I remember when I started there was one of those green messages when you entered the old BG that gave this URL:

http://combat-samurai-island.blogspot.com/2006/08/rules.html

This is from the site:

“#2: Outside scripted objects.
Outside scripted objects, defined as any objects that are not specificly made by the C:SI Team for use in the battlegrounds, are not allowed.

“This includes, but is not limited to: guns, bombs, cagers, trapping devices, push guns and push devices, orbiters, teledash and teleporting devices, shields, star wars force powers (considered a trapping and/or push device), non-physical movers, channel scanners, flight assist devices that allow you to fly in the no-fly zone (The battlegrounds are no-fly for a reason), and any device that gives you an unfair advantage in a fight.”

The general idea that seemed to tie all this together was that there is an intended limited range of what could be done in a fair competition, and these devices went beyond those limits.

Also, I remember two things that gave me an idea of what is considered fair play: the spacebar issue and macros.

With the spacebar, it seemed that it was something accessible to everyone, and seemed to be a part of SL’s functioning, so it wasn’t obvious to me at first that it was an exploit. But, it does resemble a banned device in how it works, and I remember Esprite and Archanox encouraging us to bug report the spacebar to LL and teaching a few people how to do it and what to say. Those two things, that it was like an SL glitch that resembled a banned device, and that the developers were encouraging that we bug report it, contributed to me feeling that its not something that is ok to use.

My feeling about macros came from a conversion I had with a few people when Bamboo was new. They were talking about an oldbie who used to freely admit to “macroing”. Macros were explained to me to be either software or a keyboard that allowed for sequences of moves to be programmed into a single key. It wasn’t immediately clear to me that this would be cheating, since it seemed like something potentially accessible to everyone (and wasn’t an outside “script”), and the sequence would have to be right for a situation, so for that reason it might be fair. But then it occurred to me that this was a shortcut. If I wanted to do a move sequence and it took one key to do it, whereas it took someone else 3 keys to perform, then of course that would be unfair.

So that has been my personal rule of thumb - does something resemble a banned device even though it may not involve a “device” (since the device isn’t the issue, its the effect that matters), and is something a shortcut of some kind that relieves me of needing skill, or otherwise make things easier.

I think this allows for things like jump slash (an unintended move by the developers in how they balanced things)to be legit and not an exploit, since it does not resemble a banned device, requires some skill to perform, and has a method of being countered (plus over time we have seen in develop in its uses and the defensive responses to where it easily feels like a natural element of the system). This also would make what we saw last night illegitimate, since it moves much faster than dash, looked almost like a teledash (a banned device), and even though I could block and counter it, I dueled Qooy only to experience what Ees had and so expected it and spent the whole fight waiting for it.