Free speech and forum rules - balance

[Morgan le Fay]

There obviously needs to be a balance between rules and free speech, but does this forum seem to lean too much towards rule enforcement? For example, the reasons for latest thread to be closed:

1) Naming of specific people (is there such a rule?) : accusing someone of cheating on a public forum is in bad taste, but the community is smart enough to determine whether the accusations have merit, so does it actually require forum rule enforcement? Not sure about this one, could depend on the situation.

Would you like to named and shamed, especially if you were innocent? No I don't think anyone would. There has to be a certain amount of privacy given to everyone and it's up to CS to decide whether that player or players need to be dealt with, not us. This forum shouldn't be used as a kangaroo court.

Quoted from the Forum rules, full version can be found here on the forums or please feel free to use the link in my sig.

Code of Conduct

No flaming, personal attacks or harassment
We won't tolerate posters who attempt to make life difficult or miserable for other players. Disagreement is fine, but personal attacks and harassment are not. This includes:

Flames and personal attacks
Any post which gratuitously insults or slanders another player, group, alliance, moderator or Tynon employee is not allowed. Trash/smack talk is allowed, but keep it within reason.
Any post which accuses another player of 'cheating', 'hacking', 'botting', 'exploiting', etc. is not allowed.
Any post or pattern of behavior by a player of group which consistently insults, baits or stalks a player is not allowed.

2) Posting an exploit: obviously, if someone posted instructions on how to exploit the game, it should not only be closed, but deleted. However, if someone is just presuming there is an exploit and posting an accusation, it seems almost beneficial to leave the thread open. The rest of the community can present their perspective on the situation that can quickly disprove those accusations. A lot of new / less experience players may perceive many things as exploits because to them, they can't understand how something is possible. By reading posts from other players here, they can get that understanding. Closing the thread actually seems to give validity to the existence of an exploit.

Please understand that this post is just an open discussion and not meant to be a complaint. It is not meant to target anyone, so please do not be offended.

Presuming or not, it would be unethical of me to let this kind of thing go unchecked. So what if it gives validity to an unproven or non existent exploit. If people are daft enough to go looking for it then more fool them. Exploits used intentionally are against the ToS and that means no one should attempt to find or use one anyway.

I'm certainly not offended and I can see why you have asked the question. The rules are there for a reason as things do get easily out of hand. Regardless whether any of us mods close threads with alleged exploits or not, once it's there people will automatically assume it exists-our job is to try and nip things in the bud before the conspiracies start.