As we know, this rule is and has been visible in the rules page:

1/ You May Not

Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario.

According to Veynom, the reason this is no longer counts is because its change was announced on the SimNews and only left up by mistake.

I would simply like to ask that someone please post a link to that particular SimNews post.

I have searched through the Archives, and found only this post pertaining to Spying Rules Change. It states:

"The following spying rules no more apply, meaning that infiltrating another faction has now become allowed.
* Infiltrate a group and then report or sell the information you gather about it to another group.
* Sell, trade or give away classified information about your own group to person(s) that are not members of your or known allied groups.
* If you leave a group and are still on their mailing list then you may remain there if the owner says you are allowed to, if not you MUST clearly continue to inform the owner of the list until you are taken off. Information sent from the list after you leave the group and after you warned the list owner is yours to use as you wish. "

As you can see, the infiltration rule on killing I put above was not listed as being changed here, only rules pertaining to infiltrating for information.

I can only assume that Veynom is referring to another SimNews post that I missed that states the infiltration with intent to kill rule was no longer valid. If someone can post me a link to that one, I'd appreciate it.

According to Veynom? I made that sim news post!

The infiltration rule was always on the rules page--it was commented out, as I said. That occurred well over five years ago, when Red Scenarios became defunct. The rules page change that was mentioned in the other sim news post you alluded to is what broke the comment tags and made the rule visible again.

Veynom said it also on IRC :P

My point remains. I fully realize that the rule may not have been intended to be there. But when the spy rules were changed, a big announcement was made pointing to the new rules. On the rules page as it existed for months now was that rule.

In any game, in order for it to be fair, all players must be able to play by the same rules. We have done our best to play by them in good faith at all times. Often when I see a question about whether a rule exists in the game, the answer is almost always to just point them to the rules pages. Those pages and the SimNews are what is given to players as the basis of the game. If the writers of the rules intended something else what they left explicitly posted on the rules page, I don't see how any player can be expected to understand and play under their intended rules.

This rule has been posted indisputably since the last fuss was made about the spy rules and their changes. Even before that, it was recently enforced specifically in the case against Rav Isaar, again posted about and explained officially in the SimNews. At no time was an announcement made the rule was not valid. If such a rule isn't valid simply because of what the Simmaster might of intended in contradiction to every official resource available to the common player, then every single rule posted becomes meaningless; the only valid rulebook is the one in Veynom's head, unknown and unknowable to the player.

Again, I recognize that this is a bad situation. My issue is that's its been pretty much admitted that the admins screwed up this, and as a result of their screwup dozens of players are being punished for making no mistake other than taking the admins rules in good faith. If the final judgment made is that we simply have to live with the it, you're basically saying that no one in this game can expect it to be administered fairly at any time.

The rule was not intended to exist, and as such no actions performed under the correct rules will be reversed. I'm not sure how you mean that players are being screwed over for following the rules; are you suggesting that there are players who were planning to infiltrate a faction to kill someone but held back under the impression that they wouldn't be permitted to do so? Because they can still go ahead and attempt that infiltration now that they know they're allowed.

We won't punish players for following the intended rules, however, especially as we've been continuing to tell players for the past few months that such infiltration was legal. That would not be fair.

We at CSA were following the rules when we assumed that what was posted in the official rules about infilitrating to kill was correct. Based on the assumption that killing our members would be illegal for him under that rule, I assumed it reasonably safe to give him the privs we did. We were following the rules in the sense that we expected them to be enforced as it is explicitly stated they should be on the official rules page the admins of this game had posted and as it had been enforced before against Rav.

I'm not saying Orphea broke the rules, since there was apparently conflicting rules. I'm not asking he or GE be punished. I'm saying that the CSA is being screwed simply because we believed in good faith the only rules we saw would be enforced as stated on the page and as they had before.

Its been admitted that the rules page was wrong by admin error. This led directly to us believing it reasonably safe to give Orphea the privs we did, which directly led to him killing Max and taking control of the faction. Our loss goes directly back to the administrative mistake.

If the admins uphold our loss based on the "Correct Rules", which appeared in no official places, and ignore the "Bad Rules" which were posted where everyone is supposed to look for official rules, you're telling everyone that the rules listed are nothing but a sham, that the only rule that matters is that the admins will do what they damn well please at any time, regardless of what they've said or done before. As a long time player, I sincerely hope that's not the case.

As mentioned in the other thread, Rav was punished for something entirely different (namely, plotting against a faction while he did not have an IC character at all), and there are, in fact, precedents to support leaders behind executed due to infiltration.

It's unfortunate that two different sets of rules existed simultaneously, but what occurred is legal by the intended rules so nothing will be changed.