TLDR: Read the bottom
I know this is double posting but I just want to explain why I decided to do what I did. I also sent a similar message to the staff and they discussed it internally.
I stepped down partly as a fuck you to the administrators of this port. It's pretty clear to anyone who reads this topic that that's pretty much what it is. I just want to be clear that I still want to obey all of the rules, and I'm not dropping BE because there are many people besides myself who benefit from it. I get genuine enjoyment when people use BE and thank me for doing this because they know I don't have to do it. I assume others like Konar, Alex, etc. also enjoy when people play their servers because their work and effort is also validated.
TSPG exists -- and I
strongly recommend you stick to TSPG if you want an actively moderated server cluster because I'm not dealing with this shit anymore. Yes, I am literally using my position in this community to voice my dissatisfaction. Is this petty and shitty? Absolutely, without a doubt. I have no doubt that there are specific players in this community who will use the rule changes simply to piss off other players, troll, grief, etc. I also strongly hope that these people are in the minority, because once again I would rather not impact the people who play on BE and have done nothing wrong.
Before I continue and explain why I'm doing what I'm doing, I just want to remind everyone that BE is open source. Yes, you can clone the repo at
https://github.com/IvanTopolcic/BestBot and host your own version. I've only seen two other people (besides Mifu) do this and they used it internally. I made it open source to encourage contributions, patches, and others to host their servers. A few players (read the other Capo ddos topic if you are unsure who I am talking about) have argued that I've only started BE to get a hold of the community and control it. This is the most laughable thing I've heard. I was asked numerous times to be an administrator of this port, a position I declined because I knew that I didn't have the time commitment to deal with Zandronum issues as well as with BE and NJ issues.
---- skip if you don't want a long ass explanation of my doom history ----
For people reading this who don't know my history, I believe it's important as it will give context to the next few paragraphs that I'm about to write. I'm also going to tell you because it will without a doubt be brought up by certain individuals. I started playing Zdaemon back in 2003-2004. During this time, I did a lot of absolutely despicable shit, including but not limited to: harassing other users constantly, namefaking a dead player (Thunder, rest in peace), and cheating around 2006, which I was banned for. I don't want to make excuses for myself but I believe my age and immaturity played a large role in deciding what I did. Not a lot of players knew about me back then, I was just some random Zdaemon player.
After I was banned for 2006-ish in cheating, I switched over to Skulltag. During this time, I found a few exploits that I reported to Carnevil to have them patched up and fixed (walk turbo204 sr50 if anyone remembers was a large one). I'd also just like to remind you that I was still a complete asshole at this point, having been banned from irc, forums, etc. I became friends with Spak members (Redshirt, Radnsmash, etc) who are basically what I think of as the "old school" A3. These players (including myself) caused a lot of shit and started a lot of drama in the community. We made stupid memes like Metalbread (which Ralphis used later I believe) to harass her constantly, and talked trash about her physique (you know what I'm talking about, no details for the unaware). We made fun of all of the admins and were banned many times from many servers. I was literally one of the most banned players in this port at one time. After this, I became friends with A3 players and hung around their teamspeak. I ddos'd Legion at one point in a Zdaemon private CTF game because he did something to piss me off (I don't remember exactly what but I wouldn't just randomly ddos him, it was unjustified 100% and I'm not trying to justify it but I believe context is important). Then I won a few masterbowls (CTF tournaments similar to how Football leagues work), started Best Ever, went back to school, and generally have distanced myself from most of the community with the exception of the few shitfests that happen once every few months. I also became admin of Funcrusher some time during this (I don't know exactly when to be honest) but it may have been even sooner than this.
Honestly I don't remember the exact order most of those events transpired but I believe the above is important set up for this big wall of text that I'm going to write next.
---- continue from here ----
Important note: when I refer to A3, I generally refer to Mobius because he is essentially the root cause of the problem. There are many great players in "A3" (the community, not necessarily the clan members) such as Bob, Kuchi, Dranzer, Goliath, etc (there are probably more -- the people who I dislike 100% know I dislike them) who I haven't seem cause problems and are open to thoughts and opinions from others.
First, I'm going to give my honest opinion on what I think of the staff. I think there are many weak-minded staff members who are insecure about their authority and are actually actively frightened to ban A3 players because they are afraid of the public backlash they will receive. These players should NOT be a part of the staff. They should be moderators -- forum moderators, IRC moderators, etc. They should lock topics and kick people. For "sensitive" topics, such as permanently banning some A3 members from IRC and forums (not the game, I don't think you should ban people from the game unless they actively cause TONS of problem inside the actual game itself, which usually isn't a problem). Infurnus was probably the best administrator we had, but he seems to have disappeared. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind if Infurnus read this he would at least partly agree with the points that I'm raising.
Now, I'm going to provide you with what started all of this. Around two days ago, AVC started calling Strangle names inside #zandronum, presumably (someone please correct me) because Mobius and co. were harassing him about his IRL pictures. I believe AVC called Strangle retarded or something, which should have warranted a kick or a ban assuming he wasn't just joking around, which from what I could tell he wasn't. Instead, Mobius randomly joins the channel (because somebody told him about this, I wonder who) to come to defend his friends, because many A3 members (remember: I'm not generalizing the entire clan, I'm talking about a specific subset of players) are incapable of talking 1 on 1. I believe Strangle told Mobius about this but I am not 100% confident, obviously this is speculation. Mobius come into the IRC channel #zandronum and starts giving AVC shit about being broke as fuck, black, fat, ugly, and being poor because he was taking pictures in some bathroom. I don't doubt that this type of vigilate justice is sometimes warranted to deter others from doing it, but I believe that they always take it extremely overboard, to the point where players have actually left this community because of harassment.
Now -- I suggested to the staff that they should have banned AVC and Mobius for doing this stupid shit, which they did -- they banned Mobius for 1 month from #zandronum. But note that nobody gave a shit until AFTER I reported it in the #staff channel. This is the weak minded attitude that I'm talking about. The type of ban in my opinion was also completely unwarranted. They will tell you "we usually wait to ban", "we need to discuss it", but these are poor excuses because nobody on the staff is man enough to ban people. In fact, a specific staff member has literally told me they don't want to ban Mobius because they are frightened of the "community" backlash. Mobius has been banned how many times? I'm not talking about 4 or 5 years ago, I'm talking about from 4 or 5 years ago to the present date. For instance, Moti was constantly harassed by these people over IRC for having a long neck, giraffe neck, etc. Jwarrier literally left this community because his children, yes, his two young children, were being shit on by Decay over and over and nobody gave a shit (please read the thread if you think I'm joking). During my argument with A3 a few days ago, I've had numerous people private message me telling me that they agreed with me 100%, but they try to stay out of it because they didn't want to be targeted by them and harassed, etc.
Now on to the length and severity of the ban. Does anyone seriously think a one month ban from #zandronum even means anything? After he was banned, he joined #grandvoid with the sole intent of starting an argument and shitting on me. Then, about 4 other people joined in (all from A3, of course) to basically shit on me too. Notice how when I trash on players I don't need a group of 5 to do it? This hivemind mentality is cancerous to this community and I'm surprised that they haven't been permanently banned. I understand that the staff want to be independent of policing on other "non-official" channels (what does this even mean? you own the fucking network) but I believe that problem offenders (he has been banned how many times from irc?) should be permanently g-lined. In case anyone wants to read the dramafest in #grandvoid 2 days ago, here is the log:
http://pastebin.com/qpRWL8iH
Now on to other aspects, I have tried to be a fair and just administrator (on BE and NJ), and in my honest opinion Strangle should NOT be a Zandronum administrator. Strangle, Rustking and Mobius all work together to cause shit and constantly back each other up. They dig up old shit on other players and threaten them with it, in my case it was from ddosing Legion about 4 years ago. Just read the posts and this becomes obvious. Strangle does not take criticism well, and in fact has even banned me from the #staff channel because I called him a shitty admin (sorry that you're a shitty admin, Strangle). Strangle absolutely knows this #zandronum ban has absolutely no impact on Mobius -- he's not stupid.
Now, on to the reason Strangle was actually picked to be an admin. A few years ago I believe during the formation of Zandronum (my timeframe may be off but the events are correct), Infurnus and the "renegade" group of Skulltag admins split off from the Skulltag community and moved to Zandronum. This was a necessary change as Carnevil did bad shit that caused a lot of players to lose faith in him, such as adding backdoors to the Skulltag executable to give him RCON access on any server. After the split, and in lieu of the past (mostly poor) administration, Infurnus decided that he would try to get a representative from each "major group" of voices to be admins (A3, R, NJ, and GV was already properly represented). This is when I was asked to be an admin but turned it down. Strangle however took him up on the offer. I don't know why Strangle was chosen or what Infurnus was thinking but I genuinely believe that this was an extremely poor choice. It's pretty clear that he has shown extreme preferential treatment to certain players and is not a good fit for an admin position.
A3, R, and most other forum users are the vocal minority. We are like 5% of the playerbase. The rest are people playing mm8bdm, gvh, aow, and generally do not post here. Admins need to be assertive and ban instead of beating around the bush and being scared about complaints. Who has heard of an admin team that is scared to ban problem members of the community. This is absolutely pathetic.
TLDR: I am a crybaby and complain about the Zandronum staff not banning problem players even though they've been repeatedly banned 700 times in the past and still cause problems to this day, but are not banned. I think some of the Zandronum staff members should not be staff members, but instead delegated to forum/irc moderators who have very little input but still carry out tasks such as locking obvious shitposts. More sensitive issues should be dealt with by people who know what they're doing. I believe certain community members need to be permanently (or at least 1+ year) from irc, forums, or wherever they shit on.
This is the longest post I have written anywhere and I could probably finish my university essays if I put in half the amount of effort or passion as I did writing this post.
In case it isn't aware, I am upset with the administrators in this community and I have decided to be a petty fucking dipshit and remove moderation from BE. I believe if the admins don't want to remove problem players from their community, then neither will I.