I am sympathetic to most of the points other players have made here. A few points to add from me:
(i) We were
informed less than a month ago that Wouter is planning to encode a visibility penalty for reactivated parties. Presumably this would go at least part of the way towards resolving the issues these rules reforms are designed to address. This raises the question of whether there is a case for waiting until we have seen how the new "visibility penalty" affects things, before rushing to change the rules.
(ii) In my judgement, it is not necessary or desirable to explicitly state in the rules that an account which has been used to multi or proxy three times will not be reactivated again. I would remove this part altogether. It is enough to state elsewhere in the rules document that multiing and using proxies is forbidden, and is taken seriously. Moderators should use their discretion when it comes to dealing with specific cases of multiing or proxying. I know from my own experience in Moderation that these cases can be very different. Without wanting to go into great detail here, some cases (the majority, in fact) are accidental/inadvertent and relatively "innocent", whereas others most definitely are not and are far more serious.
I will add, though, that saying to a player "Moderation won't reactivate your account, but you are free to create a new account and rejoin the game" strikes me as an unusual sanction to impose. Would a warning or even a temporary suspension be more appropriate? During my time, the only occasions I can recall where players were told "We won't reactivate your account, but you can create another one..." were when account-sharing was involved. ie. It was discovered that more than one player was accessing an in-game account, which is against the rules. In those cases I would not reactivate the account, because I could not be certain both individuals would not continue to be able to access it. Those cases, though, were very, very rare.
Another issue is that if saying to a player "Moderation won't reactivate your account, but you are free to create a new account and rejoin the game" is enshrined in the rules as a specific punishment for specific offences then it will make it more likely that players will feel offended, and take it personally, if their reactivation request is denied due to alleged "inactivity". The risk is it will
feel like a personal punishment, even if it is not really intended to be one, only a general procedure to encourage active account use. This is especially so given that, presumably, some of the players affected by these new rules will not have had their reactivation requests denied on these grounds before.
Soyiz (Wu Coup)Today at 21:49
Ok, can I ask for clarification then?
I have a party that has been inactivated three times for inactivity. Is it possible for me to reactivate it?
Mr.GodToday at 21:50
no
not if the reason for your inactivation was just u being inactive
without giving moderation prior notice
I was a bit concerned by Mr God's suggestion that players deemed to be inactive/"party-sitting" might evade having their reactivation requests denied if they have given Moderation prior notice of the situation. This could get Moderators into some messy situations. For example, the player who, when denied his reactivation request, swears blind to you that he told you he wasn't going to be active eight months ago, and you can't remember whether he did or not. Or the player who accuses you of trying to "protect" a friend who keeps "party-sitting". ..
(iii) I am not keen on the suggestion of a blanket ban on accounts being reactivated whenever multiing or proxying has been involved. This is 2018. People are not always fully aware of the details of the internet connection they are using, particularly if they are using a public wifi, or a wifi at work/university/friend's house/wherever. Many players will find themselves using a proxy, or sharing a wifi connection with another player, without even being aware it has happened. Even some browser software has proxy settings people are not aware about. As examples, there is an issue with the Opera browser sometimes being on VPN mode (shameful confession: this one happened to me!), and there used to be an issue with Google Chrome sometimes doing something similar. So to sum up, Moderators need to take a strong line against multiing and proxying, but they also need to exercise commonsense and take reasonable account the realities surrounding how people access in 2018. Each particular incident needs looking at on its own merits.
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That's a few points made, there are a few more I might make in a bit.