The portion of the site you were referring to is probably the example, "Example 2. FRANCE: A Bur Holds. GERMANY: A Mun-Bur, A Kie S AUSTRIAN A Boh-Mun. AUSTRIA: A Boh-Mun. The German support for the Austrian unit does not enable it to advance so as to dislodge a German Unit."
I am almost certain that this example is directly contradicted by the official rules. Anyone want to go recheck the rulebook?

dangermouse is correct. Although If I'm not mistaken, the adjudicator here at phpDiplomacy does allow one to dislodge oneself from one's own territory (the effort for third person neutral, phew), even with one's own support. Not strikingly useful, but can be somewhat of a technical hazard. =D

No. Dangermouse is not correct. The link I gave above is a reproduction of official rulebook! Also take a look at http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/ - these are a set of test cases that computer adjudicators should be able to pass correctly. See the section entitled 6.E.3. TEST CASE, NO HELP IN DISLODGING OWN UNIT
"To help a foreign power to dislodge own unit in head to head battle is not possible. "

After posting here I looked at the FAQ section for this site and noticed that that in http://phpdiplomacy.net/doc/dev.adjudication.txt under PROBLEMS it says "- All units of the same type are treated equally; a player may use his own units to dislodge his own units."

I also noticed another severe problem in that it says " Support hold orders can only be given to units which are holding, it should be able to be given to any units not moving." This would likely explain why I lost a centre that should have held. It would appear that mutual support orders do not work. I.e. if I order:

Germany:F Den S A Kiel
Germany:A Kiel S F Den

Neither support order will work.

Well sadly some of the rules aren't implemented in phpDiplomacy yet. This could be one of them.

The second item Mintz just listed was a bug on phpdiplomacy. However it was fixed about a month ago; though apparently the FAQ wasn't updated.

Mintz is right....from the official rules "A country cannot dislodge or support the dislodgement of one of its own units, even if that dislodgement is unexpected."

What official rules are you quoting from? The link I gave above http://faculty.washington.edu/majeski/426/sim1.html are the official rules. Or they were the last time I looked at them. The actual boardgame that I have is now in the loft.

I am quoting the rule book posted by Avalon Hill:
http://www.wizards.com/avalonhill/rules/diplomacy.pdf

Okay that's a a completely revised rule book that I've not seen before. (Presumably for the PC game). The rules I linked to were a transcription of the official rules (with minor modifications over th years) that have been used since the 1970s.

you can't support another country to attack your own unit. actually you could say "A VIE S AUSTRIAN A BUD - GAL" when you held galacit but it wouldn't do anything; it's an invalid order.

and about the rulebooks,
http://www.wizards.com/avalonhill/rules/diplomacy.pdf
is the official (currently, as of it's last update in 2005, it's the most recent) rulebook. Avalon Hill makes the board game too, you know.

and MS orders ARE valid. there's a copy of proper notation in the Appendix of "The Game of Diplomacy" by Richard Sharp, available at http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/god.htm and it has all the notation, province names, etc.

MS = mutual support
S = support (hold)
H = hold
- = move

(this last one i made up as an example)
X (xxx) S X (yyy) - zzz
unit (type unknown so "X" is used) at "xxx" is supporting the unit at "yyy"'s move to "zzz".

Yeah as I already said that's a completely revised rulebook. The one I linked to is the traditional rulebook. It's not "unofficial" it WAS the official rules since 1974 or something. The new rulesbook is completely reworded but AFAIK there are no actual rule differences between them. An adjudicator should still parse the test moves at http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/ correctly following either rulebook. I don't think MS is usually parsed by Diplomacy judges. I could be wrong though. The normal movement format can be seen in the link I gave above with the test cases.

Why don't we just ask Kestas what rulebook he used for the game instead of arguing about which set is "official"?

I'm aiming for the 2000 rules compliance (I think this is the 2000 rulebook http://phpdiplomacy.net/doc/Rulebook.pdf ), and I'll be using Kruijswijk's document to make sure it's in compliance and has accounted for all the paradoxes.
But at the moment the adjudicator is so far from any rulebook that it's not worth saying the adjudicator is guided by this or that particular rulebook

I wasn't arguing about what was official. It's just that the rules I linked to are the rules I have and have used with the boardgame for the last 20 years. AFAIK desprite the complete rewrite there's no actual difference to how those rules are interpreted.

Wait if there's no difference, why are we talking so hard about it?