TW Dean Results and Future of Trench Wars

[Falconeer]

In fact if I was "dean of staff" I would make it a requirement that moderators have to take screenshots and provide logs of offenses. The onus is on staff to prove a rule is broken, not on the victim/offender to prove they have been unjustly banned/silenced. You would see moderator abuse drop to nearly zero with this system in place. People can't abuse powers if they can't get away with it, if the system demands that for every warning you need to take a screenshot of the offense first and email it to the head sysop then nobody would mess around. All these staffers abuse because they are either ready to be fired, ready to take a slap on the wrist, or risking that the offender won't report them or recognize a breach in protocols. They do it because they can get away with it. And what promotes this attitude? Lack of transparency. Which is why i would post server logs publicly. If I was a dev or had access to a dev I would make it so server logs are full on posted for the public to access. I would make events be shown or searchable, so every WARNING a mod gives would be timestamped and searchable. And anyone can go there and see the real story. I would also outright disallow moderators/staff to have staff chats. Zone issues are issues for the whole community. You aren't special you have no special rights, you're just a volunteer. You have something to say, then say it publicly or don't say it at all. That's how you ensure everyone is behaving properly, because there is no environment where some asshole can be two faced and say one thing in private messages and then a totally different thing in public chats. I can't believe after 20 years a troll god has to point out the obvious to you guys about how to run a zone properly without bias or abuse. But i guess a troll knows best what fosters abuse when people have power, since we deal with assholes like you "staff" every day.

[qan]

In fact if I was "dean of staff" I would make it a requirement that moderators have to take screenshots and provide logs of offenses. The onus is on staff to prove a rule is broken, not on the victim/offender to prove they have been unjustly banned/silenced. You would see moderator abuse drop to nearly zero with this system in place. People can't abuse powers if they can't get away with it, if the system demands that for every warning you need to take a screenshot of the offense first and email it to the head sysop then nobody would mess around. All these staffers abuse because they are either ready to be fired, ready to take a slap on the wrist, or risking that the offender won't report them or recognize a breach in protocols. They do it because they can get away with it. And what promotes this attitude? Lack of transparency. Which is why i would post server logs publicly. If I was a dev or had access to a dev I would make it so server logs are full on posted for the public to access. I would make events be shown or searchable, so every WARNING a mod gives would be timestamped and searchable. And anyone can go there and see the real story. I would also outright disallow moderators/staff to have staff chats. Zone issues are issues for the whole community. You aren't special you have no special rights, you're just a volunteer. You have something to say, then say it publicly or don't say it at all. That's how you ensure everyone is behaving properly, because there is no environment where some asshole can be two faced and say one thing in private messages and then a totally different thing in public chats. I can't believe after 20 years a troll god has to point out the obvious to you guys about how to run a zone properly without bias or abuse. But i guess a troll knows best what fosters abuse when people have power, since we deal with assholes like you "staff" every day.

You'll be happy to learn that for all silences, mods do need to include a log and/or screenshot. (The same is not true for warnings, however.) We use a rather complex system. All warnings are timestamped as well, and recorded to the database, which is searchable. Meanwhile, two BanOps, a head and assistant, review all bans to make sure they are done in accordance with our ban manual. There's very little vigilante justice as a result. One reason TW has remained successful is because we've developed an oversight system to make it somewhat difficult for those at any level of staff to abuse.

There's transparency, but mostly it's behind the scenes ... institutional transparency. I understand it'd be better with more public transparency, but at the same time, it's just a video game. Without proof of massive corruption that the current system isn't addressing, I don't really see the need.

By the way, if you were Dean of Staff, you wouldn't have the authority to change bans policy. Like different branches of government, power is divided up by departments in TW. BanOps work on bans policy, events head runs events, leagues head (when we still had one that would last longer than a month) would decide leagues policy, PR head steers PR, training head determines how training is done, and the dean of staff determines who is hired onto lower staff, who is discplined and how, and who is fired. Sysops handle staffing department head positions, and work with department heads to make sure they're doing their jobs.

In a technical sense, sysops do have a certain final authority, but in practice this is not exercised as much as one might think. Generally it's up to department heads to make department plans, and then up to them and other department members to execute the plan. So when wii talks about wanting to assume a sort of sweeping reformer role in staff, it's not really possible. He'd be better off talking to individual department heads to try and help them. For example, if he's interested in having events hosted every day, he might go to the events department and see what's getting in the way. (Lack of motivated ERs is a big one. It's hard to stay motivated to host when you get only 3 people coming to your events. How to find hosts who are motivated despite low numbers? How to get more players joining hosted events? Those are more worthwhile problems to look at. Far more meaningful than saying, "Under my leadership, we'll have events running every day, and popsicles for everybody afterward!")

[Jessup]

It is pretty dull, true.

As for you Jessup: you brought this upon yourself. Countless years of being rude to players after EVERY TWD match, running like a little bitch, refusing to fight, losing fights on purpose, abusing powers as a mod...this doesn't come even close to what your 1000 help calls did. You as a person are unstable and shouldn't be allowed to do anything staff-wise in this game. Your personal problems are your own, I hope you finally know that. What other people did to you is again partly your fault. I've seen you many times talk shit to JB and others without no prior trolling, just because you felt like it. And ofc, people snapped at you. What else did you expect?

And to be clear, me and many others knew about your condition, never ever said anything remotely bad about your health, your father or your sex change. But hey, if you push us with those subjects yourself, ofc we are gonna retalliate. Especially when we were normal players and not staff.

So stop living like a fucking princess, finally grow up and start taking responsibilites for your actions. You also forgot to mention countless times you abused your powers in TWD where you would just kick players during a match because they were owning you, saying they lag and need to be dealt with. Really mature. Whereas I do 1 small mistake and spec a player in wbduel and am a monster. Sheesh, even I forgot that and let it go but you still can't. GROW THE FUCK UP!

And let me tell you 1 other thing: do you know why TWD is completely dead now? Do you? It's because of you. The last game we played (and I even played for Paladen) I couldn't get myself to try even 0.1 % because I was 1v4 all the time while you and Alex were just straying from another arena. Holy fuck, grow some balls, learn to team and play in a game you claim to be fucking good and finally do something decent with your e- and real life. But as we all know this won't happen, just stay the loser that you are and just go annoy some other poor saps in another game. You've done more than enough damage here.

Also, since I'm now officially gone and have 0.0 % desire to ever even come close to TW, you might actually suck Henry's dick and become the Dean that TW deserves. But guess what? If this happens, all the remaining 50 players are gonna leave so then you can finally give yourself all the medals that you so desperately want and crave, proclaim yourself the best player in the zone and start banning bots.

PS. Next time, since you are so smart, take your grudges and complaints in another thread and stop polluting my thread that has nothing to do with you, mkay?

What in the world are you talking about? I can be pissy at times after losing games but certainly no more than someone like you. Standard behavior is all. In fact my conduct is a direct result of dealing with players like you. You are a very mouthy person yourself wii who time and time again is one who enjoys trolling players in game when you win and lose so please spare me your high road bs. You are a well known troll in this zone and these stupid "vote for me" forum posts you have done prove it. 9 times out of 10 you fail to see it is merely humour too on my part. If I pipe in something it is usually like gg noobs or lost cause of eats (often true lol) but it is not some harsh deep cutting reply. I say gg almost always. I find other squads show way less sportsmanship than Paladen has over the years. When we beat a squad they almost never say gg while we always do.

I just explained how I accepted a few issues I made mistakes on in staff during my history there and I did take responsibility for them but also laid out the majority on improper actions taken against me which I have nothing to take responsibility for. Being accused does not make a person guilty...?. example,, you say TWD is dead because of me lol.. so far from the truth. Paladen is the only thing keeping it alive at all and we did for years. We always had the most games or close to the most games. Definitely the most active twd squad overall in this game.. So your logic is skewed and shows how off you are in your thought process. Blaming me is idiotic dude loool. I have helped twd activity and game activity immensely in fact.

Another example of how being accused doesn't make it true is this nonsense you write about me saying I abused my powers in TWD countless times where I would kick players during matches. That is a bold face lie rofl. I never kicked any player ever from a twd match. I don't and never did have the power to even do that. If I did I never would have done that either. How you came up with this nonsense is laughable but a clear example of the disinformation campaign people like yourself have relentlessly waged against me. It takes a few morons like you spreading lies like this for others to go.. hmm I guess Jessup is this really toxic abuser in their minds when nothing like this has EVER happened. So just stop with the lies dude.. this nonsense you wrote was unbelievable drivel.

[Jessup]

Were screen shots taken of my "offences" when I was banned as staff qan?? Honest curious question......

[Jessup]

Jessup, staff calls are supposed to be kept private from the public. At least I'm pretty sure that's the general rule. If these issues have been talked about at length with the appropriate parties though, why are you bringing it up here? It just seems your intent is to paint staff in a negative light, when by far the majority look out for the interests of the game. Some might not be as active as others due to real life constraints, but I'm quite sure all of current staff have those interests as their priority. If your goal is to get another shot at being staff, I don't think your actions are helping you much.

I went through EVERY internal option given to me by sysops and upper staff to have internal discussions and actions considered and time and time again staff ignored me. From TSL abuse issues such as team killing I observed to internal rule dissection on issues to standard harassment abuse calls within the system in place. It often failed others and myself. Staff in my opinion was not properly handling things related to the said infraction they claimed against me and also other players who were being unfairly treated so forum posts are my only means to express myself within the community in these circumstances.

I also in my reply you commented on purposely did not name players involved in calls I took nor did I name the staffers involved in controversy of issues. It is common knowledge about the jb-inc fight outburst, the dele ban duel and henry axing me. As a non staffer I have no responsibility to abide by this rule but still chose to honor it. Staying quiet when wrongs are committed against you will never resolve a thing. I was simply reporting information involved in my situation being axed on a topic involving the failings of staff. I do not like what I've experienced and from my point of view had to reshare it.

I stand by the fact that henry completely overreacted and wrongfully axed me outside of staff protocol when removing me.

[skyforger]

Jess vs qan banduel gogogo winner gets to pick new dean

[mtine]

Jess vs qan banduel gogogo winner gets to pick new dean

Hope they pick you.

[Lrim's Turtle]

You'll be happy to learn that for all silences, mods do need to include a log and/or screenshot. (The same is not true for warnings, however.) We use a rather complex system. All warnings are timestamped as well, and recorded to the database, which is searchable. Meanwhile, two BanOps, a head and assistant, review all bans to make sure they are done in accordance with our ban manual. There's very little vigilante justice as a result. One reason TW has remained successful is because we've developed an oversight system to make it somewhat difficult for those at any level of staff to abuse.

There's transparency, but mostly it's behind the scenes ... institutional transparency. I understand it'd be better with more public transparency, but at the same time, it's just a video game. Without proof of massive corruption that the current system isn't addressing, I don't really see the need.

By the way, if you were Dean of Staff, you wouldn't have the authority to change bans policy. Like different branches of government, power is divided up by departments in TW. BanOps work on bans policy, events head runs events, leagues head (when we still had one that would last longer than a month) would decide leagues policy, PR head steers PR, training head determines how training is done, and the dean of staff determines who is hired onto lower staff, who is discplined and how, and who is fired. Sysops handle staffing department head positions, and work with department heads to make sure they're doing their jobs.

In a technical sense, sysops do have a certain final authority, but in practice this is not exercised as much as one might think. Generally it's up to department heads to make department plans, and then up to them and other department members to execute the plan. So when wii talks about wanting to assume a sort of sweeping reformer role in staff, it's not really possible. He'd be better off talking to individual department heads to try and help them. For example, if he's interested in having events hosted every day, he might go to the events department and see what's getting in the way. (Lack of motivated ERs is a big one. It's hard to stay motivated to host when you get only 3 people coming to your events. How to find hosts who are motivated despite low numbers? How to get more players joining hosted events? Those are more worthwhile problems to look at. Far more meaningful than saying, "Under my leadership, we'll have events running every day, and popsicles for everybody afterward!")

1. Free popsicle is the best idea I've seen so far in this forum.
2. Qan is a low-key authoritarian.
3. Wiibimbo is attempting to campaign for a position in which he does not understand the chain of command structure and the responsibilities entailed with such position.

[Falconeer]

You'll be happy to learn that for all silences, mods do need to include a log and/or screenshot. (The same is not true for warnings, however.) We use a rather complex system. All warnings are timestamped as well, and recorded to the database, which is searchable. Meanwhile, two BanOps, a head and assistant, review all bans to make sure they are done in accordance with our ban manual. There's very little vigilante justice as a result. One reason TW has remained successful is because we've developed an oversight system to make it somewhat difficult for those at any level of staff to abuse.

There's transparency, but mostly it's behind the scenes ... institutional transparency. I understand it'd be better with more public transparency, but at the same time, it's just a video game. Without proof of massive corruption that the current system isn't addressing, I don't really see the need.

By the way, if you were Dean of Staff, you wouldn't have the authority to change bans policy. Like different branches of government, power is divided up by departments in TW. BanOps work on bans policy, events head runs events, leagues head (when we still had one that would last longer than a month) would decide leagues policy, PR head steers PR, training head determines how training is done, and the dean of staff determines who is hired onto lower staff, who is discplined and how, and who is fired. Sysops handle staffing department head positions, and work with department heads to make sure they're doing their jobs.

In a technical sense, sysops do have a certain final authority, but in practice this is not exercised as much as one might think. Generally it's up to department heads to make department plans, and then up to them and other department members to execute the plan. So when wii talks about wanting to assume a sort of sweeping reformer role in staff, it's not really possible. He'd be better off talking to individual department heads to try and help them. For example, if he's interested in having events hosted every day, he might go to the events department and see what's getting in the way. (Lack of motivated ERs is a big one. It's hard to stay motivated to host when you get only 3 people coming to your events. How to find hosts who are motivated despite low numbers? How to get more players joining hosted events? Those are more worthwhile problems to look at. Far more meaningful than saying, "Under my leadership, we'll have events running every day, and popsicles for everybody afterward!")

Maybe they are required to screenshot and provide logs on a silence. But how often is that log reviewed by anyone? How often do people silence without sending or making screenshots and not even being caught? If what you're saying is true, tucker would never have gotten away with silencing me for 1 hour, twice, based on no reason except his personal preference that I was spamming, without ever providing the "spam" rule to me, and despite the fact that me typing although i type very fast, is not actually spam. As well spam is a none-issue. People can ?ignore and it's gone completely from their screens. As well it's arbitrarily decided that just because what you deem what i say as useless it is therefore spam.

You think I'm new to subspace tyranny? this is a classic way moderators would abuse powers on people. "Stop spamming, what you're doing is spam. No I won't define spam for you. Banned." No fuck you. You are not God, and you don't get to decide that. He should have been moderating the racism/sexism that was happening in pub at the same time. Obviously you guys have stupid ideas about moderation or your system fails somewhere otherwise tuckers abuse would have been dealt with, without me having to provide the logs. Which I intend to do months later. I don't care if its 1 year later. I want to see how many years later staff will care about abuse. Or are we on a time-frame now? Sad.

[qan]

Were screen shots taken of my "offences" when I was banned as staff qan?? Honest curious question......

You weren't banned from staff; you were fired. You thought a bot was sending in an automated call about another player suggesting someone kill themselves on team chat. That's not strictly against the rules, though the banops might be able to make a case for it. The correct response would have been to talk to the player making the call, talking to the player making the comments, and getting a log to forward to the ban ops. You silenced the player making the report without talking to anyone, and without having seen any kind of log.

Regarding staff policy in general, though, logs aren't necessary for any sort of firing or disciplinary action. It's all on a case by case basis.

Maybe they are required to screenshot and provide logs on a silence. But how often is that log reviewed by anyone? How often do people silence without sending or making screenshots and not even being caught? If what you're saying is true, tucker would never have gotten away with silencing me for 1 hour, twice, based on no reason except his personal preference that I was spamming, without ever providing the "spam" rule to me, and despite the fact that me typing although i type very fast, is not actually spam.

That log is always reviewed by the ban ops, who oversee each and every ban to make sure it follows policy.

Tucker is the Head Ban Operator, so technically the only person who watches him are other members of upper staff. He has probably the most fluidity of any member of staff in his interpretation of the rules, as he is in charge of maintaining them, and is therefore more likely to be able to abuse those rules. (Not suggesting he does.)

Here's the section from our ban manual on spam. Like most rule/lawbooks, it relies on language that is open to interpretation. For example, what is considered "unnecessary" text is not well-defined.

Spamming is sending unnecessary text or macro text in public chats or team chats. Moderators should address spam liberally and softly when appropriate, before getting to the point a warning or silence is issued. Chiefly, this rule is one that shall be enforced lightly. Using soft measures like talking to the spamming player in a private message, looking to see if anyone is complaining, and making use of tell commands, such as !tell spam what, are all encouraged to be used to get the player to stop spamming. Furthermore, if the player is disconnected for message flooding, this is sufficient punishment unless the player starts spamming again and avoids being disconnected.

A general rule of thumb is to look for roughly five lines of unnecessary messages in a row, within a timeframe of about twenty seconds. Moderators should take into account the number of people in the arena they are in. Fewer people results in less people talking, which can give a false appearance of spam. The game itself issues a reminder not to flood with messages or commands before the recipient is disconnected. Once again, if the player is disconnected, no further action is required unless the player spams in a way to avoid being disconnected.

My guess is that people had been complaining about you. I've seen your typing style; it does tend to dominate a chat. Have you considered typing more words on a single line so as not to be so annoying to other people? I understand that you don't care very much at all about other people, but please try to see things from someone else's point of view from time to time.

[qan]

2. Qan is a low-key authoritarian.

Oof, 8/10, good bait!

It's true that I'm currently overseeing a tiered command structure that I haven't agreed with since I joined it 15 years ago. I've always thought it resembled a military, which seems odd for a volunteer organization. I think people enjoy feeling powerful, though, and it satisfies the need for some, which encourages them to work hard to get their spacepower. Never done much for me.

I've worked pretty hard over the years to try and get some sort of democratic process going in TW. Limited success. The biggest problem each time has been that unfortuantely, people just don't care all that much. The expectation of many people seeking change is that they simply make one forum post with a list of grievances. If they aren't addressed immediately and in exactly the way you desire, then the spaceship tyrants are trying to keep you down. When someone posts something similar years later, you can tell this person that you told the fools long ago but nobody would listen to your wisdom from the mountain. (In reality, building consensus among a group of people is the foundation of democracy; that sort of angry forum post is closer to the complaints letter the old woman pins up at the grocery store. One person is never convincing. You need to convince others to agree with you.)

Technically there is nothing that made http://www.trenchwars.org/TWPS invalid. It just went by the wayside around 2005-2006 or so. If anyone wants to submit something like a proposal under TWPS (even just a rough version with some other people signing it) there's no reason it can't go through. Happy to help anyone who wants to put together a proposal with the process, as I know it's a bit confusing.

Also working on some sort of democratic system within staff using Slack, though that means the franchise is a select group of people. Still, would be a start. Nothing else has yet to work. Maybe some sort of hybrid system would be effective. We could get some folks elected to Council again, but rather than running meetings at a certain time, use an asynhronous meeting format ("the meeting is always running") where participants could discuss issues, put forward motions, second them, discuss the motion and then vote on it. Not sure how much interest there would be, though. Anyone interested in being a TW representative these days?

[Lrim's Turtle]

Oof, 8/10, good bait!

It's true that I'm currently overseeing a tiered command structure that I haven't agreed with since I joined it 15 years ago. I've always thought it resembled a military, which seems odd for a volunteer organization. I think people enjoy feeling powerful, though, and it satisfies the need for some, which encourages them to work hard to get their spacepower. Never done much for me.

I've worked pretty hard over the years to try and get some sort of democratic process going in TW. Limited success. The biggest problem each time has been that unfortuantely, people just don't care all that much. The expectation of many people seeking change is that they simply make one forum post with a list of grievances. If they aren't addressed immediately and in exactly the way you desire, then the spaceship tyrants are trying to keep you down. When someone posts something similar years later, you can tell this person that you told the fools long ago but nobody would listen to your wisdom from the mountain. (In reality, building consensus among a group of people is the foundation of democracy; that sort of angry forum post is closer to the complaints letter the old woman pins up at the grocery store. One person is never convincing. You need to convince others to agree with you.)

Technically there is nothing that made http://www.trenchwars.org/TWPS invalid. It just went by the wayside around 2005-2006 or so. If anyone wants to submit something like a proposal under TWPS (even just a rough version with some other people signing it) there's no reason it can't go through. Happy to help anyone who wants to put together a proposal with the process, as I know it's a bit confusing.

Also working on some sort of democratic system within staff using Slack, though that means the franchise is a select group of people. Still, would be a start. Nothing else has yet to work. Maybe some sort of hybrid system would be effective. We could get some folks elected to Council again, but rather than running meetings at a certain time, use an asynhronous meeting format ("the meeting is always running") where participants could discuss issues, put forward motions, second them, discuss the motion and then vote on it. Not sure how much interest there would be, though. Anyone interested in being a TW representative these days?

Sounds like Robert's Rules of Order. I am thinking perhaps make a polling system where everyone can participate, limited to unique 1 ip, in the game. Once per month have a list of ideas to be voted on to assess public opinion. Set the automated bot in pub arena to make it convenient and display poll results on the forum for complete transparency. This would be a keen step toward a democratic system, and to ultimately gear decision making via adequate sample size instead of a "loud minority".

P.S. I nominate Wiibimbo for TW representative. Looking forward to a new topic entitled, "Poll: Who should be TW representative?"

[Jessup]

You weren't banned from staff; you were fired. You thought a bot was sending in an automated call about another player suggesting someone kill themselves on team chat. That's not strictly against the rules, though the banops might be able to make a case for it. The correct response would have been to talk to the player making the call, talking to the player making the comments, and getting a log to forward to the ban ops. You silenced the player making the report without talking to anyone, and without having seen any kind of log.

Regarding staff policy in general, though, logs aren't necessary for any sort of firing or disciplinary action. It's all on a case by case basis.

It was one mistake qan.. no one had taken the call for 25 minutes and it was left sitting their to be ignored like so many calls are these days. I jumped in trying to moderate a very serious issue and help but made a mistake. . Ban , Fire w/e.... You know there is a process staff needs to go through to fire a fellow staffer and in my case I think sysops abused it and made zero effort to help correct my mistake and refresh me with what it was I did wrong. I was fired because of one mistake I made my first day back. Henry removed me the first time over non staff related issues with a guy telling me over and over to do the exact same thing..... to kill myself repeatedly. and other death wishes towards myself and my family. YOU DID NOTHING, HENRY DID NOTHING. I got angry at jb-inc and blew up because no one was moderating that BS. It was not a staff related issue.. It was a PERSONAL issue between me and him being a foul abuser towards me and my family. Somehow you all sided with the abuser and allowed it while instead punishing me a staffer.


Henry came to me and asked me to return. I agreed to be committed and do my best to help the zone and follow the rules. I did not have a history of many mistakes like this and it was totally unintentional. I had a good history for years on staff , you all way overreacted. I should not have been the focus of rage and firing but rather the focus of caring correcting. It was not intentional and it involved awful and abusive goading of a person to commit suicide.. it was the epitome of cyber bullying. It is a very serious violation that is actually against the law in the United States. It is completely unacceptable to harass players telling them to commit suicide and for you to defend that type behavior is very telling to me about the failings of these deans we have here. YOU have allowed players to do this OVER AND OVER. If someone kills themselves YOU could be held responsible.. think about that. Issues like this have gone on here for too long with sysops doing nothing about it. The wording was serious and foul. I tried to make contact with the player too but was ignored. I doubt someone saying that would respond to staff. In my experience they just purposely ignore when caught in violations... but I got order wrong which is probably why they didn't respond sigh. One mistake ..even if it was a terrible one is not a firing offence as I had JUST returned after Henry asked me to. I apologized to both of you too in messages AND messaged the player I wrongly silenced and apologized to them too.. I spent hours downloading the ban manuals again (had issues finding them and my account) only to log in the next to to a nasty firing by henry with zero effort to talk to me ....

Whatever qan.... You are pretty uninformed about the true dynamics of what goes on in this community in real time.. rarely having a first hand point of view. Instead you take in second hand info and or base judgements from pieces gathered in logs rather than actually being there. You are hardly ever on and when you are you are afk more often than not. I know you were not there when this happened for example and neither was henry. This was caught by tucker the next day... so go ahead and support henry in this decision. Focus on me and my mistake and ignore the suicide goading harasser..... again for the umpteenth time, These type foul trolls have been allowed to do this to players over and over and it is disgusting you all allow it. I know for a fact you made zero effort to follow up on this suicide goading call and neither did Henry. Instead you focused on firing me with your energy. A very active and capable staffer. Now we have pub in shambles and TWD is too. This is you alls responsibility. Example yesterday Steadman used super to decimate two pub rounds teamkilling in jav. I made a call and no one responded for 25 minutes.. Doughnut to his credit did but the damage had been done and the auto spec bot finally took care of it.. but wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too late. It's a complete mess what you guys are doing and the dying population is a direct result of this. It shows staff has SERIOUS problems

For the record too, Tucker did NOT agree that I should have been axed. He told me I should have been retrained.. too much effort for you high and mighty complacent deans though I guess. YOU and Henry allowed it which pisses me off beyond words. . AND...... YOU allowed one more of many suicide goading trolls to remain unpunished. Step back and think about this standard. Moderation means nothing if that type crap is going on here..... just terrible and unacceptable behavior by you all.. backwards thinking and effort.. ya destroy members of staff like myself after HENRY came to me. Why even offer if this was you alls reaction towards me. Meanwhile let the real abusers go unpunished. Terrible standards and logic.. it disgusts me.......

[qan]

It was one mistake qan.. no one had taken the call for 25 minutes and it was left sitting their to be ignored like so many calls are these days. I jumped in trying to moderate a very serious issue and help but made a mistake. . Ban , Fire w/e.... You know there is a process staff needs to go through to fire a fellow staffer and in my case I think sysops abused it and made zero effort to help correct my mistake and refresh me with what it was I did wrong. I was fired because of one mistake I made my first day back. Henry removed me the first time over non staff related issues with a guy telling me over and over to do the exact same thing..... to kill myself repeatedly. and other death wishes towards myself and my family. YOU DID NOTHING, HENRY DID NOTHING. I got angry at jb-inc and blew up because no one was moderating that BS. It was not a staff related issue.. It was a PERSONAL issue between me and him being a foul abuser towards me and my family. Somehow you all sided with the abuser and allowed it while instead punishing me a staffer.

YOU have allowed players to do this OVER AND OVER. If someone kills themselves YOU could be held responsible.. think about that.

Henry went against the judgment of a lot of people to rehire you, in part this was because of me ... because I've always believed you have good intentions. Pretty much universally from staff we heard, "Wait, you're actually rehiring Jessup?" Got a lot of eye-rolls and took a lot of flak to even give that chance. Then, when you mishandled that call so completely, so absolutely thoroughly mishandled it, that was a clear indicator we'd made a mistake. I'm sorry for having made that mistake, which caused even more unnecessary stress.

Suicide's a slightly sensitive topic for me. A good friend of mine from SS -- a transgendered person, coincidentally -- killed herself. It wasn't as a result of people saying "kill yourself" online, of course. But certainly, there are people this happens to, and it's a serious issue.

The bottom line, though, is that we enforce a set of rules in TW. And we don't deviate from them or interpret them as we see fit. According to our rulebook, harassment, generally, is handled via ?ignore. If you are being harassed, you're asked to ignore the person. If they change names specifically to get around the ignore, staff can then intervene. We've discussed this at least 3 times in the past, so I know you're aware of this. You've refused to use ?ignore, insisting you have the right to defend yourself. As a result, we've been unable to do anything about it.

This is our policy. This is what we enforce. Nothing else. However, policy can easily change. If you don't think this is the best policy, you can put together some kind of proposal to change it.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy. This seems to be an issue you're passionate about. Why not try to change things for the better? It would be easy enough to create a simple, concise rule on personal harassment.

You might wonder: why don't I do it myself, or ask ban ops to do it? Because I'm not certain it's the right way to go (though I'm not certain it's not the right way, either). There's a reason we've handled things as we have up until now: because for the most part, it's worked, without unnecessarily restricting freedom of speech. (There are also problems of verification of private messages, which "real" game companies don't have to worry about because they can see the messages going through the servers. Mods in TW can't see PMs. BIET was working on an interesting solution to verify PMs, though. Still, if you just focus on non-PM messages, you could put together a decent, effective policy.)

There's also a problem of punishment. What happens to the harasser in this situation? A normal silence? A ban? Permban?

I don't have the answers to these questions. But someone who cares deeply about the issue could work out a smart way to handle it, and possibly make TW a better place through their effort.

[qan]

Sounds like Robert's Rules of Order. I am thinking perhaps make a polling system where everyone can participate, limited to unique 1 ip, in the game. Once per month have a list of ideas to be voted on to assess public opinion. Set the automated bot in pub arena to make it convenient and display poll results on the forum for complete transparency. This would be a keen step toward a democratic system, and to ultimately gear decision making via adequate sample size instead of a "loud minority".

P.S. I nominate Wiibimbo for TW representative. Looking forward to a new topic entitled, "Poll: Who should be TW representative?"

A sort of trimmed-down, simplified Robert's Rules, yeah.

The problem with in-game polling/pure democracy rather than a republic/representative model is that it's very difficult to verify identity online. I could quite easily vote with several thousand IPs, if I wish. One method we tried recently was requiring a usage amount on a name. A player would have to enter into the arena to vote, and the arena would restrict those from playing with less than 500 hours of usage. A bit of a rudimentary approach, but ... not terrible.

The other problem is: who is putting things up for a vote? That's where you need something like a meeting format and a simplified Robert's Rules. (Or else staff aren't going to be putting up any controversial votes that might upset the apple cart too much. For example, the State of California recently took off the ballot the proposal to split the state into 3 separate states. It jeopardized their existence. "Uh, no, we're not voting on that.") And I'd really like to be able to do more than just assess public opinion, which would then just either be listened to or ignored by staff. The ideal would be policy completely controlled by the public. If it were done via representatives, at least at the start, it could give a chance to get discussion going. Players could ask representatives to put forward ideas. Or, we could create some sort of system in which anyone over X usage is a representative and is included in the franchise, who can maybe then speak in a certain arena. (But how to access past comments, etc?) It's a difficult process online, when people are spread all around the world (many of whom just log on occasionally and don't give a damn what's going on). Could also be done in far too many ways.