Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Now that is really sad news and a substantial loss for dominions :(
It doesn't matter whose right or wrong, the damage is done and two of the top modders of dominions 3 are gone from here.

Sad.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I am a fan of "fan-made justice" but can a mod come here and tell me this a lie?
No really, someone tell me he wasn't permabanned for this.
I see dark times ahead

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

wow, i never play dom3 anymore and hardly visit the forums. but when I do there is always something interesting going on.
so, they have banned Sombre, huh? well, he could be an *** sometimes, but banning... that's a bit harsh don't you think? I mean, compared to the youtube-kids he is practically a stoic:o

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

For those of you upset about the impious bannination, I would point out that Starcraft 2 is now in open beta. :) I'm playing it, and really loving it. I think I'm going to finish out the last Dominions game I'm in (playing as Skavenblight, a wonderful mod nation by Sombre), and then call it quits. SC2 is also supposed to have a really great set of modding tools, just in case anyone is interested...

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Well done Admiral Zhao! Now you must kill the airbender!:happy:

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Starcraft 2 is not even in my consideration as a substitution for Dominions. First it's RTS and I generally hate RTS because it's almost always a click fest. Second it's a lame sequel to a barely satisfactory game. If that's strategy I'd love to duel you.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I’ve been away from the forums for a few years studying philosophy and generally trying to do something worthwhile with my life, whilst lurking here and downloading mods and maps from time to time. I’ve never had any interaction with Sombre, and I know nothing of the specifics of this situation. Still, my shameful pedantic scholasticism compels a bit of a reply to what I see as an abuse of ‘justification’ contained in this thread.

First off, I just want to point out that, before I could post this reply, I had to ‘accept’ Shrapnel’s forum policy. I did this fully intending to violate that policy, and I actually hope to be banned in a certain sense because then my point will be made, to wit, in the grandiose jargon of ethical discourse: Shrapnel Games and Annette acted within their rights as a company and as an authority, but contrary to the principles of justice.

It seems to me indisputable that Shrapnel has the legal right to enforce whatever arbitrary rules they want to on their forums, and that Sombre, acting as he did, violated the terms of an agreement which he must have signed, and is therefore subject to the penalties enumerated etc (which include the little subclause that lets Shrapnel permaban without warning, as it were.) I don’t really think anyone wants to argue that point, so I’ll let it alone for now and move on to the second portion of my charge. Annette has stated, rather briefly, her position:

Annette:
That is to say, Sombre merited a more extreme penalty because, in addition to the initial offence, he committed the secondary offence of Lack of Respect for Rules. Thus, Annette acted expeditiously to preserve the integrity of the forum system, since the standard protocol would, clearly, not have worked.

The trouble, of course, is that “Lack of Respect for Rules” is simply not an offence. Even in the form Annette wishes to characterize it, “Intent to Re-offend,” it isn’t an offence. It’s not an offence under Shrapnel’s own terms of use, and it isn’t an offence to Universal Justice. Mill’s dictum in On Liberty applies here- do what thou wilt, unless it harms the liberty of others. What Annette (I’m using “Annette” metonymically here, because of course it’s easier to write a polemic against a person than against a company.) proposes is pure thoughtcrime, pure victimless crime. It’s simply not the case that “Intent to disturb the peace” translates into “Disturbance of the peace.”

Even more damning, the thoughtcrime in question wasn’t even intent, but merely the aforementioned ‘lack of respect.’ I, personally, do not respect the Hate Speech Act (in Canada.) I view it as an unconstitutional limitation on our right to free speech. But that does NOT MEAN that I can be convicted of Hate Crimes unless I am demonstrably inciting hatred. Nor does it indicate intent to be hateful, nor does it demonstrate that I am a bigot. Sombre’s ‘secondary offence’ amounts to no more than that. In a court of law, it would be meaningless.

Shrapnel Community forums are not a court of law, and Annette is under no obligation to be just. However, to the extent that Annette’s decision reflects Shrapnel Policy, that policy must be regarded as unjust, and, following Thoreau, we are morally obliged to ignore it. So we come full circle: Sombre’s action not as contemptible indication of a poisonous mind, but as moral necessity. OF COURSE we shouldn’t give a rat’s arse about the rules, or about punishments. What we should care about is justice.

Valandil Out.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure no one can do this. :(

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Apparently, the privacy of those banned would be violated if the reason for their banning was revealed.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Its sad but true that Sombre isn't going to get unbanned. That would require Shrapnel to admit they were wrong, and that just can't happen. Besides, they don't give a F*** about you guys anymore anyways. you already bought the game, they have your money so buzz off. Or, be like shrapnel staff and stick very large implements up your rear.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I am trying to decide if you are twelve or just stupid.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

The saddening reality is that we, as game-consumers and forum-goers have little recourse in this matter. The one option we always have is that old truism, 'vote with your wallet'.

To that end, this is my last post. Dom 3 will be the last Shrapnel product I purchase.

I find the course of action the moderators have pursued is sufficiently distasteful to prompt this response.

I have greatly enjoyed this amazing product that the wonderful developers have assembled. I have found as much, if not more pleasure in the aftermarket mods and community support it enjoys. On the whole, the game has been a very positive experience. That fact makes it only that much harder to walk away, but I sincerely feel that I, again with limited recourse, have no other means of expression.



To the developers and the community, thank you all for the great times.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Bad timing seeing how they just released a preview of the dominions RPG mechanics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I was not on a irc channel when Sombre explained what happened, and for me it's hard to imagine that sombre was punished for what he thought. It looks for me that he was punished for what he said. There is always a difference between these 2. From my understanding - he just had a conflict with some inexperienced admin. And then another, more experienced admin, who probably is higher in hierarchy, made a decision to save face of organization in eyes of all admins, and not demotivate them by letting Sombre ignore them. Nobody likes to be ignored, and even less like to hear something like what sombre told. But this move of administration smells like Chinese style of governance - they feel they should sacrifice 1 person to keep admins happy and the system unharmed. There is a big difference between China and the other world. And since we are not employees of Shrapnel, and internet is associated with the word freedom and pluralism, what administration does can be understood but it really hurts. And if administration pays so much affords to develop modders and players community, it would be smart to consider such people as Sombre more as investors, who have voice, rather then employees who can be just fired from forum. It's your business, and you can legal right to o whatever you want, but if you want us to feel as a community, let us be this community. Otherwise many of us will have huge issues with own integrity, and that's not really good for anyone.

Shrapnel is not only a forum, it's a niche social network and it's value is in it's members.

Anyway, I would like to thank you, Shrapnel, for parental attention. I appreciate your affords and resources you spend on game and community. But are we really so little children that we deserve such kinds of punishment and control ? Or criminals? I would really understand if Sombre have shown some public disrespect to Shrapnel. But banning for Private messages exchange with one admin, whose input can be much lower then Sombre's? That's hard to understand.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Who's 12 now?

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

You were able to deduce all that from what someone told you in IRC? That the morale of the admins was in jeopardy so Sombre had to be made into a martyr?

Sombre made mods, people like mods. Sombre was rude to people, including new players and forum users, people don't like that. Shrapnel is probably breaking even between people he attracted (I doubt he attracted anyone, retain is probably a better word) through mods and people he ran off by being rude. His mods were cool, and it appealed to a lot of people, especially forum vets, but his attitude was a detriment to the community, especially new players, who are just as important customers as any of us.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I kinda disagree there, watching the drama can be very much fun :)

"Game forums. Come for the game, stay for the drama."

And lets not overreact. Sombre wasn't always an pain in the backside.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

And one more moment I'd like to mention. If you gave him "-10" points for something, from the point of view of the "feeling of is right" of the majority, Sombre definitely deserves +1000 points for his community supporting affords. And though Shrapnel doesn't formally appreciate modding, it would be wise to do it at least informally. everybody would understand if you banned somebody who did not invest any time into the game, and just ignored Sombre's bad mood or his awkward expression of his though. I start to have feeling that Sombre was banned EXACTLY because he invested so much. Because his words were treated as a show of arrogance from the person who doesn't take the world in an adequate way. To give a good example to all other Dom's dinosaurs, with a message "we watch you more then others". But who really have shown arrogance in this case? And if Sombre, who is our friend and part of our heart as he is part of commmunity, said something awkward which could be understood (quite subjective though) in a way that can be treated (also subjective) offencive way, why just not to ignore him several times, just to see if he really because inadequate destructing monster , whose existence threatens to the community, sales plans of our initiative to advertise the game?

Do you really beleave that thouse who are here, on this forum - we still play Doms because the game is great? :) No. We really appritiate the game, but many of us would not play it SP. And in MP good game partners and friends, and a feeling of community is a necessity. And he is our friend.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Well you see, shrapnel has refused to publish the reasons behind Sombre's banning, so naturally we're forced to assume that what we have heard from him is true.

Oh, and you do realize you can post Tim Brooks, instead of just thanking your tools.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I agree the drama can be fun to watch, I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to enjoying that. I blame it on my MMORPG trash talk days :). It's one of the reasons I responded in this thread, people get so worked up about the silliest things, and then they become easy pickings.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

The only explanation I will add to this discussion, is that this decision was not made in-the-heat-of-the-moment. This has been an ongoing problem for quite some time, that all the moderators have been in on. I supported the decision that was made. I have no personal interest in this situation, so I was able to base my opinion on what has transpired over time. A number of you are pointing to one or two PM references...this is not the entire picture.

This thread is being left open, for the time being, to allow people to get this out of their system. But, some are pushing it and trying to use it for a free-for-all. Stay on topic and keep your opinions civil.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

So a nobody should get perm-banned for the same things then?

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

"
You were able to deduce all that from what someone told you in IRC? That the morale of the admins was in jeopardy so Sombre had to be made into a martyr?

Sombre made mods, people like mods. Sombre was rude to people, including new players and forum users, people don't like that. Shrapnel is probably breaking even between people he attracted (I doubt he attracted anyone, retain is probably a better word) through mods and people he ran off by being rude. His mods were cool, and it appealed to a lot of people, especially forum vets, but his attitude was a detriment to the community, especially new players, who are just as important customers as any of us.[/quote]

My feeling were hurt by a mix of several reasons which, maybe wouldn't happen in case on not being a mis. But this mix is poisioning.

1. Shrapnel didn't explains why he did it. It's a Shrapnel's right, but still it hurts.
2. It's a community, not a Shrapnel's blog, so some some level of democracy is expected, regardless of those forum rules most of us don't even read, because we expect them to be just usual, reasonable, and based on an common sense.
3. I hate political correctness, as thouse who demend it are rarely the same people who contribute. From my life experience, politically correct people (I mean in extreme way, like demanding from Shrapnel to ban the offender) and those who really do something are very rarely the same person.
4. Even If I was not so much against political correctness -if someone was publicly offended - that's bad. And for public offense. There should be punishment. But if it was private - the offended have a great opputrinity to save his mood next time by avoiding games in which Somber plays with his friends. And Shrapnel could just ignore it. It's PRIVATE. I don't know if it was private or not.but..see point 1.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

The forum is littered with public instances where Sombre has been "not so nice". The last modding thread I interacted with him in he kept freaking out because he didn't think we were answering the original poster's question properly. Ultimately the original poster responded and said we were answering exactly what he was asking.

Here is the thread:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45313

A quick search of his replies would bring up similar threads where he was basically trying to e-bully people for god knows what reasons.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Naw. Foodstamp he was just ebullying you because he doesn't like you.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

[Really, do some of you believe I would ban any user for writing, "-10 points oh noes"? No, Swan, Sombre was not banned for this alone. But that nugget didn't help his case.

If we truly didn't care about you and our other customers, would we bother with these forums? Of course, we'd like to sell more games...after all, that's our job. But if we wanted to take your money and run, why are we here?

I have no expectation that anything I say is going to make those of you in an uproar change your minds. But I'm going to try to address some of the crap being tossed around here.

Amongst the Annette and Shrapnel bashing, we have heard some very compelling arguments why the decision to ban Sombre should be reconsidered (and I appreciate those considered posts). The reality is, it's a moot point. As far as I know, Sombre has no desire to return. And if he did, we would reconsider only if he were willing to respect our terms.

I have a thick skin, and I'm actually quite impressed how some of you have managed to put words in my mouth. Sombre was not banned for one post, nor for one private message. He was banned because he continually violated, and later indicated that he would not abide by, the terms of use we set forth for these boards. Apparently there are many of you who think, 1) we should have no rules or, 2) we should let Sombre have his own set of rules. I have absolutely no wish to hurt the community (what does our company stand to gain from that?), nor am I interested in any kind of power-play. But Shrapnel Games will not successfully run a company forum with either points 1 or 2 above in play.

Everyone who buys our games or is considering buying our games is welcome here, if they abide by the rules. These are Shrapnel Games' forums, and what we allow to happen here reflects on us as a company. That is why we have the rules we do. We won't allow anyone to intentionally disregard the rules. And we won't allow anyone to intentionally run off new members.

Sombre will continue to make his mods I am sure, and there are many places he can post them. So talk with him about where he is going.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Honestly dude. Who the heck are you? I have NEVER seen you participate in anything on this dominions forum so how can you possibly have an intelligent opinion about Sombre? I suppose it's possible you just lurk around like some kind of sekret mod guru, but get real. If you want us to take you seriously you should at least have some reputation amongst this community. And I sure can't figure out why you supporting this decision should matter to me.

And this threat is sweet. "Play nice or we'll delete you" Get it out of our systems? That is so pompous it makes me vomit. This isn't my system.

Let's get real. It's pretty bloody common practice amongst professional associations that discipline is transparent. In my association, they even publish that you didn't pay your dues.

Bah. I can't even articulate my disgust with your post Strider. It's drivel. You jump in to basically say "Look dudes, I'm god. STFU or we'll discipline you too"

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Annette. In some previous posts you stated you would not discuss why you banned Sombre. Now you are discussing it.

Perhaps you aren't quite understanding that it's exactly that sort of talk tha offends us poor peons who just use these forums to play dominions.

If you aren't going to talk about it DON'T. If you are, don't say you won't.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

The best way, from my opinion is just unban him without any explanations and warnings and consider it not as a faliure of administration and dangerous achievement of users community which can lead to something extremely terrible which doesn't come to my poor imagination. And start following your own rules - no permabanning before temp bans. Ideally no permabanning at all. If someone was tempobanned 3 times, and still returns and makes new mods :)... yes, I would give him 4th tempoban. As exclusion. And then 5th, etc. If he is such a maniac that he returns each time and makes new mods - Shrapnel should be just proud of it. It means he is a very loyal citizen of Shrapnel world. It's pretty cool. And sometimes people with lack of communication skills, if they have weight in community, they DESERVED it. And, having weight in community DE-FACTO in comparison with many admin's DE JURE means a lot. We are young people, we like democracy and fun. If we were serous old farts in a costumes who think too much about rules we wouldn't play computer games at all.

Please make this world, which you create for us (I hope so!) a pleasant place for US, even if it in this case will be less pleasant for you, those who regulate. You are earning money for being in this world. And we are - not. We are here only because of pleasure and only for it.

If you say you banned Sombre not for yourself, but for community...I didn't hear much voices from unpaid community users who would support you. That's a reality.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Glad to see you continue to be deliberatly obtuse about one of the main questions. If he was "continually violating" your sacred rules, why didnt you follow your own sacred procedures? continually means overtime. i guess you just decided to make a special case for Sombre by permabanning him and not give him your three strikes rule. seems pretty darn hypocrtical to me. And if you use the other part of the rule that lets you permaban him instantly, well good job. you've made the community more harmonius. We aren't giving him his own special set of rules. you are. And you look stupid for it. We know by now that your ego's are too hurt to back down at this point, but maybe, just maybe, we can get you to admit you were a little overzealous.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Thanks to the Mods for not banning me, and allowing this discussion to continue. It does have it's place on the board.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

So the new story is that you banned him because of a perceived lack of respect for the rules. So somehow the fact that he didn't give a rat's @ss about your two bit warnings and almighty mod powers made an instant perma ban somehow applicable under this rule:
Great job, I can see that you've successfully promoted harmony in the community. Leaving that aside however, tell me how in the hell his private communications with you could possibly affect community harmony? Obviously they can't because they're PRIVATE. So really, you're just trying to cover up the fact that you broke you're own policies because you couldn't stand someone who didn't "Respect mah authority," or you violated your own policies that called for a preliminary temp ban.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

That's not a new story. That has been her original point all along.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

First, I want to make clear I'm not trying to bash anyone. I have no personal agenda here. I don't even personally like Sombre, although I do respect the modding work he's done.

What does bother me is that what you say doesn't match up with either what he's said (and I have no reason to believe he's lied) nor his infraction record. He had a warning that was long since expired, and the -10pts he received from the current violation that sparked this entire chain of events. That's not an especially 'continual' problem. If Sombre was such a continual problem, why doesn't he have a long record of disciplinary action? Where are the temp bans?

I don't like being lied to, and I don't like seeing people treated unfairly. Unfortunately, all the evidence available suggests that is exactly what is happening here. If you want to change people's minds, its going to require actual evidence. As a trained scientist, I for one tend to prefer the hypothesis that the evidence actually supports.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

New story? How so? My post from last night:

I'm the one who banned Sombre. Don't blame our volunteer moderators, please. We're all very saddened by this and don't take it lightly. We (Shrapnel Games' staff) understand that Sombre has made many positive contributions to these boards. On the other hand, he/she continually violated the rules we have established and expect every forum member to observe. We actually gave some extra rope in this case, encouraging Sombre to continue participating positively without breaking our forum guidelines. Unfortunately, Sombre was not willing to do this.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

i guess she ran out of drivel to spout and is now reusing her old rhetoric. once again - why no temp bans if it was a continual problem?

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Sombre is hardly the only person with discipline problems on this board... not including maerlande, who has finally gotten his. Sure took him an awful lot of effort to get it, in comparison.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

And lets not mention Wikdthots - was any discipline ever handed down about that at all?

Edit: that is, given he was a sockpuppet, did the person responsible suffer *any* consequences?

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

To those who are angry, I'd like to ask that the discussion be elevated above what I'd expect out of other forums. Regardless of your grievance this isn't accomplishing anything other than making people look like petulant children. If you really feel fed up enough to leave then just do it.

To the admins I'd like to expound on the real reason people are angry, and I alluded to it in my previous post. Most of us identify with Sombre, even if we found him abrasive. He was part of the community and (at least those that are protesting think) he contributed much more than his abrasiveness subtracted. Your actions feel unilateral, arbitrary and an attack on our community. If he had been consistently unpalatable then not only would everyone understand why he was banned, they'd thank you for it. This feels like some outsider decided that enough respect was not paid to him and attacked our community, only to be fully supported by the powers that be. Let me be clear that I don't know or particularly care about the specifics of what happend, I'm just telling you why people are mad as they're not doing a good job articulating it.

It's not that there is a feeling that there should be no rules, it's that the feeling is that how this is enforced is an attack on our community. If you banned Sombre then who else? Obviously Sombre is not coming back, and I'd expect that several other people are gone for good over this...and the feeling is why in the hell are you swinging a big club around like that when nobody else saw a problem? This whole thing could have been greatly mitigated by publicly asking, then warning, then being clear about consequences for further behavior and bringing the community along with the decision. *Obviously* important members of the community deserve special consideration - they are what makes the community. If there is a compelling reason that one of the pillars of a community needs to be removed you can't just unilaterally do it with no transparency...unless you want considerable backlash.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

This thread has been very entertaining. Let's wrap it up with a ban to Frozen Lama for personal attacks on a moderator so he can join his buddies on the free forums.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I'm glad you've had fun with this thread foodstamp. You've gotten all kinds of thanks from Brooks for being his tool.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Thanks for being mine :).

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

I smell a future moderator in the maiking.....

and what? no infraction? no temp bans? oh.. right. the rules mean nothing lately.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

To add to this, you might try having junior mods who the community actually respects, instead of mods who contribute nearly nothing to the community and therefore enjoy no respect from it.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

This thread is a perfect example of why no one would ever want to moderate a forum lol.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

This is exactly the problem, Baalz. Sombre was granted extra leeway because of his history here. His ban didn't come out of the blue, and I'm sure he would agree. I'm certain he knew it was coming. Because we were lenient with him, there is not a record for you all to see. It's a Catch 22...I'm hearing we should be willing to bend the rules because of his contributions, but I've created an uproar because I allowed the rules to be bent.

I'm not sure what lesson we'll take from this. Will we bend the rules again for someone who has contributed greatly over a long period of time? Probably. Will that person then ignore our requests to play nice with others? Hopefully not.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

Okay, I have a suggestion then. In cases like this, institute a temporary ban and require that, as a condition of reinstatement, the member calms down, acknowledges that he or she broke the rules and agrees to follow them in the future. If the person isn't willing to follow the rules or continues to be hostile in general, then continue the ban indefinitely. If the person gets angry and quits then fine.

If the person is re-instated and the problem reoccurs then bring out the perma-banhammer.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

People...the moderators had a lot of 'reports' concerning Sombre's posts, by forum members, not moderators. Most, if not all of those who made those reports, are also long standing and respected members of this forum. And in some of the reports, it wasn't against the person who made the report, but "for" someone else, especially for the newer people.

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

annette you didn't bend the rules. you simply broke them. its that simple. basically you're simply lying to us. and i think about 50% of the anger isn't so much about him being banned anymore. its that we see ourselves being blatantly lied to. answer us. why didn't you follow your own rules to try and remedy the "continual problem"

Re: Night of the Long Knives?
 

He was a lot less rude than Septimius Severus, who is the user who actually caused the altercation by misrepresenting Sombre's words.