Where can I find the rules for the website ? (And how allowed is it to have multiple accounts ?)

[SachaBear]

Apologies in advance if the answers to these questions are somewhere obvious. I didn't find them, put please provide links if this all known and clear.

General question first : where can I find the rules for what's allowed on BGA ?

Specific question of interest : how much ok is it for a player to use multiple accounts, one for playing and one for chatting ?

I played one a table with a player. When that player wanted to talk, they did so using a second account who joined the table as observer.
I'm not completely sure why that player couldn't talk with the account they were playing from, it looks as if they were banned from using the table chat. (Also, that player didn't have two accounts playing on the table, to be clear.)

If BGA has a tool to prevent players from chatting on game tables, and players can easily bypass that restriction, well, on the one hand players doing that are clearly going against the spirit of the restriction, and on the other hand the restriction tool is a bit flawed.
Anyway. Does anyone know if using a second account to chat, especially if restricted to do so with your main account, is within the rules or not ?

[Jellby]

At the bottom of each page there are links for Terms of Use and Terms of Service.

[GTSchemer]

That seems fairly clear to me, the player is using an alt account to circumvent a moderation chat ban. I would just report it since the terms say players should not "avoid any control of access to the Services", and let the mod sort it out.

[JoysJoy]

I don't believe there is any rules against more than one account. Was this chatting person rude? Inappropriate? Mean? Did they break TOS in the chat by what they said?

If not, I dont think mods will care. They don't want to be overworked by issues that are not issues. If this perons simply chatted but was appropriate, they did not break TOS.

I have seen some complaints on the forum over the years of some people who file reports on others who did not do anything techinically wrong, and the over zealous reporters are the one moderated for wasting time and effort and resources.

[SachaBear]

Thanks for the reply, Jellby.

Well, the terms of use and the terms of service pages are long and full of legalese, so not quite the easy read for me.

At a glance, it seems to be said explicitly that, in case of a hard ban (account suspension/deletion), you are not supposed to re-create one without BGA's permission. But it doesn't seem to explicitly say you can't re-create an account if you main account was subjected to partial restrictions of service (e.g. ban from chat). Then again, it doesn't seem to describe "ban from chat", or some kinds of "partial suspension", as a sanction that BGA allows themselves to take. Admittedly, there's a vague mention that we're supposed to access BGA in good faith, but that's vague.

If any admin can clarify whether the behavior I described above is fine or not, that would be nice.
(If not, well, I won't play with that player again, so it's a problem for other players, and no longer my problem.)

____

Edit to reply to comments made while I was writing and posting the top part :

@JoysJoy : the person wasn't particularly inappropriate in that game. It was a game of Hanabi, and when they started talking, I quickly reached the conclusion this was the type of players I won't want to play with again. Nothing too bad in itself. What was curious is that they were using an alternative account to chat. I woudn't be entirely surprised if they earned a chat ban from some "heated" chat in previous Hanabi games.
And yeah, I don't want to report and be a bother if BGA says that this practice is tolerated. Hence why I'm asking.

@GTSchemer : yeah, well, I had only glanced at the terms of use. I hadn't noticed that it forbids to "circumvent or avoid any control of access to the Services". I don't know what "control of access to the Services" refer to precisely, but creating an alternative account to evade a chat ban sure sounds like circumventing or avoiding a restriction put in place by BGA.

[ErikLevin]

It would make no sense for creating a new account to circumvent a chat ban to be officially tolerated.

Having multiple accounts is not allowed at all except for special purposes: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 75#p180575
This seems to sadly not be clearly spelled out anywhere. IMO it would be good to update this with the official stance then: https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=f ... _forbidden

[JoysJoy]

It would make no sense for creating a new account to circumvent a chat ban to be officially tolerated.

Having multiple accounts is not allowed at all except for special purposes: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 75#p180575
This seems to sadly not be clearly spelled out anywhere. IMO it would be good to update this with the official stance then: https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=f ... _forbidden

No, you read that wrong. It is only not allowed if the person is playing themselves or changing ranking with the multiple account status. Here is the quote you directed us to:

"1 player - 1 account.

Playing from multiple accounts for ranking, even if not against themselves, is unfair and prohibited.

A secondary account that ONLY plays in Friendly Mode is permitted (so that players may use these to create tutorials, etc)."

SO as long as they only play friendly games or are not affecting raking, it is not prohibited. Why does it matter how many accounts anyone has, if it is not chainging ranking or anything else on BGA?

If no rules were broken, which seems clear to me that there were no rules broken, does not mean this person did anything prohibited.

Why do you care so much? Was the chat offensive and abusive? If not, then it was not prohibited.

[Nekojin]

If you think that it's unclear whether they're breaking any rules, report them, and let the Moderators sort it out. This has the advantage of getting the correct result regardless of what the truth of the matter is.

*> If it is against the rules, the Moderators will handle it.
*> If it isn't against the rules, the Moderators will leave it alone and close the report.

The only way that this could harm you is if you go around reporting lots of people for obviously non-offensive behavior. For a one-off incident where it's possible that the person is breaking the rules*, the Mods aren't going to be upset at you for reporting it.

* Ban evasion of any kind is usually against the rules, for obvious reasons. If the site just let you make new accounts to do things that you were banned from doing, that removes any real impetus for moderation to do anything.

[KenH]

*> If it is against the rules, the Moderators will handle it.
*> If it isn't against the rules, the Moderators will leave it alone and close the report.

So, is it against the rules? And if you report someone and the Moderators believe that you are unjustified, you face consequences.

Many players in the Tichu "elite" have two accounts: one to play in the Arena and another to play with their hand-chosen partner to maintain a high ELO. Is this against the rules?

[nik592]

So, is it against the rules? And if you report someone and the Moderators believe that you are unjustified, you face consequences.

So I would assume a certain amount of common sense would apply. If someone has a second account in order to do other things against the rules - eg. ELO boosting, circumventing bans of particular features, etc. then that's probably worth reporting. If you're doing it for other reasons, tutorials, whatever the benefit of two accounts for Tichu gets you (I get playing with a consistent, known partner means you can maintain a higher score, but what's the point in having that account? Just so you know what your ELO is with that partner? Probably reasonable then), etc. and it's not breaking any rules or impacting others negatively, then leave it be.

In the case, that you are wrong in your choice to report, I don't believe you are penalised if you're making infrequent, unjustified reports, and once you've made one, you know that's not a valid reason for reporting. And I highly doubt you're coming across users with multiple accounts so regularly that you'd be reporting one for a different reason that frequently.