Let's Talk

[Hammerfest-]

I'd rather not be voted off the island, but will respect community wishes if that's the case. Just throwing that out there.

Truth be told, I think you are one of the few people that I think should stick around in the staff. You try to maintain a lot of unbias which is something that is respectable.

[Razgriz]

Ok so from what I gather, so far we're voting on who we would want in. On the other hand, who does the community want out specifically? I guess we can combine both lists if possible.

[Ru5tK1ng]

Ok so from what I gather, so far we're voting on who we would want in. On the other hand, who does the community want out specifically? I guess we can combine both lists if possible.

If any sort of purging needs to be done, it should occur on the forum team. The mod list is way overblown and there really doesn't need to be an excessive amount of moderators.

Here's something metal posted and I think this touches on one of the main problems with the staff:

http://zandronum.com/forum/showthread.p ... 2#pid35807

If possible, new additions to the admin/staff team that are way more active and have the time to look at the small details of every issue would beneficial to the community as a whole.

From what I read about Dynamo, it seems if he was willing to come back he'd make a good addition. But once again it depends on his activity.

[Spottswoode]

I'm not in agreement with a democratic organization being the best approach to reform, primarily as reform in democracies is just as slow and tedious as reform in bureaucracies. This usually happens because popular people receive political defense from the populace and become as irremovable as staff members in bureaucratic organizations who are being defended by top management. Hence, swapping a bureaucracy for a democracy is certainly not going to yield a more ethically stringent, more consistent, or less biased organization. Having representation in the staff or cycled staff may not be an entirely bad idea, but there should be some staff who are not elected to avoid things becoming ruled by mobs around here. There's a reason we don't elect police officers. (We do elect their boss, however.)
I will suggest, as I always have when it comes to reform, that you create a set of rules for the administration to live by before you start talking about reform in staff. The problem here is that there are no established guidelines when it comes to the rules and punishment and the situations are always interpreted and acted upon individually in an arbitrary manner for that reason. The decisions are then filed away as final and only reviewed when the community mob gets pissed off. An appeals system would suffice here, but given the current approach of the staff it would not be reliable.
So I'm going to suggest two things at minimum:
1. Establishment of an appeals system. Bans and other forms of punishments on longer scales (in excess of one week) be publicly analyzed by the staff, appeals be given and publicly posted and reviewed, and that these appeals be given recurringly. The staff should then make future decisions in a stare decisis format based on previous bans. It won't be perfect, but you will be able to directly draw a basis and reasoning for a certain punishment as well as a basis for appealling your bans.
2. Rules and rule violations given out should be spelled out entirely with subsequent punishments and reasoning. The point is not so much to kill interpretation by admins as it is to give players a clear and concise detailing of expected rules that can be readily viewed. This will also help prevent admin abuse.
Now, we don't have to bog ourselves down into a bureaucracy with endless rules but we should have the capacity to engage and contest the rules and the rulemakers in a fair and open manner.

[Catastrophe]

Ok so from what I gather, so far we're voting on who we would want in. On the other hand, who does the community want out specifically? I guess we can combine both lists if possible.

Get rid of all the "Yes man" moderators that only agree with certain people and never think for themselves. Pretty much mindless drones.

[Hammerfest-]

Can we get some more staff responses?

I've said this when I was in staff, and I'll say it again since I still believe this is key. If, and only IF, staff wants things to work out and get a smooth ride with this issue, then staff members really need to post instead of simply reading what's going on and keeping their mouths shut. I understand that this isn't a job and that this shouldn't in effect require you to post something, but if you voluntarily sign up for something you should at least put some effort into speaking your mind.

[infurnus]

How can staff claim transparency? So long as there remains a private staff forum, there will never be the true transparency that is claimed by staff. Reforms are not usually met with reception, and many important threads are locked or hidden away.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of private discussions.
We can't have issues that involve personal information (IP addresses, aliases, emails, you name it) displayed publicly, for instance. This is probably the only point of yours I strongly disagree with.

I don't know about the "hidden away" part but locked threads do indeed happen. I'd like to think that unless it's bringing up old drama, we aren't exactly like other forums in the sense that you're disallowed from starting a new thread after another one is locked.

If in doubt, talk to the staff about it, we're pretty open when it comes down to it(at least I am), we have #zastaff on IRC, #staff for more personal stuff, and well, this area where we're talking right now.



As for staff reform stuff, hopefully people are aware I've been cleaning up the forums and overhauling things lately, updating our old FAQ, this is stuff that's been in progress recently as I've found myself with a little more free time than usual.

I have a lot of things planned, and will probably have to make a thread describing the stuff I'm going to do, but I don't want to get anyone's hopes up over stuff I might not be able to get working right. I'm also not the only one working on this stuff, I have Blzut and almost everybody else in the staff to thank for fixing, tweaking, and just keeping things working in general.

The default user theme is a hybrid of Wartorn, Metalhead, and my work. (And maybe even Dark-Assassin depending on who you ask! (they did the earlier themes that looked similar to the ones we use now))

I'm really open to improvements and reforms, recently I've been thinking of merging the Moderators and Global Moderators groups to remove redundancy, as I posted about before. Hopefully that would clean up the contact list. I'm not sure what else to type right now, I've only gotten through parts of this thread and will reply with more later as I read through.

But just so people know: serious inquiries only please. You're not Igor

[Ruin]

So I'm going to suggest two things at minimum:
1. Establishment of an appeals system. Bans and other forms of punishments on longer scales (in excess of one week) be publicly analyzed by the staff, appeals be given and publicly posted and reviewed, and that these appeals be given recurringly. The staff should then make future decisions in a stare decisis format based on previous bans. It won't be perfect, but you will be able to directly draw a basis and reasoning for a certain punishment as well as a basis for appealling your bans.
2. Rules and rule violations given out should be spelled out entirely with subsequent punishments and reasoning. The point is not so much to kill interpretation by admins as it is to give players a clear and concise detailing of expected rules that can be readily viewed. This will also help prevent admin abuse.
Now, we don't have to bog ourselves down into a bureaucracy with endless rules but we should have the capacity to engage and contest the rules and the rulemakers in a fair and open manner.

I think something like this was tried once. I don't remember it going too well. I think it went along the lines of posting the reason person X was banned, people were allowed to comment in that thread and say if the ban was justified based on the evidence provided. Though if my memory serves me well, some of the ban appeal posts were heavily biased based on the user's popularity within the community.

I do believe our rules and violations when it comes to the servers has a pretty straight forward punishment time frame (impersonation being 3 months, cheating being a year ban, etc). Perhaps they could be elaborated upon?

I do know the forums come down to moderator discretion. Which is something that is harder to tackle, as each moderator may have a different mindset as to what is punishable and what is not. Personally, I'm pretty lenient and don't hand out warnings often. For example, I don't care if people want to use just an image as a response. As long as it gets the message across. Though some others may be a bit on the stricter side of the moderation fence.

[Jenova]

I want to make things clear before anything starts up. I will avoid mentioning names, groups and associations, avoid personal insults, and intentional trolling. If this post is locked for trolling, flaming, or drama in general, it should be evident that certain administrators cannot handle such a thread, or are simply unwilling to. At the same time, please do not take the criticisms that I will bring up as a personal attack. I do not have any personal problems with the staff at this time. That being said, let’s rock.

I don't think you have a strong grasp on the situation. In your post you state that you think you will be banned for this topic, when in reality, it is a very good topic to discuss. You go in with a negative attitude as if trying to shame the forum moderators for something that they honestly wouldn't happen in the first place. I would also like to add that your points are very vague, and although you have good intentions "not singling any specific person out", it is very hard to interpret your post or agree/disagree with you when you don't know specifics about certain bans or policies.

Despite these things, there is a very high probability I will be banned for this post, even though I am going to do my best to remain focused and not give any excuse to do so. Where might I get this impression you ask? Let’s begin the first point, because that’s where I get this impression.
Everybody is aware of the Brutal Doom Suicide Encouragement thread that was posted a few days ago. http://zandronum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3484 this is the thread in question. In this thread it was exposed that Sgt Mark IV is not only a misogynist, but also a racist, a nazi-sympathizer, and asshole. Okay Decay, but what does that have to do with anything? Well, I was in fact warned for that thread after the lock happened, 2 points. Why does this matter? In a pm received to explain the warning, the author stated that said warning was not to discourage me from making further threads, nor to punish me. I was also asked to inform staff before making a similar thread. If I understand correctly, I was warned for jeopardizing the community reputation. There are many problems with this, but let’s begin with the most obvious fact. Only mods can see my warning level; the point of the warning, implicit or not, is always to dissuade me from making a similar post. If I do, I risk being banned. So is it really not for discouragement or what? The second glaring point is the need for approval for posting a similar topic. Seriously? How is this NOT a form of subtle censorship? If you need to ask permission for such a thing, that can’t be a good state of affairs.

The reason you were warned for posting that topic is because honestly, your topic was pretty much flamebait. Yeah, Sgt. Mark telling someone to kill themselves was a pretty stupid thing to do, but continuing the discussion on a completely different forum was equally as stupid. It's obvious that the same thing would have happened here, so I'm not really sure what you were trying to accomplish. I'm not sure about the whole warning point system though, maybe one would have been enough?

I'm not sure why warning points are private, but I don't really see a need for them to be public. You know how many warning points you have, what's the problem? This is a very small issue and I am not sure why you included it in your otherwise good post.

The warning should have been issued with the implicit reason for you to not to create similar topics (topics with very little discussion value that WILL end up in creating a bunch of unnecessary drama). Censorship thing is stupid. This isn't China. Nobody is going to censor your post content UNLESS it has the aforementioned qualities, i.e: no content, drama-inducing. By your logic, people like capodecima shouldn't be "censored" either. They want you to message them about it beforehand because it appears that your judgment was not too good and you could not foresee that the exact same thing that happened on the other forums would also happen here.

What does this indicate? An administration unwilling to handle important issues, except for a few here and there. Staff are supposed to be the leaders, preferably community picked. Instead we have arbitrarily assigned administrators who are quick to be judge, jury, and executioner. Who posted from staff in the BD thread? Just Infurnus. The other staff should’ve made their opinions more well known. These so-called “divisive” community issues are where we find out who people are really made of, what they can or cannot handle. It seems most of the staff were unwilling to try. But I understand the politics of not doing so.

You should not make assumptions. This doesn't mean that the administration doesn't want to handle something, but rather, that they are too tired to deal with stupid drama. I will end this section here and recap: you are dumb if you don't think your brutal doom topic should have been locked right away, and the warning was completely justified.

Onward, today another member was g-lined from IRC. Now, I’m not going to be defending the actions of this individual because I don’t know all the contexts or logs, but there is a trend of arbitrary bans being handed out for little to no reason other than general nuisance. Normally I would not find this an issue, however, there are many members on IRC and the forums itself that are a continual nuisance and general travesty. Different punishments for different people, and this has always been a problem with administration. It is very selective and subjective, and yes I know mods cannot be objective, but it is overly so. How is it that certain members that continually have nothing of substance to contribute are ritually ignored or have no action taken against them?

Now you bring up a few points in your post, the second one being about how certain bans are unfair. After a quick discussion with some of my best pals, I have come to the conclusion that yes, some bans are pretty stupid. The most notable of these (and the one you are discussing in your post, which by the way you should *please* specify because it is very hard to reply to you when you are so vague about everything) is about how Mobius was banned for some trolling crap he did in #pro. Basically, he should not have been irc banned. That is pretty much the end of that. If possible, he should be unbanned from IRC because honestly a channel ban would do more than suffice, and he should have only been banned if he evaded a channel ban to post that information (evading channel bans is cause for a gline).

There is a rule that forbids speaking on behalf of banned players. This rule is ridiculous. It is a censorship, another indication of unwillingness to deal with quasi-difficult issues. For example, we have here nub_hat posting on behalf of capo to advertise a tournament, because capo is banned. Without warning, nub_hat was instantly banned, and was unbanned only after much discussed. Similarly, I cannot voice concerns for my fellow banned members, lest I get banned myself. There is no logic to this, and it is rather tyrannical.
How is it that a certain group, who has also ritually proven to be a bad omen for the port, still manages to remain free despite their continued shenanigans and hostile intent? How is it that players who feign wanting to help, degrade new players, lie and cheat their way out of being banned continually? There are serious issues of conflicts of interest going on in administration. For those of us who actively try to expose this behaviour, we are cut off. Those of us, who have a sincere wish to make the port we once loved back to the way it was, are prevented from doing so. The only option left is to abandon the community, but we know this is in vain.
Dissident administration is also demoted or removed from staff. I have been witness to several instances of this. Staff is also typically chosen with favour given not to those with good judgement, but to those who can be controlled or have no real opinions of their own. This is not a way to run a “community centered” port.

When someone is banned for being very stupid, they are not welcome on the forums anymore. This means that if they decide to host an event, on another port, they cannot do it on Zandronum forums. When somebody posts for them, they are basically letting him post on the forums. Do you see the problem here? The rule is there in general to dissuade players from evading a ban by using a proxy player to post for them. If you understand this, you should be able to understand why nub_hat was banned.

How can staff claim transparency? So long as there remains a private staff forum, there will never be the true transparency that is claimed by staff. Reforms are not usually met with reception, and many important threads are locked or hidden away.

This one is pretty dumb too. A private channel/forum is necessary for discussing staff related issues which need no input from the community.

You bring up a few good points, but you should honestly drop the entire subsection about brutal doom because that was a well deserved warning.

As for my opinion, I don't think there needs to be more staff members. I think staff members need to be on the same page, and if possible, some important things need to be discussed within the staff and gathering input before judgment is taken. This would entail stuff like the Mobius fiasco brought up earlier. Staff members need to have a more individual opinion, as I see many staff members just blindly agreeing with each other following some type of hivemind.

As a result, the decline of zandronum itself is undoubtedly on the horizon.

lol

[Qent]

First off: Staff unwilling to handle important issues. Brutal Doom Suicide Thread was not an important issue. It was a fun discussion about whatever Sgt. Mark did and whether it was that bad, that happened to get a little heated resulting in some disciplinary action. Sgt. Mark, by the way, was not banned for what he did outside of our forums that the thread was about. He was banned for his actual post in your thread and subsequent excuses for an apology.

Different punishments for different people makes sense for different magnitudes of offense. I know you couldn't see, but it was clear from the staff response that the nuisance was enormous.

nub_hat's situation went badly, but in general, what should be the difference between a banned member posting directly and using an unbanned member as a proxy? And what do you mean by posting for Mobius in the same thread you predicted you would be banned for? Are you trying to become a martyr or something?

We would like to remove people from this community who care nothing for those around them, but it's difficult when we cannot point to a specific broken rule, and then we get staff reform threads calling "Different punishments for different people!" so please bear with us. Just a note though: having nothing of substance to contribute is perfectly fine and won't get you banned. Just don't fill up a lot of posts with a whole lot of that nothing.

Dissident administration is not demoted nor removed from staff. When I dissent, I do so firmly, and I believe that is appreciated.

[HumanBones]

As a somewhat neutral party, I'd like to give my 2 cents to this issue. It is very difficult to be a staff member or an administrator of a doom port. You're not going to please everybody, and sometimes you might not even please anybody at all. As a staff member you have to be able to make decisions like that and live with the consequences. A good friend of mine, Ru5tK1ng, still blames me for the downfall of the clan forum on the ZDaemon forums. So do a lot of people, I think. It comes with the job and it's not really suited for people who just want to make friends with everyone.

When you hold a position of power, I don't think you should be posting topics asking what the community thinks about administrative decisions (more specifically, asking them what YOU should do). I've seen some of that here in the past, and it's poor leadership. You have to be the one that makes the decision and sticks with it. If you can't make a decision, the job isn't for you.

Another thing: I actually believe the staff here all have the best intentions in mind. However, there are a large amount of them and as previously pointed out, they aren't on the same page all the time. One of them will do something, and two more will disagree and it will be public. The only way a staff can be seen as functional (hint: functional isn't effective just yet) is for all of them to be on the same page. The staff needs to respect each others decisions, and disagreements should happen in private. Always. It may be a good idea to designate certain moderators to certain forums, instead of having everyone in control of everything at the same time.

You can take what I say with a grain of salt. I may not have been good at what I did depending on who you ask, but I have had quite a bit of experience in both of these communities as a staff member/administrator and it's not easy. We've all seen what can happen when communities are run poorly, and I would absolutely hate to see that happen here, where people still give a crap about playing.

[(DeathWatch)]

As one who used to be a fairly active member of the Skulltag community, and also one that due to recent drama of the past oh... 4 years has withdrawn from the same community I feel I should interject something here.

First off I have to say there have been some really good admins and mods in the past, and also obviously some out right shitty ones. (you all know who you are respectively) The main reoccurring problem I have seen is the lack of organization and solid foundation of ground rules for all staff, administrative, moderative or otherwise *correct me if I'm wrong*.

As far as a basic code of Ethics goes within the community I can say without a doubt that there simply is not one. Any successful business owner will tell you two things are required from the starting gate for a successful company. 1: a solid set of bound and globally enforced rules for ALL levels and all ranks within a company. That means that regardless of status if you screw up you will be punished for it.
Cases of obvious trolling and fear mongering among-est those with power currently in the community should be pointed out here. I have seen several cases both recent and in the past where previously mentioned fear mongering has taken place. In the recent past due to an external decision that was made I was a for a time a target of one of these "fear mongering" groups I've mentioned. The first thing that is needed here before a reformation can begin is a clear set of rules and a community created code of Ethics.
With that, all these trolls in administrative clothing, the corruption etc.. can be targeted and cut out.

Groups that behave outside the commonly excepted public standard, yet retain power and influence with the moderation and administrative staff is and has been the core of all of this communities problems since all of this started and has constantly restarted over the past several years.
Any staff member regardless of rank, status, or otherwise that reads posts like these and thinks: "public unrest lets ban this guy" flat out deserves to be striped of all rank and power and banned themselves.
Covering up and running from problems does not solve anything, it simply settles things for a little while then brings back the same issues ten fold.

With this I conclude my rambling and hope that my earnest suggestions will be looked over by whoever currently leading this problematic community. I offer my thoughts purely as one who in the past actually cared about the community and the further development of this platform.
Zandronum as a whole has great potential, this is why its survived and why Skulltag survived so long despite the many problems.

Best of luck to anyone who is deeply involved in the current situation of things and truly desires a change for the better.

I've tried to be vague with an intent to avoid personal conflicts but I am open to any staff member messaging me privately for more information. However keep in mind I am by no means active on the forums and may take some time to get back to you.

To the community as a whole, I wish you all best of luck. I personally have long since given up on seeing any respect of the internet as a "happy" or "peaceful" place. Most of what I see going on here comes with the territory.

-(DeathWatch)

[Spottswoode]

So I'm going to suggest two things at minimum:
1. Establishment of an appeals system. Bans and other forms of punishments on longer scales (in excess of one week) be publicly analyzed by the staff, appeals be given and publicly posted and reviewed, and that these appeals be given recurringly. The staff should then make future decisions in a stare decisis format based on previous bans. It won't be perfect, but you will be able to directly draw a basis and reasoning for a certain punishment as well as a basis for appealling your bans.
2. Rules and rule violations given out should be spelled out entirely with subsequent punishments and reasoning. The point is not so much to kill interpretation by admins as it is to give players a clear and concise detailing of expected rules that can be readily viewed. This will also help prevent admin abuse.
Now, we don't have to bog ourselves down into a bureaucracy with endless rules but we should have the capacity to engage and contest the rules and the rulemakers in a fair and open manner.

I think something like this was tried once. I don't remember it going too well. I think it went along the lines of posting the reason person X was banned, people were allowed to comment in that thread and say if the ban was justified based on the evidence provided. Though if my memory serves me well, some of the ban appeal posts were heavily biased based on the user's popularity within the community.

I do believe our rules and violations when it comes to the servers has a pretty straight forward punishment time frame (impersonation being 3 months, cheating being a year ban, etc). Perhaps they could be elaborated upon?

I do know the forums come down to moderator discretion. Which is something that is harder to tackle, as each moderator may have a different mindset as to what is punishable and what is not. Personally, I'm pretty lenient and don't hand out warnings often. For example, I don't care if people want to use just an image as a response. As long as it gets the message across. Though some others may be a bit on the stricter side of the moderation fence.

No, what was created then was actually an open jury system. Any time you open punishment to the court of public opinion you get a kangaroo court. What I'm suggesting is a closed appeals setting where the punished user has the right to address the administration with grievances, errors, or apologies as the case may warrant. In this case, the administration would make a thread containing the record of the ban. The system would work like this:
The ban thread would be created. It would contain all records pertinent to the incident. A lengthy explanation would not be required, and earlier cases could be cited where a lengthy one may be warranted with an attached explanation on how it applies to this case. The admin who issued the ban or the order to ban would create the thread and provide the reasoning. Users would not be allowed to post in this thread.
After a predefined period, the punished user would be allowed to make a request to appeal his punishment. Once a week, the user can have his appeal request processed. If the us, er keeps spamming his request, it will be ignored by default. The point here is to require the user to conform to a set of rules in order to show a) he/she is actually apologetic or b) he/she is capable of an orderly process and can keep from acting like a complete asshat all the time.
If the request is accepted, by the administration, the user will be allowed to make one post in that thread and have at least one person, of their choice, post on their behalf or in their defense. (I will personally volunteer many times for the latter.) The admin who made the thread can also make a post and have an equal number of people comment of their choice. The rest of the administration would also be allowed to comment, but it is not required of them.  This has several purposes: 
1. It allows the banned user a chance to be heard, particularly if he/she has a legitimate grievance. The user is also able to have someone come to their defense in this case. 
2. It gives the staff an open place to have their thoughts shared on the rules and procedure. You guys will be pleasantly surprised how offering your thoughts to the public on a poor policy can make a difference. Dissent is openly encouraged and visible here. 
3. It allows the public to be critical of policy without having a direct exertion over it.
If the appeal is succesful, as decided by the staff (however you guys wanna do it), the user has his sentence reduced/removed as dictated by the staff.
If the appeal fails to  meet expectations, the banned user must wait a predefined period of time. Once again, the idea is to make user prove they can follow some general rules.

[Ivan]

In my opinion, there has to be only 3 lead admins. 3, who should not hastily go "Yes, we ban this guy". They should discuss things deeply before taking any serious action. And yes, preferably all 3 should discuss it and not just 1 taking the action on his/her own. This is one of the bigger problems of the staff, 0 discussion but lots of action by just one staff member. Let's say you don't have any of the other 2 online, what about the moderators? Nobody asks for their opinion, they are just there to be there. Honestly, there is an over abundance of those here. The numbers need reduction, so that the judgement can go easier and yet still be unbiased; although this heavily depends on the people that get picked.

About Jenova becoming an admin, sure why not? He did a lot for the community, and based on just that he can be one, to be honest.

Also, I noticed that nobody wants to give names, but I will. I think Metal should be out of lead admin position, and preferably any admin position, but not because I have any griefs towards her, but she does towards me and many others. This grief was building up slowly throughout the years and I feel it has peaked this year. Just seeing the "youtube" incident would probably be enough proof of it, as the judgement was carried on hastily with I suspect little discussion, as we all know the aftermath of our bans... But not just this incident anyway, there were more bad judgements in the past that some people surely could dig up, I don't feel like doing it to be honest. In the case that "many others" in the beginning was vague, it basically means [A3].

[HeavenWraith]

When Mobius got G-lined this time (which seems to be the pretext of this thread), I didn't even have the time to learn about the situation or find out the reason before several people messaged me asking "What the fuck?" and this thread popped up. I still don't know the reason, beyond "he had it coming for long". I think things would be a ton better if, like Jenova and Bones mentioned, the staff would be on the same page. Before taking action, members of staff should be notified about the decision, it should be evaluated/discussed and only then applied. That way the staff would be able to avoid mistakes, misunderstandings and handle matters more diplomatically. It really doesn't feel good when someone asks me "why was I G-lined?" and all I can tell them is "Gee, I have no idea".

Other than these peculiar PR issues, the staff seems to function well during the peace-time. The forums/IRC are functioning well and issues with the master server are resolved promptly. I personally think there are no issues in this field.

[UnTrustable]

Those of us, who have a sincere wish to make the port we once loved back to the way it was, are prevented from doing so. The only option left is to abandon the community,

Exactly.

[Metal]

I would like to clarify on the mobius ban.

The night before last, there was some discussion in the pro channel. This discussion somehow derailed toward posting pictures of people on the channel and ridiculing them. I was one of those people, as well as Nati, and a few others (So I've heard, I had left for work at this point so wasn't sure). It became pretty personal as he was posting these things in a channel that was far from private.

Was he banned from the channel first? Yes, his hostmask was still in the #pro banlist from a previous incident. I had thought someone unbanned him. But it turns out he was evading the ban and he was still on the banlist when I checked after the problem occured.

As stated in our IRC Rules

Be respectful of those around you. Abuse is not tolerated, and is dealt with sternly.

Mobius has broken this rule on multiple occasions all across the IRC network and has been warned many times for his behavior and for evading channel bans.

[Lollipop]

I actually thought Decay would be banned for the post too when I read it, it just seemed obvious to me.
The following text is not oriented against all admins. (I won't give names, drama hungering bananas)
The way I see it is that if some admins got to the topic before anyone saw it, then they would trash it, but now they will just have to play along.
I see some instances from time to time that are just horrible, though I won't list them here as it would be nothing but drama bait and not contribute anything to the matter at all. But fact is that some admins just do shit, just like Sarge, just a bit more "under the rug".

Questions remain though:
Why doesn't Decay's post about Sarge say he got warned for it? The usual is that the post show that it have done something wrong and other can learn from that and not post similarily.

Why do admins bias their views on the people? An example as follows:
Person A post something of rellevance.
Person B post something hostile/agitating or similar because of that post.
Person C report the post and get warned himself because he is an idiot.
The admin was so corrupted by hes relation to person B that he make up an excuse to give player C a warning.
AN EXAMPLE, DON'T FLAME GUYS.

How I think the moderators should be elected:
There is made a thread where they can announce they want to be moderators, and a following thread will be a poll where people can vote. Similar to SunS and other.

And now to those I vote for:
Jenova - He is obvious.
Mifu - I find him obvious, he actually give a fuck about those he communicate with.
Legion - I haven't seen much of hes work, but what I actually have seen is good and un-biased.

All the staff should be active though, it should be a requirement for being a staff member, unless it's for a short duration.

When admins give a warning, they send a PM with "you have recived a warning".
This is perfectly fine, but I have yet to see these PM's actually tell what rule you have broken and why they think so and how you can avoid doing so again. That should be pretty standard, unless it is with people who are known not to give a damn anyway (moderator must judge that), or if their time is short (should be marked).

[Nati46]

I would like to clarify on the mobius ban.

The night before last, there was some discussion in the pro channel. This discussion somehow derailed toward posting pictures of people on the channel and ridiculing them. I was one of those people, as well as Nati, and a few others (So I've heard, I had left for work at this point so wasn't sure). It became pretty personal as he was posting these things in a channel that was far from private.

Was he banned from the channel first? Yes, his hostmask was still in the #pro banlist from a previous incident. I had thought someone unbanned him. But it turns out he was evading the ban and he was still on the banlist when I checked after the problem occured.

As stated in our IRC Rules

Be respectful of those around you. Abuse is not tolerated, and is dealt with sternly.

Mobius has broken this rule on multiple occasions all across the IRC network and has been warned many times for his behavior and for evading channel bans.

And the worse part of this is that a staff member had also taken part in the trolling. That came as a surprise to me honestly.

[Dark-Assassin]

Dissident administration is also demoted or removed from staff. I have been witness to several instances of this.

I'll be honest and can actually agree to this. I've seen it before, and experienced it as well.
But I am sure in my case it's not just that alone. There were times I screwed up, I admit that, but I don't think having everything you worked for stripped from you for it is a good way to deal with it.
I am not complaining now, I have found other ways to occupy my spare time, and without the headache of dealing with, even if mostly, a drama filled community. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like it back.


I also agree with Lollipop's post.



Edit: Was too blunt and missed a lot of details on this post. I am sorry.
See: http://zandronum.com/forum/showthread.p ... 7#pid46437