Rockman:
we felt the need to delete those countries because we could never be sure that they DIDN'T add something to their country. But even if they didn't edit their countries, they had access to a DB which gave them the potential to access a lot more information than they should have had. Being able to look at ppl's stock on the market, monitor when goods are going to be bought/sold, or any other read-focused action would invalidate them as well. We know TC was in the countries table once as well.

Both of them had access to the database for the entire duration of the rounds in which they were deleted for, I believe. We didn't go back farther, but if we did I think we would still be warranted. Going as far as erasing their entire existence from the ranks tables wouldn't be too far, IMO. That's why qz and I made the call on the deletion rather than martian; it's an admin deletion, not a mod deletion. If you want to find something to cite... treason against the staff and community? :p

The other aspect is that either of them could have brought the existence of the hole to us and it would have been a net positive for whoever did it. If Hanlong did it after TC had been hiding it for probably at least a year, Hanlong would have been seen as a hero.