Bah! I wrote an incredibly eloquent and harrumphingly impassioned response to this, but the 'preview' button wiped it!

Here's a crappy rewrite:

'I' looks like 'l' because of the dodgy font in the game. I think peeps should be able to tell toons apart without having to paste and copy names, so some kind of intervention may be in order. Perhaps also with 'O' and '0'.

'4' doesn't look like 'A' unless you went to dafty school. It isn't a problem with the game. It doesn't need fixing. People who can't tell the difference need fixing. If we take those people's complaints at face value and decide that Chribba (or whichever 3rd party) has turned scam artist, that's our fault. Our (lack of) evaluation of others needs fixing. After all, they could be lying to deliberatley trash someone's reputation.

It's not the scammer's fault that the mark is guillible. It's not the 3rd party's fault if we're gullible enough to take the guillible mark's word at face value! It's our responsibility to judge the characters we meet and evaluate our interactions with them appropriately.

If scamming is a serious problem for noob retention, I do like the idea of putting it into the tutorial. Get them to RP a few common scams, then let Aurora scam them! Surely they can't stay mad at Aurora!?

The point of my post is that "...used to scam..." cannot be anywhere near the rule.

I was using the "A" "4" equivalence because it was easy to work in as an example of someone who's going to feel sad about a blanket ban (i.e. someone who mines and wants all his miners to have near identical names, and ends up getting them changed due to a drive-by petition), and saying that I think that bit of sadness is ok in the interest of having clear cut, clearly enforced, and therefor effective rules in place.

I totally agree.



We definitely do need the rules to be as clear cut as possible. But I really think we need to minimise the 'sadness' bit. If only 'l' and 'I' were acted upon, there'd be a bit of sadness. If we started going into anything like 'A' and '4', 'E' and '3', 'T' and '7' etc. it would be horrendous and unnecessary.

If scamming is a serious problem for noob retention, I do like the idea of putting it into the tutorial. Get them to RP a few common scams, then let Aurora scam them! Surely they can't stay mad at Aurora!?

other forums have rich text editors so it's easy to understand what you're writing

Repost from the threadnaught:

Impersonating someone, by using an deliberately similar name, has been (quite rightly) against the rules for as long as I remember.

Misrepresenting yourself, by claiming to be someone's alt or claiming to represent another entity, has until now been a normal part of Eve.

If someone claims to be an alt of Chribba, then I'd check with Chribba or check Chribba's bio. If someone claimed to represent Goons and that they could move my stuff into null, then I'd assume it was a scam anyway, especially if they were a member of the swarm.

Misrepresentation is part of Eve, Carbon as a Charon, Ravens as Navy Ravens, awoxing dishonest scumbags as honest reliable pilots, boys as girls, girls as boys.....

Editing the official wiki to pull off a scam was a clever move and I applaud the players ingenuity, but the wiki does need to be factually correct, so plug that loophole and leave us to lie to each other in game and on these forums.

Editing to add: As for the rewording, I'd agree with mynnna's post just below.

Bah! I wrote an incredibly eloquent and harrumphingly impassioned response to this, but the 'preview' button wiped it!

Here's a crappy rewrite:

'I' looks like 'l' because of the dodgy font in the game. I think peeps should be able to tell toons apart without having to paste and copy names, so some kind of intervention may be in order. Perhaps also with 'O' and '0'.

'4' doesn't look like 'A' unless you went to dafty school. It isn't a problem with the game. It doesn't need fixing. People who can't tell the difference need fixing. If we take those people's complaints at face value and decide that Chribba (or whichever 3rd party) has turned scam artist, that's our fault. Our (lack of) evaluation of others needs fixing. After all, they could be lying to deliberatley trash someone's reputation.

It's not the scammer's fault that the mark is guillible. It's not the 3rd party's fault if we're gullible enough to take the guillible mark's word at face value! It's our responsibility to judge the characters we meet and evaluate our interactions with them appropriately.

If scamming is a serious problem for noob retention, I do like the idea of putting it into the tutorial. Get them to RP a few common scams, then let Aurora scam them! Surely they can't stay mad at Aurora!?

Like almost everybody else I fully agree with mynnna. However, I think the proposed wording isn't saying what it's supposed to say. I believe the marked "their name" is meant to reference anybody's character, corp or alliance name. As it is it can only be read to reference CCP's (or volunteer's) name though which makes it redundant with the first sentence.

So I'd propose a slight modification:
"You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or present yourself or your corporation or alliance by imitation of another character's or corporation's or alliance's name."

There's also the Carbon/Charon scam, the "fully fitted Hulk" contract that contains everything except the actual ship itself, contracts for selling bulk ore/minerals at 10 times their unit cost (hard to distinguish because counting zeros with no separators can be difficult), the "1m isk Navy Slicer" scam (several contracts are created selling faction frigates for 1 million isk and one for 1 billion isk, and the quickly completed 1m isk contracts appear to make the 1b isk contract legitimate and highly desirable), and the "fully fitted T3" contract that contains subsystem skillbooks instead of the actual subsystems.

You make a good point, but I still maintain that any scam should be legal as long as a player has some option available to them for determining the legitimacy of a transaction, whether they may usually think it necessary to do so or not.

And in-game mechanics could be used for new player names... can't be so hard to implement a similarity check, no?

• Then just add an Aura tutorial to introduce new players to scams
• change the tos to better protect CCP employees: "You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer." [skip the rest]
• and if u must - add optional warnings to anything that might get petitioned (Clippy, the new Eve Assistant.... I wonder how that will work out) to be on the safe side [There are 3 Chribbas that have a very similar name... do you really want to accept the contract over 1 b for 1 veldspar from Chr!bba?!]
• and go drink something with your buddies because you have saved eve again! yay!

IANAL, so yeah, my proposed changes probably would need a language pass.

You know, I was going to suggest this very thing but wasn't sure. On reflection I think why not? If it clears all this up it might be the easiest way. Make the prize for not falling for it the Trading book.

Bah! I wrote an incredibly eloquent and harrumphingly impassioned response to this, but the 'preview' button wiped it!

Here's a crappy rewrite:

'I' looks like 'l' because of the dodgy font in the game. I think peeps should be able to tell toons apart without having to paste and copy names, so some kind of intervention may be in order. Perhaps also with 'O' and '0'.

'4' doesn't look like 'A' unless you went to dafty school. It isn't a problem with the game. It doesn't need fixing. People who can't tell the difference need fixing. If we take those people's complaints at face value and decide that Chribba (or whichever 3rd party) has turned scam artist, that's our fault. Our (lack of) evaluation of others needs fixing. After all, they could be lying to deliberatley trash someone's reputation.

It's not the scammer's fault that the mark is guillible. It's not the 3rd party's fault if we're gullible enough to take the guillible mark's word at face value! It's our responsibility to judge the characters we meet and evaluate our interactions with them appropriately.

If scamming is a serious problem for noob retention, I do like the idea of putting it into the tutorial. Get them to RP a few common scams, then let Aurora scam them! Surely they can't stay mad at Aurora!?

"You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of CCP or of an EVE Online volunteer group. You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself or your corporation or alliance by imitation of another character's or corporation's or alliance's name."

Added an of in there to clarify that its representative of the two groups and not representative or a group.

We will be combing this thread, and asking the CSM to submit their own responses when evaluating whether we should alter the current Terms of Service and, if we decide to change them, how we should do so.

Please be aware that this thread exists solely for constructive feedback. Nonconstructive feedback and trolling will likely result in a ban from the EVE Online Forums, as we are hoping to work together with you all to make sure EVE is the "best" EVE it can be.

On page 2, I put this amongst a list of recommended changes.