserved better, and the moderators let them down.

Guaroz your opinion on this subject is worthless. You were not a player in the game. You are not a present moderator, unless that is, you are abusing your previously accesses, which would not surprise me in the least. And your integrity from previous games and overall policy is extremely dubious. You have no idea what the facts of this incident are, and you are simply blowing shit out of your ass as usual. Your "lynching" and "KKK" references are over the top hyperbole and offensive even for you. You're a disgrace. Just shut the fuck up and troll on. Go beat up on some more rookie players and beat your chest about it.

...well that kinda escalated...why dont you all calm down :)

I agree with God. The Mods made their decision, and it was definitely a tough one to make. I don't know if I was affected by the cheaters or not (I'd like to think I was and that I didn't lose so bad on my own!) but many good players were affected, and this policy is the only one that is fair to them.

In terms of making the cheaters public, I agree that they should be, or at the very least punished with Vdip or Reliability sanctions, but I accept the mods decision either way. It's an intense game, but it's just a game.

Guaroz, way to post the direct quote from global from *after* the game was canceled. I'd love to know how you managed that.

And plantimus, you went from 26 to 6 in 3 years after getting your ass kicked by gumers and NMRing twice. No wonder you want it canceled.

The MODs decision was partial, biased and wrong because they only listened to part of the players involved (the cheaters) and completely ignored the victim´s wishes and interests.

As someone who was definitely affected by the metagaming, I am happy that it was cancelled. Very early in the game, a player told me straight out that he was helping another player because he knew him in real life. I politely told him that that was illegal and said that he doesnt give a fuck. I complained to the mods with this direct evidence, got no reply back until way after I was doomed and all they said is that warnings were given. Didn't feel very satisfying...

^"...and HE said..."

@ Mapu : at the moment Guaroz wrote his latest post in this thread, the game was not yet cancelled.

I can tell that because at that very moment, I was online and discussing the situation via PM with Guaroz.

I have to say I agree with the choice the mods made to cancel the game. Although I only joined after taking over for a CD and don't know the extent of the early game metagaming, I don't think a game with cheating of this scale should be included in anyone's game history. It doesn't matter if you were doing well or got screwed early, chance are you were significantly affected by the metagaming.

Although I agree with canceling the game, I must say keeping the identities of the cheaters secret is one of the reasons the result of the game upsets me. I think if their identities were made public, it would also be easier for some players to understand how they were affected overall.

Releasing the names of the cheaters does not in any way prohibit people from giving them a second chance. It only allows the innocent to protect themselves in the event that the cheaters recidivate, or from the possibility of recidivism. I wouldn't necessarily rule out a game with them provided there is solid reason to think they've changed their behavior.

Absent other considerations, blocking innocent people from having access to information which could allow them to protect themselves, in the name of protecting the reputations of guilty parties, is wrong. To writ there hasn't been an argument given to explain what other consideration exists here. I find it appalling that known cheaters are being trusted not to cheat again, but that the general public is not being trusted to rush to judgment about them. I might have gone about protesting this decision differently from Gumers, but his objection is spot-on.

@Guaroz:

I have great respect for the Mods and did not intend in any way to lambast them, even if it appears that way to you. But, I can understand where Gumers and co. are coming from in wanting harsher punishments (as it is, its a slap on the wrist) and their protests over how the Mods handled the situation.

Do I think I can run this site better? Hell no. I don't have the experience, or the time, or the people skills to do so. I'd probably have a quarter of the site up in arms by my first week lol. I was merely throwing out the idea because I feel Gumers and co are a little justified for wanting names.

(refer to Pres. Eden. He said it better than I could have).

Why am I curious? First of, I was bored at the moment. Secondly, many of the players affected are people I've played with before, and as individuals have my respect. Is it so wrong to want to look out for others (even if they don't need it)? Finally, as a member of the site, it is my duty to contribute to the betterment of it.

There is no right answer in this game because of the mass level cheating. I understand the course of action that the mods took but I don't agree. Guaroz said that this game is totally ruined, that is not entirely true. There was good play in this game by others that were not directly affected by the cheates or like Gumers said and we even eliminated some of them.

I am a programmer and to me this is the issue. I don't believe I am at the level of those who created this site but I still know my way around a bit. There will always be cheaters, like hackers, we won't be able to stop them all the time. So the best move sometimes is a contingency plan. I believe in a situation like this all that can be done is try to make it as fair as possible after the game has been stopped. I mentioned this before in the game before it was taken down. The mods would have to decide, in their best opinion(and that is all we can go by) who got knocked out by these clown cheaters. Give them a certain amount of sc's based on their performance. Not all that got knocked will get sc's, they would have got eliminated anyway. From there take all the sc's from the cheaters(all cheaters) and then ratio them to all remaining countries. That way the draw has those that suffered and credits those that played honestly, and removed those that cheated.
I know this would take alot of programming to do but I also realize the harder part is deciding who should be in and who should be out because of the very dynamics of the game.
But cancelling the game just destroys the moral of the players that did well and put a ton of time into the game. It also concedes that cheaters can destroy a game if they want to and some will do it just to see it done.(cheaters(hackers)are pricks, its in their nature).

I, as a member of this game, think we should know who the remaining cheaters are and their discipline. If I got into the next game with one of them, I wouldn't "metagame" myself on to him because that's makes be no better then them and I would like to think most players that I know wouldn't either. But to be called out would remind them, don't screw this up again if you enjoy playing at this site. If they made a mistake and got caught up in something, fine they will be treated fairly on the board for those that would meta against them will be disciplined. This board has a lot of self governing and that is how this got caught, by Mapu. This would at least give us a heads up. Sometimes you don't even know you are metagaming, emotions get involved and you get pissed, hard to leave it in the other game so we can help these newer(if that is what they are) players from doing again.

Guaroz, those comments, leave them in the past, that's where they belong. And Gumers has excellent points so drop your comments on him. The cheaters did ruin the game but I believe the mods should put in place some "fairer" contingency plan to make it as fair as possible, I just don't believe cancelling the game is it.

For the record, although I wasn't in the game myself, I think cancelling is clear-cut the right decision to make. That said, the decision should be in the hands of all players in the game (and if the mods are the ones to execute that decision that's perfectly fine).

But the names of the cheaters ought be given at the very least to their immediate victims in this game, and, possibly, the other players at large.

I think a good solution to this issue, for the future, might be to create a new voting option, perhaps called "No Contest," wherein the game is cancelled, like a cancelled game would be, but the game DOES NOT disappear from records. Instead, much like any game at its end, the map would read "No contest" (as opposed to "Game drawn" or "Game won by X"), the anonymous players would be revealed, and the game itself would still exist on record. This would be useful in the following situations:

* Games ruined by cheating: Not only does this option reveal the cheating parties and leave on record proof of their cheating (a benefit which should be self-evident), it also leaves their specific in-game maneuvers available for people to see. This is likely not especially important, but if there is a benefit to people cheating, it's that we get to see what two countries might do if they could be assured of perfect collaboration with one another. Suppose hypothetically that the Sealion were first discovered by cheaters playing France and Germany. What a loss it would be if such a fascinating and powerful opening were lost forever because the game was cancelled and wiped from the records.
* Test games: Back in 2011, I did extensive play-testing of the major 1v1 variants with Gobbledydook. This has slightly inflated my number of draws -- we needed to record the games for further study so we could figure out optimized strategies, and the Concede button didn't exist yet, so the only way to end the game immediately and keep it on record was via Draw. (Of course, the Concede button suffers from the same issue, inflating wins and defeats instead of draws.) Further, just recently I played a test game with fasces, and we drew after abandoning the test. Fasces was set to win, frankly, and had a much better position on me, but the game is (in my mind) erroneously considered a draw on the record instead of a no-contest. It would be useful to have no-contest as a potential result so that we can study the game and learn more from it without worry about the game affecting player stats or being lost from the record.
* Games we just plain want ended: Granted, the Cancel option exists for games like these -- but suppose that the players want the game to be available for later viewing, whether for study (as previously mentioned) or just plain nostalgia. It would be useful to have a no-contest option to preserve the game without it affecting records.

This site is not a democracy so shut the hell up.

Thank you for this great idea President Eden !

As a matter of fact, I was about to post that very same idea right now : a record of cancelled games would benefit us all.

And to avoid any misunderstanding : I agree with the fact that this site is not a democracy. I only agree with the ide

Sorry : wrong maneuver caused by the unvoluntary combination of "Tab + Enter".

So :

And to avoid any misunderstanding : I agree with the fact that this site is not a democracy. I only agree with the idea of keeping a record of cancelled games.