SGOTM 10 - Maintenance Thread

[culdeus]

There is some of this activity in our thread. I've asked this to stop prior to it showing up as a discussion here. There is some discussion along the lines of "they started it". It's fairly easy to see who is doing this as it leaves a nice neat paper trail.

 

[AlanH]

I echo the remarks above.

If players really want to cheat then they will no doubt find a way. It's not clever, and I can't see what benefit they get. The only prizes in this game are a few pixels. Are they worth making a fool of yourself over?

If people do bring this competition down by cheating, I for one shall be less inclined to continue to run it in future.

 

[LowtherCastle]

As disappointing as such cheating may be to honest players, please don't take it to heart Alan. I don't believe any sort of cheating affects the final results. In the last SG, the top three teams played significantly different strategies. Peaking cannot be a factor.

 

[BLubmuz]

Just to add gasoline on the fire, a post of mine was probably the reason DwarfSleepy started this.
In the past i asked for some way to avoid this, but after i've seen other teams' members visiting my profile and the ones of other members of my team, i felt free to use the same way to investigate.
FYI, we gained nothing by that, our game is at a point where all decisions are took.
It was just a curiosity to see if we have a chance, at least comparing us to teams roughly in our same turns.

But how many CFC members can simply use another PC, say at work to actually investigate threads? Read one row can give a sensation of where a team is, not much more. Sometime not even that.

 

[AlanH]

If you want to spoil the game for the rest of the players then go ahead. I have more fun things I can do with my time than playing nursemaid/cop to a bunch of kids who want to cheat.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

i've seen other teams' members visiting my profile and the ones of other members of my team, i felt free to use the same way to investigate.

Seriously, there are plenty of reasons to go and see someone's profile... this is only paranoïa...

please stop it.

edit: and there are graphs in the results thread that should be enough to see where you stand.

 

[Mad Professor]

Just to add gasoline on the fire, a post of mine was probably the reason DwarfSleepy started this.
In the past i asked for some way to avoid this, but after i've seen other teams' members visiting my profile and the ones of other members of my team, i felt free to use the same way to investigate.
FYI, we gained nothing by that, our game is at a point where all decisions are took.
It was just a curiosity to see if we have a chance, at least comparing us to teams roughly in our same turns.

But how many CFC members can simply use another PC, say at work to actually investigate threads? Read one row can give a sensation of where a team is, not much more. Sometime not even that.

Other people cheating has never been a good excuse of doing it yourself. All you do is increase the amount of it going on. And not gaining anything is not an excuse either as you didn't know you wouldn't gain when you decided to do it.

If nothing was gained then that's good. Let's make sure nothing is gained from now on either by not doing it... Stuff like this does nothing to increase the enjoyment of the competition. Let's not do it.

RRRashkolnikov above has some good advice for us... The fact that BLubmuz has recently visited MY profile makes me wonder why now - I had not thought anything of it until now... So all this has just created suspicion. I would like to just get on with the game with some confidence that everyone is playing how they should, which I am sure is the case for most of us.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I can't imagine anything more dissatisfying and humiliating than to go to bed one night, knowing that I had won an award by cheating. I could lie to others all I wanted but every time I looked in the mirror, I would know the truth.

@RRRashkolnikov: Frankly, I don't even know what you guys are talking about, viewing others' profiles and how to abuse it, but if I knew of potential abuse, I would never go to an opposing team player's profile while entered in an SG. For any reason.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@LowtherCastle: We seem to agree... my point was that cheating is pointless, and the reasons which were proposed as a justification were complete non sense... so anyone doing it should just stop now

 

[BLubmuz]

Nice to be loved
I can't see how you can consider cheating what i did.
If i have tought it was cheating, i didn't posted in my team thread some points on other teams, since the threads are open for anyone not competing and for the Staff.

When this SG will finish, you can go to see what i posted and surely agree it's all but cheating.

If you remember i complained about this spoiling way to gather infos time ago. But since anyone supported my complaints and i've seen other teams' members visiting my profile...

Unless officially forbidden, even only on a honor basis, i don't feel to have cheaten.

Last but not least, this won't change an inch our strategy, which is at a point where nothing can change.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Can't we love you without loving peaking at SG posts?

I spoke in generalities because I'm not interested in pointing fingers at anyone. I think the prinicple is obvious: Don't look at any post in any other SG team thread. It doesn't matter how much one looks at or how one managed to look at it. AlanH finds it unpleasant because he doesn't enjoy being a police officer, I assume. Most people don't.

As far as I'm concerned, you didn't cheat in the sense that you improved your team's game. I have no problem on that. Your game is obviously far along. It's the spirit of the matter. Frankly, I don't really care what other people do. I play by the rules because that's what's important to me.

 

[AlanH]

Unless officially forbidden, even only on a honor basis, i don't feel to have cheaten

This should not need to be said.

However. Looking at other team's posts is not permitted. It is forbidden. It doesn't matter how you do it, or where you do it, or whether I can see you do it. It is not allowed.

All xOTM rules ultimately depend on honour, because we do not have infinite resources and infinite technical capabilities, in spite of what you might think or wish.

And cheating without getting any benefit from it is stupid as well as being dishonest.

 

[da_Vinci]

Really ?! We need to have this discussion ?! Really ?! Sad!

Can't agree with AlanH more ... we all know what the rules mean, let's not be splitting hairs.

"Sure, it is against the law to kill people, but I didn't kill him, I just pushed him. The train killed him."

"Any method of accessing any information in any team thread not your own is forbidden if you are a player in a currently active game (until your team is certified as finished)". We all knew this is what the rules meant when we started, didn't we?

And are we arguing about when a rules violation is or is not cheating? Isn't the fact that it is a rules violation sufficient problem, benefit gained or not (so the question of "cheating" is really irrelevant)?

Now for some comic relief ...

As disappointing as such cheating may be to honest players, please don't take it to heart Alan. I don't believe any sort of cheating affects the final results. In the last SG, the top three teams played significantly different strategies. Peaking cannot be a factor.

@ LC: I would think that when your power, production, food, gold PEAKs in a game has everything to do with victory. Whether you PEEK at other threads may or may not matter.

(Or is Peak Peek another variant of harbor harbour?)

dV

 

[LowtherCastle]

dV, seeing that you had posted in the maintenance thread surely piqued my interest.

Silly me. Should have known better.

 

[da_Vinci]

dV, seeing that you had posted in the maintenance thread surely piqued my interest.

But I thought we had a rule against piquing ...

(The spam factory will now close ... )

dV

 

[Gumbolt]

The search facility on here is dangerous really in terms of SGOTM. I think the rules are laid out very clearly on this matter. Every team member is required to read the rules before playing. So how can anyone claim they didnt know? Fact that one individual or team does something does not make it right for others.

Fact is its difficult to know what advantage a team may have gained by doing this. It does worry me that perhaps some teams have delayed playing their games to possibly abuse this function to gain map knowledge or strategy late game. Its possible also details could be exchanged off forum by means of MSN or other communications like email. This really is quite sad.

I would hope anyone doing this would withdraw from their team to show good faith. Afterall its unfair on those teams who do abide by the rules and play honestly.

What fun is it playing the SGOTM if you need to check other threads by the back door? Wheres the challenge in that?

Sometimes its more about taking part than winning.

 

[AlanH]

We're into the final month of this game. Please review your progress and make appropriate arrangements if you want to finish by the deadline - December 7

 

[BLubmuz]

(...)
What bothers me is the ability to see the first rows of any post.
But this is not blockable, unfortunately.

No one replied on this post of mine in the SGotM 9 thread.

this is quoted from AlanH:

The rules state that you MAY NOT view the discussion threads of any team other than your own.

Reading some row on a member's profile is not like read a thread.

If this was forbidden i surely wouldn't posted offically in my team's thread.
As i said, we gained absolutely nothing by doing this, it was just curiosity.
We are one of the most advanced teams in terms of game time and probably in terms of techs knew.
What the hell can we gain in investigating some row here and there?
For the last time: if i suspected this was cheating, i won't do it. dot.

I'm very curious. Am i sick?

Aside this, discussion closed, please don't bother again with stupid demands.

The only thing i can say is that this can be a new rule to implement for next SG. Now it's not.

Last thing. I did this after i've seen strange people visited a teammate profile. Then i went on mine (for the first time in months) and noticed more strange people.
Many of them were on other SG teams. What would you have thought? That they visited your own profile to see what?

 

[AlanH]

The only thing i can say is that this can be a new rule to implement for next SG. Now it's not

The rule says you may not view the other team discussion threads. Viewing any part of a discussion thread constitutes viewing that thread. The rule needs no amendment.

 

[Mad Professor]

As much as I find BLubmuz's attempted justifications annoying, what I find even more annoying is that he is just the one bold enough to post about it, and there are probably others who are keeping quiet.

The only thing i can say is that this can be a new rule to implement for next SG. Now it's not.

I beg to disagree very strongly. Whatever your interpretation of the rules were, AlanH made it quite clear in this thread very recently, and it looks to me like the subject is closed. AlanH wrote:

"Looking at other team's posts is not permitted. It is forbidden. It doesn't matter how you do it, or where you do it, or whether I can see you do it. It is not allowed." (My emphasis)

What else needs to be said????

Edit: AlanH's quote is from post #72 in this thread