Alex, let me try to logically lead you through this.
Before you try to be self-righteous by saying that the admin team should be looking out for the interests of the people, you're wrong. I am not looking for what is fair for each individual, I am looking for what is best for the server. If I wanted to please the masses, I'd give them all OP. But by doing that, I'm neglecting the good of the server. Our interests are with making the overall best game play experience, not pleasing each individual. Good game play promotes people being happy. Being happy does not necessarily make good game play.
Now, let me examine your concerns. You say this rule is "Overpowered" and seems unfair. And it could be. If we ever used it. How often have we used that rule. Let me tell you, almost never. That's because we only use it as a safe-net. The admin team is not a power-hungry grouo of people. If we wanted to screw you all over, we'd close the server and split the paypal money between us and call it a day. You TRUST us with your donations and you TRUST us with the power of OP to make the server a good experience. That is why rule 8 exists. The populus trusts us enough to not look our for our own personal interests but rather the interests of the server. Rule 8 exists so if someone is making bad-game play but is not breaking a rule, we can properly exercise some sort of punishment.
Stng and Backpack were promoting back game play Stng and backpack worked together to scam people. Backpack would log on for a minute or two to keep his title without timing out but not staying on long enough to be challenged. He worked with Stng to make it so Stng would scam people of money to "summon" Backpack so they could accumulate innocent people's money. This is not how the game-play should be. That is why it's bad-game play. If they did not know that scamming people is bad, then that is their malfunction, not ours. That is why we are using Rule 8. Are they breaking a rule? No. Are they promoting bad game play? Yes.
You also brought up the old-gymleader thing. I agree, that could of been more properly addressed. But at that time our team was smaller and it was harder to regulate over 16 gym leaders and make a full-blown investigation. People were punished, but it's possible some may not of been. We can't ever be 100% of anything but we can try our hardest. But just because we could not properly investigate previous issues does not mean we should allow obvious abuse of mechanics to fly by. What stng and backpack did was not okay.
I hope I addressed all of your questions and concerns.
