Possibly limit it to volunteers who are either trusted not to abuse the information/track down the country or to people who do not play the server, like the game mods.

The people who are playing the server and making the threads need some way of viewing them?

Fair point. I don't know how permissions are laid out for these boards, but I am assuming there is no mechanism for only granting permission to individual threads.

Nope. Just to forums. If you have access to a forum, you have access to everything on it.

Would it be hard to implement such a permission for these forums? Obviously this problem doesn't exist yet but it is clearly possible.

I like the idea of being able to see other countries, and the suggestions on how to improve those countries. I do not think limiting this experience to a select few is going to change the odds on a poorly run country getting hit.

Some players also play the same country name or variation of a country name every reset, so connecting the dots would not be that hard.

What may be easier is to assign an ID to the country and instead of posting a player name post the ID, an provide the ID in-game to the player. This way no one except possibly the developers, admins, and the player know whose country is being displayed. As a just in case the ID could also be sent to the players forum inbox so he does not lose it.

Will the reset help threads be archived for others to look at in later resets? Will a player be able to post updates to the same thread as they follow advice being provided?

Right now we plan on closing old threads, but keeping them available for viewing. If there are any particularly insightful or helpful threads, we can sticky them. The hope is that there will eventually be a lot of instructive, older threads for new players to read through.

There are more steps we can take if too many players are attacking those who update their status. Personally I feel that getting attacked a few extra times is an acceptable price to pay if you're getting a lot of good help. The positives outweigh the negatives.

As you can see in your thread Prima, once a thread is created, all further status updates are put there as posts.

I don't believe that there are enough volunteers available to implement what Detmer is suggesting.

um. if you post an id instead of the player's name, as soon as they respond to a bit of advice, they will out themselves.

I like the new system. very simple to use and understand. now, if we get a lot of players and even 50 of them use this system, might start seeing valid posts dropping off.