:P

I saw the email. I'm looking into it

What good is your little badge, then, abgemacht? Ava doesn't have his mod badge anymore (I don't believe).

...where do you see mod badges dubmdell?

Sigh.

On his profile.

@yebellz: Have 15 minutes of looking into it helped?

Yeah!!!

TaylorSwift sucks! And I'm not criticizing a musician here.

Thank you, yebellz.

I wish Kanye West would have interrupted this TaylorSwift.

LOL

yebellz is our Kanye!

horray

I messaged TaylorSwift and this was her response:

Other players (Austria and Germany) were not willing to draw before spring 1903 either, so don't rest the blame on me.
As for drawing in our stalemate, isn't it my right to keep playing? I was waiting for either one of you to stab, one of you to make a mistake, or one of you to leave. There were three of you vs. one of me, so it was 3x more likely that those occurances happened on your side than on mine. Hence I wanted to keep playing. Also, my me caving in and drawing, I lose 399-100=299. If one of you caves, one of you loses 100, and the others may actually gain. So I had more to gain by continuing play than y'all did. I don't see how the game drawed...did you ask a mod?

I didn't mean to be unsportsmanlike, but my goal is ultimately to win fairly according to the rules.

What has she done wrong?

Yo TaylorSwift, I'm really happy for and I'mma let you finish steamrolling but drawing after 1901 CD is one of the classiest moves of all time.

^ that's hwo yebellz mods

The guy messages me accusing me of not being sportsmanlike. Meanwhile he starts a thread to bash me as an individual because he doesn't like the way I play diplomacy. Can we please be civil? This is pretty insulting...

Best Line: "Also, my me caving in and drawing, I lose 399-100=299. If one of you caves, one of you loses 100, and the others may actually gain"

And the point, I believe it says that if the game is stalemated for over a year, it will be drawn by the mods if asked for a draw.

you realize that was a WTA game and there's no benefit for stabbing once a draw has been agreed on by the weaker nations

Wrong.
1. A player can eliminate another play and get a 3-way draw instead of a 4-way draw.
2. Players don't always play rationally and may stab regardless.

Aside from this debate though, I'm really dissapointed with the WebDiplomacy community. Making an issue like this personal and creating a thread about how "taylorswift sucks" is far more inappropriate than anything I could have done in the game.

You were at 15 SCs and we were defending each other's units for at least 3 years

yes and?

taylorswfit: I simply suggest admit you've made a mistake, learn from it, and move on. You can't win this debate, because you are wrong. The more you continue the worse position you get into ...

If a player who has played 21 games on this site doesn't DRAW immediately when another player thinks they should what should the punishment be:-
1) Chop their knob off (possibly not appropriate in this instance)
2) Kill their whole family to teach them Diplo culture the HARD way
3) Let the whole site know by calling them out and ripping the piss out of them on the forum (That'll learn 'em)
4) ALL of the Above
I think you big softies give these noobs an easy ride ..... if you don't toughen up and get more abusive and offensive towards new players the site will get a reputation as a soft touch and you'll have even more new players wanting to join.
I say stone the stone-wallers to death, it's the only language these noobs understand.....

@taylorswift:

It is generally frowned upon and considered unsportsmanlike to try to wait out other players when there is a stalemate occurring. You are using outside influences (like time constraints) to impact the game, which most would agree is not good. Diplomacy is a strategy and negotiation game, not a waiting game, hence the criticism.

Mods will force draw games if there are several years where there is no real movement, as was the case in this stalemate.

I'm just looking for the taylor swift sucks thread...would someone care to send me that direction?

@rokakoma, I'm not trying to win this debate. I'm trying to learn. I wanted to keep playing and I thought that was my right. After looking through the rules, my question still stands: what rule did I break?

Sargmacher questioned why I wanted to keep playing and others started insulting me. As I wrote to Sargmacher, I had 3 reasons for hope:
1. someone makes a mistake
2. someone stabs
3. someone leaves
While number 2 is being debated, number 1 and 3 still stand, so there you have my reasons.
As for the immature and inappropriate insults, I cannot stop them but I can condemn them.

@NigeeBaby. If those are your punishments for not drawing, what about the punishments for not showing basic respect and decency? That, unlike my alleged offence, IS in the first line of the responsibilities section of the rules. ("respect other players.")

Thank you, Tom Bombadil. I concede my point 3 (someone leaves).

Regarding points 1 and 2:

I think it is fine to hold off a bit, or even pull your units back a bit if you want a stab, but considering your position, it would take a complete moron to stab because it was a WTA game. Generally most people on here are not complete morons, and if they made it far enough to work their way into a stalemate line, they probably aren't going to stab to give you the win.

Regarding making a mistake, I think this falls in the same line as someone leaving. Essentially you are just trying to wait them out, which isn't really what the game is about, and in my opinion that really doesn't have a place in the game. If they make a mistake setting up the stalemate line then its fair game, but if they have been there for a couple of turns they obviously know what they are doing, and thus waiting for a misorder is just being a poor sport.

And this is the impression that I get from most in the community as well (at least most who frequent the forums)

taylor, I know, noone borns knowing diplo rules, so you are welcome to learn.

1) anyone can make a mistake, but after the game is talemated you can assume noone will make any. It's just gambling, and has nothing to do with the game itself.
2) someone stabs is a very real and existing assumption, but not when you reached the stalmate line, noone will stab, because they know, they risk losing the whole game. If you want them to fight, and make it a 3way, then you have to pull back substantially, give some SCs to your enemies, assure them they can actually hold those, and then, only then they will eliminate the weak ones.

@taylorswift: My message to you was not rude at all. I was very polite and suggested that it is unsportsmanlike because for reasons that others have confirmed in this thread as well. Instead of taking that on board, you have further proved that you are indeed handling this without sportsmanship by posturing and getting angry over the way you have been treated - when you treated your fellow players in that game very rudely by making us enter the same moves for close to an hour just because you wanted to see if someone would get bored and leave. Moreover, 3 countries went CD in that game and this is the only reason you did well. You did not have the decency to vote draw or cancel (as everyone else did) in that situation either.

If a moderator has to force the game to end, it should be quite clear that you were no longer playing according to accepted standards. Accept that and learn from it.

you make your username taylorswift and expect respect and decency over the internet

taylorswift
You can buy a PC and a broadband connection but you can't buy class and there are a few classic examples on this very site. Some refer to these people as the 'welcoming committee'........ because it's funny. Also a lot of them are immature kids so on-line abuse of other players or Mods, etc is fairly common-place.
If you adjust your sensibilities after a while it just makes you laugh, and then you start looking forward to the abuse because you've become part of the problem, not the solution.
Welcome to Webdip :-)

The stalemate line had been in tact for over 10 turns - as such, it is extremely unlikely that someone is going to make a mistake. Everyone on the map proved that the game was over - by "waiting for a mistake" you are actually just saying that you were waiting for someone to get so bored or exasperated that they leave or throw the game. That is not acceptable.

If you were with your friends at a table, would you really insist on sitting there for 2 or 3 extra hours just to see if one of your friends left the table because they were so bored?

I don't think so.

Taylorswift, I apologize for writing that you suck. That was poor form.

Why I wrote it though, was because of #3, which you concede. I agree with #1 and #2, but in our game, you gave it plenty of time to realize that either of those was very unlikely. I/A/T all entered the SAME orders every time for many turns in a row, and they were not very complicated (I just entered two supports with the rest holding), so making a mistake was not looking like it was going to happen. As for #2 I think it was clear much earlier that that was not going to happen. After you refused to draw for a long time I even moved almost all my units that could potentially stab back to my home centers just to demonstrate no stabbing.

That leaves #3. As TomB eloquently explained it, relying on waiting out your opponents would be very poor form indeed. Please try to think about what is to be gained by doing this, virtual points on an obscure webpage. What is to be lost? The goodwill of your fellow denizens of Webdip. Now, after this little bashing session, I suppose you might not care that much about that part anymore. But think of this as a game with friends, FOR FUN. Would you just wait out a bunch of friends of yours, upsetting them, maybe getting them in trouble with their spouses or bosses, for a 399 paper poker chips?

I know it sucks to be doing so well in the game, but then getting stopped just short of the solo. But, look at the big picture. Is it really worth some virtual points to waste your time and ours with such a meaningless exercise. You almost had me, by the way. I was facing a real life deadline, and 57 on webdip wouldn't have made up for missing it.

"I know it sucks to be doing so well in the game"

3 CDs *cough*?

I DEMAND JUSTICE!!!

Number 3 is a terrible reason. You won't be popular on this site if you take that attitude.

Everyone makes mistakes in diplomacy. Even during the stalemate, in Spring 1909, I made one and allowed Austria into Kiel.
However, I understand your point that the probability of a stab or a mistake at this point is very small, almost negligible. So that small probability is outweighed by the value of my opponents' time and boredom of monotony. That seems reasonable and I understand that. Thanks :)

@Sargmacher: You need to be more careful with your facts. You made so many errors in what you just wrote...
1. "My message was not rude at all." I never said your message was rude. I implied that this thread was unsportsmanlike.
2. "You have proved that you are indeed handling this without sportsmanship by posturing and getting angry over the way you have been treated." I did no posturing. I got offended by insults in this thread, which directly violate a WebDiplomacy rule. How does that show a lack of sportsmanship?
3. "You treated your fellow players in that game very rudely." Don't equate the rudeness of my refusal to draw to the rudeness of posts like "taylorswift sucks!" and "kill their whole family."
4. "The same moves for close to an hour." Um...this simply is not true...
5. "Just because you wanted to see if someone would get bored and leave." As I wrote to you and on this forum, it was not JUST because of that. I had 3 reasons.
6. "3 countries went CD in that game." 2/3 of them went CD BECAUSE I was defeating them. Germany, for example, left after I took denmark. Russia left after I took St. Petersburg.
7. "You did not have the decency to vote draw or cancel (as everyone else did)" When the first country went CD, 3/7 players did NOT vote draw or cancel, so you are wrong when you say "everyone else did."
8. "Accept that and learn from it." My posts here are so that I may learn from it. Receiving a message from you calling me unsportsmanlike does NOT help me learn anything.

Anyway, I'm ready to drop this thanks to the concise and excellent explanations from Tom Bombadil and rokakoma. Thanks for takign the time to teach me.

I made the point about killing your family and admit that it is only humorous if you understand it and because you don't I apologise ...... killing family members for Webdip procrastination is against site rules and the Mods take a very dim view of it :-)

A good rule of thumb to give up the solo try is when the opponents have done the same unbreakable moves two turns in a row. That makes it pretty clear that you'll not be able to break though.

That said, if you are gambling fellow you might then try what rokacoma suggests and pull back from your line to open up growth for one of your neighbors. If someone sees that you are not an imminent solo threat, then they might get greedy and try to whittle out one of their neighbors. Not likely though. I find it pretty hard to whittle out an ally who has worked well with me to stop a solo threat just for 1/n more points.

* actually since there seem to be lots of math geeks on this site, I should restate the last couple words

...just for pot/(n-1)/n points.

I can understand why you're targeting me - seeing as I created this thread and was the first person to message you privately on this issue. If roka and Tom's posts are the ones you want to say you've learn from that is fine - as long as we move on from the situation and everyone can be on the same page about it. That's all I would want :)

@Sargmacher:
Posting a message that someone sent to you privately is poor form.

I disagree.

I think Taylor is wrong. Must I say more?

I'd like to give a warm welcome to Taylor swift. Welcome to the community. You seem like you're going to be strong competition in the future! I look forward to playing you one day. Your willingness to participate and learn is the mark of a worthy adversary. :)