Illegal Script Usage

[Great Brigantia]

As far as I'm aware Moran did not require an API key to run his campaign, since it was just spoofing manual. So unless I'm wrong about that I don't think your points about the API are at all relevant.

Other than that; fair enough. I do disagree, and think a region shouldn't get to benefit from illicit gain regardless of fault, but I do understand your reasoning.

This is actually even worse then, because a script that simulates manual recruitment without even accessing the API is a script that the rest of the region could very easily have no idea even exists. Again, individuals should be punished individually for individual actions. This collective responsibility ruling raises more questions than it answers, both in regard to The LKE as well as TBR. In this thread we're already seeing questions about whether the TBR recruitment ban will apply to the actual TBR community, which has left the region, or the region itself, now occupied by a hostile foreign force.

The not quantifiability point in particular is persuasive, though for all we know the admins could actually have a very good idea of how much of the gain was illicit. Even if unprovable statistics alone could I think be a good indicator.

Even if site administration can approximately quantify how many nations were gained from the illegal script, there is no possible way for them to quantify whether the three month recruitment ban will balance those illicit gains, fall short of balancing them, or go further than balancing them and actually lead to losses for The LKE beyond the gains the illegal script provided. I don't like that any region would get to keep a population gained through use of an illegal script, because it isn't fair. But sometimes life isn't fair, and I think this ruling seeks to provide fairness at the expense of actual justice. There is no way to actually correct the illicit gains that wouldn't be an unjust correction that punishes innocent bystanders who happened to share a region with the wrong person.

[Sedgistan]

As far as I'm aware Moran did not require an API key to run his campaign, since it was just spoofing manual.

Correct.

As for the "how could we have known argument": recruiters are now given an incredible amount of information about the telegrams they send. This includes statistics on how many telegrams were not delivered due to "Previous Recruitment Too Recent".

Bob Moran was sending out an inhuman number of telegrams over a sustained period of time. If the Land of Kings and Emperors had monitored the deliveries of their API (legal) telegrams, they would have noticed a massive uptick in the number of telegrams not being delivered because Bob Moran's had got there first (the advantage of recruiting via the manual route is that your TGs will usually get delivered first).

Either they failed to notice this (negligence), noticed it and were happy to assume that Bob Moran was spending every waking hour sending recruitment telegrams for The Land of Kings and Emperors (wishful thinking far beyond the point of reason), or chose simply not to question how he was managing that (wilful ignorance).

[Greater vakolicci haven]

As far as I'm aware Moran did not require an API key to run his campaign, since it was just spoofing manual.

Correct.

As for the "how could we have known argument": recruiters are now given an incredible amount of information about the telegrams they send. This includes statistics on how many telegrams were not delivered due to "Previous Recruitment Too Recent".

Bob Moran was sending out an inhuman number of telegrams over a sustained period of time. If the Land of Kings and Emperors had monitored the deliveries of their API (legal) telegrams, they would have noticed a massive uptick in the number of telegrams not being delivered because Bob Moran's had got there first (the advantage of recruiting via the manual route is that your TGs will usually get delivered first).

Either they failed to notice this (negligence), noticed it and were happy to assume that Bob Moran was spending every waking hour sending recruitment telegrams for The Land of Kings and Emperors (wishful thinking far beyond the point of reason), or chose simply not to question how he was managing that (wilful ignorance).

This all hinges on how long it was going on for. I see a lot of upsurges of 'previous recruitment too recent' for short periods, simply because the nation creation rates change.

[Pierconium]

I keep waiting on Onder to come in and decry this whole situation as LKE seeking to scapegoat the guilty party in order to avoid punishment...oh wait. Nevermind.

[Great Brigantia]

Correct.

As for the "how could we have known argument": recruiters are now given an incredible amount of information about the telegrams they send. This includes statistics on how many telegrams were not delivered due to "Previous Recruitment Too Recent".

Bob Moran was sending out an inhuman number of telegrams over a sustained period of time. If the Land of Kings and Emperors had monitored the deliveries of their API (legal) telegrams, they would have noticed a massive uptick in the number of telegrams not being delivered because Bob Moran's had got there first (the advantage of recruiting via the manual route is that your TGs will usually get delivered first).

Either they failed to notice this (negligence), noticed it and were happy to assume that Bob Moran was spending every waking hour sending recruitment telegrams for The Land of Kings and Emperors (wishful thinking far beyond the point of reason), or chose simply not to question how he was managing that (wilful ignorance).

So your argument is that this ruling is just, because The LKE should have been checking their delivery reports and should have noticed the number of telegrams that weren't getting delivered because previous recruitment was too recent. Leaving aside that most people don't do that: On a scale of 1-10, how negligent was it, in your view, for no one in the site administration or moderation to notice the "inhuman number of telegrams" Bob Moran was sending? Don't you have anything to scan for obvious signs of recruitment rules violations?

In any event, I'm not buying it. Prior to the new recruitment system, when a player was caught running an illegal script -- which was, at the time, any script -- the player was punished. This collective responsibility ruling is entirely new and contradicts years of moderation policy, and it needs to be carefully reconsidered.

[Onderkelkia]

As for the "how could we have known argument": recruiters are now given an incredible amount of information about the telegrams they send. This includes statistics on how many telegrams were not delivered due to "Previous Recruitment Too Recent".

Bob Moran was sending out an inhuman number of telegrams over a sustained period of time. If the Land of Kings and Emperors had monitored the deliveries of their API (legal) telegrams, they would have noticed a massive uptick in the number of telegrams not being delivered because Bob Moran's had got there first (the advantage of recruiting via the manual route is that your TGs will usually get delivered first).

Either they failed to notice this (negligence), noticed it and were happy to assume that Bob Moran was spending every waking hour sending recruitment telegrams for The Land of Kings and Emperors (wishful thinking far beyond the point of reason), or chose simply not to question how he was managing that (wilful ignorance).

So you are saying that failing to inspect API telegram delivery information constitutes negligence, implying that regions running API recruitment are under an obligation to check this information in order to see if the number of previous telegrams not delivered indicates there is illicit automated recruitment?

Why would regions have reason to think they need to check for illicit automated recruitment in the first place? It's hardly a likely prospect. If regions have no reason to think this, why would they be under an obligation to check the API delivery information from the perspective of moderation?

If moderation wants to impose a duty to use that information and perform regular checks on it, they should put that into the site rules.

In any case, say the API delivery information had been inspected - we'd have had to been noting down the previous levels of telegrams sent too recently going back to when that telegram was first sent, in 2013, to notice that was an uplift of such a considerable amount to trigger suspicion.

I control the LKE's recruiter nation and I have actually been away from 10 February, though I have been dragged back since then to deal with the attempt to condemn LKE, the attempt to condemn TNI, the change of monarchy and drafting of the new constitution in TNI, the end of the UIAF, the formation of the Congress of Sovereigns and now this - so naturally I wasn't checking the API delivery information closely in that period. Is that a crime now?

Looking at it now, the number of telegrams showing previous recruitment was too recent on the LKE's API telegram is 11,800.

Considering that telegram has been in operation since mid-2013, I don't how that is a glaringly obvious impossible number, for someone without reason to be suspicious, if you assume there was manual recruitment alongside it across that period. If Bob Moran was sending 100 telegrams for 100 days, that'd be 10,000 telegrams. If manual telegrams get delivered first, as you say, a high proportion of his would have shown up. So if he was sending hundreds of telegrams a day for several months (or, if he only started on being appointed as interior minister, if he was sending say 300-400 per day in the space of a month and a half, not at all impossible), that could very well get to 11,800 or more, without leaving space for the number of "previous recruitment too recent"s generated by script and legal manual telegrams sent out over the previous two years. In the pre-automated days, I used to regularly send 200-300 telegrams for the LKE daily; Bob Moran could have easily sent more (I know Cerebella for instance used to send obscenely large amounts for TNI in 2010-12).

So, no you are simply incorrect that the API delivery information showed "inhuman" recruitment levels by Bob Moran.

[Reddogkeno101]

As for the "how could we have known argument": recruiters are now given an incredible amount of information about the telegrams they send. This includes statistics on how many telegrams were not delivered due to "Previous Recruitment Too Recent".

Bob Moran was sending out an inhuman number of telegrams over a sustained period of time. If the Land of Kings and Emperors had monitored the deliveries of their API (legal) telegrams, they would have noticed a massive uptick in the number of telegrams not being delivered because Bob Moran's had got there first (the advantage of recruiting via the manual route is that your TGs will usually get delivered first).

Either they failed to notice this (negligence), noticed it and were happy to assume that Bob Moran was spending every waking hour sending recruitment telegrams for The Land of Kings and Emperors (wishful thinking far beyond the point of reason), or chose simply not to question how he was managing that (wilful ignorance).

So you are saying that failing to inspect API telegram delivery information constitutes negligence, implying that regions running API recruitment are under an obligation to check this information in order to see if the number of previous telegrams not delivered indicates there is illicit automated recruitment?

Why would regions have reason to think they need to check for illicit automated recruitment in the first place? It's hardly a likely prospect. If regions have no reason to think this, why would they be under an obligation to check the API delivery information from the perspective of moderation?

If moderation wants to impose a duty to use that information and perform regular checks on it, they should put that into the site rules.

In any case, say the API delivery information had been inspected - we'd have had to been noting down the previous levels of telegrams sent too recently going back to when that telegram was first sent, in 2013, to notice that was an uplift of such a considerable amount to trigger suspicion.

I (control the LKE's recruiter nation) have actually been away from 10 February, though I have been dragged back since then to deal with the attempt to condemn LKE, the attempt to condemn TNI, the change of monarchy and drafting of the new constitution in TNI, the end of the UIAF, the formation of the Congress of Sovereigns and now this - so naturally I wasn't checking the API delivery information closely in that period. Is that a crime now?

Looking at it now, the number of telegrams showing previous recruitment was too recent on the LKE's API telegram is 11,800.

Considering that telegram has been in operation since mid-2013, I don't how that is a glaringly obvious impossible number, for someone without reason to be suspicious, if you assume there was manual recruitment alongside it across that period. If Bob Moran was sending 100 telegrams for 100 days, that'd be 10,000 telegrams. If manual telegrams get delivered first, a high proportion of his would have shown up. So if he was sending a large number of telegrams a day for several months, that would be more than sufficient to get to 10,000/11,800, without leaving space for the number of "previous recruitment too recent"s generated by script and legal manual telegrams sent out over the previous two years. In the pre-automated days, I used to regularly send 200-300 telegrams for the LKE daily; Bob Moran could have easily sent more (I know Cerebella for instance used to send obscenely large amounts for TNI in 2010-12).

So, no you are simply incorrect that the API delivery information showed "inhuman" recruitment levels by Bob Moran.

Well I would say the delegate and founder have responsibilities to appoint the right people to the job, however when the founder gets involved, it gets messy like in TBR. That ground is very loose as to what should happen to the region as a result.

[Consular]

The act being illegal recruitment. Was that not obvious? I certainly thought so. Regardless of whether you consider his actions legal in your own regional framework, or allowed by the founder, or whatever, in fact there was illegal recruitment being done for the LKE.

You've missed the point, I'm not arguing you failed to stop it -- I'm arguing that you failed is not materially relevant. Your arguable negligence doesn't factor in because, as I thought that quote illustrated quite succintly, fault is not required.

No, it is you who is missing the point. Strict liability still requires an act or omission on the part of the offender - not someone else.

The LKE, as a collective entity, did not perform illegal recruitment. Bob Moran did.

The act was by Bob Moran, not the LKE. There was no act by the LKE.

Unless you are arguing there was some omission, in which case negligence will nearly always also be relevant, there is nothing to blame the LKE for at all.

There is no conduct element or mental element on the part of the LKE.

No -- you see, I'm not really arguing that the LKE is necessarily the offender. I am arguing that the decision was necessary to prevent illicitly gained profit, and that I can't personally think of any other solution that adequates addresses such.

Besides that, I suppose I simply don't accept your distinction between the LKE and the person in its government charged with manual recruitment. The tech was as a simple point of fact recruiting nations for the LKE, illegally. That, to me, constitutes the act. It is the conduct element -- the fact that it was done without your knowledge doesn't matter because it was for you and for your benefit; the act served you.

I won't further address any of your other points. I've explained my thoughts and have little desire to run in logical circles for ever and ever.

[Zlevecky]

Tisk tisk!

[Onderkelkia]

No -- you see, I'm not really arguing that the LKE is necessarily the offender. I am arguing that the decision was necessary to prevent illicitly gained profit, and that I can't personally think of any other solution that adequates addresses such.

If you're not arguing that the LKE is necessarily the offender, then I don't see what the strict liability rule has to do with anything.

I'm not doubting Bob Moran's intention to use the script.

If your point is that the "illicitly gained profit" is merely being confiscated from the LKE, then my previous points (which you decline to answer) cover this:

There is nothing morally perverse in seeking to remove benefits that were illicitly gained. I'm sure it will seem inequitable from your perspective given your supposed lack of guilt, but it is the only fair option for other regions at the end of the day. Justice can be harsh on individuals. This is not an usual approach to illicitly obtained goods even in an outside NS context.

1. This is more complicated than removing stolen money inserted into someone's bank account without their knowledge - there is much less chance of the people concerned sustaining any additional loss as a result of having that stolen money removed than if the LKE is banned from recruiting altogether.

2. It is morally perverse to impose sanctions, with the purposes of retribution and deterrence rather than merely intending to correct the population, on those who had no knowledge of Bob Moran's actions.

3. I return to the issue of quantifying the loss as I outlined above:

It seems to be that it is likely that the restriction was intended to be about retribution and deterrence, not merely correcting the population (not that it can be quantified what effect this will have - we cannot know whether it will correct the population to what it should have been - bearing in mind that some of the nations we would have gained when Bob Moran's script was in operation would have been from our actual, legal script and it's now the legal script's recruitment that we are losing)

Besides that, I suppose I simply don't accept your distinction between the LKE and the person in its government charged with manual recruitment. The tech was as a simple point of fact recruiting nations for the LKE, illegally. That, to me, constitutes the act.

Bob Moran's responsibility was for manual recruitment. Performing automated recruitment was outside of his duties and in excess of his remit.

The Interior Minister (assuming he set it up as the Interior Minister) does not have the authority to go around setting up ad-hoc recruitment tools.

It was not a government-sanctioned activity. The LKE, as a collective entity, never endorsed or even knew about his actions.

It is the conduct element -- the fact that it was done without your knowledge doesn't matter because it was for you and for your benefit; the act served you.

The fact that an act is performed for a person's benefit doesn't make it part of that person's conduct.

Moreover, we don't know for certain if the act was performed "for you and for your benefit" - Bob Moran was working alongside a known long-standing enemy of LKE on a course of action which could only ever lead to disaster. Bob Moran's own motivations in this affair are yet to be confirmed.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Wouldn't it make more sense to institute the recruitment ban up to the point where the LKE's population has been reduced to its current population minus what they gained from Bob's recruitment?

[Onderkelkia]

Wouldn't it make more sense to institute the recruitment ban up to the point where the LKE's population has been reduced to its current population minus what they gained from Bob's recruitment?

It should be noted that if Bob Moran's illegal recruitment was making such a difference, then its cessation (with time) would naturally stabilise the LKE's population back to a normal level eventually anyway. 3 months' loss of the API script recruitment on top of that may accelerate the process of stabilisation, but it will also cause unnecessary, unwarranted extra damage and prevent an inflow of new citizenship applicants into our region's forum community (3 months without any new members, with recruitment being the LKE's principal source of new members, is a very long period indeed - that is severe additional damage, quite apart from correcting the effect on the regional population of what Bob Moran was doing without our knowledge or consent).

[Elke and Elba]

Wouldn't it make more sense to institute the recruitment ban up to the point where the LKE's population has been reduced to its current population minus what they gained from Bob's recruitment?

I've already said this before why it wouldn't work.

Me spam puppets in LKE: Onder can't get the TG rights back for recruitment.
Onder mass eject LKE members: Onder can get his TG rights within half an hour.

There's too many loopholes in a seemingly good concept.

I do agree with Onder though, that there shouldn't be a similarity in the time for recruitment ban between LKE and TBR. I'm not of the opinion of the shortening the LKE's ban, but instead a lengthening of TBR's one.

[Pierconium]

I do agree with Onder though, that there shouldn't be a similarity in the time for recruitment ban between LKE and TBR. I'm not of the opinion of the shortening the LKE's ban, but instead a lengthening of TBR's one.

Putting in-game political rivalries aside, why would LKE and TBR be treated differently for utilizing the same illegal script? I am genuinely curious about this. I looked back through the thread for the argument and must have missed it.

[Shogun]

That recruiting ban really hurts us, nobody should doubt that.

Only effective way for recruiting now is continue active with our normal modus operandi of "raid training" during updates (So called "tag raiding"), and as it seems, natives does big part of the task themselves currently on our behalf. That is good. That is good.

Currently there are no region to recruit either, so that makes ban little bit easier to handle with.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Wouldn't it make more sense to institute the recruitment ban up to the point where the LKE's population has been reduced to its current population minus what they gained from Bob's recruitment?

I've already said this before why it wouldn't work.

Me spam puppets in LKE: Onder can't get the TG rights back for recruitment.
Onder mass eject LKE members: Onder can get his TG rights within half an hour.

There's too many loopholes in a seemingly good concept.

I do agree with Onder though, that there shouldn't be a similarity in the time for recruitment ban between LKE and TBR. I'm not of the opinion of the shortening the LKE's ban, but instead a lengthening of TBR's one.

I disagree with punishments for entire regions at all. Although I do think Bob should be puppetswiped (note: not delete on sight), I think hurting the entire action for one persons actions is awful.

[Harkback Union]

Why didn't they use a macro bot?
Its just as good as a script but there is no way to trace it!

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Why didn't they use a macro bot?
Its just as good as a script but there is no way to trace it!

...

Because giving people ideas is exactly what we want to do.

[Elke and Elba]

I do agree with Onder though, that there shouldn't be a similarity in the time for recruitment ban between LKE and TBR. I'm not of the opinion of the shortening the LKE's ban, but instead a lengthening of TBR's one.

Putting in-game political rivalries aside, why would LKE and TBR be treated differently for utilizing the same illegal script? I am genuinely curious about this. I looked back through the thread for the argument and must have missed it.

Because TBR's script has been probably in play for a relatively longer period of time compared to LKE's.

This doesn't cancel out the culpability of the parties seemingly involved in the exercise, but instead metes punishment based on the effect the script has had as a recruiting advantage. I think TBR have been advantaged compared to LKE in that aspect.

On political rivalries - while TBR is pretty much universally hated upon (more so by some people) - I don't think Yggdrasil-LKE relations are even good to start with - or even decent enough for me to show bias to LKE, if that is what you are insinuating. :/

[Harkback Union]

Why didn't they use a macro bot?
Its just as good as a script but there is no way to trace it!

...

Because giving people ideas is exactly what we want to do.

Macro bots take care of 90% of my office work. I just sit back and watch as they upload images on their own to the net.

In fact they are working right now, as we speak!

[Greater vakolicci haven]

...

Because giving people ideas is exactly what we want to do.

Macro bots take care of 90% of my office work. I just sit back and watch as they upload images on their own to the net.

In fact they are working right now, as we speak!

Not the best idea for recruitment. I think I could design a macro for recruitment, but I wouldn't do it because I don't want to get slammed by the mods for unfair recruiting (besides my region doesn't really recruit ATM.)

[Shadoke]

Basically, all this figures is if I hate a region, and don't care about being punished , I can get a region banned from recruitment for a while. Thanks Mods

[Onderkelkia]

I do agree with Onder though, that there shouldn't be a similarity in the time for recruitment ban between LKE and TBR. I'm not of the opinion of the shortening the LKE's ban, but instead a lengthening of TBR's one.

Putting in-game political rivalries aside, why would LKE and TBR be treated differently for utilizing the same illegal script? I am genuinely curious about this. I looked back through the thread for the argument and must have missed it.

The argument being presented, in order to justify the restriction on LKE recruitment in spite of the fact we did not know about Bob Moran's actions or consent to them, is that the LKE gained an advantage from Bob Moran's actions and the restriction is a necessary measure to correct that advantage.

If the purpose of the restrictions is to correct the advantage gained from Bob Moran's illegal activity, then it makes no sense for the restrictions imposed on TBR and the LKE to be for the same periods, because presumably the scripts were in operation for different lengths of time and therefore had different effects, as Bob Moran was associated with TBR for longer and more extensively than he was the LKE. Bob Moran was first appointed to a position of any kind in the LKE at the end of January, when he was offered the role of chief of the general staff, a relatively insignificant post prior to the UIAF's dissolution (as the UIAF structure handled most military command duties) - prior to that he was just a lurking citizen, much as he was in other regions (including Osiris and TNI), with no connection to any kind of government activity in the LKE. I've asked for the moderators to confirm when each of these scripts began.

However, my point is that the LKE has no culpability for Bob Moran's actions because we had no knowledge of them in the slightest. Any sanction of any length can therefore only be therefore be plausibly justified if it does not go beyond the minimum of what is strictly necessary to correct the imbalance created by Bob Moran's rogue behaviour - though even that is unfair on the LKE as a whole. My point above was that, It should be noted that if Bob Moran's illegal recruitment was making such a difference, then its cessation (with time) would naturally stabilise the LKE's population back to a normal level eventually anyway, while imposing a recruitment restriction, especially but not only one as long as three months, has the potential for significant collateral effects well beyond accelerating the population stabilisation - whether that involves causing greater population loss than can be quantifiably justified by Bob Moran's actions or depriving us of a regular source of citizenship applicants for what is chiefly a forum community - when the LKE did nothing wrong.

[Aksun]

I just thought of something... I was doing Justice work last night and I was talking about juvenile delinquency and deterrence. What if the mods are punishing the whole region as a means of using general deterrence? Just a thought... In which case I will argue and say research shows this method doesn't work (see death penalty), but in a game that is all about having the largest population... I can see general deterrence working, since the punishment was severe, swift, and just.

That's my speal at 4 am. I am still analyzing the situation on my off time to see why they decided to punish the region and why Bob was motivated to violate the rules.

[Harkback Union]

Macro bots take care of 90% of my office work. I just sit back and watch as they upload images on their own to the net.

In fact they are working right now, as we speak!

Not the best idea for recruitment. I think I could design a macro for recruitment, but I wouldn't do it because I don't want to get slammed by the mods for unfair recruiting (besides my region doesn't really recruit ATM.)

But how would they find out? You could make every marco cycle run on a different speed so that it looks like manual recruiting!