Gentlemen and Gentleladies,

I refer back to a previous post of mine. If you look back into the historical progress of Diplomacy as a game then it becomes easier to situate this particular issue within its context. The platform where we play Diplomacy has changed over time, and when looking at it's evolution we can see where some of the hesitation towards accepting certain features arise from.

This community has not been without it's controversies. I refer back to the great WTA v PPSC debate, and earlier discussions surrounding Gunboat v Full Press games. The Moderation team has been reluctant to step in and provide a definitive response to this new discussion precisely because it is because ideas that can better the site often arise from such debates. For instance in the WTA v PPSC debate we found a solution to the problem by devising a new vPoint system. As a part of the Gunboat v Full Press topic Gray-Press as a variant arose. This wouldn't have arisen without members expressing their opinions and making suggestions about how they feel this site could be improved.

To re-iterate, the CYOC option is simply that, an option that allows people to choose their own country during game startup. It was implemented due to another forum debate to deal with the enormous time burden that swapping countries was taking up for the mod-admin team - this site hosts regular SRG tournaments, many of which require certain countries to be chosen specifically for this purpose. Especially 1v1 tournaments - it was developed through the majority of the member's desire to see such a function implemented.

The mod-admin team do not accept the assumption that choosing your own country automatically equates to cheating. In fact the only way that this could be considered cheating in the very real sense of meta-gaming is that if a pattern of alliances existed between sets of players on this site. In reality this is actually a rare phenomenon in the greater scheme of things. Players report to us suspicious behaviour, and we have a large array of tools at our disposal to assess whether or not meta-gaming is occurring.

Another concern is that players are using the CYOC feature as a tool in which to pre-arrange alliances and start early discussions regarding tactics in-game. I can categorically say that this IS NOT happening on this site, as PM records and in-game chats attest to this fact.

This site has been running for just over 4 years now, and to date we have only banned just over 120 accounts in that time. Just where this 'cheating' reputation arises from I do not know, as other more 'reputable' sites like webDip bans well over that amount of users PER MONTH.

The open-source software that kestas programmed for quick interactive adjudication of the game Diplomacy, is precisely that - open-source - and because of this it is within the purview of the Diplomacy community to take that open-source software and develop it in whatever way they see fit, provided it remains open-source and appropriate credit given.

This site vDiplomacy, is part of that project. It provides a functional sand-box environment for the purposes of developing code, and the realisation of variants for it's users. Other language sites have since 'cherry-picked' elements from vDip and applied this to their own situation, as far as I know there are dedicated servers offering Russian. Spanish and German iterations of the code that has been developed here on this site.

The CYOC option is an option. You can choose to participate in a game that has this enabled, just as you can choose to participate in a gunboat game or not, or a WTA or PPSC game. Your choice. We are not going to disable this option for the community.

However we are looking issues and some fixes that have been raised in this discussion, that will address the concerns raised. A prime example is in making the CYOC an anonymous choice until the game has started (if it is a non-anon game), as we feel that unless the intent to cheat the system via meta-gaming is already present then this should eliminate nearly all of the peripheral concerns raised in this thread surrounding the CYOC option.

Please remember that we are an open site that tries to facilitate players from all walks of life. But it is also a developmental site, whose part aim is to explore the possible avenues for the development of the original code that kestas created. In my opinion this is the most exciting place to be in the development of on-line Diplomacy at this present time. We currently host more variants and more options than any other site I know of, and we have an active community that isn't frightened to raise concerns about what they perceive as a 'threat' to the hobby. This creates a wonderful dynamic that we here on the mod-admin team cherish and is in a large part why we dedicate our free time to ensuring that this site remains a fun and interesting place to be and play games on.