I assume this was to me, so I'll respond, albeit belatedly.
If I were cheating, and people accused me of cheating, I wouldn't complain about it here. It's so much easier to just not post, than complain about someone being right about me.
No, the foundation of my complaint is the "guilty until proven innocent" stance, requiring everyone suspected to justify themselves to the busybody's (lack of) authority.
You could add to that, that should you remain quiet when they expect you to give evidence of your attendance, you become subject to all manner of abuses. But, should you appease their presumptive expectations by responding, they won't apologise for their false presumption, or veiled accusation.
If they did that, then I might respect them, a little.
"...busybody's..."
You say potato I say potatoe?
I call them people who still care about UO you call them busybodys.
"You could add to that, that should you remain quiet when they expect you to give evidence of your attendance..."
It seems as though you are saying, that the game would be so much better if we all simply ignored cheaters so that a noncheater is never accidentally mistaken for a cheater and might be expected to say a simple hi if asked?
It seems reasonable to assume that a noncheater would appreciate and respect the work other noncheaters are doing to help make the game a more level playing field.
So I don't understand this part of your argument at all really.
"...you become subject to all manner of abuses."
You do understand that if you are abused ingame there are steps you can take to stop the abuse?
Same rules apply to anyone breaking the rules, be it scripter, duper or harasser.
I gather from your post that you just don't have time and or can't be bothered to worry about cheaters, even so much as to type a hi in response to a strange players greeting, just in case they accidentally mistook you for a cheater you shall simply REFUSE to answer them!
I actually got bold with the last suspected afk miner I bumped into. I went right up to her in Fel and said hi and I stood there,
Waiting to die.
Or for the char to say hi back.
Or for it to recall away quickly.
All it did was mine, smelt on its fire beetle.
So yes, I paged.
Within 30 minutes I just happened to see some red letters pop up in the lower left hand corner of my screen in between the squiggles from my last object last target macro.
Yeah I was holding my finger on the squiggly button and starting mining then turning to watch tv for about 8-10 pick swings (by ear), before I looked back at the screen to see if I was overweight and ore was going on the ground.
So I very nearly missed it.
It was a GM asking me my pet's name.
I'm like WTF? I'm the pager not the pagee here.
So I hit enter and a long row of squiggles appeared over my head and I had to type in my pet's name which was: a g b.
GM says Oh that wasn't what I wanted to ask you. Thank you and enjoy your mining. (He probably wanted to know about my neon guildname, they got me the next day for that).
Well I was told a few days later by another player that someone got 3 days off because their miner scripter got caught and that was their ONLY account, they were pissed and felt like they lost too much money so now they were gonna close their Luna city vendor house.
I'm kinda dense so I replied: "All they lost was time, just 3 days off!"
Later I realized he meant they lost actual cash money because they had lost 3 days worth of scripted up ingots and gems to sell for cash.
So will I continue to*test* and page on someone I suspect is cheating? Why shouldn't I?
And since most pet names seem to be longer than the 2 letters in Hi most of the time, it seems it'd be easier just to say hi to someone who says hi to you, rather than typing your pets name or some other reply longer than hi to a GM question.
Also you do realize that by saying hi back you never know you just might be replying to, OMG, a new player who actually needs some help?
If you care about UO you wouldn't be a cheater, and cost the game money because people have to send GMs to catch you.
Same thing applies to wasting a GMs time because YOU know you aren't cheating but refuse to say hi to people who don't know. If you cared about UO you wouldn't want to cost the game money.
You'd just say hi back.