No, because that isn't true. Said player is entitled to no such thing.

(One might want to add something about allowed communication too, I don't know. But you'd want to be careful. The mods aren't going to want to pore over messages to check for required writing style or something).

@abge,
I know he's not. I'm suggesting he WOULD be if the rule were enacted.
At present, you're quite right, he's absolutely not, which is why it's absurd .... but anyway.

No. A player is not allowed to demand a draw or cancel, nor should they be. Aplapo is allowed to report cheating and have the Mods deal with it as they see fit.

Fine, then change the end to read something about the mods will recognize said rules in adjudicating that game.

haha I'm not sure wheteher abge is being deliberately obtuse here or what.

Semck is suggesting that personal variants should be allowed, and that the mods should support the game creater's desire to cancel these variants if they were clearly stated at the start of the game.

@yJ

we already do that and Semck is the first player on this site not to understand that.

oh, well I'm the 2nd then, sorry :P

@abge, you may already do that, but

(a) if you do, it is certainly in violation of the present rules as written, which would be a good reason to modify them, and

(b) since both Draug and Sargemarcher agreed it was "clearly" illegal for a mod to interfere in the Pacifist Varient game, I would assume I am NOT the first player on the site to have misunderstood this.

abgemacht is correct here, YJ. Gunboats were traditionally on the honor system before code supported the variant. You can read the full details of the controversy in Pacifist Variant [1], under the global. gameID=82542

I mean, the Mods already enforce custom games, but once a game starts the creator has no more power than anyone else.

@abge, well, the modified version should be better then.

I'm on a tablet right now, when l get out of class, I'll explain why the rules are written as they are

@dubmdell, I'm not questioning the truth of that, but I do think it's unreasonable that one has to be an "old timer" with memory going back to pre supported-gunboat days to realize that the rules don't mean what they say.

The thing is, semck's proposed rule change would have no bearing on the current controversy.

@semck, I'm not an old timer myself, but I read enough in the forums to pick up on why the site history is the way it is.

@dub, of course, but it would prevent it happening again. I'm not trying to solve THIS game. I just think the rules should clearly state what happens with unsupported variants.

@dub, cool. Not everybody does though, and there's no requirement to read site history threads, so my argument remains.

whoa, now, hold your horses. I don't read threads that have long since been locked. I'm talking about the idle comments the real old timers make regarding site history in various threads.

I did not say it was "clearly illegal" for a mod to intervene in the Pacifist Variant game. Please don't misquote me or put words into my mouth.

I said that you had not broken any official-stated rule and that because the variant game's rules were only agreed upon in the forum and not as a 'tournament' with the moderators, moderator action on the issue would most likely seem out of place.

Semck83, you've been active on the site for almost four years and yet you claim ignorance?

Please. You acted like a dishonourable jerk in the Pacifist Variant game. You agreed and gave your word to follow the rules created through consensus on the forum. Every other player in the game managed to keep their word and you broke it. And you broke it twice. Don't hide behind erroneous rulebooks or information that passed you by. You acted like a jerk, accept that and move on. Everyone else has.

haha, thanks for pointed out the age difference Sarg. Semck is only "older" than me by two months! lol

@Sargmarcher,

Sorry to have misquoted you then. Lest I put words in your mouth, here is what you said:

"He hasn't broken a site rule so no intervention should be made against him - that's obvious."

@Dub,

Sorry, I realize that. I meant "threads about site history."

@Sarg,

First, as a minor thing, I have not been active for four years. I have been active for one year, and a member for four years. I used it for a few months four years ago, and had almost nothing to do with the forum.

Moreover, I read mostly non-webdip related threads on the forums. I really don't have that much of a sense of history of the site. This is probably bad, admittedly.

As for the rest: I do regret ruining dub's game, but I did NOT realize I wasn't joining a regular game until it started. (I did realize before the first move -- I think I gave draug another impression on that by mistake -- but due in part to the very fact that the whole process had led to my making such a mistake, and to the fact that I was on a diplomacy site with diplomacy rules, I decided to play diplomacy. I will also say that I was not SURE until the first moves. The whole thing by then felt pretty twighlight-zonish to me, honestly, and I clearly remember logging on to see the first moves and not really knowing whether I would have seen everybody move, or only me, because I felt like one feels when there's a big joke going on and you're not quite sure how much everybody's joking.)

As you say, statistical evidence would suggest I was an anomaly here -- everybody else understood. I can't really question that I displayed pretty dim behavior. But I of course dispute the rest of your characterization.

Here is my promised response:

First, I'm personally shocked that this is an issue at all. In HS, my friends and I played a lot of board games and we changed the rules a lot to see what would happen. Never did someone say "Well, the rules don't say to do that, so I'm going to disregard the agreement we *just* made about rule changes." This concept is so foreign to me that I simply didn't see it coming. I apologize if I didn't handle this situation perfectly, but it was one I had no concept of.

In regards to the rulebook. It has been my experience that most website are run by power-hunger anal-retentive jackasses who love nothing more than to impose draconian rules on people. I think Kestas and the other mods should be commended for making this a site with, imho, one of the smallest class differences between mods and other members. With that being said, we try to let players sort out their problems on their own as much as possible. Is everything we do written in the rules? No, that's partly because we want to seem inviting to new players, and partly because we don't want to spend our time lawyering up a rulebook.

I'm sorry if things were confusing for you and maybe we'll change the rulebook (if anyone gets around to it). The only thing I can offer you is that the mod position (at least internally) on variants is clear and consistent.

"First, I'm personally shocked that this is an issue at all. ... //This concept is so foreign to me that I simply didn't see it coming.//" (emphasis added)

+1