I do not see accusations of cheating in the letters made available thus far. More like indirect accusations of abuse and/or a lack of fair play.
This is the equivelant of plugging your ears, closing your eyes, and screaming "I can't hear you! Na na na!" There is a very clear accusation of violation of the Fair Play clause here. Made in public, possibly without evidence, which if true is
undeniably a violation. I quote ยง2.5 of the Social Contract (emphasis mine): "Do not publicly accuse anyone of cheating,
abuses or violations of this contract without proof or evidence."
Background information can be useful. It could be ironic in this case but 'exploiting loopholes' could also be seen as 'playing within the laws as set by the game'. It can be a point of view. I was around when that happened.
There is little relevant context to this, and no excuse. There was active and intentional exploitation of bugs in the game to further specific goals. As one of the people who investigated the issue, I can speak on this with authority.
That said, the evidence would be almost impossible to produce.
In what way? For the Vanimedle player to make these claims without violation of the social Contract he must have evidence of absence. That is, he must have evidence that the secession in question was planned with little to no IC interaction, which is certainly provable (and also falsifiable).
Nothing wrong with this.
...unless the planning occured largely out of game, in which case it is a violation of the Fair Play clause. This is therefor a public accusation that the players involved were violating the Social Contract.
Public accusations, with or without proof probably does more harm than good.
Irrelevant. As Magistrates it is our job to judge according to the current rules and policies:
not to create our own.
Rulers channel (for example) would normally be 'private' from an IG perspective but would be public from an OOC perspective as they are considered other players whom you would be accusing in front of.
To this I quote a portion of the Government rules: "Do not encourage or tolerate cheating and abuses of the game rules in your realm. If you learn of any cheating going on, immediately inform us privately or on the mailing list. If you are certain, then have your ruler use the OOC Ban function." As the rulers on the island, the players on the ruler channel have a responsibility to report violations and enforce the rules as well they can. To say that these players, who are already given this responbility, cannot discuss current situations amongst themselves is absurd.
Some 'off topic discussion' providing background information on prior events could be relevant as extenuating circumstances.
We are not judging past action. We are judging only the one at hand. No extenuating circumstances ever validate violation of either the Inalienable Rights or the Social Contract. Please stop encouraging derailment of the thread.
We need David . D's input.
I wholly agree.
