Ok, Tom, then by your reasoning the following series is true:

I am an all powerful deity, because I am an all powerful deity. Therefore, I am an all powerful deity.

You have no right to determine who is a quality player and who is not a quality player. No single person has that right. Even Collectively, in the truest sense, the collective doesn't have the right. Its not your place to judge other people. The fact that you do that is abysmal. I completely agree with butterhead's statements.

@Drano: So if a person dies and misses a turn, he is no longer a quality player?

@Tomahaha- There is always room for improvement. no matter what site you go to, no matter who you play against, Something could always be better. and we do improve this site. Everytime a cheater is caught, every time a new variant is added, every time a useful new feature is added, we are improving. While some features aren't as useful, and some(like CYOC) are controversial, we are still moving forward.

"There are MANY quality players here. But there are also many poor players and cheaters here. Go to other sites and you find this to not be the case. Honestly some of these "premier" sites are not for me, too cut throat and too competitive. I am only saying there is certainly room for improvement and if you refuse to improve and look the other way, you are doing nobody a favor!"

So what you are saying is you are not good enough to play on the other sites, so you come here and bash the players here? Great logic there buddy. Great logic!

Tom, just give up. They're just being ridiculous now. Dying imagonnalose? Are you really throwing out the death card? That's just pitiful and uncalled for. Shame on you for trying to shoehorn that in. Personal tragedy has no place in this discussion. Although, if you want to get technical, no, someone who died would NOT BE a quality opponent anymore for obvious reasons.

Butter head -

Moving forward for the sake of moving forward is foolish. That's like saying "let's pass laws. Whether they're good or bad, at least we're moving forward!" Ddo you see how silly that sounds? One should only move forward when it makes sense, not "just because".

As for the "slew" of CYOC games, you really think there's that many that someone can't handle it? If you know me at all, you know I'm on vdip a lot. I can handle quite a bit. And it would help that on a lot of them, they'd be tournaments or srgs with assigned countries, which is easy to do.

No Drano, what is uncalled for is limiting the rights and privileges of others because you think its wrong.

Would you consider not giving all men (and later women) the right to vote because they were not the same ethnicity as those in power? (Since I live in the US, we'll use them as an example) If even one old white former slave owner thinks that is the case, then by all arguments that you and Tom have put forth, that old white man should get his way. Its the same principle kids. The same principle.

@Drano- Did you notice I said "Useful" features? Also, that was a point in response to Tomahaha saying that we could improve. Notice I still left up for debate if CYOC is useful or not. I think it is, other's don't.
As for the "slew" of games- there is a LOT here(I would know, I play in a lot of them and even start my fair share). Whether one person could handle that, I don't know, but why remove a feature and take that chance, then find they can't, re-impliment the feature, and have this whole debate again?

News flash imagonnalose, youndont get "rights and privileges" on this site! Its a private site and all our rights can be stripped away at any moment. Oil can decide "f*ck free speech" and there's nothing we can do about it!

This argument is not about rights and privileges. Its about what's good for diplomacy as a whole and this site as well. Tom and I are arguing that CYOC is detrimental to the websites reputation, and thus, to the website as a whole. Wouldn't you all like to have awesome players come join vdip because its awesome? Well, apparently vdip has a cheating reputation (that may or may not he true, that isn't the point), which means those players likely wouldn't bother coming here!

Butter head - CYOC IMO is an unnecessary feature that can be easily replicated by 1 or 2 volunteers. Apparently we have a cheating reputation and CYOC only reinforces that (whether true or not). To me, that's counterproductive.

Question: is everyone here so happy with the players here that we don't want new ones? Or that you'd be happy if players like me, tom, ruffhaus, and others who have pmed tom left? If we want to grow the sites reputation, pulling CYOC and showing others that the cheating reputation is a bunch of bullshit is a good start.

Oh and butter head, you say younplaynin a lot of CYOC games? How many? One new one a week? Two? Three? Even ifbtheres 2 new ones every day, that could easily be handled. And I highly doubt there's anything close to that.

You are absolutely right Drano!!!!!!!

And by that logic, Oli has deemed the feature to be useful. Therefore, there is nothing you can do about it. So stop.

No, oil put it in because we asked. Its up to us to debate its usefulness and whether we want to keep it.

But I can see debating you is useless. You turn to death and snarky comments instead of countering my points. You ignored my whole message about improving the site and bringing in new players etc. Obviously you're happy as is. And by extension, you don't care to try to make vdip as amazing as it could be because you're happy with the status quo.

Well right now I am cutting down on my games so not nearly as many. and I can't give an estimate, but I'd say there is a couple new ones a week. I'm not saying that it would be too much for a GM to handle. I am saying that it MIGHT be too much for him/her to handle.

To answer your question: I am happy with the players here. But I would also love to see new players. I would be sad to see quality players like you, RUFF, and Tomahaha leave(I can only assume Tom is a quality player, as I haven't seen him in action). But at the same time, If people are going to threaten to leave when they don't get their way, let them go.

I am not trying to change your mind about CYOC. I know that would be impossible. We have differing opinions on an issue. You have given me yours, I have given you mine.

So first you say Oli has control, but now you say we have control. Which is it?

My problem with what you have been saying is that you take it upon yourself to determine who is a quality player and who is not. Ultimately, whether the feature is useful or not doesn't matter anymore. The fact is, it is useful. Does it encourage cheating? No features encourage cheating. Does it have the potential? Yes, but so doesn't everything.

We all want more people to come here, but it is not our place to judge whether they are quality or not. If Oli doesn't want a person here, he has the right. If he does, he has the right to. If he doesn't care, that's his perrogative. All we can do is promote our site in the best way we can. Whether we have this tool or not, people are going to find ways to cheat. If I had my way, every single game would be anonymous, there would be no way to determine what game you are joining (except what map it is) and there would be no way to know who is in the game. But we can't do that. The point of this site was to try other maps, other configurations, other setups.... It is simply a custom feature that can be used or not.

Answer this question for me:

If you choose to not use the CYOC option, does it have any effect on your game? (Y or N will suffice)

Second question:

If someone else uses the CYOC option in a game you are in no way involved with, does it affect your game? (Again, Y or N will suffice)

Please answer those questions.

To the folks in this debate:
You will not convince your opponent of anything. Nothing new can be introduced at this point. If you agree with that sentiment, do not reply.

"If you agree with that sentiment, do not reply."

Agreed.

That was funny in my head.

Also, let them have their fun :)

Let's just let this go kids. No point in arguing about it. If you have a problem, then talk about it with the mods in the mod forum.

You let it go! They're not going to stop arguing about it! RAGE!

Steephie...I'm on of the ones arguing about it...go back to sleep, steephie, it was just a bad dream...

I love how you guys are trying to present us as irrational and illogical by using words like "kids" and "rage" (referring to tom and I obviously), when all we've done is present our arguments with support. Good way to ruin your credibility. Keep it up.

NO! RAGE!

Just let me have my fun, I haven't been troll-ish for years.

That last message was to Imagonnalose.

Rage was a general outburst, not aimed at anyone.

As for kids, I see no reason to assume that's aimed at you and Tom either drano.

@Drano, I was referring to us all as being kids...ask before you assume what someone means. And when you present an argument, please continue to contradict yourself. It makes it all the more amusing for me.

hahaha, Assigning powers to players might be too much for a GM to handle?
I have hosted countless games by hand, no program to judge, mapping by hand, reminders a few times a week. I am doing one game now that has over ten players and the fog of ware requires individual maps for each player, I ran WW4 by hand, I ran my NWO variant (56 players I think?) by HAND. Drano can handle assigning players to a few games a week! Or is it POSSIBLE to allow the games originator to do so? or possibly a team of moderators or any with moderator status? Any number of ideas could possibly work and it would take some discussion. But to simply thwart all discussion in the name of status quo when frankly that status quo aint working! and it is NOT working , please tell me early negotiating never happens here, go ahead, someone tell me this is forbidden because I already heard from several they do it themselves and did not realize it was considered cheating while others told me they experienced this exact problem when signing up late to a game...it IS a problem and you try to explain it away, doing nothing is ignoring an existing problem you most certainly DO have! Go ahead tell me how early negotiating never happens here, tell me that with a straight face and I will back off the issue...you CAN'T because it does happen and yes, it most certainly IS cheating whether you want to accept that or not!

/rage

@Tom - Sorry for bringing Redscape up. I certainly did not mean to be scolding towards it, although looking back at my post I probably was. It's very interesting that it had 200 players at one point - I thought it had always been a small community. How did it lose so many members?

Also, your point that this variant may help cheaters is valid, but that really isn't a great reason to remove it. The reason why is that exactly the same argument could be applied to a lot of variants:

"Gunboat gives cheaters a much larger advantage over other players than they would have in a FP game. Some people like the Gunboat option, but is it really worth having the increased risk of cheating? We should disable it to stop this, and give mods the power to turn this variant on SRGs only if it's needed. It stops most people from using the option regularly, yes, but it also reduces the possibility of cheating."

That template is a fairly good summation of the argument, and can easily be applied to many other things:


"Public Press Only gives cheaters a much larger advantage over other players than they would have in a FP game. Some people like the PPO option, but is it really worth having the increased risk of cheating? We should disable it to stop this, and give mods the power to turn this variant on in SRGs only if it's needed. It stops most people from using the option regularly, yes, but it also reduces the possibility of cheating."

Or even:

"Smaller variants give cheaters a much larger advantage over other players than they would have in a larger game. Some people like the option to play with less players, but is it really worth having the increased risk of cheating? We should disable any variants with 5 players or less to stop this, and give mods the power to turn these variants on in SRGs only if they're needed. It stops most people from using the option regularly, yes, but it also reduces the possibility of cheating."

-Also, for that one, why just <5 player variants? Two cheaters can have a huge effect in anything up to 8 or 9. Standard could be disabled under the same logic.


You could use this template to argue against the vast majority of variants. In fact, you could use it to argue against a site that runs like this altogether:

"Having only a couple of Mods to watch over 200ish games gives cheaters a much larger advantage over other players than they would have on a site that had an individual mod for each game. It would take a lot more effort, but is it really worth having the increased risk of cheating? We should have an individual GM for every game. It will vastly reduce the number of games that are able to be played at any point due to the limited number of GMs, but it also reduces the possibility of cheating."

And taking it to the most extreme it could possibly be:

"The ability to play Diplomacy at all gives cheaters the ability to cheat. Some people like to play the game, but is it really worth having the risk of cheating? We should completely stop everyone from playing the game altogether. It may stop people playing the game they want to play, but it also stops the possibility of cheating."


The later arguments here are completely ridiculous, and that's obvious for anyone to see. The first ones (against CYOC, Gunboat, and PPO) are not so ridiculous and could be argued for with credibility. However, the same argument could be used for everything. The real problem here is that, with a greater range of variants, you are inevitably going to have some that have an increased risk of cheating. Where do you draw the line? If CYOC is disabled Gunboat certainly needs to be, as Gunboat has a much bigger risk of cheating and impact of cheating, and I think most players would agree that gunboat should not be disabled (even those who don't like it), because a considerable number of players enjoy the variant.

Anyhow, I've rattled on for far too long. My point is that, if you're not willing to take the risk of cheating, draw your own line and don't play the variant. Many people have done so with Gunboat already, and this method has the bonus that people who like the variant are still able to play it, while people who don't like it don't need to play it. It's the best compromise by a long way.


Just as a quick final note - if any multis are reading this, try Orathaic's variant rather than any of the ones here. It's custom made to be the best variant for cheating in out there:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~orathaic/multiswebdip/

@Tomahaha- I said Might not be able to. I don't know Drano's schedule. I don't know his job. I don't know his home life. If he thinks he could handle it, more power to him. I am just saying if it was me, I couldn't do it. I don't have the time. There are a number of options. And those could always be discussed. I personally am not attempting to thwart any discussion. I would be very open to discussing an alternative method we could propose. But just saying "do away with it, make a GM/mod do it" is not the answer. Early Negotiations do happen. They aren't supposed to, and anyone who feels they are a victim of this should report it to a mod. I won't deny they do though. I do not try to explain it away. but you are making it sound like we have cheaters running rampant on this site, when that is simply not true. we do have our share of cheaters. But we handle them.
Also- if you have knowledge of cheating, please take it to the Mod forums. Please tell your anonymous PMers to do the same.

Now- if you would like to discuss other options(other than just simply, do away with it and let a mod handle it), then lets discuss that. But If all you want to do is say do away with it, not discuss other options, and bad mouth the site, then we have nothing more to discuss.

so once again, the suggestion offered is to keep things the same, but try to encourage people to do a better job of reporting suspected cheaters. Better reporting is certainly good! But you do nothing to stop the root of the problem and frankly, once a cheater is caught, that game is now garbage, all that time spent is ruined. It's bets to stop it before it starts. The only way to stop an admitted problem (early communication between players is rampant) is to put an end to it. That seems simple to me. I understand you like picking your power, again, makes sense and we offered a solution to that as well. So why the continued insistence to keep it the same? Everything is solved...pick your nation, fewer cheaters, no early negotiating (again ...cheating), and yet here we are with people arguing against something they are agreeing to in every part but not when taken as a whole.

If some players don't know that negotiations before the game starts are prohibited, that can be solved very easily by writing clearly that information somewhere.

For example, the first message of the global chat window of a Choose Your Country game could be :
"Please remember that negotiations before the game begins are not allowed."