Seriously, everyone, stop placing or mentioning tools or instructions that may or may not help with avoiding detection for things that are prohibited on OGS.
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Seriously the system works “so well”, you banned my main account instead. Great job 
@benjito You want me to write again how it can be done? Being a moderator and being able to delete a part of a response, does not mean that the facts get deleted as well.
I’m not a mod, and I don’t really care if you write it again 
However, @Vsotvep has made it pretty clear that there are consequences to breaking rules (color me shocked!) so you’d only be hurting yourself.
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Yeah, they banned my main gaming account instead of the forum one … very accurate in their aim
so you’d only be hurting yourself.
I wouldn’t classify losing this account as more than an inconvenience, but hey.
proof
I rest my case @benjito and I have not even used anything of what I mentioned earlier and was deleted:
@Vsotvep Now feel free to give me back my actual account … or not. Else consider it a gift for the brief free QA on the site. It was a fun experiment
Well, your main gaming account(s) were the ones playing against themselves. I’m not trying to shut you up, I’m trying to show you the process of breaking the rules and its consequences. I promise I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t do with other users: first you had a warning (although on the forum), then the thing you were told not to do happened again, so a ban followed, and now you get a chance to appeal by promising not to do it again.
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It certainly does strengthen the case that you don’t know the meaning of the word “proof”.
My main account is the one I am writting from.
The other was a test account where I tested recently the volatity of the early ranking (has 10+ games)
The other was created for that same experiment (has less than 10 games)
None of the other two accounts ever played with my actual gaming account.
If you think those accounts are “main”, yeah, oooook 
I am replying to that moderator message you sent and I am relaying how this worked. Feel free to fix those or do nothing. As I said, not many people do meangless things like that. Just because a loophole exists, doesn’t mean it is important.
and now you get a chance to appeal by promising not to do it again.
Feel free to ban the test accounts that were playing with each other, just as I said here:
I wrote that before any of that happened so let us not pretend that this is not on the record.
You can troll me as much as you like since it is allowed, but I got around a ban easily and played a game with noone being the wiser, and that’s a fact. If you find this funny, that’s an added bonus.
Jeth was clearly trying to make a point. An argument on the forums or telling everyone to stop giving tips on how to beat the system is not really an official warning to be instantly followed by a ban.
I don’t know exactly what was done on the banned accounts, whether they played ranked between themselves or with others as well… either way a ban on the main account seems excessive especially without a personal warning about the reason of the ban.
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I mean, the reason of the ban is pretty clear. Playing against oneself is against the rules, and announcing on the forum that you’ll do it is not some kind of “get-out-of-jail” card.
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Doing something that is against the rules doesn’t warrant an instant ban. Does anyone who play themselves get banned without being officially warned? Even if that is the case, is it the same when a community regular does it to test the system and not actually cheat to inflate their rank?
How did these games get detected? Does the system auto-detect users who play themselves? If his accounts were looked at because he mentioned he would test this, then even his main point about the hole in the system might be still valid. That would make the ban completely pointless in terms of showing him users not being able to cheat the system. It would also make it untrue that he got the same treatment as any user.
“I see what you tried to do there, the system detected it and the point you were trying to make was moot, so stop.” would be a normal reaction.
“I was on the lookout for you testing this so I caught it, even if there is a hole in the system, youre not allowed to test it, so stop” would be another.
Banning without an official warning is too much.
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The point of a warning is to make sure the person knows what they’re doing is against the rules. This has been repeatedly said here and you cannot argue that Jeth wasn’t aware of it.
Again, being a community regular is not a “get-out-of-jail” card. We aren’t in a situation where there was an interesting test to be done which was pre-agreed with the mods, we are in a situation where a person decides unilaterally and with full awareness to keep crossing the boundaries (for a “test” which frankly has no purpose).
Any user announcing that he will break the rules would get the same treatment.
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If you try it yourself, you will see the purpose of it. The questions posed on @snakesss second paragraph are not trivial and they are right on the money. I promised above and in private to not talk anymore about the results of this in order to not encourage people even indirectly, but I think that it is safe to say again that not talking about a problem, does not make it disappear and let’s leave it at that
The treatment is immaterial and noone is really complaining about any injustice. It was just a test. My only point at that moment was that they got my main account as well which was definitely not taking part in the test and I found that a bit funny.
I wouldn’t dillute/alter my main account’s ranking for a test. I made/used “burner” accounts which only altered their own ranking and were not meant to be used again and I made that clear from the start, which is why there is no “get-out-of-jail” behaviour involved, as you seem to believe, but since that part was clarified, then it is just part of the process.
No need to make a test. I gained 1 rating point by winning against a player who is 9 stones weaker, so we can roughly estimate that a few hundred wins and 0 losses against much weaker opponents will bring an account from 6k to 1d. But this would be a very boring way to get a worthless promotion.
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So, if i see a user doing something wrong and I tell them how it is against the TOS, when I report them they’ll be banned without a warning? Because they knew about the rules? There is no difference between someone knowing the rules and having gotten an official warning?
Thanks for repeating yourself. You didn’t really answer but I take it you think it is the same when an ill-willed individual tries to cheat the system and when a community member does it (by announcing it) to test the system/the moderators handling the system. Being a community member isn’t a get-out-of-jail card, sure. However it also doesn’t mean “you have to know the rules and get banned instantly if you break them”. There is a protocol for bans and it is more than about teaching the user about the rule. An official warning first sets the tone and lets the user know that they might reasonably face further action.
So, his actual mistake was not breaking the rules but announcing it? Him admitting to this unthinkable offence somehow made his ban more imminent?
If everyone else who plays themselves don’t get banned instantly, then he didn’t get the same treatment.
This wasn’t a case of “you did something horrible, you’re a menace to the community so you deserved to be banned”. This was a case of “don’t argue with the mods or challenge them in any way”.
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This isn’t a court of law, there is nothing “official”. Warnings are just a customary practice which aim at clarifying to the user that their behavior is against the rules, before escalating to a ban. I agree there is a teaching value in this.
Here I have a lot of sympathy for considering that no further warning was required given that the user was already reminded of the rule on the forum and made clear he was aware of it and was simply intended to break it - there was nothing left to explain or teach.
Now I take it we disagree on this, that’s fine.
This is a very weird take, I’m not sure I get where you’re going with that.
By this logic, if OGS cannot identify and act on every single player who breaks a rule, it shouldn’t act on any of them?
My point is that the treatment was the same as any player identified as breaking the rules (whether that’s through announcing it publicly or other means).
It isn’t; nothing is law on OGS, which is why regulations and guidelines matter even more. I’m not just saying “warning on personal message first is the rule, you can’t omit it”, I’m also saying “personally warning jeth before banning in this specific instance is a must/common sense” - a forum warning about “not telling people about holes in the system” isn’t the same as “don’t repeat playing yourself or you’ll be banned” - jeth didn’t even expect the ban for their action and they were right. They were a little provocative in the discussion and in trying to test the mods but it was nowhere close to warranting a ban.
I take that as a rhetorical question but I’ll answer anyway. They should act on them.
A moderator shouldn’t ignore all context about an offence and target a user (they were arguing with) in their detection, then claim they got the same treatment.
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Yeah, and here we disagree. But I already made my points and you made yours so I don’t think we have much to add!
But they did get the same treatment!
Now your point is rather that they should not have gotten the same treatment because, even if they purposefully broke the rule, it was not with the genuine intent of cheating.
Fair enough, I can understand your view, but I also have sympathy for the idea that it is much easier and efficient to avoid any debate as to whether a user can uniterally decide to break this or that rule because they felt like running “tests” or other random reasons.
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I doubt the test had any value. I feel confident that whatever the test demonstrated was already known by at least some of the mods and ex-mods.
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