No, it could provide a help to a lesser player who doesn't deserve it. I also think that an eliminated player should be unable to post to the game after a turn or two. Give them just long enough to say good bye and have some closing thoughts, but not running commentary/ideas/suggestions/tactical analysis.

It happens on occasion that a player will ask me to look at a game and comment on what they should do. I generally decline such requests from the old ethics of FtF in that you do not comment on someone else's game in progress. There is a little grey area there in the case of a game where you were once involved in, that is often covered by House Rules.
In another web community, the moderators and it would appear the community takes an opposite view. They provide a category in their forum for games in progress and have no problem what so ever on players posting their game positions and asking the community at large what they should be doing.
As many know I am of the 'old' (maybe ancient') school and what my ethics on this is may not be the majority or what is wanted for this community which is fine.
The question is what does this community *(phpDip) see and want...

The classic arguments against commenting are:
1. when players sign up for a game they are playing you not the Imperial War College of some Ancient Golden Age player pool.
2. people will not learn unless they make the decisions and mistakes on their own
3. it distorts the relationship between veteran and newbie

The arguments in favor of allowing the open discussion is
1. Players can learn from the discussions and improve their play
2. it affects the veteran newbie relationship and allows for the newbies to close the gap on the techniques
3 . it will introduce greater unknowns in the game
4. it may flood the Forum with game advise requests and finally put inane postings to the side

I think it doesn't matter. If ome one asks for advice and takes it, there enemies have the same amount of ability to go check the other players thread to see what they are doing. How ever if it is not in the open then I think it should be considered meta gaming or multi accounting as the person on that account isn't actually doing the playing.

I don't think it's appropriate to discus strategy or tacticts of an ongoing game. If it's a generic tactics question, it can be answered generically (such as the many questions about swapping units or broken convoys).

If it's a generic Strategy question, such as openings, again it can be answered generically.

Even if the person can go the the games being played to see what's going on, if the question was asked generically, it can be answered generically.

I would hate to see an a question like "Hey in this game Germany is allying with me, but he's building up his forces around me, should I trust him and move my units to the front with Russia, or should I defend against him.?" Then someone with much experience says - "Oh that's the classic Birsan Germany Stab - you'd better watch out! Here's how you defend ..." or something like that.

Keep it generic, and all is good. Learning from more experienced players is good, but getting specific help from them on a specific game is bad.

I think that it shouldn't be done, and if you do talk about a game in progress you should get permission from in-game to do so.
It can be awkward, but even an obscured example is rather unfair, because most people will be able to work out what game you mean.
Asking after the game, fine.
Oh, and personally I think that once your nation is dead you should shut up and have no diplomatic input.

Philcore said it better than me, but that's what I was trying to articulate. If you have a tactics or strategy, by all means ask for help. But don't refer to an exact game or to the exact situation. Try to recreate a generic situation that has a similar effect.

@figle - I think that it can be valuable as a learning exercise though. And even if people figure out what game you're talking about - it's still the responsibility of the one helping to make it generic and not about the game in question. For instance in my example if some one posed the question, even outright - being a noob and all, the more experienced player who recognises the "Birsan Germany Stab" (I made that up, btw - don't actually try to google it Edi ;-) can just say something like:

It's inappropriate to ask for advice regarding an ongoing game, but in general there are certain positions which can often indicate that a stab is coming, you might want to check out www.diplomacy.net/commonstabs.html for more information.

wow way to make the discussion concrete curlyfiries - check out his thread on stalemates - how to answer that?

your welcome :D

probably not

Are you sure?

Definitely not for in-play games.

Anyone interested in post-mortem analysis or theoretical/theological questions is welcome. That's the way you solve the 'learning' problem - not by turning yourself into a bot.