AHK Bans too harsh?

[Ohrami]

@branon

• the part where you purposefully used faulty logic and wilful ignorance to imply that all software (including browsers and operating systems) beyond OS accessibility tools was against the rules

I see where the misunderstanding comes from. Since you didn’t read the entire post, you didn’t see that my argument, which made only true statements, alleged that a literal interpretation of the rules as written implies that utilizing any software (including browsers and operating systems) while also utilizing the mouse keys software that comes with your operating system would not be allowed. That is not a result of wilful ignorance; it’s simply a consequence of logic, and the reason why those desiring to be precise take care to word their sentences properly, and rather than being offended, they instead take note of critiques and issue corrections. There have been multi-million dollar lawsuits won over far, far less.

@branon

• the part where your proposed macroing rules were several paragraphs longer than all the other rules put together, virtually guaranteeing that no reasonable player would ever read/understand them, and looking ridiculous to boot

Why would it guarantee that no reasonable player would ever read/understand a rule-set if it is longer than one or two paragraphs? Do you believe that reasonable people are less capable of reading or understanding things than unreasonable ones, or simply less willing? If so, why?

@branon

We tried the “just write a clear ruleset” approach and it had the opposite effect. Every single solitary bullet point we clarified was contested to no end. It was exhausting.

Your solution is five times longer and thus would be five times worse. Imagine answering a constant stream of questions about every line of your macroing ruleset, several times per day, most often posed by abusive players with banned accounts.

Taking issue with the “inaccuracy” of the rules is a problem with your perception, not a problem with the rules themselves. Again: the macroing rule has not changed, it is the exact same rule only stated a different way. If you got banned after the page was updated, you’d have gotten banned before the page was updated!

I believe there is pretty significant evidence that the reason why writing an allegedly clear rule-set didn’t work out well is because the previous rules as written were unclear. My clarifications rectify that issue. There would be no need for questions, and every question could confidently be answered with, “As long as you follow the rules as written to the letter, you are fine.” If people did follow the rules as written to the letter and still managed to create a script that you or your team did not deem appropriate for the game, you could then update the rules to reflect that.

And no, there is no problem with my perception. The rules as they are currently written say exactly what I implied they say in my original post. There is a pretty clear reason why, shortly following the publication of the revised rule-set, the majority of people believed that rebinding keys at all wasn’t even allowed anymore (including myself), and why there were and are so many clarification requests regarding that: the rules were written inaccurately.

@branon

Something you read on our rules page probably indicated to you that this was allowed. You were mistaken, but it’s ultimately our fault for providing an overly-verbose rule that was capable of being misinterpreted in this way. That’s fixed now.

The rules as they were previously written did not imply at all that bots of this sort were allowed in the game. The only thing the rules update did was ensure that people who want to use software that currently is allowed will not know that they are allowed to use it unless they get some verification from a moderator on the forum or the Discord server.