The following quote contains astronaut jones's explanation of what would have been asked to Sileath in exchange for peace:


I think that AJ just misused the term "joke thread" - posting fake IRC logs isn't necessarily an (IC) "joke" and it isn't thus forbidden by itself - but I'd anyway like to ask/discuss to which point surrender terms can be pushed before they become "illegal".
Asking to someone to do something against the rules would obviously be illegal, but I am not certain about asking to someone to not post on the forums. I believe that trying to prevent anybody to post/participate (yes, even Sileath!) should be prerogative of the moderation team only.
What AJ claims would have been done looks to me as a breach of the "Questionable Actions and Content" Forum Rule - and it's possibly against CN TOS #2 also («Users agree to not engage in extortion of real life possessions of other players in response to in-game situations or vice versa.») - I in fact believe that the usage of these forums has to do with RL rights also (I will spare you my essay on the subject...)
I also find relevant that there is precedent of the Admin stating that "RL should be kept out of peace terms".

Long story short: what are (or should be) the borders of legitimate Surrender Terms? (And of any agreement concluded under the threat of in-game force, for that matter.)

admin did dictate RL must be left out of surrender terms and I don't imagine he'd be pleased to find out players might be effectively banned from posting on his forums by other players through said terms. Besides effectively ruining one of the most interesting parts of the game for an entire alliance, one facet of Moderation decision-making is based on how players conduct themselves while remaining active and if that ability is taken away by other players that throws somewhat of a wrench in our WLR policy.

How is telling someone they can't post as part of surrender terms any different from attacking someone based on their posts? As long as the ban only applies to the IC portions of the forum, I don't see how this has to do with moderation at all. We've just exited an era where it was pretty common to attack people based on their posts on this forum, the moderation team didn't see a need to intervene, and the community corrected itself. I don't see how this concerns moderation at all. As for WLR's, it wouldn't be any different from anyone who applied for WLR and hadn't posted for a month.

Mandatory radio silence (at least in IC forums areas), seems to me to be a legitimate IC demand. Now obviously if this were applied to other forums or OOC forums it would be a problem, but here we have specific forums labeled as IC only. It only makes sense that we be able to use IC pressure in such an IC environment.

As far as warn level reductions go, if they were accrued by rule violations only in IC areas of the forum, could improvement be shown by posting in say, the Water Cooler, where a person might respond quite a bit differently? The "What song are you listening to now" or "Anime Talk" threads offer little opportunity for flame war, after all, while still showing "activity" on the forum by posting in them. If that's the case, barring someone from IC subforums could be a little problematic.

I wasn't aware that OOC surrender terms were against the rules. Does this rule apply to the Fark-IROK beer term?

-Bama

I think that was more of a joke term that some people chose to do for fun.

Really, I personally think disallowing someone from posting in an IC area of the forum because of terms is a bit over the line because you do force them to be ICly removed from the forum community. With most of the game being in the OWF IC area's, it really takes a way an integral part of the game. In my opinion (and many others may agree with me here), being able to participate in the IC forums gives me another reason to stay in this game.

With all due respect, Fark seemed to take the whole issue of the reviews rather seriously. Indeed they were offended that IRON wouldn't "play along".

As to the question at hand, treaties are signed on a daily basis that limit speech. For example, a clause in almost every PIAT demands that the signatories remain "respectful to each other in the forums". No one seems to have a problem with this. Indeed, treaties have been canceled because individual members were not respectful, even if they were speaking for themselves and not for their alliance.

As to a treaty/surrender terms clause that would completely prohibit posting in the IC forums for a time...that would seem to cross a line. I *could* however see a treaty that would demand that the surrendering nation/alliance remain respectful to the victorious nation/alliance while the terms were still in place. That would be just a variation of the "respect" clause in a PIAT or other treaty of friendship. Perhaps that would be a nice compromise.

I think that requesting that someone doesn't post on the forums as part of surrender terms is a legimitate term. If the person surrendering isn't happy with it, they don't have to accept terms.

Me too. Apparently we were wrong.

-Bama

I also think it's fine. I thought viceroys with forum access were fine too.

The game stops being fun when we nitpick and find loopholes which would let us disallow certain actions that might be tough to deal with while playing the game.

ChairmanHal brings up a good point, we have precedent for treatys limiting the usage of the Open World Forum.

To expand on his point, with the proper writing of terms one can basically make it impossible for the defeated to post on the forums. For example, if Alliance A has a PIAT (with respect clause) with Alliance B and people from Alliance A troll Alliance B, then Alliance B is justified in breaking the PIAT due to postings on these forums.

Now for surrender terms, I can just throw the same respect clause in there and wait for a member of the defeated alliance to have a bad day, log into the game and shoot his or her mouth off on the forums, and low and behold I have a surrender terms violation, so I can cancel the surrender terms or punish the defeated for their 'infraction.'

It is basically the same use case, just swap PIAT for Surrender Terms or vice versa. If the victors really want to silence an entire alliance they just make those 'respect' terms so strict its next to impossible to post anything of substance without breaking the terms and they've hit de facto radio silence. Since the forums are in character it means you can face in game attacks for your posts on them, so it makes sense that treaties can govern behavior on the forums to a degree.

Now in the special case of the recent FARK-IRON terms and the posting requirements I could see banning such terms because they required an out of game action (drinking beer, eating bacon, playing a video game), but you can't really ban them for IC posting requirements.

As a final note it seems like a good idea for certian alliances to lay low after winning or losing. We've recently see few alliances exit wars and promptly shoot themselves in their foot, so really making them run under radio silence might have actually been in their benefit. So telling people to stay off the forums isn't a cruel and unheard of punishment.

If the administrative staff is concerned perhaps the policy should focus on setting a limit for how long terms can last such as radio silence. Also I'd like note that the root forum of Alliance Politics is listed as an OOC section, so no one can be banned IC from posting there. This area is a fairly busy area and often features topics that are somewhat IC and somewhat OOC. That area can easily serve as an area for defeated alliance members to post OOC commentary on the state of the game and voice the views of the player, if not their character.

Agreed with this.

People have always been held accountable for what they post in the IC forums, it's a huge part of the game. I don't see how attacking someone for posting on the IC sub forums (regardless of said post's contents) is any more of a violation of the rules than attacking someone who insults your alliance there. Alliance leaders gag their members all the time (with the potential punishment of being removed from their alliance if they post).

At the end of the day, no player can force another player off of the forums with any threat of IC action. If someone is under constant attack for what they are saying on the forums then they should handle it as the IC persecution that it is. The only point at which that becomes OOC is if they are attacked for posts in the OOC sections of the forums (which probably happens anyway but is impossible to police).

Your argument implies a reasoning of the kind "anything that can't be materially imposed musts be legitimate".
If that was correct extorting donations would be legitimate, but since it is instead forbidden your reasoning musts be wrong.
(Your conclusion may be correct, but it can't be because of your logic - that is necessarily wrong.)

The point (IMO) is: what is OOC and thus "off limits", and what can instead be allowed? In other words / for example: to what extent can IC actions affect anybody's ability to interact with these forums?

The IC forums are IC. If someone were gagged from speaking in those IC forums at the threat of war IC, then I feel the term is fair. This means the same player may speak at will in the OWF and can bash the other alliance all he/she wants there because that forum is OOC.

There was a time when NPO was at war, wouldn't allow anyone to leave, but at the same time was on radio silence. If you would have left you would have been attacked. Effectively doing the same thing.

Many good points on both sides for sure.

It's true that the nations being offered the terms can choose not to surrender if there's a "no posting" clause, making this different than someone attempting a forced takeover of forums. It could be an IC gag order if players are not disallowed posting in the OOC areas. Are they typically only banned from posting in IC forums?

When considering Warn Level Reduction requests we do prefer players stay active in the areas they've previously had the most problems with to demonstrate they have learned how to hold it together when faced with the situations most contentious to them personally.

Here's a clarification of the Viceroy/forum policy: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?s...mp;#entry783646.

Alliances always had the "option" to not take the surrender terms including a viceroy. But, yet that was banned. So in theory, yes, they could reject the terms, but likely it would mean further destruction, just like the viceroy issue.

Dear god this was a good topic from Jerdge. A very good question.

At one hand we want everyone to be able to participate in the forum, the discussions and be active members of the Cybernations community. Something that wouldn't be compatible with allowing surrender terms restricting forum access for players.

On the other hand I tried to see this from a RL/IC perspective. Could it be compared to a nation completely blocking another nation from participating on the International Arena? Well yes, in my opinion it could. Although that only would be reasonable if IC-forums such as the alliance one was blocked.

Oh well. More arguments please! You need to convince us stubborn moderators.

So long as its restricted to only the Alliance Politics and the like (let the RPers keep RPing, etc.), seems perfectly IC. Consider too that the community seems to do a good job self-regulating these things, as an alliance issuing such a term would have a rocky path in doing so.

You don't see many nations attacking other's for participating on the international scene either in real life. You see embargo's and blockades, but you rarely see them actually preventing statements from that nation from being said. In real life, no nation is truly disallowed from participating in the international scene because of the media outlets there are in this world.

To disallow nations from being able to interact with the community takes away a certain aspect of the game, much like having a viceroy did. Being disallowed from participating IC breeds boredom in people, and boredom leads people to logging in less and less and caring less and less about the game and community. This game lives off of the IC community interaction on these forums, not IG interaction via PM's. I see it as a term that hurts the game more than it not having an effect.


Another point, and to go off of what Sword of Estel said, if someone has had warns in any IC section (barring the RP section of the forum) and terms say one cannot post in the OWF area of the forums then I believe the alliance imposing the terms hurts the player's chances of getting a WLR because they do not have the activity to show a change in behavior.

@SoE's question: Gags are dependent on the alliance issuing the IC gag, but as far as I know they limit it to the OWF.

The trouble with the viceroy issue was that it was demanding the change of ownership of RL property (namely the alliance forums of the defeated alliance) which was already against the rules. As far as I'm aware, it's hypothetically still perfectly legal to install a viceroy as part of surrender terms, they just cannot demand that the viceroy be given access to the off-site forums of the surrendering alliance.

I always thought the lack of viceroys since then was due more to the general change of what the community deems acceptable in character. In the sense that those characters who imposed viceroys we criticised horribly and their actions we met with IC war and/or extremely bad PR. So alliances stopped doing it not because they weren't allowed to, but because it carried very bad in game consequences for them.

[edit]
In my experience, yes.

I think that a condition of surrender requiring a defeated opponent to refrain from posting in in-character sections of the forum for a period of time is actually a legitimate use of roleplaying and should be allowed. In "RL" situations, nations sometimes try to force other nations to be "cut-off from the rest of the world", a phrase that is used when imposing sanctions and other forms of punishment against a country or countries. That is not an exact parallel with surrender terms, but global isolation is certainly a real world tactic, so I think it should be an in-character option, too. I was struck that in general, people don't seem offended when a losing party is forced to post particular words or face further aggression. What is the difference between not being allowed to post, or only being allowed to post exactly what you are told to post? The latter actually seems worse than the former, because when someone posts it gives an air of legitimacy to what they are saying is their own beliefs, when in fact it may not be...Also, bigwoody makes a good point- folks that deal out terms that are seen as harsh by the majority will suffer for it (at least eventually).

Why do I have the impression that you're surprised?


At this point I would say that gag orders of any kind in OOC forums should be regarded as a no-no, as they relate to a RL faculty rather than to an in-game affair.
Gag orders in IC forums could be part of a legitimate play - with all the possible negative PR and whatnot - but they certainly harm the game, as Voodoo Nova eloquently explained.
The negative PR isn't anyway a decisive argument against the necessity of an intervention of the Mods, otherwise posting porn wouldn't need to be a warnable offence.

(Ok, maybe I didn't pick the best example, you maniacs...)

On the other hand, considering the issue from an IC perspective, banning something that is "IC politics" isn't a neat way to protect the game from harm. (BigKat also has a good point.)


Maybe a good compromise would be to consider gag orders illegitimate, but to allow IC gag orders on specific topics and for a limited amount of time (e.g. "don't comment on the alliances ABC and XYZ for three months", or the classic "no MNO member under the rank of ... is allowed to post in this thread").
About the enforcing, other than policing the in-game/forum PMs and forum posts, the remaining of our channels of communication would probably be outside of the Mods' jurisdiction - but on the other hand "recommended" guidelines would have an extremely high chance to be respected by a very vast majority of players even outside of said jurisdiction.

Well, I don't think the mods will want to push guidelines that will effect issues outside of their jurisdiction (like someone elses forums, and excluding using IC action to control RL property). I think the main focus on enforcing such a rule would be to do the same thing that the mods have done to help curb viceroy's. If an alliance had been given that term, just talk to a moderator about it. Other than that, it'd be difficult to enforce the term otherwise.

Well, strictly speaking, the issue would be within their jurisdiction when the practical effect of not respecting a "gag order" would be in-game repercussions. Just like the selling of one's nation on eBay wouldn't happen in their jursdiction, but they'd delete that one's nation nonetheless should they find out about the transaction.
Anyway, I'm going off-topic thus I stop it here...

The topic did include surrender terms and OOC limits, so the example was fine (I would think anyways, I could be wrong ). With the first example, that would be within their jurisdiction because it involves in-game repercussions, but unfortunately, it would be fairly difficult to enforce (in my opinion) because they could be saying they're attacking the nation for other reasons.

my opinion on this is essentially that there is established precedent for wars occurring because of posts made in the IC forums. There is also an established precedent set for peace terms to include posts in the IC forums (surrenders, beer reviews, etc etc). I don't think that it is too much of an extension of this for surrender terms to include a lack of posts in the IC forums, so long limits to posting activity were neither excessive nor forums-wide. I would see a limit of one month as probably being the maximum acceptable limitation in this regard. I would furthermore only find this acceptable as a term for individuals rather than alliances.

Note that this is not a surrender term I would use or want to use.

Well, the thing is, limit it to one way and it could be used another way. You could easily name the entire alliance individually, except for one or two people in the alliance. Would that be acceptable? Time limits could also be abused in such a manner, because most terms do not end in a month on CN. It's a decent thought, but personally I feel that if there is going to be a limit, it shouldn't be allowed as a term because you are taking someone's OOC privilege allowed by admin and saying he/she can't do it.

What does people think of the solution that'd we'd treat this exactly the same way we treat PZI/ZI. We leave it up to the community to decide if it's acceptable or not?

Or does the two cases differ too much because one is forum-related and the other takes place in-game with tools that the great admin has given to the players?




I didn't mean it like that

Well, I can see as appropriate a community driven "solution" for IC forums (a complete ban of the practice, allowing intra-alliance gag orders only, time limits, etc - whatever the community developed); but OOC forums would be "RL" and should thus be protected by the staff, IMHO.

Sorry, I wasn't being clear. Yes, I meant the IC forums.

I think the two cases differ quite a bit. PZI/ZI is in game wars, with reasons being whatever the war declaration is. Surrender terms saying "you can't post here" is almost like playing moderator to a degree.

A couple of quotes from today that seem relevant to this topic as well:

I agree with Atlas that this is something that should be left up to the community to police.

This might be a good idea in theory, but will ultimately be impossible to regulate or actually implement effectively.

If someone can present an workable way this can be done without moderation effectively interfering with IC actions which have gone on for many years (many alliances actually perform self restricted forum posting) then I might change my opinion; until then, I cannot even consider supporting this.

I agree with this post to.


Ide also like to point out, as someone else did earlyer, that we are coming out of an era where people were attacked for IC posts, and in some cases OOC posts/reasons. The world didnt like that, and rose up to defeat the people who did it. Its sorta that way with a lot of the aspects in this game.

There was a point where people wouldnt launch nukes in wars, now the community accepts it.
At a point tech raiding wasnt as wide spread, now it is.
At a point people didnt need protectorates to keep from being attacked, now they do.

Its the natural evolution of the game IMO. Things constantly change with the way the community accepts the game and how people act. Whos to tell that next month there wont be a war over tech raids? Or IRC reasons? Or Wiki even.

OOC should be protected, but IC should be left to the players to decide.

The point in discussion is not about policing war declarations or interfering with any IC action. It's about banning IC-enforced deals (read: Surrender Terms and similar, mainly) that involve limiting one's ability to post in the (ooc) forums.

The idea is that one that obtained surrender terms that involved such a limitation to post couldn't publish the terms on this board without getting warned/"moderated" - thus making it pointless to ask for the term in the first place (one would hope).
Just like surrender terms that give root admin access to someone else's forum are already illegal according to the ToS/rules.

Now, one could at this point discuss the possibility of obtaining and enforcing terms without having them published here (aka: "secret" terms); but that can't be ground for affirming the uselessness of a ban of the type that is being discussed. Otherwise it would be also "useless" to ban multies, as trying to keep them unknown to the staff is possible (and probably much easier, if you think of it...)

Master-debater was showing other examples of the community policing itself, I think he's aware that isn't what this topic is about.

Our point, is that you shouldn't get warned or have moderator interference in such a surrender term, it should be up to the community to decide how to deal with it. Banning people from posting on IC sections of the forum is in no way different from attacking people for posts made on the boards. Since the latter is allowed by the mods, it doesn't make sense the former wouldn't be.

It is different. By banning people from posting on the forums you prevent them from bringing their story to the public and as we have seen lately, public opinion can have an effect on how things turn out.

It is nothing more than one more childish bulling might makes right tactic used to threaten people.

If you don't like how some people post you already have options to take care of that. You can debate them, if they step over the line you can report them, if you just can't stand to read their posts you can put them on ignore. Just because you don't like what they post doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same way.

A number of alliances prohibit their own members from posting on the CN forums. If that's prohibited as a clause in surrender terms, it also calls into question whether alliances can restrict their membership in the same way voluntarily.

I wasn't replying to MD specifically.
I think we can agree with gag orders about IC forums (I don't agree with such gag orders, but I can accept that it's not an issue for the Mods). I think that the most delicate issue is when gag orders are about OOC forums (Open World RP included).


That also comes into question; I personally think that gag orders for OOC forums should be considered warnable offences anyway, not to mention how stupid they are most of the times, but anyway it's a slightly different situation: in most occasions one can leave an alliance without in-game military reprisals - and when there are it is for issues unrelated to this one (say, state of war for the alliance) - while not bending to surrender terms is generally met with in-game use of force.
Long story short, if you don't like your alliance's gag orders you can (generally) leave unharmed. If you don't like the gag orders in your surrender terms you can't generally leave without "consequences".

It isn't different. You can't actually ban people from posting unless you're a mod, meaning that what it actually is, is that if you post, you get attacked. That's the same as the other scenario, you post, you get attacked.

I think there's consensus that banning people from OOC parts of the forum is over the line.

The line is clear:

When a Pacifican has a term that requires MK to make 10 images for PNN, even though PNN is an IC media conglomorate that covers IC events and would have used the images in an IC manner, that is crossing the OOC line and the term is thrown out.

When Fark requires IRON to drink IRL beer and give IC reports on the IRL beer they spent IRL money on, that is clearly within character.

If you're not going to make a constructive post, don't post here at all.

Posting bias claims will only end in your warning level increasing.

I agree with the idea that restrictions on forum posts should be limited to only certain forums, but IC vs OOC isn't a very good line. Fantasy RP is IC, but a completely different kind of IC than Alliance Announcements. And Open World RP itself (not the two sub forums) isn't generally considered IC but pertains directly to IC politics.

I think that everybody thought that that IRON-Fark term was just a joke and thus nobody cared to report it (at least, that's what I thought at the time). Fark's later behaviour on the issue (complaints and whatnot, IIRC), didn't drive to any IC repercussion either, thus they were probably just complaining for IRON not displaying "enough" OOC sense of humour.
If Fark had tried to actually push the issue In Game/Character, and/or they had attacked IRON because of it, that would have been wrong and (ITT) warnable. In fact, Fark should have probably made it clear that it was a joke (if it was that) and you're correct that such terms should be avoided, or at least clearly marked as OOC/jokes to avoid any confusion.

(Last but not least, when you see something that you think is not legit it's a good idea to just report it... If you did it, I withdraw this comment and I apologize for it.)

That's the only real logical step. PZI/EZI was intended to keep the player from playing the game completely. They could "still play" but that's also true if someone rejects surrender terms requiring them to not post.

No the differnce is the origin of the order, the bolded part of the TOS was "Users agree to not engage in extortion of real life possessions of other players in response to in-game situations or vice versa."

So when you join an alliance you volunteer to submit to that alliances authority structure, including gag orders. The issue here is consent and duress. There is no extortion, becuase you volunteered to do it.

When an alliance is defeated in combat surrender terms are always signed under duress, take them or keep bleeding, A gag order as part of surrender terms is extortion because there is a threat behind them.

Its the differnce between volunteering for military service, and getting drafted.



The names of the people, and the usage of the images aren't important. Graphic design takes time and effort, time and effort that are very much OOC. The end usage of the images might be IC, but their creation process sure isn't. I can RP running a graphic design shop all I want but without some OOC time and effort my shop will never produce anything no matter how successful I claim it to be.

T also takes OOC time and effort to write an IC apology, organize reparations, and decom your military.