AXE Poid Immediately for Abusing Staff Powers, and Axe/Punish Paradise/Sheriff

[Rasaq]

Multiple people involved ='s cover-up.

[soup]

Exalt,
First, staff was exploiting a bug in the zone. The most obvious issue here is that this sets a horrid example for everyone. If it is ok for staffers to exploit than why shouldn’t a player feel ok doing it too? This is what Soup’s post should have been about but unfortunately he included some more emotional content.

This opened the door for the thread to be moved. This was a lame move but in my opinion there were legitimate reasons to do so, there IS trash talk in the original post. Again, a great opportunity to make an important point and possible improvement lost because of the drama.

Please show me where I showed any emotion or trash talk? Quote my first post.

[Ricko]

it's not really a cover up if Poid, the dean of staff, has kicked one off staff and suspended the other. A cover up would have resulted in both remaining on staff as if nothing happened.

[Turban]

alright, there's a chance that i will be going just slightly off-topic with this post/rant.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm going to assume that staff has remained unchanged, or mayhaps gotten worse, over the years. there was countless of staff meetings where absolutely nothing got accomplished, staffers wanted to change shit but rarely anything happened after the meetings.

first of all, it's a damn nice thing to see that there are others who believe that the current quota system which staff are using happens to be utterly garbage. it is an age-old system that promotes the wrong type of activity and simply rewards those with the most time to spare; it encourages laziness and lessens the quality of staff members. there has been dozens of staffers who got undeservingly got promoted only due to their activity in staff while a good bunch of quality staffers never got promoted even if they deserved the promotion. it seemed as if upperstaff was only looking at the numbers: quantity over quality. that system has developed some unhealthy competition within staff, they are basically fighting against each other just to meet the quota. back in the day there was a time when i tried to get rid of the system, but what could a lowly-ranked staff member (twd op/event coordination team) do to make the change? unfortunately, nothing.

i consider myself to be an active player, at least back in the day, who participated in most hosted events over the past thirteen years. there has been this trend that i've been noticing as of late: the quality of hosted events and answered calls has dropped drastically. back in the day events used to be something you would look forward to; not because there was more players playing the game, but because staff seemed to truly care about the players and wanted to make it a fun experience for all. they were creative and had imagination, cracking jokes and making up new rules, interacted with the crowd and weren't relying on thebots do to everything for them. unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. there has only been a handful of hosts whom i would consider to be good in the past 6 years and that is not a good sign. hosts are now just rotating the same events over and over again, mostly events where you can just load a bot and start it (such as freezetag or pictionary). that is not a fun experience for someone playing the events, especially if you know what quality events used to be back in the day.

whoever is the current head of staff training should do a better job. please tell your current hosts to be less lazy and stop relying on the bots and macros created by someone else. be more creative, remove your macros and type everything by yourself. have variation, interact with the players. don't be boring and clones of each other.

that's all for now. hope it makes some sense, i have no time to read through it as i'm about to leave work for the day. i would maybe consider rejoining staff if things finally changed to the better, but i'm not too optimistic at the moment.

[Ricko]

I couldn't agree with you more Turpin, this is spot on to what I believe our issues are in staff.

Over the last few years it really has been far too numbers based and this has inevitably ended up with much lower quality hosting and in my opinion far too frequent hosting that has lead to most of the TW population being completely disinterested in going to events. That being said our quota system has been changed recently to be less numbers based and more about joining in and participating with the tw population (you dirty commoners).

The quota system has definitely led to the appointment of the wrong people to positions of power - too many players who had 1-2 years to their name but spent 20 hours a day hosting and taking calls so they were #1 on the staff quota boards and fast tracked to promotion, these are not the people staff should want and definitely doesn't need, we need people with experience and people who really know what the community here is all about and the history we have.

By the way I am not slamming the current staff set up that I am involved in; I'm stating what I think has been wrong over the last 5 or so years. Believe me staff is changing (finally), people might call it changing too late but it's better to at least try now than have never tried. There are changes happening in staff and it really would be nice if our community could get behind us during this transitional phase and work with us, stop slamming staff as a whole over issues that half of us were not involved with over the years and acknowledge that at least we are now trying.

Admittedly that last paragraph seems a bit ironic given the forum thread it is written in, but meh.

[Zeebu]

the biggest reasons why people throw a shit fit when staff does something wrong:

everyone wants to see public accountability. we only want to see a public execution because we dont get the little things here and there. everyone is interested when a staffer is written up on doing something wrong. mistakes should be acknowledged and then the staff should be trained in order to prevent another occurance.

in an actual case of abuse, we all want to see what the person did and how staff is handling it. one little post listing what was done and the punishment given. that is it.

just as an fyi, im a pretty big 'dont do stupid shit' person. if a player is purposely provoking an action, that should be taken into account when looking at the situation. its still nice to know what is going on, but just let us know. these are usually the situations that get the most coverage anyway.

its better to get in front of things instead of ignoring them until someone finally makes a case or gets enough rabblerousers to join their cause.

[Demonic]

alright, there's a chance that i will be going just slightly off-topic with this post/rant.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm going to assume that staff has remained unchanged, or mayhaps gotten worse, over the years. there was countless of staff meetings where absolutely nothing got accomplished, staffers wanted to change shit but rarely anything happened after the meetings.

first of all, it's a damn nice thing to see that there are others who believe that the current quota system which staff are using happens to be utterly garbage. it is an age-old system that promotes the wrong type of activity and simply rewards those with the most time to spare; it encourages laziness and lessens the quality of staff members. there has been dozens of staffers who got undeservingly got promoted only due to their activity in staff while a good bunch of quality staffers never got promoted even if they deserved the promotion. it seemed as if upperstaff was only looking at the numbers: quantity over quality. that system has developed some unhealthy competition within staff, they are basically fighting against each other just to meet the quota. back in the day there was a time when i tried to get rid of the system, but what could a lowly-ranked staff member (twd op/event coordination team) do to make the change? unfortunately, nothing.

i consider myself to be an active player, at least back in the day, who participated in most hosted events over the past thirteen years. there has been this trend that i've been noticing as of late: the quality of hosted events and answered calls has dropped drastically. back in the day events used to be something you would look forward to; not because there was more players playing the game, but because staff seemed to truly care about the players and wanted to make it a fun experience for all. they were creative and had imagination, cracking jokes and making up new rules, interacted with the crowd and weren't relying on thebots do to everything for them. unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. there has only been a handful of hosts whom i would consider to be good in the past 6 years and that is not a good sign. hosts are now just rotating the same events over and over again, mostly events where you can just load a bot and start it (such as freezetag or pictionary). that is not a fun experience for someone playing the events, especially if you know what quality events used to be back in the day.

whoever is the current head of staff training should do a better job. please tell your current hosts to be less lazy and stop relying on the bots and macros created by someone else. be more creative, remove your macros and type everything by yourself. have variation, interact with the players. don't be boring and clones of each other.

that's all for now. hope it makes some sense, i have no time to read through it as i'm about to leave work for the day. i would maybe consider rejoining staff if things finally changed to the better, but i'm not too optimistic at the moment.

Your correct on quota, but I basically removed that requirement some months back and told staff I expect them to actually play the game (zh/er etc..)

Then we (mm and myself) went a step further and completely altered the structure of staff. No longer this zh>er>mod>smod route, so ppl who want to help etc have to host or vice versa. I started this in oct last year, but really gained traction when mm returned from his 6 month absence. Finally installed around Christmas time, it gave the ability for players to support with twl etc without going down the mod route.

So that's all the staff changes and how staff are looking to change to support, that said players have just as much responsibility to change to be honest, when council goes online and we cant have this self destructive BS that seems to come, don't get my way lets start provocative stories on forums and tell half a story to incite etc etc.. Players will have the power and the ability to directly affect change, and therefore need to be held to the same accountability as staff. That's ideal world I appreciate and a long way off, we have to get staff right before any of the above can work and that's a tough task in itself. I said I started this restructure in October, but to be fair Eph originally started the idea some months prior, but left staff due to the speed it took to happen. Change is not quick, as everyone has to be on board with it first. Anything other then that will be half heartened and will waste my time, and waste all of your time as well.

[Ephemeral]

Please show me where I showed any emotion or trash talk? Quote my first post.

Soup,
IMO you did not need to call specific people out as you did in the title. If you had first simply outlined facts about the exploit itself; followed by the fact that staff themselves were dicking around with it, the thread would have never been in danger of being moved.

I’m all for transparency, and like I said previously moving the thread was lame. But IMO the need to identify the exploit and then publish the fact that some staffers were using it trumps the need to call out specific people. There are times when naming names becomes needed, just not sure that this was one of them
eph

[Exalt]

How ever I think what Poid did is far less a crime than is being made out to be - he saw a thread posted in the tw forums that potentially will turn people away from the game so he moved it in the interest of the game. All he has done is move the thread, he hasn't deleted it. I'm not agreeing or promoting that as staff we can do what we want and hide issues that occur, but Poid probably did this as a gut reaction to a forum thread that was getting ugly and potentially damaging so he moved it from the public TW section of the forums, I very much doubt he was intentionally hushing the voices of the public or protecting 2 staffers who abused their power

Having had time to sleep everything off and rethink it, along with discussions with players both in the game, privately through messages, and also through posts on this thread made by Qan/Turban/Eph/etc, I do agree with you at this point in that I don't think POiD INTENTIONALLY did anything to abuse or to hide/minimize/hush the voices of the community per say. I do agree with this now, and I think perhaps the title of my thread and some of the harsher things I said in the OP are probably not as justified as I once saw them.

That being said... I think the BIGGEST issue I have with POiD moving the thread and everything is two fold.

1) He was/is condescending in his approach. In this thread, his first sentence of his response/rebuttal was to basically call me an ignorant fool. Perhaps he was heated emotionally and so he said that out of spike due to him assuming I am just attacking him out of some personal vendetta rather than having a legitimate reason, but even still, he is an upper-staff member who just got promoted as high as he can possibly get. He should act more professional and courteous towards the regular players of this game. We all have our opinions, and none of us are ignorant nor fools nor anything "less" than equals in terms of intelligence OR our dedication to this game and or want for this game to have a bright future. We all want good things for this game, and we all contribute in our own ways. I did not like the way POiD treated Soupero either. Not at all. Soup was NOT trying to attack staff. He was trying to point something out and give information to the general public about the incident, which I will always maintain that the general public deserves to know when things like this happen. Staff obviously are held accountable by their own, but abuse should never be tolerated, and punishment for abuse should have to include the public being made aware, and therefore the subsequent backlash and humiliation it causes. I personally believe that Paradise will come back a better staff member at the end of the day DUE to being humiliated in public the way he was. He will probably try harder, and he will not be making the same mistakes twice. Sheriff obviously had a previous history of abuse, so he got axed, and he had every reason to be. He got his warning the first time he abused, and this was a case of doing it multiple times. I commend the staff members that made the decision to let him go, and I grudgingly agree with the decision to not get rid of Paradise and I suppose not POiD either. I DO hope that POiD is at least TALKED TO by other staff members into realizing some of his mistakes though.

2. POiD fucked up because he did not understand the PERCEPTION of him moving/changing the title of the thread had toward the general public. I realize that his intention was to minimize the damage to the zone/staff reputation, but he actually made it worse by trying to cover it up so to speak. Yes, in the end, his intention was to cover it up and minimize the damage. No, he did not delete the thread, but I think he had enough knowledge to know that the backlash around deleting it would've been even worse, in a very large margin. Players need ways to vent, and that forum thread (and this one) are our ways to do so. To remove that would've been catastrophic. That being said, he ever should've TOUCHED the thread whatsoever. I don't care if it degenerated into a "staff are abusing again" derailment where there was shit talk in it or not. The overall point of the thread was not shit talk. It was informative and public reporting. It was making players accountable to the public. POiD did not grasp this fact, and that is a problem. He did not look at this from a Public Relations standpoint where he looked at it from a PLAYER perspective. He simply looked at it from a STAFF perspective, and that perspective is elitist and not aligned with the overall majority of this game. Staff are a very small minority, and it has separated itself from the player base WILLINGLY throughout the years, and BECAUSE OF THAT, staff have a bad reputation and are disliked/distrusted by the large majority. They are viewed as elitist. It is only NOWADAYS... through initiatives like the TW Council, and also through the personal independent actions of players like Qan/Demonic/Ricko/Shadow/Reckful/Etc that have helped gain trust back, transparency into the everyday problems of staff, and also it removes some of the elitist attitudes and elitist stigmas that staff have maintained for so long.

The PROBLEM that I have with POiD is that he either A) Does not understand or B) Is still stuck in the old-school mentality of that elitist mentality that staff have always maintained in the past, and that elitist "separate and not equal" attitude is WHY staff are so distrusted and hated by the majority of players in this game. It is WHY so many good staff members have quit. It is WHY there are so many shitty politics within the staff structure. THAT is the problem. POiD needs to get rid of his condescending elitist attitude first and foremost when he is dealing with non-staff members. Nobody fucking likes anyone that acts like they are above them. Everyone hates their boss, and yet POiD is no one's boss. He volunteered for his position and he was given his position through no specific great deeds or actions of his own. He was promoted through an already flawed system, and so he should NOT be lifting his nose in the air and acting like he is better than anyone, let alone more intelligent, knowledgeable, or as if he knows what is good for subspace or this zone better than any other regular player in the community.

Also, POiD did not seem to understand that his actions were the wrong one due to the message it puts out to the community. His message spoke loud and clear two things: 1) Staff are guilty of something and we want to hide the fact that we fucked up and 2) Staff protect their own and we want to protect the staff members that abused and broke the rules of the game over caring about the needs and wants of the general public. BOTH of these two issues are stuck in the same elitist old-school mentality mold, and like I've said, that elitist mentally HAS TO DIE for this game to ever have a future. That elitist mentally is the reason staff are hated, distrusted, viewed as useless, and attacked so much on the daily. That elitist mentally is the reason shit storms like Soupero's thread and my thread occur.

SO what I hope will happen is that players that understand what I've said here, the staff members that understand the general idea of what that elitist mentality is and how detrimental it has always been will sit down and have a talk with POiD about what the CORRECT way of doing this is, the CORRECT way of treating the regular non-staff members of the community is, and the CORRECT way of handling issues like this in the future. I also hope you guys slowly, but surely make him understand that this elitist "I am staff, you are not, I know better, you do not, I am better than you because I am staff and you are not" mentality CANNOT be tolerated any longer.

To add to that, I propose that any and all members of staff that continue to think in the old-school form of elitism within staff need to be sat down and spoken to by the rest of the staff members into fixing and changing into the new TRANSPARENT and EQUAL style of approach that has started to gain some ground and some trust/respect back to the current staff members. Fix them guys. All you staffers who know what I'm saying, TALK TO THE OTHERS. Tell them what they are doing wrong. MAKE them understand. IF THEY REFUSE... then you need to push for their removal. Why? I don't care if they have been mods for 15 years, are great event hosts, are the best at filling their quotas, are amazing at taking help calls... I don't care how well they do their job whatsoever. ALL I care about is that they stop their condescending elitist attitudes FIRST AND FOREMOST. Gaining the trust and respect of the community back should be Priority #1 of staff as a group. So like I've said, if specific staff members refuse to adapt to the new way of doing things, they need to be let go. Let someone else be promoted to take their place, and then hire some more understanding, charismatic, and politically savvy players who know how to speak to the general public. AKA hire players like me (lol, joke, but you get the point).

[Ephemeral]

Your correct on quota, but I basically removed that requirement some months back and told staff I expect them to actually play the game (zh/er etc..)

Then we (mm and myself) went a step further and completely altered the structure of staff. No longer this zh>er>mod>smod route, so ppl who want to help etc have to host or vice versa. I started this in oct last year, but really gained traction when mm returned from his 6 month absence. Finally installed around Christmas time, it gave the ability for players to support with twl etc without going down the mod route.

So that's all the staff changes and how staff are looking to change to support, that said players have just as much responsibility to change to be honest, when council goes online and we cant have this self destructive BS that seems to come, don't get my way lets start provocative stories on forums and tell half a story to incite etc etc.. Players will have the power and the ability to directly affect change, and therefore need to be held to the same accountability as staff. That's ideal world I appreciate and a long way off, we have to get staff right before any of the above can work and that's a tough task in itself. I said I started this restructure in October, but to be fair Eph originally started the idea some months prior, but left staff due to the speed it took to happen. Change is not quick, as everyone has to be on board with it first. Anything other then that will be half heartened and will waste my time, and waste all of your time as well.

Demonic,
The process was always understood to take a while. Arthur Clarke said it best, “Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
1- It's completely impossible.
2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing (or too hard to do)
3- I said it was a good idea all along.”
TW is currently somewhere between #2 and #3.
eph

[Demonic]

Demonic,
The process was always understood to take a while. Arthur Clarke said it best, “Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
1- It's completely impossible.
2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing (or too hard to do)
3- I said it was a good idea all along.”
TW is currently somewhere between #2 and #3.
eph

Clever guy that Arthur Clarke :P

[Exalt]

So that's all the staff changes and how staff are looking to change to support, that said players have just as much responsibility to change to be honest, when council goes online and we cant have this self destructive BS that seems to come, don't get my way lets start provocative stories on forums and tell half a story to incite etc etc.. Players will have the power and the ability to directly affect change, and therefore need to be held to the same accountability as staff. That's ideal world I appreciate and a long way off, we have to get staff right before any of the above can work and that's a tough task in itself. I said I started this restructure in October, but to be fair Eph originally started the idea some months prior, but left staff due to the speed it took to happen. Change is not quick, as everyone has to be on board with it first. Anything other then that will be half heartened and will waste my time, and waste all of your time as well.

I was told a few inside things on how these changes came about, including Eph's story in staff and the various things he went through to try to change the structure of staff, and personally Demonic, I have to say that I am very, very impressed with you for all of it. I am going based purely on memory of the last 15 years, so I am bound to forget/be wrong about certain good/bad things... but in my personal opinion, you are the best sysop this game has seen since I've started playing in 00/01. Pure_Luck did some things well too, but he never wanted to change the structure of staff. He never wanted to give up any of his power to make the game better. He never wanted to remove himself from that totem pole and say "here players, this is YOUR game too, YOU guys deserve a say into the future of OUR game."

You are the first one in an actual top-position of power within staff to want to make this change. This alone speaks volumes to me of your character. I told this to Eph in a private message, but I'll repeat part of it here for you to see, and see if you agree with it:

What I find oddly ironic (actually, maybe it isn't so odd after all) is that it seems almost ALL the BEST staff members this game has ever had have quit due to largely exactly what you quit for, and they are also all the people who are so strongly against the Council idea. The biggest bashers of the thing are the people that were at one time amazing staff members with fresh perspectives on how to make everything better. The entire staff structure is a joke and has been corrupt and fucked up since basically it's beginnings. It promotes people who WANT the power rather than the people who deserve the power. Wanting it and deserving it are almost two completely separate things, and they rarely coincide. The only time the even do coincide is when someone wants power only to be able to gain enough leverage to change things finally, which in THAT case means they want to gain power so that they can in effect, remove the power that they just gained. Lol, knowing how few people there are in the world that are like that, especially once they get drunk on that power... well.. you can understand why so many staff members were and probably still are against your ideas of how things should be.
Basically Demonic... you did what so very few people in this game or even world would do. You took power and then decided to give it back to the people. This almost never happens in real life. This is like a George Washington type of move from the American Revolution. Most people would be a Hitler/Stalin/Saddam/Castro/Napoleon type of dictator once they gain power. Hell, this was the communist ideal, which was to create a revolution and CHANGE things originally, but then once those people took power, they got drunk on it and refused to let any of it go. You are doing the exact opposite for the first time I can ever remember, and it is extremely impressive to me. It really, really is. I can't say how impressive it is, because you literally are the first sysop to actually see the BIG PICTURE here and who wants to IMPROVE this game and make it last, rather than be the captain of a sinking ship.

Really Demonic, I know there are a lot of players that have grudges against you for whatever reason, and I don't fully know the entire stories behind them and personally I don't fully care. All I know is what I see myself with my own eyes, and what I hear through my own sources, and all things considered, it seems you are legitimately genuine and legitimately want to make things better for this zone. I really do stand by the idea that you are the best sysop this game has seen at least since I've been playing this game, which is a good 14 years now. I'd just like to say thank you for actually giving a shit and for trying. No matter what DOES happen, the simple fact that you are trying is more than enough to make me glad you are leading our current crop of staff.

[Demonic]

I was told a few inside things on how these changes came about, including Eph's story in staff and the various things he went through to try to change the structure of staff, and personally Demonic, I have to say that I am very, very impressed with you for all of it. I am going based purely on memory of the last 15 years, so I am bound to forget/be wrong about certain good/bad things... but in my personal opinion, you are the best sysop this game has seen since I've started playing in 00/01. Pure_Luck did some things well too, but he never wanted to change the structure of staff. He never wanted to give up any of his power to make the game better. He never wanted to remove himself from that totem pole and say "here players, this is YOUR game too, YOU guys deserve a say into the future of OUR game."

You are the first one in an actual top-position of power within staff to want to make this change. This alone speaks volumes to me of your character. I told this to Eph in a private message, but I'll repeat part of it here for you to see, and see if you agree with it:

What I find oddly ironic (actually, maybe it isn't so odd after all) is that it seems almost ALL the BEST staff members this game has ever had have quit due to largely exactly what you quit for, and they are also all the people who are so strongly against the Council idea. The biggest bashers of the thing are the people that were at one time amazing staff members with fresh perspectives on how to make everything better. The entire staff structure is a joke and has been corrupt and fucked up since basically it's beginnings. It promotes people who WANT the power rather than the people who deserve the power. Wanting it and deserving it are almost two completely separate things, and they rarely coincide. The only time the even do coincide is when someone wants power only to be able to gain enough leverage to change things finally, which in THAT case means they want to gain power so that they can in effect, remove the power that they just gained. Lol, knowing how few people there are in the world that are like that, especially once they get drunk on that power... well.. you can understand why so many staff members were and probably still are against your ideas of how things should be.
Basically Demonic... you did what so very few people in this game or even world would do. You took power and then decided to give it back to the people. This almost never happens in real life. This is like a George Washington type of move from the American Revolution. Most people would be a Hitler/Stalin/Saddam/Castro/Napoleon type of dictator once they gain power. Hell, this was the communist ideal, which was to create a revolution and CHANGE things originally, but then once those people took power, they got drunk on it and refused to let any of it go. You are doing the exact opposite for the first time I can ever remember, and it is extremely impressive to me. It really, really is. I can't say how impressive it is, because you literally are the first sysop to actually see the BIG PICTURE here and who wants to IMPROVE this game and make it last, rather than be the captain of a sinking ship.

Really Demonic, I know there are a lot of players that have grudges against you for whatever reason, and I don't fully know the entire stories behind them and personally I don't fully care. All I know is what I see myself with my own eyes, and what I hear through my own sources, and all things considered, it seems you are legitimately genuine and legitimately want to make things better for this zone. I really do stand by the idea that you are the best sysop this game has seen at least since I've been playing this game, which is a good 14 years now. I'd just like to say thank you for actually giving a shit and for trying. No matter what DOES happen, the simple fact that you are trying is more than enough to make me glad you are leading our current crop of staff.

Lol thanks, but credit has to goto Eph for thinking through this idea, then having the courage to bring it to me with a reason as to why it was good. Also M_M as although I started the ball rolling, once he got involved it really moved.

The above makes me sound great, and im sure the truth is far from that. I would like to think anyone would have realised this is necessary for the zone to survive, and besides if the council does work well maybe me and mm can retire and have the council as the zone sysop. Who know's what could happen IF this gets off the ground and player support.

[Sheriff]

The opinions, acts and views expressed at or through this game via Sheriff are the opinions of the designated authors and do not reflect the opinions or views of the staff as a whole or the opinions or views of any other individual.

[Shaddowknight]

whoever is the current head of staff training should do a better job. please tell your current hosts to be less lazy and stop relying on the bots and macros created by someone else. be more creative, remove your macros and type everything by yourself. have variation, interact with the players. don't be boring and clones of each other.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what I want to actually do with staff training. With the change in Staff Structure, it will need to be changed. It does serve it's intended purpose, but it can be changed to be much more effective. I just need to figure out what all I need to do exactly to make it work better.
One of the issues is that staffers move more freely between departments, and each department SHOULD be handling their individual training beyond initial staff training.
I will also admit to being less active as of late (#blameSkyrim), so some of the issue with that could be properly placed on me.
Something for WillBy and myself to work on with our current hosts.