As part of the series of incremental site upgrades which will culminate with Crossfire 4.0, Crossfire 3.2 has been launched. Those of you who saw my sneak preview journal yesterday evening will be aware of what is new, but to those of you who did not, here is what we have changed:

• Cheaters will no longer be banned. Banning cheaters is great in theory, but the sheer volume of duplicate accounts which are created at the click of a button is testament to the fact that, in reality, it is an unenforceable policy. With our new policy we hope to strike a balance between making it clear to the community if someone has been caught cheating, and giving the cheater enough of an incentive not to create a duplicate account. Instead of banning cheaters we are introducing a new tagging system whereby there will be two types of tags -- red and orange. Those caught cheating will incur a red tag, which will be visible both on their profile (alongside further details) and behind every instance of their nickname. Those caught knowingly playing with Crossfire-tagged cheaters will incur an orange tag, which will be visible only on their profile. Those with red tags will not be allowed to play at Crossfire competitions, nor will they be able to create clans, post movies, or post in the recruitment forum. Other than this, their account will function as normal. A publicly viewable database listing those who are tagged is available here. A more comprehensive ignore feature will be added in a future Crossfire upgrade, and it will allow users to decide for themselves if they want to ignore tagged users.
  
  The tag lengths will be as follows:
  
  3 months for playing with cheaters; 6 months for cheating on a public server; 12 months for cheating in a clan match. Repeat offenders will get time-and-a-half.
  
  
• Spammers will no longer be banned. Those who persistently post spam, racism, adult material, or other disallowed content will have their posting rights temporarily revoked. During this time, they will still be able to use the site ordinarily. Bans will only be resorted to in extraordinary situations. As a result of this new policy, most of the ban list will be cleared.
• Report functionality for comments, content and users. This will enable users to report users for cheating, general rule-breaking, or otherwise, which should help Crossfire staff to run the site more efficiently. These rights will be revocable.
• Soft-deleting. Prior to 3.2, all deleted content disappeared into the ether, but, from now on most -- and soon all -- deleted content will be soft-deleted, instead, which means that deleted content can be restored. This will also make site staff more accountable for their actions, as it is now possible to see what was deleted, who deleted it, and when they deleted it.
• Extensive administrator logging. Practically every administrator action will be logged, increasing accountability.
• New userlevels. The following user levels will exist as of 3.2: Member; Tagged; Restricted (posting rights revoked); Trustee; News Writer; Moderator; Anti-cheat Administrator; Administrator; Head Administrator; Developer. This will help us run the site more efficiently, as the work will be delegated. This differs to the free-for-all that currently exists!
• The return of the search function!
• The return of the ajax inbox updater!
• Plenty of other cosmetic changes and bug fixes that you'll probably discover at some stage, too.

Update: It was all a joke! Haha!

krosan has been relieved of his administerial duties with immediate effect.

Shortly after the CIC7 LAN, Wzzrd staff made claims that money had been stolen from the till behind the bar. Subsequently, Enschede police launched a full investigation into the alleged theft. Naturally, Crossfire co-operated with the police fully in their investigation. Now, 3 weeks after the investigation began, it has emerged that Crossfire administrator krosan was behind the robbery.

In light of the above, Crossfire has no choice other than to remove krosan from the administerial team. On behalf of the rest of the staff here at Crossfire, I would like to apologise to the community for the poor judgement in hiring krosan in the first place.

After idle.ee have recently announced their comeback, they joined up with the North American organization Blight Gaming today. The lineup looks still unchanged, but they seem to be ready for CIC7 now!

Roster:

• ferus
• Night
• bulldozer
• drago
• Squall
• urtier
• JaKaZc

James "blackfoger" Larsen, Founder and CEO of Blight gaming:

Quote

"After scoping out the scene for several months and getting numerous emails for top teams wanting us to pick them up we weren't sure if it was the right choice or whom to get. But we knew if we aquired a team it have to be before CIC7. Shortly Ferus approached me and after speaking with him I knew this is team we wanted.Comprised of old school players with a large following but still have the skill to win and the drive it was a perfect match. Then after I talked with the team even more I know this was a match made in heaven. We are glad to be sending idle.ee to CIC7 which they be attending in March, but before they do the team will be releasing loads of content for all their fans including videos, commentaries, Articles, Blogs, and lessons.
Check the Blight Gaming facebook on a regular basis because there might be a special surprise for all our loyal fans of wolfenstein ;D"

Sebastian 'drago' Ohrmann:

Quote

"We are delighted to be given the chance to join such a professional gaming organization such as Blight. They will provide us with everything necessary to stay on top and we believe that the Enemy Territory scene will benefit from this. Once again we are eager to claim the throne by winning the Intel Crossfire Challenge 7 and look forward to our cooperation with Blight Gaming. Thanks to everyone supporting us, be prepared for some exciting games!"

#blight @ QuakeNet and GameSurge
Blight Gaming

The popular GUID matching website YAWn! has unfortunately had its database compromised, and as a result everybody is strongly urged to change all of their passwords if they are the same as their YAWn! password, should they have an account there.

Earlier today you may have noticed a couple of strange things on Crossfire, such as the 'Fusengate 08' article disappearing and the 'Cheaters' forum thread being defaced, among various other things. This was caused by a few of our members having the same passwords here as they do on their YAWn! accounts, and inadvertently allowing the individual to login to their Crossfire profiles and disrupt the website.

We have identified who is responsible, and it is some random peon from the recent bust, unsurprisingly. Despite what you may hear elsewhere this person is not affiliated with any cheat website, nC had nothing to do with this. The YAWn! admins have been informed, who have taken necessary steps to ensure that this does not happen again. It should be noted however, that the guilty party still has a copy of the old database and can continue to cause certain people problems if they do not change their passwords.

A general rule of thumb is to never use the same password on different websites, as obvious as that may sound it is surprising how many ignore it. You should also use an alphanumerical password with upper and lower case.

Unfortunately, this has already affected one of our members quite seriously, so we strongly urge you not to take this lightly. This will only affect those who have an account on YAWn!, with the same password to it used elsewhere. Despite that, this is a good oppurtunity for those of you with weak passwords to change them to better ones.

The YAWn! website is still fully functional and should be safe to use, provided any members have changed their passwords.

You can change your passwords here.

YAWn! newspost: http://www.yawn.be/