Recent events

[StealthFox]

@Ishan: The April Fool's joke that happened was not discussed in the thread you posted.

Actually the basic idea was. There was lots of talk about VonC in the Curia. So, the core framework was there only the details were different.

[Hobbes.]

The only thing I was aware of was discussions about what we should do for April 1st. I was not aware whether or not the "basic idea" (which was among the many ones discussed there) was going to be materialized. There was also no discussion about selling mods and stuff, or if there was I don't know about it. The bottom line is that I knew nothing about this prank and that I am in no way responsible for it.

Edit, I just saw some posts in the April Fool's thread that hint that this was a prank. They were posted in 28/03/2012. Now this may make some people think that I knew about the whole thing the day it happened, but I swear I just saw these posts, besides the thread was deleted shortly after they were made. Of course there's no way to prove I am telling the truth right now, I guess you will have to take my word for it.

[xcorps]

Bloody hell you are naiive.

Oh, please do tell.






This should be highly entertaining.

[Halie Satanus]

One of the driving forces.

Giggles is beloved so yes.

So you can't see anything wrong in disclosing a pm without asking the concerned member for permission to do so?

There are many precedents of exactly this and I don't recall anyone ever being infracted for it. I believe 'posting private information ect,' refers to home addresses, telephone number and the like, though elements of information from mod development forums might also come under that section, if need be..

[War lord]

I think the time for settling down is now upon us, since it is clear the prank will have no effect on membership numbers, the integrity of the modding community, or content, and the composition of senior staff is unable to be addressed since, ironically, this prank has demonstrated that hex is above dismissal by anyone but hex.

Really any more raging on either side, by either staff or non-staff, just makes the whole community look bad. Let's admit mistakes were made, accept apologies, and move forward. Anyone who actually cares about TWC's integrity would take this advice, I think.

I agree.

[Hobbes.]

There are many precedents of exactly this and I don't recall anyone ever being infracted for it. I believe 'posting private information ect,' refers to home addresses, telephone number and the like, though elements of information from mod development forums might also come under that section, if need be..

Still, I don't want people to make any exceptions in my case, especially some consider that I did more damage than good. I would prefer if I was not banned though, seeing how this Minecraft thing is picking up.

[Aikanįr]

There are many precedents of exactly this and I don't recall anyone ever being infracted for it. I believe 'posting private information ect,' refers to home addresses, telephone number and the like, though elements of information from mod development forums might also come under that section, if need be..

That's your point of view on the matter, not what is written in ToS.
That said, I get the impression that none of the behaviour related to the prank while it was still going will be referred to in any way. But the prank is over and thus, especially for citizens and even more so citizens who happen to hold an office, not only ToS but referrals as well come into fair play again.

[Hobbes.]

If you believe I sholuld be referred, don't hesitate to do so.

[Belisarius]

No one will be infracted based on anything that happened during the prank.

[Sųren]

There are many precedents of exactly this and I don't recall anyone ever being infracted for it. I believe 'posting private information ect,' refers to home addresses, telephone number and the like, though elements of information from mod development forums might also come under that section, if need be..

This is exactly right. As you say, there have been numerous instances of this in the past, and it has usually been accepted that one party can post something like that, though it is not encouraged. It used to be a contentious issue with people like tBP incorrectly claiming it was illegal, but it's certainly happened often enough, including by many staff members and admins.

No I did not say that. I know I have violated the ToS and I will accept any form of penalty for it. I don't regret doing it, though.

Although by this point Aikanįr has managed to get an unnecessary apology from you for supposedly breaking the ToS, you don't really need to, as precedent exists to suggest that it's not against the ToS. Of course it might be decided differently by the Tribunal at some point, as it's always been controversial, but it's certainly not a clear cut issue.

Still, I don't want people to make any exceptions in my case, especially some consider that I did more damage than good. I would prefer if I was not banned though, seeing how this Minecraft thing is picking up.

It's worth noting that if this hadn't been a prank no one would have even thought to criticize your actions.

[Aikanįr]

If you believe I sholuld be referred, don't hesitate to do so.

Since for me, it was a prank and it's over. I won't
What I'm actually going to do is to ask you, what kind of badge you're wearing, since somehow this prank-drama seems to keep you away from the duties you've freely applyed for and got elected in order to execute them by the CVRIA. But somehow this thingy here appears as if it would mean much more to you than the application of a fellow member.

Edit:
Thanks Soren for pointing this out

[Kjertesvein]

You should now stop posting crap imo. Even though not among the organizers but we, meaning majority of site moderators, were also in as much as you or any other staff member was. None of us knew about it until it was launched, front line moderators like me, Darth Red & DimeBagHo etc had to moderate the forums by staying in background and not participating in it because someone had to deal with the actual moderation, also as we suspected that this will continue up till April 2nd or something.

The actual discussion about all of this started on March 14 in the April Fools' Day thread, started by Aldgarkalaughskel on March 28, 2009 (Thread visible to all the staff members. Content, technical, moderators...). These are the posts you made recently in that thread before this prank:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

^He is obviously joking btw.

My own posts in that, we all were throwing random ideas:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hotspur said something about dissolving curia.

Later on this was planned in the modding vault forums, only a few members have access to that. Not even moderators can see it.

So to claim that you had absolutely no ing idea and didn't really knew about all of this, and were as oblivious as other members, is a blatant lie. You even gave me a rep on this post when i closed this thread. Rep comment being: " I hope this will be over soon"

After few hours i'm not sure what happened to you but you decided to play the role of messiah and openly said that it was a prank and all who were in on it are idiots and retards. This sort of criticism and anger would only be acceptable if it were coming from a member who had no idea about it. Coming from you is completely unreasonable & absolute nonsense.

Even if you had said this in a diplomatic way i would've appreciated it. Like "Sorry guys but i think this was dragged far enough & i don't find it funny anymore, see this guys i have this proof etc etc so please calm down etc etc."

The stuff you did was massively disruptive and riled up the crowd needlessly. As the prime focus earlier was to know the truth behind it ("LOL is this serious? or Oh noes.") but later on it got diverted to "Are staff members kidding about it? Are they retards? How is this supposed to be humourous?"

Sorry but someone had to tell you this as it seems you have some illusions that you helped here. Next time if you truly care for such a thing then try to deal with the situation behind closed doors by PMing hex like Jom instead of posting Private messages, backstabbing your own content folks & insulting them publicly.
___________________________________________________

Obviously this was blown out of proportion & backfired at us() but i strongly disagree with some of the stuff i read here:
@TWC folks
Now i realize that you guys are extremely angry from this prank and some of you consider it as ill or infantile humour & that some of them were also emotionally hurt from this. First of all, i sincerely apologize for that, me & Bolkonsky, who initiated this, know perfectly well that no prank or joke is worth it when people get upset from it. It stops being funny when ppl like Narf or anyone else get upset from it & are hurt. If people are going to leave the forums because of this then this will only make us feel miserable as that was never our intent.

Being angry at us is your right, which we gladly welcome only because we all are part of the community, you guys are not strangers, so your reaction or over reaction on legitimate reasons is always welcome. Personally i'm pretty sure i might've been in the same boat as you guys if i weren't in the staff and has not seen this coming from miles away.

Now i'm going to divide it into parts & try to explain our actions:

1) Intention: Obviously it was never meant to upset anyone. The prime focus was to build some conspiracy around the actual purchase of the site & produce a contained uproar when those who tried to expose this were banned without any explanation. Now personally i feel that almost everyone likes conspiracy theories, watching fights between 2 known people, especially on internet when we consider that thing as lame, over the subject they're arguing. Eventually this would've been put forward and the response we thought we will see was "LOL you bastards, you got us...well played." The plan was only to project a fake conflict between moderators and admins\site owner. In 2006 something like this also happened:

^Source. I wasn't here but i believe this went out without any issues.

2) Trust issues: As GED has already explained, that to even think that the site owner himself will attempt to break the trust of its members and destroy the community he tried and is still trying to build is completely preposterous. As all the regulars might know, that discussion of members is considered off-topic on misc occasions when a conversation about that particular person is going south, no one wants to be flamed etc and they usually report when such a thing happens.
GED suggested to use his name only because he didn't wanted any other staff member to get in front of the crosshairs. A common similarity among all the previous owners.

Something like this can never happen without hex approval especially from the site owner, no one is seeing that GED was cool enough to allow such an elaborate prank, yes i know some of you guys think it was lame & stupid but that's not the point here. In my opinion GED is not Garb, he is a simple minded & a straight forward person & not meticulous about such things, unless it's technical code or some sort. Had he known that this might happen then obviously he wouldn't have bothered.

If you guys think such a casualness is his weakness which previous owners might have not done then there is also an immense quality that imb and garb lacked, which was availability for every member every time, in dire situations. Obviously that is what moderators and other hex are for also, otherwise no point in keeping us, but his presence means a lot, it also guarantees that no abuse of powers can snowball on TWC.

I have seen on one occasion that GED even went beyond the forums to help a Multiplayer kid on a serious cyber bullying issue.

3) Why 28th March?: Like i said earlier most of us didn't knew anything about it and were also surprised to see it, Imo the timing was very wrong, i mean there was no chance in hell someone could've pulled it off for that long without massive forum disruption. Perfect timing would've been 31st March and revealing in noon of April the 1st. But like the organizers earlier said, they didn't wanted to make it too obvious. This was a mistake imo but i understand their point of view.

4) Selling of Mods thingy: LOL i have no idea how did that came up but i can't take it seriously at all and some of the responses i saw made me laugh hard at this, i'll be honest here it was too obvious imo & you guys should've seen this, especially as all the derivative works on TW games are SEGA\CA's anyways. And even if I thought that it was serious, Jack Lusted name's was mentioned so at least I would've waited for his response.

Chances are that hard working modders who mod with passion, don't pay much attention on forums and don't really know such details might have been extremely worried after reading this, so again on their behalf i apologize to those who were offended.

5) Staff's attitude: Some of you guys are complaining that the organizers still have a false attitude and are still insulting us by not acknowledging their mistake. You guys have to understand it from their point of view also, it's like a brown guy from India is strip searched and questioned for hours on an US airport, suspecting that he works for Al-queda lol.

Anyways nothing will be achieved by arguing each other so imo we should now all go back to our usual forum business!
Peace!

Good points. Specially "In my opinion GED is not Garb".

Btw: you, bolky and jom ought to handle press conferances from here on now on a proffesional basis. oh, the patience..

It's all water under the bridge for me.

~Wille

[Hobbes.]

Since for me, it was a prank and it's over. I won't
What I'm actually going to do is to ask you, what kind of badge you're wearing, since somehow this prank-drama seems to keep you away from the duties you've freely applyed for and got elected in order to execute them by the CVRIA. But somehow this thingy here appears as if it would mean much more to you than the application of a fellow member.

Yeah, I know, this has been keeping be quite busy. I am not that inactive there, btw, you can see I have voted and posted etc. But you are absolutely right, I shouldn't have neglected my duties.
Edit: I still have a couple of days to vote, and I will.

[Ishan]

I'm sorry? I've nothing against you Ishan, but we've been publicly insulted directly by Hex members. How can any of us go back to normal when it's been made clear that some of the staff consider themselves above the ToS that they're meant to enforce?

Heinz's post really sums it well.

No one from hex insulted members individually or as a group. Highlight the insulting others clause, perhaps i'm missing something. Prank is also based on a lie or tricks and lying etc is not against ToS. Only thing you can say is insulting is that, those particular organizers have a stubborn view about it and not accepting the charges put on them, which is breaking of trust etc & playing a sick joke. No one will say that because they never intended as such & had no idea that some of them will perceive as such. They didn't actually hacked stuff and sent PMs to CA. Hex apology in official capacity is already given in Jom's announcement because of how this turned out, no one is proud of it.

But what you're demanding is unreasonable as like i earlier said, this prank was just a means to provide some entertainment to the forum members by orchestrating a dispute among ourselves.

Hell as far as the trust and common decency goes, we never even remove over sized signatures without first requesting the user to do it himself.

@Ishan: The April Fool's joke that happened was not discussed in the thread you posted. Sure I knew there had been a discussion about organizing something but I never knew about the prank that actually happened. Had I known about it I would have expressed my opinion. Now as for the rep I gave you, I don't see how me hoping that the chaotic situation would stop is something bad or how it helps prove your point. As for calling the people behind a prank (of which I had absolutely no idea of) retards was a bit too much, and I edited most of the insulting comments, not to mention that I apologized. Still I did offend some people, and I will happily accept to be punished for it if you think I deserve it. As for showing the PMs, it was in order to show people that it was a prank so that they would stop worrying. And finally I think that my actions did help some people and that I acted in the community's interest. I can't see how I backstabbed anyone by trying to expose the prank.

I know your heart is in the right place as legio says you're cool, i believe him firmly. Anyways there are some of the things you should regret. I willing to explain all of this if you open a thread in content staff or via PM\MSN whatever, no one needs to know about this publicly.
Lastly some things are beyond a simple apology, it needs enormous amount of time to repair and regain its former status.
Check this very thread for example, all of GED's work, dedication, integrity and honesty is completely forgotten by some members just because he Oked a prank which some users found distasteful. Yet some people still can't see why he's posting the way he is & taking it as a disrespect for TWC & its members. Reputation is like a sand castle, brother.

So you can't see anything wrong in disclosing a pm without asking the concerned member for permission to do so?

Harassment or Invasion of Privacy (1, 4, or 8 points)
Continual harassing behavior directed towards a certain individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the boards, with or without use of explicit or implicit threats is prohibited. Posting private information without permission is also prohibited.

Just saying though ...

Nah it's fine especially in this case. His way of approach was very wrong imo but not his intent.

Still, I don't want people to make any exceptions in my case, especially some consider that I did more damage than good. I would prefer if I was not banned though, seeing how this Minecraft thing is picking up.

No one is going to ban you or infract you, few other members also insulted staffers which was totally fine in the heat of the moment.

There are many precedents of exactly this and I don't recall anyone ever being infracted for it. I believe 'posting private information ect,' refers to home addresses, telephone number and the like, though elements of information from mod development forums might also come under that section, if need be..

Sir Halie is right.

@Kjertesvein: "It's all water under the bridge for me."
Thank you Sir, i appreciate it.

[Magicman2051]

Later on this was planned in the modding vault forums, only a few members have access to that. Not even moderators can see it.

Just want to take the chance to respond to this, directly. The planning amounted to the following.

Spoiler for Convo: 

>Actually its live on Atlas already.

-redacted link-

I love posting in closed threads!<

>^^ Not cool bro.<

>Its cool when I do it. Its a ToS violation when you do it!<

>OK, all PMs received, I'll take a look at this later.

Also, no point in even closing the thread, because everyone that can access this forum is an LM here.<

>>Quote: Its cool when I do it. Its a ToS violation when you do it!<

VonC... ar darn it, can't VonC the Owner<

>You can sure try though.<

All of which occurred on March 20th, as I understand it Bolk may have discussed it with GED after that but that was the extent of the planning.

[Nazgūl Killer]

Honestly? I laughed. I applaud the actors. You got me, gave me quite the scare honestly. Only now managed to catch up on things having been quite disconnected lately.

[Bolkonsky]

Just want to take the chance to respond to this, directly. The planning amounted to the following.

Spoiler for Convo: 

>Actually its live on Atlas already.

-redacted link-

I love posting in closed threads!<

>^^ Not cool bro.<

>Its cool when I do it. Its a ToS violation when you do it!<

>OK, all PMs received, I'll take a look at this later.

Also, no point in even closing the thread, because everyone that can access this forum is an LM here.<

>>Quote: Its cool when I do it. Its a ToS violation when you do it!<

VonC... ar darn it, can't VonC the Owner<

>You can sure try though.<

All of which occurred on March 20th, as I understand it Bolk may have discussed it with GED after that but that was the extent of the planning.

Yeah, that's the extent of it, outside of some PM's with Aik determining what exactly we were gonna VonC him for, and then a PM to GED to get the OK. I really can't stress this enough, the intention was to VonC GED, not to fool everyone into thinking he was selling mods, etc. It got incredibly sidetracked, for which I apologize, I really should have foreseen that.

[GrnEyedDvl]

The entire thing got a bit overdone when people not in on the original prank started piling on, they knew it was a joke and threw in whatever popped into their heads. I should have anticpated that, but didnt, and it caused a lot more angst than I thought it would. Sorry.

I gotta admit, I am still laughing about the whole thing though.

[pannonian]

Check this very thread for example, all of GED's work, dedication, integrity and honesty is completely forgotten by some members just because he Oked a prank which some users found distasteful. Yet some people still can't see why he's posting the way he is & taking it as a disrespect for TWC & its members. Reputation is like a sand castle, brother.

Over the past few years, no-one, not even Sim, has done as much as GED to perpetuate the TWC site, and just as significantly, perpetuate the TWC traditions of giving members the means by which they can pursue their interests. If there are things members are interested in, GED provides the resources, then it's up to the members themselves to realise their vision. Similar to what the TWC administration has been doing for modders for quite a few years now, but for a wider range of projects.

[Nazgūl Killer]

Honestly, when I read through the threads I was thinking "They have to be joking... Not again..." And I half bought it, half didn't. But I guess it was more of me not wanting to believe it, than having some sort of hunch of it not being real... Honestly I think you guys should have just gone with it to the bitter end.