The reason we've made a policy against duplicating items is because of the overall impact it has on the AC community. I normally don't like rules like this, but we've seen it happen with both Wild World and City Folk. Animal Crossing is a game structured around a virtual economy. When the economy dies, the game dies along with it for many players. And even if a user personally refuses to duplicate items, they are still affected by the online economy. We'd like to avoid this as much as possible, which is why we don't allow it.
That being said, we are not witch hunters and we understand that duping will happen despite the policy. This is why we do not respond to baseless accusations of duplicating, but would rather let the Wi-Fi Feedback ratings deal with it. However, we will lock any public discussions or admissions of duplicating items when it pertains to trading items, finding duping partners, etc.
Duplicating items is in fact cheating because it's done by exploiting a game glitch. Whether you cheat in a videogame or not is your own decision, but we don't want the cheating of one user to indirectly affect another user's gameplay. Online games ban online cheating, so it shouldn't be too shocking to hear that The Bell Tree and other AC sites don't allow it either. Time traveling, on the other hand, is not cheating and the difference between the two may help you understand the policy. One is done by exploiting a game glitch, the other is an intentional feature.
To sum it up, we don't care how you choose to play the game, but we hope you will not do anything that will ruin the experience for others.
