Posts: 1,948
Threads: 175
Joined: Feb 2013
Staff roles: Systems Lead Server Administrator
The problem I've taken with this course of action is that it's an extremely harmful form of server administration.
The event thread was posted on August 24th, 2016. It was bumped several times throughout. When did the administration decide to take issue with the event and edit/post in the thread?
One hour and a half before the event was supposed to begin. You had essentially nine days to call off the event, get in touch with Yber, and get the event more in line with what you wanted, and you instead chose to quickly rush in at the last hour or so and slam down some hasty edits saying "No, you can't participate in this event if you're outside your ZOI!"
And sure, you could make the argument that it's "common sense" that the event shouldn't have gone through since it "violates the rules", except for the fact that it's been run successfully for the last two years at the same time, and last year's event was essentially identical. Considering the staff was almost literally identical in Sep. '15 as it was in Sep '16 (with the exception of Dimon and Hannibal)...it's curious, I suppose, how the staff opinion of an event can vary so wildly with so little change.
Although, honestly, my problem isn't so much that the staff decided to shut down the XTF event, but rather how it was handled. If you wanted to keep the event from happening, you honestly could've done it far before it became such an inconvenience to everyone involved, and ruining an event for many people that had been, from a year ago up until an hour and a half before it happened, completely legal and allowed by the rules. If you somehow didn't realize the event was happening AND somehow changed your minds completely on the idea that the event should take place, then I don't see the harm in letting the event play out, since it was so close to occurring, and then dropping a post that the event will need to be changed or edited to happen again in the future. This would reflect an admin team that doesn't want to ruin the fun of anyone involved - not just those who are against the event, but those who are FOR the event, as well. This would show an admin team exercising restraint. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and rather than apologizing and noting that the handling of this was in error, you've decided that instead it is the fault of those involved - those who were essentially blindsided with minimal communication from the staff prior to the event - for not...reporting Hannibal's actions to the admin team? Is that not what this thread is for?
And, Jansen, to tack on to Yber's response, the problem with Hannibal's post lies in the fact that it, at best, completely ignores the problems with this decision at best, and at worst, essentially patronizes Yber and those who tried to organize this event for not suddenly listening to the Word of God who hastily scribbled across the event that had been up for over a week because suddenly, out of nowhere, this event was VERBOTEN and anyone who attended who was outside of their ZOI was going to face SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. Heaven forbid some people want to get together and shoot each other once a year for an hour and a half in a system that isn't Connecticut to celebrate a really old Freelancer group that's managed to still exist.
The Rules Wrote:The intent behind these rules are for everyone to be excellent to one another, and to use common sense. Consider the people around you. Keep fair play in mind. It's a game and nothing is gained, or lost, save the experience. Credits can be re-earned. Ammunition replenished. If you become infuriated step away. If you make a mistake apologize. If you wish to find a loophole in the rules, good luck.
Fair play, a level head and consideration for others are paramount. The rules are not a sword or shield to be used for or against someone, but to ensure that the server environment has structure and allows everyone to have fun.
You can argue that this event was a "threat to the structure of the server environment" or whatever, but I don't see anyone except yourselves cheering that "the sanctity of the server was upheld!" and "the RP nature of the community was kept alive!" by performing this action, and especially in performing it the way you did.
Rant over, I suppose. Back to being another "biased member of the community".
ed: to correct my statement slightly, the event this year was a bit broader (I was under the impression that it only took place across a couple of systems in the Taus), but at the same time there was apparently a coordination chat between @Yber and the admin team, so really my point(s) still stand(s).
(10-03-2016, 09:40 AM)sindroms Wrote: That list has grown at least 3 times by now, sadly. It only included a list of ships that directly got the money from the source - knowingly and not.
Please have patience, it is a long and highly tedious process for everyone involved. Send lots of coffee.
I see the list has grown and now another admin posted that people who find that their names on the list, should post an appeal to prove where the money they have came from.
I don't really know how to do that, but i will provide for you one more link that include payments to my character "Orascom".
I already provided Nebula Complex and Hamann Shipyard links, so here is the third one, it's for Solitaire Metropolis and that's all i have from documents.
I hope that this situation with nickname is going to be settled soon. I also understand that this is a massive task that you guys are working on, so good luck and i am patient.
Note: I think some people sniping each others on this thread lately .. i know this is a never-ending problem, but i recommend locking this thread for a while.
* Vendetta pokes his head in to the Admin feedback and sees drama.
Okay. I see a lot of people are still upset over what happened, and rightly so, as it was a really poor judgement call on the staff to wait until the last minute to act on something. In fact, this has been a recurring issue that I've noticed where things are put off to the last minute, swept under the rug, outright ignored, so on and so forth. I've been told to contact staff via the forums instead of Skype (which is still extremely inefficient) to have things done. Said things haven't even been acknowledged, and once again the lack of public relations shows vibrantly among the people who volunteer to lead and manage a community that is essentially a giant daycare.
Stop.
I'm going to quote myself quoting someone here.
(09-22-2016, 07:47 AM)Vendetta Wrote: In the words of someone who has been here far longer than I and seen the inner workings:
You can't save something that is effectively suffering from a terminal illness.
I know I don't know the inner workings. I know I don't know how hard it is. I get that you have lives, but would it be seriously detrimental to your personal health to actively talk with the community publicly about things/decisions/ideas/plans/problems? No it wouldn't. It'd give you a better perspective of how the Community you volunteered to help manage operates. It'd give you insight in to things that normally would just leave you acting blindly. The system is flawed, especially the new means of processing sanctions and the appeal process. The older system was surprisingly better, and I even sat here and gave the new one a try. It added more paperwork to a job you already seem to consider timely and in need of significant effort.
You somehow managed to make the job worse for you than any better, and productivity has significantly dropped because of it. It took two months for an appeal about a warning to get a response, which in the end was 'Oh it's been two months, doesn't matter anymore'. What kind of system is that? Other people have their appeals outright ignored well past the whole 28 day period. There is no streamline of work or efficiency. There is no productivity. All the general maintenance, and @sindroms events have been the only thing we've really seen beyond questionable action/decision after questionable action/decision. I was content to sit by and hope for the best, and that it was just a rough patch but its been going on for months now guys. It's time to stop.
Your approach to the community is just as unhealthy as banning six people with mediocre evidence because they were harmful to the server gameplay in your own opinion, and yeah I'm a little irritated due to recent events and conversation/interaction with specific staff. I even sent in reviews, applications for a position to help out, various other requests not even related to the issue that have been ignored. It has been well over three months since a sanction was filed that still hasn't been processed or seen any correspondence when inquiring about the problem. Two months for an SRP gun change that involved sharing the ship which was such a big controversy that despite repeated discussions about factions and their own warships, moving the ship to different accounts, and having to actually point out parts of the RP because you couldn't find what was literally the first line in a linked post only to see that after all that time, the controversy of sharing it didn't even matter was completely and utterly ridiculous.
The staff's unwillingness to become involved with community issues as mediators and resolve conflicts also speaks clearly for Public Relations once again. The latest warning on a staff member shows the integrity of the staff, and at this point I know my Mod application is going to get ignored because I had the stones to post my opinion about you all, and my opinion is that the current staff really isn't healthy for the community save three members of it. No, that doesn't include moderators or developers. There are some mods I've seen that haven't really done anything. I frequently talk to some devs and have seen a small bit of the inner workings of their team. There's still minimal communication between the two. I don't know why, and frankly at this point I don't care. Over the months my confidence in the team's ability has been dwindling, and I'm sorry to say it's reached the point where I have almost no faith in their ability to manage a community that most aren't even that interested in participating in anymore, and it's a shame because for some I know that people bashing admins is to blame for their lack of motivation.
But for the love and health of the community, please, please stop blaming everyone else for the health of this place and look at yourselves. We're no saints, but right now neither are you in the eyes of a lot of people, and while only a few are speaking up here, there's talks elsewhere about it, and genuine concern about how things have reached this point, and only you can fix this, because only admins can hold admins accountable for their own actions, and if it's too much of a blow to your ego to admit you were wrong in one situation and apologize, just to move on, then why'd you take up the position? Is it just for the status card?
Tl;dr please stop and re-evaluate how you're doing your jobs, and stop pointing fingers at each other - Community members included.
Kudos for taking the long and hard way of removing hacked cash from Disco - without making the community suffer by the much easier solution of a rollback to a pre-hack status. Hope you can locate the money and that players that unintentioally were caught up in it can redeem their names quickly by cooperating.
I am convinced that this is the right way to go.
But it for sure is the harder one.
(10-04-2016, 04:58 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Kudos for taking the long and hard way of removing hacked cash from Disco - without making the community suffer by the much easier solution of a rollback to a pre-hack status. Hope you can locate the money and that players that unintentioally were caught up in it can redeem their names quickly by cooperating.
I am convinced that this is the right way to go.
But it for sure is the harder one.
I think I am earning my money on this one!
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person
(10-04-2016, 04:58 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Kudos for taking the long and hard way of removing hacked cash from Disco - without making the community suffer by the much easier solution of a rollback to a pre-hack status. Hope you can locate the money and that players that unintentioally were caught up in it can redeem their names quickly by cooperating.
I am convinced that this is the right way to go.
But it for sure is the harder one.
+1
I realize that the amount of work involved into fixing this mess is enormous so I also want to kudos the staff for their efforts in repairing the damage done by that certain individual who decided to cheat their way through the game.
(10-04-2016, 04:58 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Kudos for taking the long and hard way of removing hacked cash from Disco - without making the community suffer by the much easier solution of a rollback to a pre-hack status. Hope you can locate the money and that players that unintentioally were caught up in it can redeem their names quickly by cooperating.
I am convinced that this is the right way to go.
But it for sure is the harder one.
+1
I realize that the amount of work involved into fixing this mess is enormous so I also want to kudos the staff for their efforts in repairing the damage done by that certain individual who decided to cheat their way through the game.
(10-04-2016, 04:58 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Kudos for taking the long and hard way of removing hacked cash from Disco - without making the community suffer by the much easier solution of a rollback to a pre-hack status. Hope you can locate the money and that players that unintentioally were caught up in it can redeem their names quickly by cooperating.
I am convinced that this is the right way to go.
But it for sure is the harder one.
In regards to the event that happened a while ago with the crown.
It was fun however there was a lot of misunderstanding. Has it been canceled at some point or what?
Also I really did not like that the hunted were allowed to trade the item among them. This unbalanced the fight (once we actually managed to catch them after a long and exhausting lockdown) greatly since they could have, and indeed did, transfer the item to the person with shield and cruise engaged and there was physically no way to keep up with this considering not everyone was on ts and could not be coordinated.
However on the whole this gave me a really nice vibe of the old HHC bountyhunts which is really nice. However as per the improvements for the future - announce it once, give the item to only one player and have them reach only one certain system. That streamlines everything and makes it a good challenge to both sides.
I am kinda confused about this ... What I think is... A double standard.
The admins say you are volunteering your time for the community. Fair enough we all have lives.
BUT
The admins get chosen to be admins through a difficult screening process. A process that has a high reward for the few that earn it. To get to this position and then not do the expected is... Yeah.
Guys im not saying anything bad but looking it from the point of view as it is an earned space to be plus the first question to apply is how much time do you have... Is well... Can't use the excuse for everything.