Undeath is eating all the Oct in the galaxy, stop attacking him.

Thanks Pie! Just this time last year the mods would have been getting together to try and figure out if it was worth waiting 24 hours to maybe get it fixed, or go ahead and do a full reset

You should be able to change that by going to profile -> identity.
Under settings you can control if the email address is visible

tbh, the # of "IAs" happening this round probably isn't significantly higher than in a normal round. players are just able to talk about them in forum and chat instead of having to stick to outside modes of communication.

Wait, when did civilization collapse?

Anything related to VIPs and draft codes has to come direct from the pie man

Probably a good idea Pie! I'd imagine if they aren't going to read the warning the way it is, they wouldn't read the announcements either

The problem with IAs has always been that when communication takes place externally, it's difficult to moderate consistently. Unless the conversation takes place in ingame messages, we ran the risk of the information being fabricated. The moderator team and Pie had multiple long discussions on this, and our options basically came down to:

1. Start accepting other sources of information
2. Remove the rule and allow the game to moderate itself

The problem with the first option is again that it's incredibly easy to fabricate outside sources. A quick convo with someone on Facebook, drop into photoshop and edit a word here and there, boom someone just offered to ia with you. Discord has been mentioned as an option as we have more control over that. Couple issues there including that players could edit what they said after the fact, and although Discord has a lot of advantages over IRC, easily accessible/searchable logs aren't one of them.

Market aiding was always an incredibly frustrating one, because it can be so obvious that it's happening without there being a single shred of evidence we could use to punish someone.

As a long time moderator who has been through this cycle a number of times, it's still sad to see the negativity that comes with any change that's made. Pie has spent a lot of time making improvements to this game and there's a lot more to come, but if you think his goal is to bring the game back to the point it was 15 years ago you're crazy as it's not relevant to the current market.

It's weird seeing people post in this thread

The only reason to write in your vote is being a colossal asshole that doesn't care about the outcome of an election. 

I say that because it's just as effective as sitting on your couch at home and not voting, but you make the effort to vote knowing full well that it will have no impact.

1.  Passing planets to another family is not allowed.
2.  There's 0 evidence of planet passing.