Spock asked me to look at the PV situation. Since he gave me free hands I will look at the complete situation starting with people who parked on the planet and ending with Ardbeg's posts. Note: this doesn't mean that anyone's behaviour is questionable, it simply means that those issues received a lot of attention on the WB and need to be looked at to clear the innocent and punish the guilty.
I already have a lot of information on this issue, but if anyone wants to put their 2(or more) cents in, they are welcome. I would especially like to see some kind of timeline. I would also like to talk to the people involved.
If you would like to tell me something, email me at cl4proze@cling.gu.se
If you prefer, I will be in #smr for the next few hours and on ICQ 67868693, msn blum_@hotmail.com
I expect to come to a decision by tomorrow morning (that's in approximately 22 hours), but if I decide I have all the required information, I'll make my decision earlier.
The PV situation
I received a couple of emails about the issue and I would like to thank everyone who contributed.
First, I would like to explain what rules I am acting under.
While bug abuse is not against the rules as they stand (needs to be fixed), it is quite clear that it is against the spirit of the game. Therefore I will assume that there is such a rule and that I have complete freedom in determining the punishment. At the same time I would like to urge people responsible to add a rule regarding bug abuse with appropriate punishment.
Another issue is that two of the people investigated hold positions of responsibility with the community, namely Ardbeg as a moderator and PV as an administrator. If either is found guilty (and probably even if they are found innocent) there will be people questioning whether they are fit to keep those positions. Since I believe that admin positions depend solely on Spock's trust and moderator positions depend solely on webboard admin's trust I will not comment those issues any further.
Now, let's get to the facts.
1.A bug that made it impossible to attack planets was discovered.
2.Sterling and several other players found an unclaimed planet, killed people who were on it, claimed it and landed.
Some time passed....
3.Bug was fixed
Some more time passed.
4.PV announced the fix on the webboard.
5.PV and some other players attacked the planet and killed whoever was on it.
6.Cheating accusations were voiced on the webboard loudly and repeatedly by Ardbeg.
Those are the facts as I see it. Some things are not quite clear. For example, I have been unable to get any information on when PV found out about the bug being fixed. Was it soon after 3. or just before 4.?
Now, let's look at the issues in chronological order.
First, Sterling and Co. Landing on a planet and claiming it is normal procedure. Of course, some people prefer to keep it unclaimed, to lower the risk of the planet being busted just to check, but there are different theories on that issue. What makes it all slightly more suspicious is the fact that the planet was in enemy galaxy, but that is explained by the fact that Sterling was low on turns. Something that I find much harder to explain is this:
PV: PV is a member of the admin team. For that reason he has access to information that regular mortals don't have so abuse of such information would be a very serious offense. At the same time it is not his responsibility to post updates on code changes and bug fixes. This is promarily the responsibility of whoever uploads the change to live, but that hasn't been followed in the past.
Let's look at how PV handled the issue. He received information and he posted it on the webboard (since there is no evidence of the contrary, I will assume that he did so within reasonable time). According to the information I have, he discovered the fact that Sterling & Co were parked on the planet after that. He went and busted the planet.
Of course this is not the ideal solution. It would've been much better to make an ingame announcement. Regarding the rest of his behaviour, I see no problem. Giving out newbie turns and making time limits before you can attack planets would only benefit people who parked only because planets were unbustable and those shouldn't be benefitted. The only people who were negatively affected by the bug were the ones who wanted to bust and couldn't and they gain nothing from a newbie turn and time delays. Therefore I see no problem with the rest of his behaviour. Regarding announcement, it was not his responsibility and there is no policy for posting updates(there should be one) so I see no reason for any punishment.
Ardbeg: Ardbeg's posts were clearly inappropriate. The correct action would've been to take it up with Spock, privately. Looking at his posts I would place his behaviour somewhere between Rule I.4 and Rule I.5 (see http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?t=5135 ). Since they give the same punishment I see no reason to decide which one it is.
As promised earlier, I will now try to decide Sterling's punishment. To do that, I need to decide how bug abuse rates vs other offenses and how Sterling's abuse rates vs other possible abuses. While I could write pages about the subject, I believe that arguments at this point would unduly influence their decision about how the rules on that issue should look. Therefore I'll try to keep it short.
While bug abuse is a serious problem, the range of the abuse, and it's effects can vary a lot. In this case, the abuse had no in-game effect and it's largest effect was me writing this post. For that reason I believe that a minor punishment is sufficient.
So, my conclusion is: Ardbeg gets 10 points, Sterling gets 10 points, the coders need a system for announcing updates and rules need to be updated to include bug abuse. This is my last post on the issue.
First, I would like to explain what rules I am acting under.
While bug abuse is not against the rules as they stand (needs to be fixed), it is quite clear that it is against the spirit of the game. Therefore I will assume that there is such a rule and that I have complete freedom in determining the punishment. At the same time I would like to urge people responsible to add a rule regarding bug abuse with appropriate punishment.
Another issue is that two of the people investigated hold positions of responsibility with the community, namely Ardbeg as a moderator and PV as an administrator. If either is found guilty (and probably even if they are found innocent) there will be people questioning whether they are fit to keep those positions. Since I believe that admin positions depend solely on Spock's trust and moderator positions depend solely on webboard admin's trust I will not comment those issues any further.
Now, let's get to the facts.
1.A bug that made it impossible to attack planets was discovered.
2.Sterling and several other players found an unclaimed planet, killed people who were on it, claimed it and landed.
Some time passed....
3.Bug was fixed
Some more time passed.
4.PV announced the fix on the webboard.
5.PV and some other players attacked the planet and killed whoever was on it.
6.Cheating accusations were voiced on the webboard loudly and repeatedly by Ardbeg.
Those are the facts as I see it. Some things are not quite clear. For example, I have been unable to get any information on when PV found out about the bug being fixed. Was it soon after 3. or just before 4.?
Now, let's look at the issues in chronological order.
First, Sterling and Co. Landing on a planet and claiming it is normal procedure. Of course, some people prefer to keep it unclaimed, to lower the risk of the planet being busted just to check, but there are different theories on that issue. What makes it all slightly more suspicious is the fact that the planet was in enemy galaxy, but that is explained by the fact that Sterling was low on turns. Something that I find much harder to explain is this:
This shows that Sterling's behaviour was clearly motivated by the bug and that he would've behaved in different way if there was no bug. I view that as bug abuse. Since there is no evidence whether the rest of his team shared Sterling's reasoning or stayed just to protect him, I can't pass judgement againt them. I will return to punishment later in this post.Sterling(http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?t=5326) wrote: I was online for a very long time waiting for the bug to be fixed. If i had gotten some warning I would've gotten out of dodge. I thought appropriate measures would have been taken to announce the fix (as has been done on EVERY OTHER bug fix).
PV: PV is a member of the admin team. For that reason he has access to information that regular mortals don't have so abuse of such information would be a very serious offense. At the same time it is not his responsibility to post updates on code changes and bug fixes. This is promarily the responsibility of whoever uploads the change to live, but that hasn't been followed in the past.
Let's look at how PV handled the issue. He received information and he posted it on the webboard (since there is no evidence of the contrary, I will assume that he did so within reasonable time). According to the information I have, he discovered the fact that Sterling & Co were parked on the planet after that. He went and busted the planet.
Of course this is not the ideal solution. It would've been much better to make an ingame announcement. Regarding the rest of his behaviour, I see no problem. Giving out newbie turns and making time limits before you can attack planets would only benefit people who parked only because planets were unbustable and those shouldn't be benefitted. The only people who were negatively affected by the bug were the ones who wanted to bust and couldn't and they gain nothing from a newbie turn and time delays. Therefore I see no problem with the rest of his behaviour. Regarding announcement, it was not his responsibility and there is no policy for posting updates(there should be one) so I see no reason for any punishment.
Ardbeg: Ardbeg's posts were clearly inappropriate. The correct action would've been to take it up with Spock, privately. Looking at his posts I would place his behaviour somewhere between Rule I.4 and Rule I.5 (see http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?t=5135 ). Since they give the same punishment I see no reason to decide which one it is.
As promised earlier, I will now try to decide Sterling's punishment. To do that, I need to decide how bug abuse rates vs other offenses and how Sterling's abuse rates vs other possible abuses. While I could write pages about the subject, I believe that arguments at this point would unduly influence their decision about how the rules on that issue should look. Therefore I'll try to keep it short.
While bug abuse is a serious problem, the range of the abuse, and it's effects can vary a lot. In this case, the abuse had no in-game effect and it's largest effect was me writing this post. For that reason I believe that a minor punishment is sufficient.
So, my conclusion is: Ardbeg gets 10 points, Sterling gets 10 points, the coders need a system for announcing updates and rules need to be updated to include bug abuse. This is my last post on the issue.