Before anyone gets the notion to start flaming me, listen to my words in a non-biased, non emotional way. I am, for the most part, trying to write this without emotions involved, which means there will be minimal flaming from my part. I am going to outline what I have seen the past few days because of this incident I have caused. There are good points and bad points I will bring up. Go get your bottle of beer (or milk for some people), and settle down and just listen to what I have to say.
First off, I want to apologies to the Space Merchant Realms Community because of my actions. It was an irresponsible act of indecency that has caused this Community to go head over heels about a touchy topic. People have been pulling each others hairs, administrators have been harassed by members of the community, and overall, it has been a HUGE fiasco. This was not suppose to be this big of a deal. The week I was banned, a few people talked to me about this incident, but overall a majority of the community had no idea that I had been banned. It was shocking news to people to hear it. Some agreed to the punishment, others disagreed. I want to apologies to Jester and to the other person who I podded that night. I came away with 2 kills. With RoJaK Hunting, it could have been more, maybe less, but lets not speculate on that.
Secondly, I want to thank the Administration for their continued hard work and effort put into this game to be called lousy names behind their back AND in front of their face. This is poor sportsmanship however you look at it. The administration does their work for free. Believe it or not, but with only 7 active administrators, most of them being in college or at the workplace, it is a real burden on them. We should be thankful we have an administrative team like we do. They are real people, who care about the game. We do not have asses for admins. Thank them for their hard work!
The Administration for the past few YEARS have done amazing things! In today’s society (travdan already brought this up, because I told him in a private chat) people focus on the negative news. No one cares about when someone does good things, they care about the one screw up they have. I will take an example of an unnamed congressman (this can be the pope, the king of your country, the president, the Warlord, whatever). They might do 500 good things to improve the world around you, but whenever they pick their nose with the wrong hand, the news media picks up on this and totally destroys that person. Granted, I used an example that is in no way feasible, but it gets the point across. The community of SMR has neglected the fact that the administration has done wonderful things, and focuses on their two most recent slip up’s: the PR issue and my issue. We need to get away from the negativeness and focus on the brightness of their existence. Because of the hampering lately on the admin team, I know of a few people who want to step down because they feel like they waste their time because people trash them without thinking of what they are saying.
The decision of the administration was made clear by Estoys post, then again by Spocks post, and then some more by Vtreka, and the rest of the crew of the SMR Admin team. They are the administrators. They talked for a straight week about my punishment until they decided to lower the punishment from 80 points to 30 points. I respect their decision, not because my punishment was lowered by three weeks, but because they acted on it with thoroughness. It took them close to two weeks to enact on the punishment and to have it settled, but it was done in their fashion. Again, I want to reiterate that they volunteer their time. Remember, they are human, just like yourself. Respect their decision, and go with their decision. They know what is best for the community. If they are unsure, there is a Committee they can ask how it will affect the general public. Respect their decision. Do not flame them because it isn’t YOUR view. There is always two sides to the story. If you think your way is always the right way, you are wrong. But then again, I am wrong for saying that exact statement!
I do not know the motive for talking about this in public, what has happened to me, but it was the wrong choice by that individual. I requested that this matter be kept in the confides of what I assumed would be a pact. Unfortunately, that individual brought up this topic in the wrong medium. What I mean by that is under the rules, if you have a discrepancy of anything that the administrators have done, it should be brought up through the administration by contacting them VIA e-mail, PM’s in chat, or other methods but not bringing it up in public forums. It was wrong, and I do not condone him for that action.
As for the other motives, which I assume is to find the faults in the administrators decisions, I will explain their decision from my viewpoint. This is no way THEIR viewpoint; it is just from my stance on what I have been viewing over the last week. There are two rules threads on the message board. One is posted by Blum on February 22, 2004, the other by nariis on August 4th, 2004. There is a conflict of the punishment that I should have received according to these two. By Nariis’s rules, I should have received 40 points maximum for the offense I did. By Blums, I should have received 40 points or 80 points, depending on how they interpret the rules. I said interpret in the last sentence. That is done by humans, and human error happens. But, if we go by nariis’s rules, I should have received 40 points maximum. I received 30 points because the administration averaged the points together–(20+20+20+20+40+80)/6=33.3 ban points, rounded down=30.
The one thing I have noticed is the discrepancy of the administrations decisions. But, remember, they are human, and they do have a say in the points that are given to the individual. The point system is a mere guideline that they have constructed so that different infractions can serve either a more severe punishment or a less severe punishment according to how the administration feels it needs to be handled. Some people will say it is a biased opinion, and the rules need to be steadfast. I agree to a certain extent. The way I disagree is there are differences in opinions and all opinions need to be viewed. I will take my case to describe.
An individual told an administrator what my total ban points should be, according to Blum’s post. Without consent of the other administrators to look further into it for details, the administrator banned me with 80 total ban points added. A further, better investigation into the litigation of what happened, and more opinions from the administration table found that the points should be added together then averaged to take the whole team’s opinion on the matter at hand. Other times, when there is a clear consensus of what has happened, a group of administrators (not everyone) will come to agreement that “X†points needs to be added to that account. It differs upon infraction.
The point I am trying to get across is that you need to respect the administrations actions, and If you think it needs to be something more, or something “better†if you will, there is appropriate forums for this. We need to respect our administrators decisions in what they do. I know some times it is hard to understand the logic behind it all, but it was made for a reason, biased or not. I did not request to have my banishment lowered to 30, to 20, or kept at 80. The admin team did what they thought was in the best interest of the game. Respect their decision and move on.
Negative news tears people apart. We need to stop dwelling on what people have slipped up on, administration and player base alike, and become more pro-active in our voice towards the good of what we have done. We are human, we all make mistakes. I sure as hell have learned from this experience, at how certain people can become monsters, at how some people can become your best friend too. I never thought the people who stood up for me would stand up, and accordingly, those who went against me, I was shocked. But all of this is irrelevant. I am happy to see that we have had more people online on the web-board now than it has been in the past few months combined! I personally talked to a few people who said they were logging on just to read the Web-board! Do this when there isn’t something as exciting as what has happened.
I hope this opened your eye to a little more than what has happened in the past few days and week. I will strive to get the inconsistency of condescending rules replaced with a straight-forward rule book. Up till now, it wasn’t needed. But, as we all have seen, we need a more straight-forward guideline to go by.
In closing, I want to again apologies to everyone who’s been involved in this situation. I hope that you have read this without emotions, that you have learned from what I have said. I do ask you refrain from emotional responses, but I know they will come. I tried to be as logical and straightforward as I could be in my response to your call. I have learned my lesson, more than 4 fold. We, as humans, have to learn to live, then we live to forget. In a few days or weeks, or however long this goes on, which I hope it ends tonight with my letter, everyone will have forgotten this ever existed, and will go on with their enjoyment of SMR. Again, I am sorry.
Long awaited speech:
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OmegaRenegade
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RandyOrsolo
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I'll say my peace then its back to playing one of the best games on the net. If someone didn't know something was wrong and was caught doing it. I could understand giving them a lesser punishment but if you knew that what you did was against rules and did it anyway. Well you know what I am saying. About 8 months ago I had found a link that when I clicked on it took me into someone else account. It took me 3 sec, to realize that I was in someone else account. Now I could have looked at the alliances planets, cleaned out their aa or any number of things. But what I did do was get out of his account, then I messages him to let him know what had happen, then I message MrSpock and told him how it happen. He then took care of it. Had I keep this infor, to myself and keep using it and was caught. Would it have been ok for me to get a lesser punishment? When someone finds a bug, loophole, a bad link, you know that you should report it right away and not use it. So now it is what it is. I won't responed to this topic anymore it back to the game.
Last thing before I go, Kuwl thanks, you made a good post and you sound like you would never do anything like that again. This is nothing against you I would feel the same way no matter who did it.
Last thing before I go, Kuwl thanks, you made a good post and you sound like you would never do anything like that again. This is nothing against you I would feel the same way no matter who did it.