Gentlemen,
For the first time since I can remember the Election and History Games has a large number of games being played at the moment and a noticeable increase in activity, which I'm rather happy about. However, that also means we've had a rather regrettable case of cheating, as well as a number of other issues.
I've been rather lax moderating the board until now partly because it's not the board that tends to give problems (and since my internet remains limited, I couldn't be as vigilant as I should have been yesterday), so my apologies for that. I'll be far more vigilant now.
Having said, I have a few points to make so there's clarity:
1.- Oversaturation: Great as it is to have many games, too many or too many of the same kind can be more harmful and helpful. Remember that there's only a finite amount of players, energy and interest, and having, for example, too many presidential election games can lead to not having enough players to play those games, which then suffer an early death. The answer to these games not working out is not, I should add, just creating new games until they work.
I can't force people not to make games because that runs against the idea of the board, but I can strongly urge you to consider carefully before starting a game. And if there's five or six games of the same sort, then seriously consider waiting until one of them ends before creating yours.
2.- Needless bumping: I've tolerated it thus far, but this is more or less where I draw the line. It is rather pointless to bump your own games with posts that add nothing but to say "bump" or "bumping for more players", and there's even an argument for that to be considered spam. So don't fall into that, please, or I'll take action.
3.- Cheating: Cheating in games was not against the ToS thus far because, well, no one (to my memory) has been so disrespectful and petty as to try something so dumb. I can't predict whether the ToS will be updated to reflect this new reality (I hope they will), but personally I won't be tolerant on that moving forward. So please, for the sake of some degree of decency, don't even think about cheating.
4.- Behavior: This is some advice, but if another situation emerges in which there are suspicions of cheating or a sock, bring it up immediately in the appropiate place. Post here or in the Atlas Board, PM me or another mod. But don't start a several pages argument of who is and who isn't a sock. It would be easier to solve the problem this way, and thus avoid threads from being derailed.
That's all for now, but I'm sure something else may come up in the future.
Thanks a lot... If only you were doing this weeks ago.
