Two small rule tweaks

[Sedgistan]

Original wording:

Puppet Flooding: Any player or group of players creating large numbers of puppets for the purpose of spamming, harassing, or annoying a region, be they invaders, defenders, or natives, may find all such puppets ... and their main nations ... deleted without warning as Regional Happenings spammers.

Regional Happenings Spam: Going in and out of a region while filling the regional event's board with departing and arriving messages. Also deliberately spamming the wrong password to attempt to enter a region, as this will also cover the regional happenings section. This includes doing so with more than just one of your nations and is not allowed. Use the Additional Information check-boxes on the Getting Help Page to capture abuses.

New wording:

Puppet Flooding: Any player or group of players creating large numbers of puppets for the purpose of spamming, harassing, or annoying a region, be they invaders, defenders, or natives, may find all such puppets ... and their main nations ... deleted without warning. Note that Moderators do not enforce regional bans unless a player has a significant record of harassing members of the region (i.e. prior rule-breaking). In other circumstances, it should be handled by the Regional Officers.

Regional Happenings Spam: Moving between regions for the purpose of spamming the Regional Happenings is prohibited.

Why? We've had a spate of reports over the last few months from players expecting us to enforce regional bans (i.e. a nation is banned from a region, and the player than returns with another one). We wish to emphasise that the primary responsibility for enforcing regional bans lies with Regional Officers. The rules now set out the limited circumstances in which we will enforce such bans.

This also:

• Removes mention of Regional Happenings spam from the "Puppet Flooding" section; it's already covered in the "Regional Happenings Spam" section as above.
• Removes the mention of wrong passwords from Regional Happenings Spam, as that's covered elsewhere in the rules - we punish the password guessing not the spam element of it.
• Tightens the wording on Regional Happenings Spam.

Since the expanded Regional Activity records were introduced a few years ago, Regional Happenings Spam almost never occurs - we get maybe a report or two per year on it. The rule remains in place for the odd occasion someone decides to move a nation between regions repeatedly to pimp their region, and to prevent "clearing" of regional happenings for R/D purposes.

[Flanderlion]

So has puppet flooding actually been defined? I hadn't spotted anything (although I've not been active all the time over the years) but others said it had offsite. For R/D purposes, on an update you obviously aren't allowed to move 100 puppets per player into a region, but where is the line?

[Zandovia]

So has puppet flooding actually been defined? I hadn't spotted anything (although I've not been active all the time over the years) but others said it had offsite. For R/D purposes, on an update you obviously aren't allowed to move 100 puppets per player into a region, but where is the line?

I wasnt warned until 3 but

[Sedgistan]

So has puppet flooding actually been defined? I hadn't spotted anything (although I've not been active all the time over the years) but others said it had offsite. For R/D purposes, on an update you obviously aren't allowed to move 100 puppets per player into a region, but where is the line?

We can't give you a number on that, as it depends on so many different factors. The key bit is "for the purpose of spamming, harassing, or annoying a region".