If you can't tell the difference between using quotes in direct responses and copypastaing and entire song's worth of lyrics, then god... I don't even know what to tell you.

This was posted July 23rd. The stuff happened in the last two weeks.

This is just a suggestion, would it be possible to install some sort of Report Post feature? It could have two options - Report to CL, or, if the offender is a CL, Report to Staff.

This or maybe a warning to the CL/person before admin jailing the entire upperstructure might be nice.  I dunno 

FutureStealer - there is already a report post feature which was added a week or two ago. This thread was posted July 23rd, I think that was plenty of warning that this behaviour isn't acceptable?

So first offense of breaking this rule is insta admin jail?  No warning tot he people breaking the rule?  Just straight to jail?

And yes, I think some heads up about a thread posted 6 months ago might be nice in these cases.  Especially assuming it's probbly in a business district for a city you're not in.

As a CL it's not like I get a message for every post a member makes.  How am I supposed to police this?

Are you actually saying that people need reminding that plagiarism is against the rules?

No, you don't get a message. But there are only four business districts, and there are lots of people within districts that could easily look over the business district to check for stuff like this. You have all the resources you need to police this already.

TIL constantly be on all forums and make sure you know every random post from announcements or be prepared to be jailed.  GG admans.

I meant six business districts. I always forget about LA + LV.

You don't have to constantly be on all forums. You have 39 people in your district, you don't think that's enough to just keep an eye on your members?

And yes, you should know the rules of the game. If they're broken, people get punished. That's how rules work. How is that news to anyone?

pretty sure all they want to prevent is spam in the BD

I'm not disagreeing with the reason of this rule, I've got 2 big problems here:

1.) This is the only place this rule is listed.  In a thread.  Posted 6 months ago.  That up until yesterday was buried god knows how many pages deep.  Anyone who didn't happen to be playing or somehow missed this announcement has no way of knowing it's there.  Maybe an actual set of posting guidlines would be nice.  So people have a resource to look at for all forum posting rules.

2.) There was no warning.  This thread had been going for 2 weeks+ and not one person came to myself or my members about us breaking the forum rules.  The fact that an admin jail for 6 people was the "warning" is ridiculous in my opinion.  Especially for a group that doesn't have a lot, if any, warnings of bad conduct against them.

Plagiarism in a text based game should be the most obvious no-no of all.

There are posting guidelines, look under the help dropdown on your menu.

People don't get warned when they dupe/account share/script, they get killed instantly. You and your upper structure were admin jailed for one day. So yes, it was a warning.

I'm not sure if you're trolling here or not FS? I'll assume you're not and reply to your comments as serious ones.

No warning before the admin jailing? The admin jailing was the warning. A fairly lenient one. Players had cheated the game out of a considerable amount of XP, a variety of rewards gained for (unwarranted) forum activity, increased vision due to the posts, increased income due to faster drug units (the XP) and training (the other rewards). The benefits here in most cases coming at the expense of other players who weren't actively gaming the system. Given what happened, I think a very light slap on the wrist in the form of a 24 hour time out was a very acceptable (if overly lenient) warning. 

First offence breaking this rule? The people in question were breaking it again and again for weeks. It wasn't a once off honest mistake, it was a conscious decision to do it repeatedly to the point that it accounted for nearly half of the VIP points earned by one of the districts (that was the second highest scoring district, prior to being decimated). 

(To put it in perspective, this issue was flagged by me. I wondered how some of the other districts were achieving such high scores for forum activity [anyone who knows me knows I'm an engineer and take every opportunity I can to investigate and figure out the game mechanics down to the minutia<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">]. When I spotted what had inflated many of the scores, it sickened me. It was my ranting about it with a few people far more intelligent than I in #dl [we still need to organise that "P</font>lagiarism<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)"> Party" btw] that brought it to the attention of the admin team. So if people would like a scapegoat for anger over this, you can leave Izzy and the team alone I'm right here! :D)</font>

<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">Heads up about this thread? The game rules are pushed at you from so many places I can't even count how many there are. In each and every case it explicitly sites </font>plagiarism<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)"> as being against the rules. This thread gave a very specific example just so people couldn't even try and claim ignorance that they didn't know that </font>plagiarism<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)"> was plagiarism... yet here we are. I won't even begin on the topic of copyright infringement and the potential legal issues (which get very complex and convoluted depending on various aspects from the location of the servers to the location of the people accessing the copyright infringed data) that could </font>arise<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)"> from it. </font>

<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">The reality is, nobody thought that what was happening here was ok. If they did, they'd have been actively doing it in the streets and other areas that get far more traffic and notice.</font> <font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">They specifically did it where it tended to sit in the background and not get noticed.</font> Even should they have been doing it publicly and thought it was ok, it's not ok and it still requires consequences. <font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">T</font>

<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">(Just on the off chance anyone reading this thinks this is a personal attack or anything like it, I've always got on great with FS and will continue to after this. I just disagree with him on this issue. Guys got punished for breaking rules. They did break the rules. The rules were clearly laid out. The punishment fit the crime [if possibly a little on the light side]. The only people who can possibly feel hard done by here are the ones who lost out on benefits that were stolen from them by those gaming the system, but I've yet to see one of them mention a word in protest so we'll hope they're cool with it.)</font>

Plagirism? Really?  I don't think pasting song lyrics, with the name of the song counts as plagirism... And once again  I'm not disagreeing with the reason of the rule.

The posting guidlines.. Please, go read them and tell me where in there this rule was?  Or in the one on the wiki?

Dupe accounts and sharing are also explicitly outlined as against the rules, again this was not.  And are you really trying to compare infractions in the forum to duping/cheating???

Satanta,

I highly disagree that anyone knowingly cheated.  I'm not condoning their behavior and have individually punished the one responsible myself.  Even without that thread we are still #1, so how did that effect anyones VIP?  Also if this was such a big issue seems that it would have been responded to earlier, not 2 weeks after the read was rolling.

Again, speaking to all those involved no one really realized they were breaking rules (Again to my suggestion of a composed list of rules somewhere), which could have been confirmed by a helpdesk member contacting at least one of the posters about the subject.  If someone thought we were cheating to get our points, they could have pointed it out to myself or anyone making these mistakes.

I think with what has seemed like a large amount of over-zealous punishments from the admin staff I think it's about time we as players get an actual set of rules and what their punishments are.  What am I supposed to do for new members posting?  Point them to here and tell em I'll see you in a few years when you finish reading that forum?

can all this not just be treated as a lesson learned? it was only a day and obviously nothing big went down sure someone may have lost a DFP but now you know better in the future right?

Sure, about this rule, yes. But what other rule is 12 pages deep in this forum that someone (doesn't have to be my fam) breaks and someone is punished for.  I don't think it's too much to ask to actually have the rules somewhere and to have the posting guidelines be actual guidelines of what you can/can't post.  If rules get added those pages need to be maintained.

there does have to be one "go-to" place for rules i agree, users shouldnt have to sort through 12 pages of changes and what not before they do something to see if it breaks the rules