@Bardic_Nerd
The people from DF who are joining Summerdale are there because one player from Summerdale advertised first BM, and then the realm he plays in. He advertised it and that is the sole reason why so many new players in Summerdale. Saying that it is not fair because you didn't think of it first is really poor logic. You should try to advertise Libero Empire somewhere else...who knows, you may get a ton of new players and there is a ton of other forums to promote the game. In the end BM wins as we get a lot of new players. 
On the other hand, we have a player who deliberately exploited a bug in order to gain *substantial* advantage in this war. I really don't agree with the Magistrates about this punishment as it has ton of loopholes and he do as he pleases. You speak about fairness, but is it really fair that the only punishment he got is just gold? After your foes legitimately outsmarted you abd took the most important region of the entire war? The main advantage, region+militia=big advantage, is still there and it will remain to be there. The punishment doesn't affect that at all, and that is bad. We don't correct bugs but we should correct bug exploits...which are, IMO, two different things.
This is just like any other bug in the sense that no one is going to go in and instantly remove all that militia, or revert the region to Summerdale's control. Tom's policy is and has been since I started playing that the results of bugs are not corrected. Sometimes that means you get screwed even once the bug is fixed. Sometimes it means you get a nice little bonus. Sometimes one player gets a bonus at another player's expense. Is that really fair? Nope. But them's the rules. I'm fairly sure this applies to bug exploits as well. If you disagree with that stance, I believe the person to take it up with would be Tom.
In assessing this situation, we determined that this was not a calculated exploit. The player of Orris had no idea that this bug would occur in advance of when it did, nor has he since attempted to reproduce it to his own benefit. The ruling was made because we felt the player had other options than to do what he did, but it's not necessarily clear how well he understood that fact, seeing as he does not appear to be quite as much of a BM junky as those of us who regularly read this forum (and have probably acquired a nuanced understanding of the rules as a result). Either way, we do not feel that this was done with Malice Aforethought. A message has been sent via the warning. As a result this shouldn't happen again (not without much more serious repercussions anyway). So long as the player of Orris makes a good faith effort to remove the additional militia when he can, I do not think that we should do anything else. The only other option we have is locking that player's account. I'm not sure that I see how doing so would render the current situation any more just or palatable for the players in Summerdale (and would also result in you having to wait longer before those militia get disbanded, might I add).
