Define cheating.

by cheating do you mean lying?

If by cheating by doing things like impersonation of yourself, impersonation of others, impersonation of GM, spying or intercepting others moves? These are not allowed by the site specifically if not by Diplomacy.

Basically he and Austria worked together all game, and eventually he said

"(To: Global, from Turkey) - Autumn, 1905: I am terrible. To be honest, the game wasn't fair: Austria and I go the same school LOL"

So I reported him and he's all whiny.

ghug came in and docked him points (breaking rule 4 and wasting mod's time)

People used to use hidden microphones. They use tamper with the order-processing. Pieces could be covertly added to the game board.

The only three rules for cheating were that it had to be entertaining, novel and artistic. Like you couldn't just keep peeking at order sheets randomly, however sitting at a tactical position in a room so that you could read someone's order sheet in a mirror was fine. After all, you needed to know how to read backwards. Hence, novel and innovative.

Chaqa wins.

To me, this comes back to the name of the game. You could have the same rules, and call the game "World Domination", and then rabid cheating would be legit. But the game is called "Diplomacy", and in the real world, too much cheating by a nation will ultimately be punished.

I'm fine with deceit, but if you claim to be metagaming or a multi I will report you. Pretty simple.

Yes, the young guys aren't ruthless enough. This is supposed to simulate war. Locking someone in the bathroom so that they missed an orders phase is completely cool the first time that someone thinks of it.

If they communicated outside of the game interface or revealed their identities to each other in an anonymous game, that's cheating. Ban them.

If they just lied to other players about their strategies, that's not an issue. If all players agree to abide by certain codes of conduct, as mentioned in the FAQs and as accepted by the game settings, and some of them break those codes, they deserve to be punished.

Chaqa,

But that's snitching, another problem with the young people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_snitching

Euchre is the only game were cheating is allowed.

If you ever catch Uncle Al doing something he's not supposed to be doing, DO NOT report this to the authorities.

Uncle Al is on probation until January.

*where

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=150460&viewArchive=Messages&page-archive=3#

If Steve Jackson made this game, then yes, you could cheat.

I feel like I should be surprised that this is a thread...but I'm not -_-

While perhaps that type of "cheating" may be allowed on the traditional board, certain rules are given to the site to keep from mass riots from occuri....okay, well really, really bad riots that could derail the entire site and in playing, a user has to accept them, like all those terms and agreements. And with how much of a problem Multis have been, you have to take a step in the mods shoes to see how forcing their involvement is not enjoyable for anyone.

I'm not disputing that I cheated, or that the staff were wrong to punish me.

I'm debating that psych ops at that level is a valuable skill. You have to realize that Chaqa and the Reinvented, ( userID=64275 ) two of my protege, were involved in a knock-down, drag-out fight. I knew the only way that I could beat a player of Chaqa's caliber was to go all out, so I deployed all of my units and, lacking any additional ammunition, I began trolling.

It flustered Chaqa enough that he made a few errors. We almost won because of this. This is not an easy skill to perfect.

Al, you fucked up, now buck up and accept that for what it is.

"cmon man I was only trolling lol you so mad gg"

I'm not disputing the outcome of the game, I'm disputing that the staff should be trained to deal with situations this simple.

This is a provable error.

Imagine if you work for the electric company. Your phone rings.

"Hello, my neighbor wants you to turn his electricity off. He's going out of town."

Do any of you question the proper response to this?

"Okay, thanks for calling. Please have your neighbor call us himself with his billing information to file the request."

You have an obvious and gross misunderstanding of this site and its rules then.

Actually, my dear boy, you have an obvious and gross misunderstanding.

The staff have previously complained that they want us to be sneakier.

"4. Do not use the software or moderators as a diplomacy tactic
Lying is fine in Diplomacy except when it gives mods/admins unnecessary work to do!

Falsely accusing someone of being a multi-accounter/meta-gaming to rally others against them in a game, or claiming that your orders didn't come out the way you entered them to cover up your motives, means mods/admins spend time looking for cheaters/bugs which were made up."

The website explicitly disallows claiming to multi/meta in order to troll / upset someone.

Yes, but that's why you're not any good at the game. If you can't immediately unravel a puzzle like that, you're playing at a lower level.

I'll make another scenario for you.

You work at a bank. I come in and say, "Hey, Warren Buffet totally wants you to wire me millions of dollars!"

Do you,

A) Reply: "Congratulations! Please have Mr. Buffet stop by tomorrow to file the request himself! We'll get that right over to you!"

or do you

B) Begin wiring Uncle Al millions of dollars?

I know you're a dear lad and quite precocious at that, but if it takes you more than a third of a second to solve that one you've got a ways to go, Kid.

Al, this is ridiculous. You very specifically broke site rules, and then repeatedly insulted others for following the rules, then insulted the mods that enforced those rules. Then I start to get impressed. You have the chutzpah to start a thread complaining about being reported and punished for breaking site rules, and also claim that anyone should be able to tell whether or not someone is a meta with no way of actually finding out.

So this thread loaded before the mute script ran, and I happened to see it, so I figure I should go ahead and take the opportunity to inform everyone that Al Swearengen is a shitty poster who should be ignored. I suggest everyone put him on mute, as your lives will be that much better for his absence. He has a habit of PMing people and sending them nasty, abusive messages, then muting them so they can't retaliate. It's happened to me and happened to other people (I remember JECE making a thread about it). He's a coward who hides behind the anonymity of the Internet as best as he possibly can in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance in his head that arises from simultaneously being concerned about his reputation and having an impulse to act like an asshole. He is a poster child for everything a good person should seek not to be. Don't feed the troll.

This is so stupid. Cheating is not allowed in any game.
Every game has a basic framework of rules. In Diplomacy also, there is a basic framework of rules, within which actions like lying and deceit are obviously encouraged.
Even in face to face diplomacy, there is a basic framework of rules - what that framework is would change from game to game.

Al has cheated. Cheating is punishable on this site. I'm glad Al has been punished without further ado.

Also Al - if you want to encourage innovative tactics, try and come up with new innovative tactics of deceit that fit within the rules - now that would be true innovation. Cheating is not innovative at all - its cowardly and its what you do when you are incapable of being innovative.

On a different note, I wonder if the mods will lock this thread now since it "serves no purpose?"

Man everyone hating on Al. I don't get it, he's just doing what he loves. So what if he's a bit crazy.

I say we pill him.