By "we" do you mean jmo and ATC or are you actually asking the rest of us?

@jmo- The point is exactly that when mods are acting as mods their actions should not require having read multiple threads, PMs, emails, etc. There are plenty of avenues that are not site facing that mods can use to deal with problems. What purpose do these messages serve?

"No, but I don't see ssorenn attacking you either unless you think that if your name is mentioned then you are attacked. If that's the case, I suggest both of you mute each other for everyone else's enjoyment."

"Putin, if you can't stand me or have respect for the mods, you can feel free to leave the site. Otherwise, you'll continue to see us participate in the forum and run the site."

"Actually I can ban you or silence you if you continue to disregard our request to not attack other members or to continually provoke me or the mods and waste our time by having us address your inane comments constantly."

"Putin, please do not lie. I have asked you in threads specifically as well as multiple times in PMs to stop attacking other members such as ssorenn. You continually reject that you have attacked anyone or that anyone's opinion except yours matter. If you can't respect the site owner or the mods and follow their requests not to attack or provoke other members or the mods, please leave.

Thank you for understanding, and I apologize to others for this slight derailing of the thread."

The answer is that they serves no purpose except perhaps for zultar to vent his frustration. I am certain that all of the "information" has already been communicated to Putin. I encourage you and the other mods to stick to your own advice and, as you said, use the mod email to handle problems.

Thank you for your opinion, uclabb. I won't comment on this any further.

If you have any further comments, please use the mod email. Thanks.

@uclabb, The current forum policy is that warnings are given in the forum for all situations regarding the forum. The reason being that if we issue warnings only in private then people complain on that thread that no action was taken against the person for their infraction. The public warning also serves to inform members what is or isn't allowable on the forum. Since if a new member joins the site and sees a cheating accusation or a thread calling for a members death go unaddressed by the mods they could justifiably assume such things are allowable.

Zultar's posts here informed Putin that his behavior (in this case refusing to respect a site owners request to stop posting fragmented complaints in multiple threads since it was wasting multiple mods times sorting through a rather simple issue over weeks) isn't really acceptable or helpful seems pretty fair to me. Maybe that's just because I've kept track of all the sub-conversations that have resulted because a few members have decided they will not communication with us via email.

As you said though, this is a rather simple issue, and shouldn't require forum posts, which is why I again asked everyone to simply email us if they have concerns. Had Putin done so this whole situation could have easily been avoided.

If you had done so we wouldn't be hijacking a thread that is supposed to be about diplomacy and lying.

I understand that people want to voice their opinions, but doing so in the forum about any type of case, be it a cheating accusation, a suspected multi, or someone harassing you on the site, simply leads to a long debate in which the actual issue never gets solved because everyone outside of the case wants to input their opinion and becomes outraged if their comments aren't addressed by the mod team.

A great example of this is that I have a list of 17 bookmarked games and members that I suspect are cheating related. Instead of looking into them I've spent over an hour already writing and reading replies to something that should never have been an issue had members simply come to the mod email with their concerns.

Anyways, I hope the explanation of why warnings are public makes sense to you. While I wish we could also keep those to email it just doesn't seem feasible for the reasons I mentioned. If you have any thoughts on how to get around those issues please shoot us an email with it. I think we're both in agreement that members emailing us with concerns could have avoided this situation and will help avoid future ones.

@everyone, if you have any questions on anything in my post please shoot us an email about it so we can allow this thread to get back to the rather interesting conversation on lying styles in diplomacy.

-WebDip Admin

Edi Birsan on lying in Diplomacy:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/article/ah20080710

For what it is worth, I expect to be lied to several times during a game. The trick is to determine which is which. I will also lie to cover a stab, but otherwise won't. Once in a great great while I may create a false rumor to cloud a player's relationship with another player, but that has backfired more often than not so I don't tend to do that much anymore.

@jmo- I appreciate your response, and have no wish to draw out the issue. I'm fine with public warnings directly following behavior that isn't within the rules of the site. That is not what happened here. Mods and users should have different responsibilities and expectations. Was putin being a whiner by asking zultar to address ssoren's attacks on him? Yeah, definitely. But zultar's response did not restore decorum, it was outright catty. The proper response was to ignore him or to give a formal warning of the type that appears in jmo's most recent post.

To be clear, while I'm personally not necessarily in favor of the increased modding that has come to the site recently, I don't feel particularly strongly either way and even believe you all when you say that it has increased the net happiness on the site or whatever the claim is. Also, mapleleaf is a total ass (I actually like putin as he often has interesting if at times a little crazy things to say). I'm not complaining, nor am I or have I ever been during my 6 years on the site a "mod hater" or a troll. To say that I have wasted an hour of your time is ridiculous. (It's not as ridiculous as zultar PMing me the "I'm sorry you don't understand, but given our past interactions, I suspect you don't actually care and are just looking to waste my time. This conversation is considered resolved." PM) I didn't engage you jmo in this thread or you zultar via PM. If you didn't want to talk about it, you shouldn't ahve started the conversation. My suspicion is that there is a similar mod-driven fanning of flames in the case of putin and others as well.

Back on topic- I completely disagree with Ogion. I expect to never be lied to during a game. Every time someone lies to me, I have made a mistake. If I play well, it never should be in anyone's interest to lie to me.

@bo_sox: so what you're saying is, because this is Diplomacy, there's "lying" and then there's "LYING."

I suppose I am more cynical. Just because it isn't in someone's interest does not mean they won't misjudge. Mostly when I get stabbed it ends poorly for the stabber (with some very large exceptions). I always ask what would happen of they are lying and plan accordingly. Sometimes people are in fact gearing up something strange. I would never presume that I have played each player's temperament perfectly all the time. This, I expect to make mistakes and I expect to be lied to, sometimes when I screw up and se times when they do

"I expect to never be lied to during a game"

I was wondering where all your points went.

Per the rulebook, and my profile:

"Diplomacy is a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept and promises broken... Knowing whom to trust, when to trust them, what to promise, and when to promise it is the heart of the game."

My approach to the game is to talk to everyone a lot, to figure out who is lying to me and who is not. I then ally with those that I determine want to ally with me, and defend myself from those that I determine are coming after me. Sounds boring, I know, but somehow it *never* turns out boring in reality.

MM, those are my thoughts exactly. I play 1901 as a detective trying to figure out how the board will take shape. I talk to everyone and establish things that will allow me to determine who is trustworthy and who is not. It's a big reason I prefer a DMZ over a bounce.

That's pretty much how I think many of the best play MM, get general impressions by feel, have a general plan, but know how to adapt and use press in whatever means your gut feeling seems to hint will work best.

I think I recall you mentioning in the past you play mainly by instinct, am I remembering the right person?

Tru, MM, can either of you explain how you know when you're being lied too in a press game, especially in the opening year? I tend to be more analytic and judge the cross press I get from all the countries on the map, using inconsistencies or different enthusiasm levels. Do either of you do the same or other methods?

Using inconsistencies can give you false positives though, don't you think ?

I tend to try to measure competence rather than trustworthiness.

I assume that everyone on the board will attempt to take me over if the board conditions are right. Every game is a gunboat game, except the ones where you're able to talk to people.

I prefer being straight up lied to compared to misleading statements. Same goes for how I conduct press. People who prefer misleading statements strike me as being generally untrustworthy and misunderstandings arise, making formation of trust impossible - even when it might be neceasary.

Now if we are talking about in preparation for a stab as opposed to just how we normaly conduct press, I would say I use a combination of both, depending on which might sound the most sincere. My best stabs are usually half-lies which are feasible move sets.

@AWB ... precisely. I'm saying that there is lying, wherein a player sends a message actually intending to follow through on whatever promise was made and then is by way of another player or by way of their own individual revelation elects to go for a presumably better alternative, and that there is LYING as you put it, wherein a player sends a message never having any intent of following through on said promise. As a receiver, it's important that you learn to differentiate these and learn to instinctively (and more often than not correctly) decipher a player's intentions. That's often where I personally struggle.

@bo_sox: would you agree that "lying" + "LYING" = 100% of Diplomacy communication, given a margin of error for role-playing, shit-talking, hate-expressing, anger-managing, friendly banter, and whatnot?

"Hey, I'm doing some friendly banter with my neighbor here. I know he's lying to me. But is he just lying, or is he LYING?"

The best way in my opinion to differentiate the two is to communicate with others and form communicative alliances with as many players as possible even if they have no practical value. If they're doing the same, which any good player would be, they would be able to provide you a decent amount of information about the player you're concerned with, and at that point you can determine whether they are being semi-honest or whether they are just trying to manipulate you. Some players are able to do it by tone or other speech characteristics as well, but I can typically only do that in non-anon with players I've been around before so it's not necessarily the best way to go about it.

I'd ask a better press player, personally. Much of my success in press has been centered around tactics, which I consider myself pretty good at, rather than actual press and negotiations, which I'd say I'm decent at at best.

See... that's the thing.

http://devel.diplom.org/Zine/S1998R/Windsor/caissa.html

The communication that matters is the communication that relates to salient over-the-board issues. The board, as it stands, is the reality.

If another player is lowercase-l "lying" to you, he might actually be telling the truth if it's over-the-board convenient for him.

Making the decision to big-caps "LIE" to someone, with intent and aforethought, is not just comparatively rarer, but it is typically not undertaken lightly.

All "alliances" are conditional. Some of those conditions are explicit, some are not.

DISREGARD LAST

ACCIDENTAL REPOST

or... wait, not

jmo, I have said that I play by instinct, but what may be more accurate is that I can't explain what I am doing very well since I don't typically understand what I'm doing well enough... I often feel I know what to do in certain situations (based on press moreso than the board), maybe I just make it more complicated in my brain than it needs to be so there's too much info to "pass on".

ANimac: To your original post, it is generally best too always believe what you say. If you can convince yourself that something is real, then you can convince another player of the same thing.

That said, lying through your teeth always has its place, but usually only when you feel you can 100% trust a third party you are collaborating with.

best too always --> best to always

I probably still do this in my press unintentionally, but I absolutely detest weaselly, misleading statement "lies," typically because the players using them manage to convince themselves that because they didn't literally tell a lie, they didn't do anything misleading at all and that it's your fault for reading too much into it. They DO literally tell lies when they say that they weren't misleading despite implying otherwise.

Essentially, I don't mind lies in Diplomacy, although it obviously sucks to be on the receiving end of them. I detest meta-lies and think they're actually personally insulting and malevolent. Diplomacy is a game where you sometimes have to be dishonest to win. It's the players who are dishonest in their pursuit of victory, but then are dishonest about their dishonesty, who I can't stand.