We've made the following changes to the rules.
Cheating rule
- Cheating across multiple games in competitive mafia incurs an instant 4 month lobby ban and ineligibility to trophy for 8 months.
- Cheating across multiple games in ranked (red heart) games incurs a one week lobby ban.
In both instances a cheating 1st violation is given.
Maximum ban duration
The maximum ban length is now 3 months in all normal cases of rule breaking. The mod team reserves the right to issue longer bans for particularly malicious behavior, such as OPI and posting X-rated content. Violations lengths have not changed. If you're wondering how this works, read the following.
- For violations that last up to 3 months, nothing changes.
- For violations up to 6 months, the ban is applied for 3 months and then lifted. The user will have N violations where N is the number required for a ban, but will be unbanned. Upon receiving another violation of the same type, he will be banned for another 3 months. When the second ban expires, the user can have at most N-1 violations of this type and things are normal.
- Violations longer than 6 months will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
These changes are a shift to a more reformational, correctional way of enforcing rules. In particular, giving users who have cheated in red heart games a week to reflect on their actions feels a lot more reasonable to us than an immediate half-year ban. When it comes to shorter ban durations, the idea is that most people view 3 months or longer as simply "a long period of time," and are not disincentivized from breaking the rules because they will be banned for 6 months rather than 3 months.
We believe that these changes will lead to lower bypassing rates and less cheating on the site.
