Where's Nick??

[Sho]

That's right.

[Nick]

Firstly, I think you grossly misread the joking manner in which many of my comments were made...

Do me a favor, dear. Look up the word conspiracy.

That's rude and bad argumentation ...

This, for instance. Basically, a conspiracy is two or more people planning to do something. An investigation quite literally is a conspiracy, no matter what way you want to look at it. Conspiracy has been given a bad look these days, with any far-out theory labeled a 'conspiracy', and anything called a 'conspiracy' labelled far-out.

If a respectable person such as yourself or Jur or someone had come to me with specific accusations, it would have been very different.

The problem is that only a few people are deeply involved in PD cases and are good at it. Most times that I got deeply involved in a PD case, I just demonstrated that I'm not very tactful with these things, and I am usually not well enough able to get a good overal picture of a case. I get too tired of leading long logs of chat conversations or events pages, and I get just too annoyed with people accusing each other of lying etc. It's not my thing, which is why the PD was among the first things (together with the RD) I delegated to others.

Well, I wasn't confronted or accused of anything in this matter, just banned. So even if you don't feel you're very good at it, something would have been better than nothing.

I hope that after admitting my wrongdoing, and the fact that I'm banned (so why would I care), the things I continue to deny are believed.

You won't get a blanket cheque that from now on everything you say is believed ... Right now, having forgotten most of the case anyway (as I just said), I personally tend to believe you, but that's not sufficient ...

That's not exactly what I meant, but fair enough.

Also, note that I might have been missing other reasons that you were banned, I don't want to say with absolute certainty that I just gave you the exact reason ... It was too complicated a case for that.

Well, anytime somebody feels like filling me in, if it's not too much of a bother...

I have now several times argued that we should perhaps have some kind of jury or judge. Most people are not very supportive of the idea, and it is definitely even far more bureaucratic than the current system, but this kind of cases make me want something like that ... The PD would then have to argue the case, even if not prove totally, and the accused would be given a chance to defend, and a judge would finally decide.

Well in this case I would know what it is exactly I'm being accused of, go for it. Maybe not in use for a day to day basis, however.. that might get a tad ridiculous.

I have reported this and others to you in a conversation several months ago. Quite frankly, you ignored me afaik.

Accusations from one person, especially when this person is under investigation, without decent proof, is not going to convince me easily. Besides, I probably sometimes fail by just hating to deal with these issues so much that I ignore them more than I should. There are many issues related to Cantr I have to think about, and many more issues unrelated to Cantr in my life I have to deal with, that this is the kind of extra thing I don't really need, and that might sometimes blur my judgement as to the seriousness of a case.

You could perhaps write me a personal email with whom you accuse of what and what evidence you have?

Well, you didn't seem very interested in it at the time. While I am primarily the one who comes out and speaks these things, don't think for a second I'm the only one here. For whatever reason (probably my outspokenness), people tend to come to me with these things. When I presented my evidence to you (including conversation logs, and more concrete proof), it was accumulated by several people, some of whom are high ranking staff members. You didn't seem very willing to accept the fact that trusted staff members could be capable of the things they were accused of.

Let's start by not having one person do all of the hiring.

This is simply not the case. Every application is reviewed by several people. Usually at least the chair of the respective department, the personnel officer, and the GAB, and often one or two GAC members. Some cases are judged by fewer people than others, but none of them by one person only.

I understand that, as the full context from which you quoted me showed. However, all of the applications are bottlenecked through one person, who gets a say on any and all staff applications. And same said person has commented, negatively, on all of my staff applications. Such a position is a very powerful and abusable position.

The GAB members should not be in any other departments.

No kidding.

However, we unfortunately lack the kind of reliable staff in sufficient numbers to change this. Even with the bigger departments, you'd be surprised how small a proportion of the staff members is doing most of the work. We don't have enough staff at the moment to fill all those positions.

I can easily believe this. However, I think some people on staff are really underrated (Surly, Wichita, to name a couple), and some, overrated (names left out for lack of gunfire's sake).

As for proving allegations against a staff member, well as
you said before, it's quite difficult if not impossible to 'prove' them, but repeated accusations are never a good sign. Anybody with any serious accusations should not be sitting on the GAC or GAB. You know who I'm talking about.

That does, however, also depend on how many people are making these accusations.

As I've said before, there are numerous others. Not everybody likes putting themselves in the line of fire, however. And with me being banned, it will likely stay that way.

Nope, I think that's my wild-card ticket back in.

Sure, if you think so ... I don't think you will be able to 'bribe' your way in. You'll be let in after a long enough period if we have the impression that you will play according to the rules. Not later and not earlier. It has nothing to do with how useful we consider you for staff positions.

*sighs* Jos, you are too serious sometimes.
That was a joke.

Yes, chars should be independent, you should not encourage others outside the game to suddenly start playing. It's cooperation on players level to get things going on characters level, and that is not allowed under the CR.

As I've said time and time before, this, and the other rules, especially ones that you're going to ban people for, really should be written down somewhere. People don't like finding out by having their account locked/banned.

-----

Something I'd like to clarify, really. I don't think the 'people-you-know-Im-talking-about' have secret meetings where they find out how they can do things against the will of people like myself, or anything far fetched like that.

You work with politics, I'll put it this way. When a politician has the power to appoint, or direct influence over appointment, whether with evil motives or not, they're going to want people that they are amiable with to surround them and fill those positions. It's just human nature. These friendly members are going to gain 'trust' with each other faster, and the society in question will gravitate towards their methods.

This becomes quite apparent when you look at examples, keeping in mind who is friends with who. One certain staff member, for instance, is a hard working, untrusted individual who hasn't been proved of any wrongdoing. This person is apparently not allowed from ever having a position of any real trust, for reasons I won't get specific on because if you haven't noticed, for the most part, I'm trying to make most of my cases anonymous.

However, then you go and look at people who have been accused (and proven) of wrongdoing, both as players and staff members, yet these people still have access to high-trust things. Who they are friends with, is no coincidence. The staff member from the former scenario, by 'chance', is not very amiable with the same high ranking person.

So, I'm not saying that these staff members shouldn't be allowed to have access to what they do have, I'm not aware enough of how members are monitored, et cetera, so I can't really make an informed judgement (and if I did, it's not like it would matter much). However, I just question why these people ARE granted trust, and the others, are not. I have been around Cantr for a long time, and talked with pretty much anybody who has been bored enough to hang around the OOC areas of Cantr (IRC, forum), and of those that have been here for a long time, and are as involved with the 'social' side of Cantr as I have been in the past, people see what is going on. The perhaps intentional, possibly unintentional clique that has formed over the past years. I know you have more of a what we like to call a 'life' than us, and have never had any experience in applying, or raising, in staff (you've always been the head cheese).

So maybe some things need to be looked at, again, to prevent this clear trend which is not just something I've randomly accused like a paranoiac, it's something which most of the oldbies see. I'm not going to attempt to make suggestions on how to totally redo the Cantr staff, or anything, but a simple question.

Why does it matter what a certain someone, who has no involvement with the RD, think about RD applicants? Just an example, but I'm sort of questioning the position in and of itself. I think the most simple and massive blow you could do towards the forming clique (or if you don't believe in it, it would be a blow to people claiming there is one, at least) would be to remove this position entirely. Clearly, applicants are already given consideration by their department chair and the GAB, is that not enough? And also, since the person who happens to be the P.O., is also on the GAB, does not this person basically get a double say?

Another sort of... disclaimer.. I'd like to mention is that the PD is a department, it's members change. When I criticize the PD, it's actions of certain PD members, which I am not going to list every time instead of just saying PD. West, KeVeS, and others, I'm really not saying anything towards you. I think the context of each point clearly (for the right, informed people) points out who I'm talking about, without inserting names for flame wars, or to just generally cause public disrespect (assume for a second that I had that power...) towards said names.

[Nalaris]

Asking for dragging help is a CRB? How?

[Nick]

Asking for dragging help is a CRB? How?

He even clarified and said that asking somebody to go on to play Cantr when otherwise they wouldn't, is a CRB (one that I was banned for it seems).

Unfortunately, unless they read this page.. of this topic... they will have no idea.

[SekoETC]

Asking for dragging help OUTSIDE OF THE GAME is a breach. This is apparently confusing a lot of people. You can ask ingame for people to help, but you shouldn't go poking your friend on instant messenger "hey, log in, I need help dragging".

[Nick]

Just to make sure something is clear ...

Asking in character to get help draging is in character and fine, right?

Asking your IM buddies to log on and help drag is Major Bad CRB no-no, right?

Running a Cantr group which holds maps is a no-no, too.

So is gathering your characters with others oocly in order to perform a goal concieved out of character.

But you knew all of that, right?

[Jos Elkink]

Firstly, I think you grossly misread the joking manner in which many of my comments were made...

Oh, yes, I have a tendency to take such things seriously. In writing, jokes are not always clear. Hence my over-use (abuse?) of smileys when I'm typing.

Well, I wasn't confronted or accused of anything in this matter, just banned. So even if you don't feel you're very good at it, something would have been better than nothing.

Point taken ...

Well in this case I would know what it is exactly I'm being accused of, go for it. Maybe not in use for a day to day basis, however.. that might get a tad ridiculous.

I think you made a typo somewhere, but the result is that I don't get what you're saying ...

I understand that, as the full context from which you quoted me showed. However, all of the applications are bottlenecked through one person, who gets a say on any and all staff applications. And same said person has commented, negatively, on all of my staff applications. Such a position is a very powerful and abusable position.

The fact that one person comments on all applications I can't really see as an issue. You're overestimating this person's influence, including on your applications.

The GAB members should not be in any other departments.

No kidding.

The PerD might be an exception, though. The rule among our staff is that the GAB is fully responsible for hiring, nobody else, but the GAB does this upon advice from the chair, and the PerD also often voices an opinion. (Btw, the current prime PerD member is not a member of the GAB, so you have outdated information ...) The PerD is really like an administrative assistant to the GAB in recruitment affairs.

I can easily believe this. However, I think some people on staff are really underrated (Surly, Wichita, to name a couple), and some, overrated (names left out for lack of gunfire's sake).

Both examples you give are actually very highly rated, even when this is not fully visible (yet) in public.

There is, btw, also a problem in promoting people too fast, since the departments also need their staff ...

As I've said before, there are numerous others. Not everybody likes putting themselves in the line of fire, however. And with me being banned, it will likely stay that way.

One person saying there are numerous others is not the same as having numerous witnesses ... And I'm sure you'll agree that around Cantr staff there have also always been many outragious conspiracy theories that were pure nonsense. We have had highly trusted staff abusing their powers (and they were immediately removed from staff) so I know this can happen, but I'm not going to act upon every single conspiracy theory.

A basic underlying problem around the whole discussion above is the issue of trust. Much like you argue yourself, people you know you can more easily trust, hence the requirement of trust leads automatically partly to cliquishness. This should be avoided, but can't always be. Even when there is no reason to really suspect someone, I always find it very scary to give PD access rights to players I don't really know. In most cases I still find it scary when we decide to do so, but you have to at some point. When to trust someone and when not is a very difficult issue, and is a totally subjective one, not objective. I trust some people and some other people I trust less (and I'm not going to publicly state which staff members I trust more or less ...), and sometimes this is not entirely determined by how trustworthy someone is. Sometimes it's just how much you like someone, or incidental 'evidence' of someones trustworthiness, etc.

As I've said time and time before, this, and the other rules, especially ones that you're going to ban people for, really should be written down somewhere. People don't like finding out by having their account locked/banned.

Yeah, I know that people complain that the CR is not clear enough. And I know that is to a large extent my fault. The problem is quite simple, I think: the CR is in a sense a very clear rule to understand the idea behind it. And when people stick to the idea behind it, there is no problem. Once you start to specify in much more detail what is allowed and what isn't, people start to forget about the basic idea of the rule, and start to follow the strict rules instead. Most PD members are, for as far as I know, in favour of such a strict interpretation (e.g. only 1 char in one organization; only 2 chars on one location; etc.), while I have always been very reluctant to support such rules. I know of players who had chars continuously in the same area (Richard around Quillanoi, for example), but who were very clearly abiding by the CR and who really understood the spirit of the CR. Once I start specifying in more detail, people think everything is ok when they just stick to those rules, but there is no set of clear rules that encompass the whole of the CR, while the CR is very simple and clear rule. All cooperation and interaction between characters should follow from their in-game interactions and should not be influenced by out-of-game facts, be it that two chars are of one player, or a player knows more than the char, or the players know the player of another char, etc. Within reason, of course, like chars can speak English. It seems to me that it is rather obvious where breaking this rule spoils the game and where it is reasonable. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one who thinks the rule is totally obvious ...

(Richard's objection to the 4-day-rule is valid in the sense that that rule does not follow from the CR, but it is only instated to make abiding to the CR more easy.)

You work with politics, I'll put it this way. When a politician has the power to appoint, or direct influence over appointment, whether with evil motives or not, they're going to want people that they are amiable with to surround them and fill those positions. It's just human nature. These friendly members are going to gain 'trust' with each other faster, and the society in question will gravitate towards their methods.

Yes, of course, this is undeniable.

This becomes quite apparent when you look at examples, keeping in mind who is friends with who. One certain staff member, for instance, is a hard working, untrusted individual who hasn't been proved of any wrongdoing. This person is apparently not allowed from ever having a position of any real trust

Yes, this goes back to my point about how trust works ... Are you suggesting I should ignore the fact that I don't trust someone? That I should require proof before disallowing anyone access to sensitive parts of the game?

However, then you go and look at people who have been accused (and proven) of wrongdoing, both as players and staff members, yet these people still have access to high-trust things.

If this is true, it's bad, indeed ...

The perhaps intentional, possibly unintentional clique that has formed over the past years. I know you have more of a what we like to call a 'life' than us, and have never had any experience in applying, or raising, in staff (you've always been the head cheese).

Yes, I know my position is rather comfortable in this respect ... It takes many hours of work to get there, though ... But I can't deny it. I'm very glad I did not have to apply and I'm glad I did not have to climb the ladder like others do. Being simply in charge is far more fun.

I'm not sure I agree there is a clique which formed, but I think I do. It's difficult to say. In a sense, I think there was more of a clique a few years ago then now, but it was a very different clique which was more obviously respected among the players (although Cathy has had hard times too, in that respect, despite her excellent work). Now the clique is different and less widely respected, perhaps. Maybe you're right, maybe not, I'm simply not sure.

Why does it matter what a certain someone, who has no involvement with the RD, think about RD applicants?

RD is about trusting people with access to the game database (parts of it, anyway). So applicants are for example judged on whether they don't have big PD cases pending or something, by someone involved in the PD. They're judged on whether they write clear in their application, which anyone can judge. They are judged on whether we agree with their idea of what Cantr is all about, which is judged mostly by me and Jur, I suppose. Etc. There are different criteria, and different people can comment on different aspects. Usually we all agree, anyway, with a few exceptions. Most applications are rather obvious, either really not that good, or really quite good. Only some are more controversial.

Clearly, applicants are already given consideration by their department chair and the GAB, is that not enough? And also, since the person who happens to be the P.O., is also on the GAB, does not this person basically get a double say?

You're overestimating the influence of the PerD. The voice of the GAB and GAC members is far more important, as well as the chair of the department.

[Coramon]

Does this mean I should start a "LET HIM PLAY" thread?

[west]

You could. Wouldn't do anything though.

[Jos Elkink]

I would appreciate if people reading this thread could have a look at http://www.cantr.net/mwiki/index.php/Game_Rules and see if it is more clear now. Suggestions for changes are welcome.

[Thetaris]

Does this mean I should start a "LET HIM PLAY" thread?

Lol, they're not Australian, they won't get this joke about the footballer.

Hell, their typical footballer is a soccer player, so...

[Thetaris]

Now that I've actually read this all and summed it up, I was highly in support of Nick but I had to disagree with some of his points, which really put him in a negative perspective.

Apparently we should be surprised at the amount of cheating?

I think not. I personally know 4 or 5 people who play Cantr who are on my contacts list. Seeker and I often talk about Cantr, of course never letting our characters in on a secret.

But our characters have never, never worked together. In fact we haven't even thought it over. We haven't even said anything about cheating yet.

If I wanted to cheat, I most definately could, but I know one thing for sure, and that's that most players do not cheat.

Do you know how fast it is to make a hotmail account?
Do you know how many computers there are at a decent internet cafe?
Do you know how easy it is to make hundreds of Cantr accounts?

It may take a few days but it's do-able.

This is more a note to the staff, you really need to implement IP tracking... Although I may be against it if you program it crappily, as Seeker and I go to the same school and we use school computers to access our accounts, it is well worth it.

Nick, if you cheated before, then Jos's point is they finally found overwhelming evidence and put it against you... Sorry to be on their side but I see their point.

[Sho]

The PD uses IP tracking.

[Coramon]

So that's why my friend can't get an account. I played the game on his comp and showed him the ropes but he got denied.

[Sho]

E-mail players@cantr.net and tell them what the situation is. PD is usually quite understanding of those situations.