Scout's ban: my story

OK guys, I figured i should probably start a new thread rather than continue to post in the "Indiana's ops" thread, although my banning has something to do with that thread. But in that thread people have been telling their side of the story of what happened, or just some of the facts rather than all of them, and people keep asking me and stuff, so here is my side of the story. It's a story of a winbolo/irc rule that exists now on an official website, but before that only existed in a few people's minds, thus not understood, accepted, or used by everyone.

INCIDENT 1: fi's game

About a month ago, FI created a map on one of the bots, PW game, smallball the map. I joined, and since I was the 3rd one in, fi asked me to leave, he only wanted 1x1 (with nobody in particular). Before I could say "come on, fi, you gotta try this 2x2 or more, it's fun", more people joined. There were at leave 5 or even 6 people total in the game at one time. Fi kept asking people to leave, I kept telling everyone to stay because I wanted to have a multi-player game. FI kept asking me and everyone else after me in the game to leave, people did not leave though. Some did leave, eventually, but only to find another game, not because they were following fi's orders.

Fi was very upset with me, telling me I had broken a rule: the rule that says you have to leave a game when the map creator asks you to. Oh, and by the way, out of all of the people that also did not leave right away when the map creator fi asked, yours truly was the only one punished for it. He warned me, and kicked me. And if fi was upset that I was confusing them by telling them to stay, then what's the problem with telling them to stay? I mean if the KNOW the rule, then I'm not confusing them at all. They can find out who the map creator was, and do what he says! And if I knew the rule too, then why would I refuse to follow it?

Well, I tried to tell fi that there wasn't any such rule. That that rule exists for situations like before a game starts, they forget to lock and a 5th or 7th player sneaks in, and everyone will say "please leave, we have a set game here". And it exists in case in the middle of a game if the players called hold so someone can rejoin, and it was unlocked for a split second, and new player sneaks in, everyone can say "please leave, we're waiting for this dude". Each situation has a "majority rules" kinda policy. The rule at the time, posted on fi's website and therefore official for .us irc, said this:

"if someone ask you to leave (and you did not create the map) then leave without a fuss. "

FI tried to convince me that this meant that the map creator had ultimate say over who left and who stayed. When in reality, it clearly give immunity to the map creator from being asked to leave VERY big difference. And most anyone who speaks english as their native language and passed high school english classes can understand what the above rule truly says and what it does not say.

FI then tried to convince me that the "map creator has ultimate say in who stays or goes" policy is what everyone knows and follows and understands, even though the rule on the website doesn't say it exactly. Oh everyone knows it, do they? Did I know it? No. Did everyone else who joined the game and didn't leave when YOU asked know it? No. Did everyone who I talked to in irc after the incident with Indiana last week know it? No, they in fact said there WAS no policy and that Indiana was wrong for asking me to leave. So if the policy is not in print on YOUR website that is linked to from SHEEP's OFFICIAL website, How in the hell do I know you're not making up some crap just because you're mad about not getting a 1x1 in your game?????

INCIDENT #2: Indiana's game

Most of you know about this one, I don't have to explain too much. I joined a game last week, nobody else was there yet. Indiana joined and told me to leave right away. Mac joined too, but I asked Mac if he wanted me to leave, he said no. Indiana cited the same rule that fi did earlier, saying that the map creator has ultimate authority. I tried to tell him that that is not what is printed on fi's official site. He thought that the following:

"if someone ask you to leave (and you did not create the map) then leave without a fuss. "

DID in fact mean that the map creator had ultimate authority. Now I give fi credit for at least seeing where I was coming from when talking about this particular rule. Indiana either had no freaking clue what the words actually said, or he pretended that they meant what he said, and misinterpreted the rule against me. He went to fi and recommended that i be banned, based on what happened, and fi OK'd it.

So far I have been warned, kicked, and banned because of a rule that DID NOT EXIST until the morning after this last incident, the morning after I was banned. The rule now reads like this:

"2) If someone ask you to leave (and you did not create the map), then leave without a fuss. Many times people organize games with set players, then start a map to play that game. The person who started the map via the gamebot on IRC gets the final decision in how big the game is and who has to leave or stay."

Ahhh, now that's much more clear isn't it! Not that I agree with the rule 100%, but at least everyone can actually READ it somewhere that's official, as opposed to a rule that only some people know, or use, or accept, or understand. And because of that, I agree to follow it.

In one of the last posts in the "Indiana's ops" thread, Min said that you can't plead ignorance, because the rules are out there for everyone to read and find out for themselves, so if you don't know the rules it's your own fault. Until last week, were all the rules out there for everyone to read for themselves? I don't think they were, but i got warned, kicked, and banned anyway. All for a rule that existed in the minds of 2 people with ops, and nobody else's that I know of.

sorry for the really really long post

Mad Scout wrote:

In one of the last posts in the "Indiana's ops" thread, Min said that you can't plead ignorance, because the rules are out there for everyone to read and find out for themselves, so if you don't know the rules it's your own fault. Until last week, were all the rules out there for everyone to read for themselves? I don't think they were, but i got warned, kicked, and banned anyway. All for a rule that existed in the minds of 2 people with ops, and nobody else's that I know of.

umm, that was a general statement I made madscout .... it wasn't ment to imply that a rule exsisted that you didn't know .... you were clearly kicked and banned from incorrect and misinterpreted reasons .... which was always clear to me, even before this nice long clarifying post.

Min

Min wrote:

Mad Scout wrote:

In one of the last posts in the "Indiana's ops" thread, Min said that you can't plead ignorance, because the rules are out there for everyone to read and find out for themselves, so if you don't know the rules it's your own fault. Until last week, were all the rules out there for everyone to read for themselves? I don't think they were, but i got warned, kicked, and banned anyway. All for a rule that existed in the minds of 2 people with ops, and nobody else's that I know of.

umm, that was a general statement I made madscout .... it wasn't ment to imply that a rule exsisted that you didn't know .... you were clearly kicked and banned from incorrect and misinterpreted reasons .... which was always clear to me, even before this nice long clarifying post.

Min

I know what you said was in response to something said about Indiana, not me. But I used what you said as something that makes sense: If you want to enforce the rules, everyone has to understand them and know them. In my case, not everyone knew the rules, yet they were still enforced.

which is why you find me constantly snivelling about the policy on .us .... its weak, the wording is bad, its not very clear. etc

Min

Rules or no, I just don't see why you couldn't have left when asked. Just seems disrespectful to me.

Nova wrote:

Rules or no, I just don't see why you couldn't have left when asked. Just seems disrespectful to me.

It also seems very disrespectful to me to ask people to leave when you have no set teams in mind.

It also seems very disrespectful to me to ask someone to leave when the person you're asking was in the game before you were!

If everyone (or even more than one) was asking me to leave, I would have left. But they weren't.

This is why we have written rules folks. If we're not going to post all of them, then don't post any.

I'm not sure why you felt inclined to post this, as the ban lasted only a few hours and it has been resolved. But since you feel strongly about this to post your side of the story, I'll go ahead with my side :-).

I had been playing a number of 1v1 on smallball. Madscout tries to get me to play 2v2, but I only am interested in playing 1v1s. I start a 1v1 on smallball waiting for the next person to join so I can 1v1 them - and I advertise this on #winbolo (numerous times I might add). Everytime Madscout ask me to 2v2, I say no, I only want 1v1. Then he joins my games, along with 3-4 ppl that came with him. I ask everyone to leave, about half leave. MadScout there starts telling ppl to stay, that we should play 2v2, and the other half stayed for a good while. That was quite frustrating, trying to get a 1v1 when you have Mad Scout trying to get a number of ppl to crash your game. Later, Mad scout admited to me he crashed my game to try to force me to have a team game when he knew all along I wanted a 1v1.

After the game, I had a (very) long discussion with him. I clearly explained to him the interpertation of the rules, and why I had kicked him, and what would happen if he crashed a game again (that the next time it'd be a ban). I posted on the .us forum, a report on the warning and kick, as we are required to each time we take an op action.

Then a few weeks down the road, Indiana comes to me and tells me how Mad Scout did the same thing to him, crashing into his game and refusing to leave. It was hard to believe, as I already had this discussion with Mad Scout. So I informed Indiana under our warning-kick-ban policy, he could if he wished, ban Mad Scout under the policy and rules we've set up. Because Mad Scout was fully aware of the rule and our interpertation.

The ban itself only lasted for a few hours. Mad Scout, Indiana, and I had a 3 way conversation on a seperate channel, and when Mad Scout agreed to follow the rule, Indiana unbanned him because Mad Scout is a respectable person and the only thing we wanted to do was to enforce the passworded game rule.

In the meantime - a bunch of ppl were calling us power hungry, that we were ops running rampant, that we were abusing our powers when in fact we were following a laid-out policy that carefully lays out guideline on how ops are to operate. Remember, We are volunteers with limited amount of time, we aren't paid workers and we do our best. Sorry if our best causes frictions once in a while and misunderstandings, but please bear with us. We're willing to learn through our mistakes, and listen to the general wishes of the community as a whole, when we have the right kind of dialogue.


Mad Scout wrote:

"All for a rule that existed in the minds of 2 people with ops, and nobody else's that I know of. "

Well, it existed in LRL (the owner of the .us IRC server)'s mind too. Maybe we were wrong to assume it existed in everyone else mind - we thought that was a very logical commonsense interpretation. That's the way it is in Bolo - the person who starts the game sets it out.

But it seems we were wrong. We thought it was something everyone would understand and that it was quite logical. Perhaps we should have posted the interpretation more publicly. Perhaps we should modify it to something else, something that is more suited to everyone. Afterall, the rules in the password games are meant to be what the respectable members of this community feel it should be. Let's start a dialogue on that, on what our needs are in passworded games, and what we should enforce and not enforce. BTW, this SHOULD have been started by you after you had received the warning. It kinda throws a wrench into the process when you ignore a warning and keep the same actions just because you disagreed with the interpretation of the rule.

"This is why we have written rules folks. If we're not going to post all of them, then don't post any."

So, would you rather we go back to the days of no rules, in the days when ops could kick-ban ppl for any reason they wanted, without giving any warnings? The days when Viper would routinely kick-ban ppl for the fun of it, when a certain op would kick-ban ppl because they said something slightly sexist, or somethign that offended that op (and there were thousands of things that offended that op)? The days when a certain op would kick-ban ppl because they cusssed in a game? The days when there were as many kick-bans in one week as there have been in an entire year of the .us policy?

Anyway Mad Scout, I believe you're a good guy, so let's start a dialogue on what the passworded games rules should be. Let's use this situation and turn it into something that good can come out of it.

*Stick to banning the 'tards who REALLY ruin games, not the seasoned players with a history of great etiquette.

*If you're asked to leave, just leave. There's other games. Better to leave than to risk opening a big box of bitching.

FireIce wrote:

I'm not sure why you felt inclined to post this, as the ban lasted only a few hours and it has been resolved. But since you feel strongly about this to post your side of the story, I'll go ahead with my side :-).

I feel like my name has been dragged through the mud. I don’t know if you ops keep permanent records of people and how often they’ve been banned or kicked or whatever, but now I have a record. I feel like my repuation has been marred and I don’t want to be treated differently from now on because of this ridiculous BS. This is why I have not yet let this go.

FireIce wrote:

Later, Mad scout admited to me he crashed my game to try to force me to have a team game when he knew all along I wanted a 1v1.

Ok, I agree with the above paragraph except for this sentence. You see, I did not view it as crashing YOUR game. I did not view it as YOUR game at all, it was as much my game as it was yours or anyone else’s. Nothing in the rules at the time specified ownership of a game.

FireIce wrote:

Then a few weeks down the road, Indiana … ban Mad Scout under the policy and rules we've set up. Because Mad Scout was fully aware of the rule and our interpertation.

YOUR interpretation. I didn’t interpret anything. I just read the rule on your website and followed it as it was worded exactly. You did not change the wording to match your “interpretation” after the dialogue that you and I had when I was kicked. You waited till I was BANNED to change it.

FireIce wrote:

…Remember, We are volunteers with limited amount of time, we aren't paid workers and we do our best. Sorry if our best causes frictions once in a while and misunderstandings, but please bear with us. We're willing to learn through our mistakes…

Learning from your mistakes is wonderful, but does it have to include kicking and banning innocent people? Please, don’t make us your little policy guinea pigs that way!

FireIce wrote:

Well, it existed in LRL (the owner of the .us IRC server)'s mind too. Maybe we were wrong to assume it existed in everyone else mind - we thought that was a very logical commonsense interpretation. That's the way it is in Bolo - the person who starts the game sets it out.

No, that’s NOT the way it is in bolo. Or at least, not how I thought. And apparently, according to my little survey (last I checked), about 5/10 people didn’t see it that way either! Even if the remaining people vote your way, fi, 5 is still a pretty big number. Wouldn’t it be nice if the number was zero? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had the same “values” when it came to winbolo?

You see, when you download the game, you don’t download the same rules and ettiquette to your brain at the same time. Those have to be inculturated. But even through different experiences, people form different beliefs about how the game is played. That’s why objectively written rules can be so wonderful. They tell everyone straight up what is acceptable and what is not, so everyone knows how to play.

Take the issue of abortion in America. Different people have different believes about what people should do regarding abortion, and it’s because of their differing VALUES. But without laws to tell us what is acceptable and what isn’t, we have different people doing different things because of the differing values, and we could have some utter chaos I bet you could imagine! Sometimes laws change, some stay the same, but at least we have laws to begin with!

FireIce wrote:

But it seems we were wrong. We thought it was something everyone would understand and that it was quite logical. Perhaps we should have posted the interpretation more publicly. Perhaps we should modify it to something else, something that is more suited to everyone. Afterall, the rules in the password games are meant to be what the respectable members of this community feel it should be. Let's start a dialogue on that, on what our needs are in passworded games, and what we should enforce and not enforce. BTW, this SHOULD have been started by you after you had received the warning. It kinda throws a wrench into the process when you ignore a warning and keep the same actions just because you disagreed with the interpretation of the rule.

FireIce wrote:

After the game, I had a (very) long discussion with him.

OK, so I guess we in fact DID have some dialogue about the problem right after. I shared my views, you shared yours.

But THANK YOU for admitting that you were wrong!! Ok, fi, here’s what you do. Think very carefully about your rules as you know them in your own mind. Then read your rules as they appear on your website. Does it match exactly what is in your mind? Would a newbie, new to the winbolo community, be able to read your rules and know exactly what the rules are as they appear in your own mind? Obviously they did not before.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you love cookies, fi. Let’s say you have an awesome recipe for cookies made from scratch that you bake all the time and eat and share with your family and friends. You want to share that same joy of cookies with your winbolo pals from all over the world. You can’t bake us all cookies and send them UPS to us, but you can email us the recipe, so you do. Sticks, haha, and myself (all Detroit area residents) decide to simultaneously bake the cookies, following your recipe EXACTLY, at our 3 separate homes. We get together with our freshly baked cookies to share with each other, but we find out that each person came up with a completely different kind of cookie. My cookies were large and puffy. Haha’s were tiny and crunchy and paper thin. Sticks’ were half burnt and half raw. Oh, and all 3 variations tasted like a different kind of animal shit. WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?!? Well, fi, maybe you should have written a more objective recipe. Maybe “a pinch of salt” wasn’t specific enough. Maybe “a little bit of shortening” left too much to the imagination.

It is very possible to have objective food recipes, though. Ever notice how a Big Mac at McDonald’s is the same everywhere you go, no matter if you’re in Royal Oak, MI or Boca Raton, FL or Seattle WA?

FireIce wrote:

So, would you rather we go back to the days of no rules, in the days when ops could kick-ban ppl for any reason they wanted, without giving any warnings? The days when Viper would routinely kick-ban ppl for the fun of it, when a certain op would kick-ban ppl because they said something slightly sexist, or somethign that offended that op (and there were thousands of things that offended that op)? The days when a certain op would kick-ban ppl because they cusssed in a game? The days when there were as many kick-bans in one week as there have been in an entire year of the .us policy?

No we don’t want to go back to those days. But I feel like I was treated as though was have gone back! I mean, come on, if Min is sniveling at how poorly worded the rules and policies are…

EXCELLENT speech!