Replacemenet tournament director

[Pootleflump]

I would have thought weight irrelevant and unhelpful to a welcoming and inclusive dialogue.

Otherwise, I'd need to leave PlayDip too.

I also don't think it's any of our business to speculate as to why people have dropped off the site or come back again.

[wardiecj]

Oh blimey.

Does PlayDip have a weight limit???

I am so screwed.

[Strategus]

Being lardy has its advantages though. I mean you can rest your beer glass on your belly while you are watching the football, for example.

[TheFlyingBoat]

Hello Everyone,

I am new temporary Tournament Director holding the fort until Malarkey returns. It looks like all the hard work has been done in setup and hopefully I can just keep the wheels turning.

I'll check messages daily and post regularly with the simple aim of keeping the game fun and delivering the tournament rounds. Bear with me while I catch up on the tournament structure and please be patient with any rule requests in the first week.

With thanks to those offers of help, I'll be in touch soon and if anyone else would like to pitch in please message me.

Good luck to all competing!

Good to see! I sent you a PM about an R1 issue that I would love some help with it.

[GameKat]

Oh blimey.

Does PlayDip have a weight limit???

I am so screwed.

No worries, Wardie, it's a lower limit.

[Pootleflump]

No worries, Wardie, it's a lower limit.

Hoorah! It's official. Empire biscuits for all my favourite allies, even the wee lemons.

[Captainmeme]

Do we know what happened to Carebear? I was away when he left and for some time after and always had a lot of respect for him

He burnt out on Diplomacy iirc and backed off slowly before suddenly dropping everything and leaving. Doing fine irl as far as I know, but hasn't interacted with the Diplomacy scene since.

Malarky I'm a bit more worried about because he's disappeared from everything - even stuff unrelated to Diplomacy - at once, and with no slowdown beforehand. I don't think he intended to drop the tournament and I really hope he's okay. Unfortunately every attempt to contact him is a dead end though; he's extremely private about his identity so we'll have to wait until he returns to find out what happened.

[Jack007]

...

I also don't think it's any of our business to speculate as to why people have dropped off the site or come back again.

I completely disagree, Pootle.

Of course do we have a right to know what's happening.

After all, he stressed the time of so many people. He was setting himself above others by taking over the conversations at the forum and the chat, presenting himself as an "expert", creating rules (tournament), answering arrogantly to votes at the forum, calling for articles for his "zine", opening a new tab (blog) on the website, becoming a moderator with special rights.

These are PROMISES, right? It means implicitly that he promises to fulfill the self-imposed commitments towards the others, in exchange for a prominent "social position" and special rights (e.g. as a moderator).

He makes people to invest hours and days to write intelligent zine articles, months to participate and stay with a tournament. He asks people to invest some of their lifetime for him and his projects.

And then he disappears just like this? That's not normal and we have the right to know what's going on.

Of course, he could suffer a stroke, or die, or get catched and jailed in, etc. Then I would say: aahw.. poor boy, or RIP, or whatever is appropriate..

But still: why does nobody know what happened. I hear that he had meticulously hidden his identity. Why is that? What has he to hide? To become a moderator on playdip, isn't one asked for his RL identity, phone number and other contact data and/or references?

Then another point of my contemplations: When somebody gets so much active, has many projects, deals with people and organizes them, he needs a lot of time for that, right? He would spend a good part of the day doing this. So, normally that would not get unnoticed by persons in his environment. They would ask: what are you doing, and he would show them what he does and tell them about Playdiplomacy, the zine, the tournament. NORMALLY. And if then something happens like a stroke or so, they would be able to send a short notice to the community, in whatever form that be, to say that the patient would not return.

EXCEPT.. if he has done all this in complete isolation, in a closed little room, a mansard, a remote Norwegian hut.. (*imaginating all these settings*). Bref, except if he was a VERY LONELY person.

Any other proposals that could explain it?

I am still in a very beginning phase of my trial to understand the psychology behind such behaviour. I need more signs and observations, and I might have some more questions shortly.

What I can say already is, that when somebody comes and swings himself up WITHIN A SHORT TIME, in a community like e.g. Playdiplomacy, then caution is advisable, and measures should be taken like RL identity check, references, contact possibilities outside of the online channels of that community.

Regards.. Jack

[Captainmeme]

I'm not sure if it has been posted anywhere yet, but Malarky posted an update on his blog: https://diplomaticon.com/2022/11/27/if- ... s-a-while/

He suffered a stroke, which is why he disappeared. Thankfully he recognised the signs and called an ambulance in time, and is doing okay.

[Jensen]

Thanks for the update.
Look forward to seeing Malarky back on the site.