As the new rights holder for the diplomacy board game and therefore webdip’s overlord, I have been asked to rule on the recent banning case.

This case involves the owners and mods of webdiplomacy [hereinafter called ‘the mods’] on the one side and Fasces a member of webdiplomacy and former mod of Vdiplomacy on the other.
Council for the mods allege that Fasces may have said something that is contra to the Official Secrets Act which all the mods must sign when volunteering to serve their community. What Fasces actually said will never be known as it has since been deleted.
Fasces case is that if he did say anything at all, and there is now no proof he did, that it didn’t fall under the Official Secrets Act because it wasn’t in fact a secret.
I am assisted by a case that council for the mods have helpfully provided. They have allowed me to reproduce it here.
The case of Posonbury-Smyth. R v [1991] EWCA Crim 289 involved a civil servant who was tasked with writing Hansard. Hansard is the official record of everything said in the UK House of Commons. On the 29th November 1989 Geoffrey Dickens MP stated during a debate on the Official Secrets Acts that it was too wide ranging and that if he mentioned that the cabinet had Bourbon Biscuits with their tea that he could fall foul of the Act. As it happens Mr Dickens MP could not be prosecuted as he was covered by parliamentary privilege. The secret was out and, as the House of Commons was now broadcast on mainstream TV, dozens of people could have been watching. Mr Posonbury-Smyth, as was his duty recorded Mr Dickens’ comments verbatim. As Mr Posonbury-Smyth didn’t have the protection of parliamentary privilege he was prosecuted for breach of the Official Secrets Act. Before it came to court Mr Posonbury-Smyth was accidentally ran over by a London bus and died. As the case was of huge constitutional importance the trial continued in his absence.
The trial was conducted in-camera and the verdict has only recently being released under the 30 year rule. Mr Posonbury-Smyth was found guilty, he had signed the Official Secrets Act and nothing should have made him break it even though the secret he was exposing was (a) trivial and (b) not a secret. His corpse was dug up and he was hanged for treason. As a footnote records released under the 30 year rule confirm that the cabinet enjoyed Jaffa Cakes with their tea and Mr Dickens was wrong to claim they were Bourbon Biscuits.
As precedents are very compelling I was minded to rule that Fasces should be accidently run over by a bus, buried, dug up and hanged. But I’m not going to rule that (a) because saying a member should be killed would run the risk of me being banned (although I would argue that Fasces is now a former member so I could call for his death), and (b) this is a gaming site and that would be a little absurd (even for me).
I am going to rule that Fasces will be given a new identity. We will see a new member appear soon, it is really Fasces but no one, including the mods, will know it’s him.

-maniac