@Doak: trust me, you don't care. :-P

@Hellalt: I think she can say that, since, her win percentage is over twice as high as your win and draw percentages combined...

Rule 13 - Don't be a little bitch about forum arguments.

That's to both sides, by the way.

I posted last. I win.

The only problem here is that there is no real argument to sort out.
Do you consider your superiority claim to even be a solid argument?
That's more childish than the sum of my troll attempts.
I also like to play diplomacy with people I appreciate.
And that would be Draugnar and even Rlumley but not you.
So the only reason left for me to play with you is to exterminate you.
This will happen sooner or later.
Till then have fun miss Superior Coward Cow

Oh no... Hellalt took my win.

Oh wait... I win again!

@rhumley
Different people value different things, so in one person's view someone may be superior, in another's they may be inferior.
You could be the cleverest person in the world, but people may argue that you are inferior to a dust bin man (no offense intended) who has a loving family and wife.
Some argue Hitler was superior to many because of his skills in getting a crowd on his side(I don't agree)

Also your axion contradicts itself:
"An equally accepted axiom: Statements with always and never are always wrong."
Your statement contains an always in it.
I do hope it was a joke from you.

It was most definitely a joke. :-)

And I don't really care about what other people value. I care about what I value.

rlumley +1

Rule 13:

Be sure to keep a flexible sense of humour when browsing webdiplomacy's forums. The only alternative is mental breakdown. ;)

Rule 27:

Be precise.

Sigh, clearly I didn't read the topic properly. ;(

Rule 13 should therefore be:

Don't post unless you have actually thought through your post beforehand. :P

@Friendly Sword - Based on the way many of the arguments here go (and keeping in mind your original formulation of Rule 13), I think you mean:

"Don't post if you have actually thought through your post beforehand"

@Draugnar-You taught me a lot of tactics and deception. But you could learn a lot from the females about tact, modesty, controlling your emotions, etc. Your poker game would improve, your Dip game would improve, and your life would improve.

Tact - I intentionally lack it. BS me and I call ya on it. Modesty - I have it. I may not reflect it here, but I don't claim to know all or be all. I have limits. I know my Diplomatic skills are very poor and that even brilliant tactical skills (which I do NOT have) can't make up for it. Controlling my emotions - if you ever met me in real life, you would say I do a fine job at that as well. My primary issue there is hyperactive excitement if things go my way (which kills my poker game, unfortunately).

I agree that improvements in these areas would improve my poker and dip game, but my life doesn't really need improvement. Thanks anyhow.

Modesty: A virtue weak people invented so they wouldn't be embarrassed by the strong.

I must agree with that, at least partially, although it makes me look like an idiot.

Hahahaha hellalt. You are so ridiculous.

Also Draug, all I was saying is certain people are superior to other people at certain things. Thus logically the sum of those things would indicate an overall superiority. But someone mentioned a garbage man with a good home life, and thats an excellent point, something like overall skill or value summary is impossible to quantify.

Which brings us back to diplomacy, where skill has indeed been quantified, in the form of Ghost Rating. Akroma is 6th best on the site I believe, certainly in the top ten.

@ rlumley - I must disagree w/ your statement, but mostly on a semantics level. I consider myself modest in the way I interact w/ others and carry myself, although I would also consider myself internally arrogant. I suppose the difference is how you define modesty.

I

Modesty is a virtue. Using it as an excuse for mediocrity is not.

Jeez, I sure knocked her beer over, didn't I?
However, I'm upset that this has led to minor hysterics on both sides.

Akroma, that was meant as a pun on the previous post which declared a rule that we should be proper gentlemen, in which a reference was made to the term 'nerd', which is inappropriate on a site which is most frequented by young and above average intelligence males.
I certainly would not persecute a female player just because. Dip requires a combination of intelligence and experience to play well, and the ladies should bear in mind that 'nerds' are often sensitive individuals who can turn out to be real ladies men in later life, just like I have (!!).

So, Akroma, male dominated enviornments tend to be competitive and suspicious (quite legitimately) of females style of competitiveness. This I have seen in the workplace too. The theory of equality cannot be applied in a genuinely competitive enviornment where Winner Takes All.
I notice the female players are tending to padlock themselves in to private games. Perhaps the negotiative nature of Dip attracts a different style of cooperation and adventure. However, backstabbing is something women are particularly adept at especially when the rules allow them to get away with it (cf. divorce courts ) !!
I'd love to play in a female dominated game of Dip;
Maybe you'd like to invite me into one of your little private covens for a game, Akroma?

Hahahahaha, that's just hilarious. Fun thread.

Has anyone mentioned rule 34 yet?

I did Onar... In regards to Brest and Naples. :-P

Rule 14: Don't bump threads because you created them and want them to get a lot of posts.

*Bump* :-P

Oh boy.

The only thing I've noticed about the girls is that they talk more than the boys. No joke. Also, real ladies men don't brag they are ladies men.

"And Draugnar, if you're attempting to insult me, you've failed. I am incredibly elitist. I'm arrogant, confident and proud of my achievements. You will not convince me that my achievements are worthless, and you will not convince me that I am not better than the majority of people in the world, people who spend their days attempting to skirt as much work as possible and gossiping about the trivialities of their pathetic lives."

That's the problem with arrogance. You can't be convinced otherwise. Intelligence and a closed mind is like a prodigious violinist who decides to wear ear plugs for the rest of their life who can never be convinced that their violin is out of tune. The aural and cognitive dissonance in both situations is tremendous when you are convinced you are superior and correct or that your violin is in tune. If you don't examine yourself, or listen to your violin, your intelligence and talent is a waste. I would say that an IQ in the top 1% is not even that rare on this Diplomacy site, and IQ is such a small facet of what makes someone who they are, being an inexact measurement of just a portion of your brain's computational capabilities.

Trust me when I say that the variance in intelligence pales in comparison to the overall similarities, talents, and flaws shared by the entire human race. It's important to realize that compared to the average human being, at best you have a lottery ticket more of a chance at having a significant impact on the world. But that doesn't matter, and many people will never realize this, because egotism is the premise, not the conclusion. Much of it is inherited, and the justification for a sense of superiority is found after the fact. Whether it's because you're more intelligent than the average person, whether it's because you're stronger, more successful in business, or better at Diplomacy. It doesn't matter that you're much worse at most other things, because you can always rationalize egotism after the fact by cardstacking your positive attributes in your head. It's one of evolution's greatest tricks, and the ego goes to great lengths to preserve itself, at the cost of alienation, physical pain, but more commonly, an inaccurate understanding of the world. I don't mean to insult or single you out; most humans share this flaw, myself included, and there's not much that can be done other than a very habitual self-scepticism.

Man I'm on a roll with this... I didn't realize there was a third page to this thread! That's two times in a row I've made that mistake. =/

The modesty/arrogance spectrum and the weak/strong spectrum are definitely not 100% correlated, if there is any correlation at all. I find that some of the most immoral, obnoxious morons are the most arrogant, and some of the most secure, upstanding, and intelligent people to be quite modest. A strong person can be modest without anybody thinking they are weak. A weak person can be arrogant, but nobody will mistake them for a strong person. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the greatest people were abundantly modest.