Rights: Responsibilities: Rules:You may only have one account, second accounts are not allowed under any circumstances, and will be banned. This may also lead to your first account also being banned. If you forget your password, use the lost password finder here. If you are still unable to log in, contact the mods.
Metagaming is when you make a decision in a game for reasons outside the game. For example, you cannot make alliances because you are friends/relatives or in return for a favor in another game (cross-game alliances), because such an alliance would give an unfair advantage to those involved. Metagaming is unfair to all the other members involved with the games, so these offenses are taken very seriously.
The decision about whether a player has or has not cheated and the consequences to be given lie solely with the Mod/Admin Team. All accusations against other players must be made directly to the Mod/Admin Team, in private, reporting your concerns on the ModForum.
Any cheating accusation made anywhere else are considered "Public" and will be punished, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the accusation. A "accusation" is any statement (true or false) which claims, suggests, implies, or hints that another player is guilty of an action or activity not allowed by the site rules.
Any attempts to bend the definition of 'public cheating accusation' are expressly forbidden.
A public cheating accusation can be perceived as cheating if it gives the accuser an advantage in a game (such as convincing other players to attack the so-called cheater, or to vote for cancel if the accuser is doing poorly, etc...). In such a case the accuser is trying to gain an unfair advantage, so punishments are harsher than normal policy and can lead to a ban.
Lying is fine in Diplomacy except when it gives mods/admins unnecessary work to do!
Falsely accusing someone of being a multi-accounter/meta-gaming to rally others against them in a game, or claiming that your orders didn't
come out the way you entered them to cover up your motives, means mods/admins spend time looking for cheaters/bugs which were made up.
Avoid making cheating accusations in game, via pm, or on the forum. Software bug claims must be genuine and should be reported as soon as possible to the ModForum.
If another player took advantage from a bug, please report it to us as soon as possible, and we will follow the policy found here.
Pause and Extend features are there to help players avoid missing their orders, but are not part of the game. As such pausing and unpausing should not be used for diplomatic gain. Examples of actions that break this rule are refusing to unpause unless other players will draw the game, or purposely not voting Extend to have that opponent miss the next turn. If these features ares being abused the Mod/Admin Team may step in to sort it out and give penalties to players who are partaking in unfair/unsportsmanlike conduct. The pause and extend buttons cannot be used as diplomatic tools and should not be used for anything other than indicating the need for a delay caused by something that is going to prevent you from logging into the site and issuing orders/conducting diplomacy in your games. If you need a pause in a press game, please announce it in the Global chat indicating the exact day you'll be back. Please try to plan ahead and avoid the need for pauses if possible. Also, before asking for pause or extend, consider switching your country to another site member as explained in this HOWTO's section.
You must register your account using an email address that you own. The owner of the email address used to register an account is the only person authorized to use the account. You are not allowed to give your account's password to anyone under any circumstance. Account-sitting (getting someone you trust to log on as you and issue orders when you are unable to) is expressly forbidden on this site. The exception is if the person you ask to sit your account is a non-member who will never be joining the site.
Remember that "Protect your account with a strong password and a secure account e-mail address." is your responsibility. You are not allowed to change your account's email address to one belonging to someone else.
If you are unable to take care of your games for a while, you are strongly encouraged to find one or more volunteer game-sitters. Then you can switch your game(s) to those game-sitters with the "CountrySwitch" feature on the "Settings" page. You may want to advertise for game-sitters on the Forum. Please use the designated thread and keep your request undetailed. Simply state you are looking for game-sitters. Avoid mentioning details about your ongoing games to avoid breaking rule #3. Find more information on Country Swapping here.
You are welcome and indeed encouraged to join in with the community but be sensible. Do not start too many threads at once. Try to keep your replies relevant to the conversation and do not encourage discussions having nothing to do with the thread's topic.
Simply remember that you have the responsibility to be respectful to your fellow members so avoid trolling their conversations.
Before posting a question relating to the software please read the FAQ, the Features and the HOWTO. Being up to date with these pages is your responsibility.
The forum rules can be found in more detail below.
You must answer any warnings or other messages sent to you by the moderators and must do your best to provide them any possible information related to what they're asking. Refusing to reply, being evasive, or lying may result in your account being banned.
The rules on this page and on the linked pages are ones which might not be obvious. Just because a specific rule isn't given here or in the linked pages doesn't mean moderators cannot stop people from ruining the server for others!
Mod Policies:
The moderator team will consider cancelling games when there are 2 or more cheaters in a game and/or they had a considerable impact on the game as a whole. We will encourage the remaining players to cancel on their own. If they do not, we will ask for an explanation. We will determine if the explanation is warranted and either leave it alone or force cancel with an explanation. If no players have been eliminated the remaining players may choose to draw the game before it is cancelled. The number of players caught cheating and banned before the Mod/Admin team decides to cancel a game may go up or down depending on the variant type, and how many members are involved in the game.
Games that have been paused for over 2 months without any activity will be cancelled.
In games paused for over 2 months with some activity we will post in global asking if there are objections to a cancellation.
The players should take care of handling delays to the game themselves as much as they can. If they have agreed to pause, then they should also have agreed when to unpause. If the unpause doesn't happen by said date, then they can report the issue to the ModForum and we will look into it. If you are unable to keep up with a game please consider using a game-sitter. We will not consider pause/extend requests if the requester hasn't already entered their Extend vote in their game(s).
As users have their own set of responsibilities, so does the moderator staff.
As representatives of the vDiplomacy users, the moderators will be held accountable for disciplinary decisions.
While judgment regarding forum rule violations remains at the sole discretion of the moderator staff,
users will be provided with a clear warning regarding rules violations in either a forum post or private message.
Users can appeal any moderator's decision by opening a thread on the ModForum
(or, if your account has been banned, by sending an email to
admin@webdiplomacy.ru) specifying the grounds for the appeal.
The appeal will be dealt with by one of the admins who was not involved in the original decision or by the site owner.
Appeals made on behalf of other members will not be considered. The outcome of an appeal is final.
There may be a formal explanation and discussion on moderators' decisions in the ModForum, but the moderator staff will never disclose information that may contain personal information about members or about the methods used to enforce the rules.
Forum Moderation:A user-driven approach is the primary method of forum moderation;
In order to maintain a positive user experience please follow the forum rules below!
Additionally, threads which share information on an ongoing game have a negative impact on games which self-moderation can't prevent, so the mod team can lock/silence these threads:
Do not create new accounts to work around user silences, or post threads to continue on from ones which have been silenced! Do not post messages on the forum for users who have been silenced. This may result in bans etc, which would be worse than simply keeping off the forum for a few days. When in doubt about whether posting something is allowed, remember your first responsibility: "use common sense and respect other players!"
Special Rules Games / Tournaments:
There are two types of special Games on the site: Special Rules Games and Tournaments. If you're interested in starting or running either type please open a thread in the ModForum and explain your idea to the moderator team in order to get approval.
This approval is necessary to ensure that the game(s) are set up properly, avoiding potential issues that can occur when a game is not properly planned.
Once you get our approval, you can start a sign-up thread on the Forum posting the approved Rulebook (or a link to it) and the name of the Director (usually who opened the Sign-up thread) in the opening post or immediately after. In the sign-up thread interested players should be able to read the Director's name and the moderator approved rules before deciding whether to join. Sign-up threads without moderator approved Rules will be silenced.
Special Games must be passworded.
An Special Rules Games is a game which uses a different rule set to standard games. Notable examples can be found on the vDip Wiki, including Bourse Diplomacy, Shift Diplomacy, Treaties and Contract Gunboat. If you want to run a Special Rules Games, please post in the modforum explaining your idea - the moderators will ask you some questions you’ll need to answer before posting the idea to the forum, to make sure that the rules are clear. The answers to these question will need to be included in the forum thread advertising the game to ensure all members fully understand the games rules and objectives.
These are larger series of games with unique scoring rules to determine a winner. These games will have a Tournament Director (TD), who will oversee all aspects of the tournament. This person will be responsible for making decisions relating to the scoring, pauses, and anything affecting game play.
Please open a thread on the mod forum if you want to start a tournament (see the contact details below), and you will be asked a list of questions that will help us set the tournament up. The answers to the questions asked by the mod team will need to be included in the thread advertising for the tournament. Threads advertising a tournament without approval and without these answers will be locked.
Contacting a mod/admin:Mods can:
For these issues use the ModForum. For general questions about the software you may find useful the developer forum. If you want to create and develop your Variant, ask on the vDip Lab forum.
Mods cannot:
Contact us on the ModForum. You can access this from the Mods button, at the top-right of any vDip page when you are logged in the site. A message posted there will alert all mods to check on this issue and you can keep track of your issue in the thread. You are only able to view threads you started and nobody else but the mods can see your threads there. Mods won't reveal anything about what threads you opened and on what you wrote on the moderator forum. If you can't log in the site email the moderators at admin@webdiplomacy.ru, not their personal addresses.
Always try to have some clear reasons when contacting and do not mention it on the forum. In your post you should include:
We will try to reply to you quickly, but be patient: investigations can take quite some time. If we have not followed up with you in 72 hours please feel free to follow up with us.
Thanks for reading this Rulebook, have fun!
- The mod/admin team
