On the "King of Thema Devia" roleplay

[Jom]

EDIT-By and large Jom's original post below still stands. TD roleplaying competitions/games/elections etc. are not automatically banned, but are susbject to restrictions and require Hex clearance before proceding.

You guys have already been told that if you want to set up a roleplay, you should do it in the appropriate forum. I have just asked that the election of a new "king", plus all activities related to this be shut down, as all these activities amount to the construction of a hierarchy that excludes and harasses other members who don't comply with it from a forum that is open for all to post in.

This clause of the "constitution" in particular is unacceptable, and can be seen as the straw that broke the camel's back:

The Ruler of the TD is to be given at least one rep per month by every TD regular. If a denizen fails to pay his taxes, the Dear Leader may impose a Royal Ostracism upon him. This exclusion bars the user from becoming a denizen and thus having voting rights, at a minimum until the King is paid his tithe. Also, political support of the ostracised may result in the same fate being dealt out to those supporting. However, ostracisms deemed unconstitutional by the Council may be annulled

Demanding reputation and threatening harassment if it is not forthcoming is not and never will be allowed on TWC. If these activities were somehow aiming to better the site, then perhaps Hex would be more lenient, but the construction of a reputation circle using strong-arm tactics is not going to be permitted, nor is the implementation of a system in a public area of TWC whereby some members are discriminated against simply at the whim of others.

This stops here and now, and if it doesn't, then I'm afraid infractions (that we have refrained from issuing up until this point) will be forthcoming.

I'll leave this thread open for any comments/death threats.

[Ferdiad]

There goes my chance at glory and fame. Also do you want your death threats via E-Mail or PM?

[Dan the Man]

I didn't participate in this, but it seemed more like good-natured joking than the establishment of any kind of hierarchy. The King of the TD is more of a "King of Fools" than a real authority figure.
Again, that's just from the outside looking in.

[Påsan]

That rep part was never enforced from day one though. The fact that its even there is a leftover from the first days of the council group, Legio hit down that pretty hard so after that we haven't done anything that can be described as "pressuring" or anything similar like that.

As for why I made the group after Legio told us not to roleplay is beacuse I saw the election of a 'king' as close akin to the "Create A Party" threads than real role-playing as I told good Snuggans in post nr #22.

If this is roleplay is debatable,

Legio closed the "overthrow Dictator Cahoma" thread.

The former election thread was not closed, however.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=517548


This thread is an Election something the Devia have a long history with. Its primary goal is not roleplay.

here is some former elections:

Create a Party 2012
Create a Party 2010 - Summer Election - Host: Antwerpen
Create a Party 2009 - Host: Guy
Create a Party 2007 - Host: Guy

But I hope you see this is all just some good-natured joking and popularity contest within the Thema Devia. Its fun to do something other than the regular random banter on occasion, although I admit the incentive to take it too far is certainly there.

[Inkie]

Yeah, the idea with the 'rep tax' was that the king is goign to be someone popular anyway, so chances are in a month he'll be repped by all the regulars in any case. The way I predicted it, if someone didn't rep the guy, he would (if he cared at all) post a silly tirade against the disloyalty of the member, who would either start a 'rebellion' and leave the group or agree and just rep the guy - in joining the group the idea would be that you didn't mind repping someone, just for fun, for the continuation of a game, and that's that.

I also find the term 'rep circles' somewhat inappropriate, seeing it was just that: A vertical rep donation for services to the game. There are lots of rep-circles on TWC and I don't think many of them are less ignominious than the one we put forward, although if we would have received some form of prior warning, we would have immediately complied and annulled such a house-rule.

I understand that for the mods it seems like we were power hungry or vicious (yes, admittedly there was one shameful episode involving harassment) but I think that almost all of those who participated in the game enjoyed it in some form. Roleplay in the form of elections has been part of TD-life for years, from what it seems, and for me it's the most fun a forum can be: Glorifying irrelevance and giving insignificance auras of greatness. I think that's just my weird sense of humour, and the collective desire of some of us to make the TD a different kind of pointless .

[saxdude]

Why would anyone bother making a king of TD thread in the roleplay section? That sort of defeats the point... It would lack any sort of pretend validity.

[Ferdiad]

Wasnt really role-play so much as bragging rights/popularity contest.

[Inkie]

For some. Isn't that fun though? I mean isn't it what most of the idle talk in the CT is about (when it's not about toilet habits) or the elections which have been around for ages? Goofy posturing and bragging about rep and what-not.

[Jom]

That rep part was never enforced from day one though. The fact that its even there is a leftover from the first days of the council group, Legio hit down that pretty hard so after that we haven't done anything that can be described as "pressuring" or anything similar like that.

As for why I made the group after Legio told us not to roleplay is beacuse I saw the election of a 'king' as close akin to the "Create A Party" threads than real role-playing as I told good Snuggans in post nr #22.



But I hope you see this is all just some good-natured joking and popularity contest within the Thema Devia. Its fun to do something other than the regular random banter on occasion, although I admit the incentive to take it too far is certainly there.

The Create A Party thread is already on a very short leash after it got out of hand last year, but it only takes place once a year and the winner does not have any pretensions of power over other posters in the TD. Therein lie two very crucial differences.

Yeah, the idea with the 'rep tax' was that the king is goign to be someone popular anyway, so chances are in a month he'll be repped by all the regulars in any case. The way I predicted it, if someone didn't rep the guy, he would (if he cared at all) post a silly tirade against the disloyalty of the member, who would either start a 'rebellion' and leave the group or agree and just rep the guy - in joining the group the idea would be that you didn't mind repping someone, just for fun, for the continuation of a game, and that's that.

I also find the term 'rep circles' somewhat inappropriate, seeing it was just that: A vertical rep donation for services to the game. There are lots of rep-circles on TWC and I don't think many of them are less ignominious than the one we put forward, although if we would have received some form of prior warning, we would have immediately complied and annulled such a house-rule.

I understand that for the mods it seems like we were power hungry or vicious (yes, admittedly there was one shameful episode involving harassment) but I think that almost all of those who participated in the game enjoyed it in some form. Roleplay in the form of elections has been part of TD-life for years, from what it seems, and for me it's the most fun a forum can be: Glorifying irrelevance and giving insignificance auras of greatness. I think that's just my weird sense of humour, and the collective desire of some of us to make the TD a different kind of pointless .

Roleplaying through elections is fine, but as I pointed out both above and in my opening post, you guys took it too far with the implication that the winner of the election held some sort of power over other posters in the TD and could single them out for attack via the ostracism mechanism, a word that is mentioned no fewer than 5 times in the constitution. There probably are lots of rep circles on TWC, but they're not overt and seem to be voluntary, so we cannot do very much about them. Your proposed rep circle, vertical rep donation, call it what you like went too far in that it stipulated punishment for non-compliance, something that cannot be abided.

If you had only sought to glorify irrelevance, that would have been fine, but you also tried to impose a hierarchy where none exists and the legitimacy for such is not there either, and also looked to exclude certain people from this illegitimate hierarchy via harassment, especially if they did not comply with your wishes, when you do not derive your power from anywhere but a small clique of like-minded posters.

[Ferdiad]

Notice this all started when Cahoma abdicated....

[Jom]

Notice this all started when Cahoma abdicated....

Whenever a dictator is removed, the power returns to the people.

[saxdude]

lol srsns

Huh, no wonder the party thread is no where near as active or interesting as it was years before, What happened to those guys that wrote with incredibly annoying poshness? Now we have these stupid pony parties and what have you.

Whenever a dictator is removed, the power returns to the people.

But generally to another dictator, and even so you removed democratic elections so both are redundant.

[lolIsuck]

And then the people chose a new dictator.

[Påsan]

Its never been my objective to go against any rules or rebel in any sort of way, so as one of the 'ringleaders' I'm fine with this at least.

We had some fun though

[lolIsuck]

It was cool, councillor of TD souns pretty awesome.

[Niles Crane]

Hear, hear! I've always said it was an absurd farce. The power lies with the people, not with a dictatorial monarchy.

[Inkie]

Roleplaying through elections is fine, but as I pointed out both above and in my opening post, you guys took it too far with the implication that the winner of the election held some sort of power over other posters in the TD and could single them out for attack via the ostracism mechanism, a word that is mentioned no fewer than 5 times in the constitution. There probably are lots of rep circles on TWC, but they're not overt and seem to be voluntary, so we cannot do very much about them. Your proposed rep circle, vertical rep donation, call it what you like went too far in that it stipulated punishment for non-compliance, something that cannot be abided.

If you had only sought to glorify irrelevance, that would have been fine, but you also tried to impose a hierarchy where none exists and the legitimacy for such is not there either, and also looked to exclude certain people from this illegitimate hierarchy via harassment, especially if they did not comply with your wishes, when you do not derive your power from anywhere but a small clique of like-minded posters.

The thing is, due to the tongue-in-cheek nature of this whole affair, we never saw it as an 'attack' or 'harassment' aiming to force people to +rep a guy. I also didn't discount the possibility that 'denizens', if they so wished, would propose in the group that they didn't want to rep the guy (if this was really a problem for some), and that if it gained support then the clause would be abolished.

I had never seen rep as such a serious affair, which is why originally I included the 'rep ostracism' in the constitution. I didn't see it at the time as exclusion, and when Legio explained to us the flaws of our ways, we were quick to remedy them without a problem. Something which seems unfair to us is that we weren't informed of the necessity of shutting down everything to do with rep in the constitution, even giving rep, which I believed was something only positive.

The way you word it surprises me: It conjures up ghastly images of someone crying in front of their PC because they refused to be forced to +rep someone and were therefore screamed out of an institution designed to harass people. I have never, never intended to ruin anyones experience of this forum, which I find to be the most enlightened place I visit on the internet. I admit wholeheartedly that our treatment of a certain user was at first despicable, but I would like to point out that, even before moderators inevitable intervened, all of those involved, denizen/councillor or not, realized that it could be seen as something ugly.

I would like to compare our original method and intentions to those seen in this thread: To play the game you will have to +rep someone (in this case the guy had selfishly designated himself...) or you won't get to play. Even then, I would in no way oppose it if a moderator had done so much as inform me that it wasn't allowed.

It just seems so random that all of the sudden some old posts start getting cleaned up and judged by moderators as if they had been posted today when the issue they revolved around had been sorted weeks ago, and that our groups/threads were closed not for an immediate, present and obvious breach of ToS, but for something which had been around for ages, and which none of us suspected in the least of being against the rules.

Edit: That's embarrassing. I basically ended up saying "we didn't find it a problem to force people to do X", which isn't what I meant at all. I meant to post the nature of our game/RP the way you presumably see it, and it has been corrected now. It's pretty late and I don't want to risk posting in a way which may not represent what I really mean, so I'm going to call it a day...

[Diamat]

Jom,

As someone who is pretty new to the TD, please allow me to present my point of view.

When I first started to realize that there was a hidden hierarchy in the TD, I simply thought it was an internal joke thing. Having conversed with these people now for some time, I can tell you, it really only is a joke.

As a newcomer, this did not intimidate me in any way. On the contrary, it gained my interest, because it seemed like these people actually have a sense of humor. There are no rules and no regulations that are enforced. Just look at the Grand Inquisitor. He constantly stamps people as heretics, but there is nothing he can actually do. It's just for fun. And anyone with a sense of humor get's this.

Honestly, if you were to completely ban such internal hierarchy stuff, the TD would not be as fun. After all, this is what got me interested in the first place.

Yes, for the sake of clarity, we ought to erase certain portions of the Constitution (especially the rep and ostracism part) which seem rather harsh to outsiders, not familiar with the humor of it.

But please keep in mind, most of it is simple sarcasm and humor.

Diamat.

[lolIsuck]

Of course we have humour, how did you think I got all this rep?

It is not to be taken so serious, if we would make it serious it would lose the fun part wich is the most important thing.
We are on a game forum, not the House of Lords.

[Derpy Hooves]

The thing is, due to the tongue-in-cheek nature of this whole affair, we never saw it as an 'attack' or 'harassment' aiming to force people to +rep a guy. I also didn't discount the possibility that 'denizens', if they so wished, would propose in the group that they didn't want to rep the guy (if this was really a problem for some), and that if it gained support then the clause would be abolished.

I had never seen rep as such a serious affair, which is why originally I included the 'rep ostracism' in the constitution. I didn't see it at the time as exclusion, and when Legio explained to us the flaws of our ways, we were quick to remedy them without a problem. Something which seems unfair to us is that we weren't informed of the necessity of shutting down everything to do with rep in the constitution, even giving rep, which I believed was something only positive.

The way you word it surprises me: It conjures up ghastly images of someone crying in front of their PC because they refused to be forced to +rep someone and were therefore screamed out of an institution designed to harass people. I have never, never intended to ruin anyones experience of this forum, which I find to be the most enlightened place I visit on the internet. I admit wholeheartedly that our treatment of a certain user was at first despicable, but I would like to point out that, even before moderators inevitable intervened, all of those involved, denizen/councillor or not, realized that it could be seen as something ugly.

I would like to compare our original method and intentions to those seen in this thread: To play the game you will have to +rep someone (in this case the guy had selfishly designated himself...) or you won't get to play. Even then, I would in no way oppose it if a moderator had done so much as inform me that it wasn't allowed.

It just seems so random that all of the sudden some old posts start getting cleaned up and judged by moderators as if they had been posted today when the issue they revolved around had been sorted weeks ago, and that our groups/threads were closed not for an immediate, present and obvious breach of ToS, but for something which had been around for ages, and which none of us suspected in the least of being against the rules.

Edit: That's embarrassing. I basically ended up saying "we didn't find it a problem to force people to do X", which isn't what I meant at all. I meant to post the nature of our game/RP the way you presumably see it, and it has been corrected now. It's pretty late and I don't want to risk posting in a way which may not represent what I really mean, so I'm going to call it a day...

Here here!
I am still the self-proclaimed TD Lord Inquisitor