Why is it unacceptable to to change the rule enforcement as situations demand it? Do you really think I should just let things like this slide with no consequence? Yes, users need to be responsible for their passwords, but if one does slip out, that doesn't give other people the right to go and use it. If you were to use somebody's credit card or bank information, I'm fairly certain there are some pretty significant legal ramifications. Read the last sentence of the agreement Bain posted. I could expand on that, perhaps, but there are things that do far more damage than cheating, and I will ban for them.
Just to put things in perspective, I would have to ban hundreds of players just to break even with the amount of cash I've invested in this game -- money from my own pocket. That doesn't even begin to cover time. And that's assuming they'd all pay to get their bans lifted immediately, which they wouldn't. In fact, nobody has paid to get a ban lifted. The concept for this was introduced by Warhead (since he had an exceptionally long ban due to repeat offenses and evasions) and put forth to the community to debate. Most people thought it was a good idea, but I have yet to have any banned players go through with it. To suggest that I would use an underhanded tactic like banning players for trivial things in order to make some quick cash is, frankly, an insult. I think you know this.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not a free game. No software is free. It's just a question of who pays for it. I've had to pay for a huge portion of it, both from my wallet and with my time, so that you don't have to. Yet somehow I've become too powerful? I shouldn't be allowed to control who can and can't use the resources I've created and paid for? I'm not opposed to the idea of a board, but what would be the criteria for its members? It might be nice to have a group of people to help determine who else was involved in this and what appropriate punishments should be.
In reality, I don't have enough time to mess around with all this. I've wasted far too much time on this issue already. I'm banning Smokey as well, since he just admitted to being responsible for obtaining and distributing Jigsaw's password.
As for Y2J, he still stays banned. Even if he didn't do anything to Jigsaw's account, it wasn't his, and he shouldn't have been nosing around in it (which he admitted to doing). Even with a closer inspection of the logs, I can't come to any different conclusions:
2007-07-24 22:39:47 - Web login from Jigsaw's ip
...
Several game logins from jigsaw, no web logins.
...
2007-07-25 21:39:49 - Game login from Jigsaw's ip
2007-07-26 00:21:04 - Web login from 147.253.174.5 (Y2J's IP)
2007-07-26 00:39:01 - Jigsaw posts that he can't log in
2007-07-26 12:48:23 - Jigsaw's account gets accepted into aB.
2007-07-26 19:12:42 - I reset Jigsaw's password.
2007-07-26 19:23:37 - Web login from Jigsaw's ip
2007-07-26 20:24:58 - Web login form Jigsaw's ip
Not only was Y2J's ip the only one not matching Jigsaw's hostmask, but the last web login was on the 24th. Also, Y2J's IP was the last to log into Jigsaw's forum account before it became inaccessible.
I don't know why I bother explaining myself. I really shouldn't have to. If you have a problem with my "totalitarian control", feel free to find another game to play.