Rule Addition Regarding Hiding Identity from Staff

[zoraster]

The following has been added to the site rules:

You may not hide your identity from the site administrators and moderators acting in their official capacity. Users should register their alternate accounts ("alts") as alts (here for help), and they should not register with fake emails, exclusively use proxies, or use other methods to hide their identity. Doing so will be reason in itself to remove you from the site.

This is not an attempt to stop users from using alternate accounts, but with this rule we want to clarify that for administrative purposes, we need to know which accounts are linked. If you accidentally register your account as a main, don't fret (it's easy to accidentally do if you mess up part of the form), just post in the alt activation thread or PM a mod. We may inquire as to your identity if there's some confusion.

Also, this isn't intended to necessarily stop users from using proxies

so long as the proxies aren't hiding your identity from us

. In other words, if your alt is known and registered there's no problem with using proxies or registering with a different email address. It's just when we believe you are attempting to deceive us in our official duties that there is a problem.

To be clear, it's not a problem to act like a different person on an alt in a game even if there's a staff member playing the game, though as we've stated before, you should not attempt to get around another player or game mod's "blacklist" by using an alt. Also, it's worth noting that while staff members shouldn't use their position to try to gain an advantage in a game, their official duties may mean they discover your identity.

Last, keep in mind that certain areas of the site, such as The Speakeasy/GTKAS and Newbie Games have their own rules about alternate accounts.

[zoraster]

Zoraster, can we talk legal precedent for a moment?

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 0#p7096589

Given mods have been reprimanded for revealing hidden alts in games prior, where is the stance of the moderation team on this?

Because "Also, it's worth noting that while staff members shouldn't use their position to try to gain an advantage in a game, their official duties may mean they discover your identity." makes it sound an awful lot like "mods won't go out of their way to look you up but if they happen to be privy to some knowledge that they wouldn't otherwise, fair game?

Like I just want to know what the standard moderation response to "A Moderator has revealed who I am to the other players in my game while I was playing on an alt" will be.

It's a good question. A moderator shouldn't reveal who you are to others in your game. Generally their power of detection should be kept to themselves (and other mods) in their official capacity. Part of the problem before was revealing a secret identity to the game in general. The problem wasn't that the mod himself knew the identity of a secret alt.

[zoraster]

Game mods are welcome to exclude staff members if they want to make absolutely sure those playing on secret alts won't be known to other users.

For what it's worth, Site Chat mods don't have the ability to tell alts.

[zoraster]

Yeah, we're not interested in knowing who you REALLY are. I don't care that you're Sir Rhinox of Middleford the III in real life or whatever. All I want to do is link your accounts for official purposes. Primarily this is for enforcing bans and establishing a pattern of behavior from the same user. For example, compare three completely different people who post an abusive message toward a user vs. three alts from the same user posting abusive messages toward a user. The former might end up in warnings for those three people. The latter might warrant heavier action as it's a pattern of behavior.

There are some secondary benefits like making it easier to catch cheaters, making sure that those marked as newbies in newbie games aren't actually established users, and so forth.

The simple truth is that the change in rule may seem large, but it's pretty minor. Few people work to hide their identity in a way that is the primary driver, and almost all of them are banned users.

[zoraster]

Everyone on the staff, including me, is on some sort of timeline to retiring. That's just the deal with a volunteer gig (also death comes for us all unless you're Yosarian2). People doing the job aren't "compensated" with the ability to tell alts. They wouldn't have the power to do so if I didn't think it was necessary for performing our duties. But it absolutely is, so they absolutely will retain the ability to do so.

[zoraster]

I'm doing a fair bit of stuff behind the scenes that takes up my time here, but if someone wants to check to see if we've had more no-hydra games after our subtle change in policy regarding them on April 18th? It'd require looking at maybe... 6 months before and the 6 months after and see the rates at which either (a) hydras weren't allowed or (b) hydras didn't play as both are useful metrics.

[zoraster]

that's my guess too and the intended purpose, but don't have much to truly back that up other than a moment to moment anecdotal look.

[zoraster]

he most certainly is.