Do you expect it to grow?

Pfth! All I see are reasons why things can't be done. Think outside that rectangular container thingy.

Yes, but no faster than before. There will always be multi's, but they'll never be a big issue.

notoriousmjf has a quote from Bearnstien on his profile and I think Roosterman left his live game to prevent being banned as it had The Bears in it

The best way would be to require an email confirmation for new accounts and only accept "paid" or "corporate" accounts, not free ones like gmail or yahoo or msn. It doesn't provide any identity theft risk, validates the person is for real, and limits the number of times a person would be able to reregister by tracking previously banned accounts email addresses. You could also build a blacklist of servers where problem children kept coming from. For example, if I became a multi and kept using my Draugnar.com domain with a constantly changing name on that domain (i.e. [email protected], [email protected], etc) then you could ban the entire domain. That would also then allow someone to run their own mail server (I'm working on getting the time to set one up, instead of relying on Go Daddy) while preventing those with private servers from being able to abuse them to get on.

What the hell is going on with this tool Bearnstein.

Lol I always miss out on these. Anyone want to offer a narrative for me?

Fig? You want to enlighten Thucy? I'm sure you have the most details of any of us, considering you were the banner (and he/she the banished).

It also removes many of us being able to play - I don't have a paid email account (well, I do now but thats my university one).

Denis - I believe their friends. I'm hoping they'll email me, but as I'm off tomorrow morning someone else will have to keep an eye on him for a week.

thuc: Post 3 in this thread is a good start.
After that he made this bears account, which is now closed also

@Fig - in this day and age, how many people don't have a uni account, a corporate account, or one from their ISP? Very few people only have free email accounts. Even when you were in high school living at home, I'm sure your parents had a block of 5 provided by their ISP. Unless of course the ISPs in the UK are different than the ones in the states. Overhere, you usually get a few email addresses to go with your internet access when you subscribe to an ISP, whether it be traditional modem, DSL, or Cable.

Well that is true. Freeserve (which has changed ownership about 25025234 times since we signed up) gives you a subdomain and so any addresses you want off that. Equally that's in the control of my parents rather htan me, so I'd have to wait for them to look at theirs before it forwarded over (even with outlook rules to help me).
Still, its a real option if needed.

Have you parents set one of the addresses to automatically forward to your gmail account. Then you could click the reply link and confirm a legitimate address that would verify you were you...

It can be done as a server side rule, so they wouldn't have to look before it forwarded to you.

Figlesquidge, Roosterman was mentioned earlier in conjunction with Bearnstein. Is he part of this? I just got knocked out of a game where the two were working together. Just need to know if he is clean.

I've noticed that Rooster man and bearnstien have played a significant amount of games together and they either drew or rooster lost, and now rooster and the The ---- Bears played together, allied and then The ---- Bears admitted to being bearnstien...connection?

I think the paid email idea is a reasonable idea, but I also don't think you can assume everyone, or even most people, have one. I didn't have one until I went to college this fall, but I've played Diplomacy, online and off, for many years now. Many members of this site are not in college, and do not have jobs that provide them with company emails. This measure would ultimately prevent the vast majority of the youth who are interested in the game from signing up. I guess we have to decide which our priority is, fewer (or no?) multis, or new young players.

They get on the net somehow and most ISPs provide email addresses to the subscribers. If their parents pay for internet, they probably have email addresses as part of the deal. Most people just don't know this cause they don't read the fine print in their Service Contracts.

True, although I don't think Orange (the most recent owner) supports server side rules.
anyway, its an idea.

@ Draug, I have a corporate account, but I am also strongly motivated not to use it for non-corporate use, as that is grounds for termination

You should ask the IT folks if using it just for registering for accounts is against the rules or not. Being the head of IT, I don't worry about it too much and I just remind people that anything they send or receive is subject to potential review and not their personal mail, so don't send anything they wouldn't want someone other than the recipient to receive. Beyond that, we have physical limitations in place to prevent sneding or receiving excessively large attachments and filters that use the common blacklists to prevent receiving emails from certain known spam sources.

@ Draug - we've laid off 10% of our consultants in the last 18 months. Asking questions is a good way to get noticed. I don't *want* to be noticed, unless it's bringing in a nice tasty bit of consulting work ;)

Gotcha... I forget that I'm fairly secure in a company that, despite the econmy, has doubled in size in the last 18 months.

Draugnar is a countercyclical asset

and yes I do mean that in a sexy way

Pep does marketing. Who do companies turn to when times are tough and money is tight? Marketing firms to get people to buy their stuff. So, yeah, my firm's industry as a whole is countercyclical.

Got $20 per year (<$2 per month)? Go to GoDaddy.com and register Acosmist.com as a domain. You get one free email address on the Acosmist.com domain for your personal use. $5 a month will get you several more.

There is a new account Stupendous Man created about 20 minutes ago and he just joined a live game with Rooster Man he seems to have 75 invested in an anon game as well

what the hell denis. i just joined webdiplomacy and looked for open games. what is this whole thread about anyway?

Well this guy Bearnstein ripped off the site by creating multiple accounts and playing in various games with those accounts. The fact that you take stance so defensively right away almost increases my suspicion of you as an alias of Rooster Man.

where were YOU when all this was going on, denis?

HM?