The official server flamewar topic

[prsm]

From these quotes, I sense, from various GMs:

a regret in how the move was carried out

some kind words and respect to Platyna

a willingness to still work with her under some circumstances

a respect for her single-point-of-authority model, again under specific circumstances

some members not being very involved in the move

a call to stop fighting and work together

I am sorry that your "senses" missed the mark.
No regret on how the move was carried out, a regret she was called a "thunder****".
Yes, I did have some kind words for Platyna, I am a grown adult man.

Next time the spider senses start tingling, don't trust them.

Prsm

[GARRETTtheGREAT]

At this point I say just wipe both servers and nobody can complain about who owns what.

+1

I suggest all interested parties get an SSH login with access to the game lose/lose: http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/

[Frost]

At this point I say just wipe both servers and nobody can complain about who owns what.

+1

Are you requesting that we delete your data from themanaworld.org? Please be clear and specific.

Blackrazor, you haven't played the game since a few weeks after the server move. Are you concerned that if you log in, that would imply consent for us to retain your data?

The purpose of this game is to have fun. If someone is upset that their accounts are on this server, I will do my best to help. Any request to delete must meet the same criteria as a regular password request (send from the registered email address).

[Kandiman]

Although I no longer have enough free time to devote to this project, I felt that it was overdue that I submit some thoughts on this topic. I have been following this discussion with interest whenever I had a few free minutes at work (nobody tell my boss!).

Throughout the duration of my tenure with TMW, I have progressed from casual player to dedicated player to developer to vested follower/townsitter (when time permits). During my period as dedicated player/dev I was logged in to both IRC and the game 24/7. I logged every piece of conversation, discussion, opinion, outage, or any other data that crossed my screen. I am/was an information glutton. As a result, I have a complete (and perhaps unique) point of view over the hierarchy (past and present) and the personalities involved. Here are my gleanings, obviously with my own personal lens applied to it all:

Regarding Platyna: extremely intelligent, absurdly biased, ridiculously egotistic, and utterly uncompromising. Taken individually, each of these traits could be accepted, managed, worked with. As a package, they made for a person who refused to accept when she was wrong or accept the input of someone with greater knowledge in a given arena. Even allowing for real life scenarios, she did not respond to any request she deemed unworthy of her time, including server outage periods. I dare any person to show me a case where an outage was resolved faster under her than those taken care of by the current administration.

Regarding o11c: extremely intelligent, absurdly biased, obscenely confident. I may not have always agreed with either his approach, his communication, or his methods, BUT!! he has always been open to suggestion, criticism, and rejection. He is blunt, extremely focused and talks like a machine. He listens, presents his reasoning and if the majority overrule him, he bows to the consensus.

Regarding Frost: extremely intelligent, uncommonly thoughtful, impossible to aggravate. By far the person I have the closest relationship with, we have always seen matters from the same light. That said, Frost would sooner eat his warlord plate than do anything to damage the game. He has, and would do again (I believe) contradict, impeach, or overrule, even his friends to protect it. Upon his nomination and appointment as admin, he did everything in his power to resolve the issues that plagued the players, up to the point that the limitations imposed by Platyna would allow. If he saw fit that a break from her hosting platform was required (although unsavory), I trust his judgement implicitly.

Regarding GM's: extremely dedicated, devastatingly impartial, refreshingly realistic. I have a personal relationship with every single GM currently active, as well as some that have become inactive. Not a single one of them would put their personal friendships, opinions, guild or party members, or "superiors" above the rules. They each have the ability to see both 'sides' of an argument and the intelligence and insight required to make informed and thoughtful decisions regarding the enforcement of rules. One of them held no compunction in banning an alt of mine that I used as a bot despite knowing who was behind the keyboard. I would support their decisions almost unquestioningly.

Regarding blackrazor: intelligent, stubborn, adept with words. I do not know who he/she is outside of the forum posts I have seen, but I swear they'd make an excellent politician. Willing to turn words to provide the impression of understanding both sides, claiming allegiance to neither, and doing anything possible to argue with anything anybody says, regardless of whether the comments hold merit or not. Runs with a single theme, pushing it above all other ideals, and claiming that it is some magical solution to all problems.

All said, I believe that the split was 100% necessary for the continuation and health of the project and I fully support the decision.

As always, and as mentioned above, these comments represent my own view and opinion on the subject. This will be my one and only post concerning this topic, and I will not respond to any rebuttals, reprimands, disavowals or flames.

Debate at will.

[blackrazor]

At this point I say just wipe both servers and nobody can complain about who owns what.

+1

Are you requesting that we delete your data from themanaworld.org? Please be clear and specific.

Please do not pretend that you don't know what the word "wipe" means. They are referring to ALL the data, not just their own. Personally, I think that if there is any doubt that you actually OWN the data you copied from Platinum, then you should probably delete it. You have excellent staff and I have no doubt that even with a fresh start, you will continue to do very well with ongoing content, events, improvements, etc. That same advice also goes for Platyna. You can't both own the data, but it was deliberately left in both places. I don't think that it's right to leave the data cloned on multiple operational servers, but I am speaking globally, and not just about my own personal data, just to be clear. Anyways, that is just my opinion.

Blackrazor, you haven't played the game since a few weeks after the server move. Are you concerned that if you log in, that would imply consent for us to retain your data?

Who gave you the right to check my login data and to publicly post any details of it to these forums? Am I under investigation? Did I break any rules? What gives you the right to guess at my concerns in such a way as to imply that I may not want my data retained? Did I ask for my data to be removed?

The purpose of this game is to have fun. If someone is upset that their accounts are on this server, I will do my best to help. Any request to delete must meet the same criteria as a regular password request (send from the registered email address).

That's fine. And I'm sure we all know how to contact you should that ever become the case.

Here's a quote from me that you should have read when trying to "guess" these concerns that you attribute to me.
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... &start=244

I consider myself as much ".Org as .Net".

====

@Frost and TMWC

I think it's odd how you have a whole thread, 3 pages, dedicated to a poll on combat data, with the central issue being player PRIVACY rights vs. availability of useful information here:

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 12&t=17295

And also another thread, also 3 pages, with a poll on using player-bots as webcams, and the player PRIVACY rights affected by that:

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 12&t=17320

So presumably you care about player privacy rights, or at least that they are worthy of discussion, and yet it is perfectly fine for frost, a TMWC top-admin, to look up my last time online status and to post about when I was last online in the game, on this public forum. If he really needed to discuss it with me, he could have private messaged me, but instead he chose to make it public.

What happened to player privacy rights in this case? I am launching an official complaint against frost, right now, to the TMWC, over what I feel is a misuse of his authority in this case, to look up my personal info without any investigation against me (just for his curiosity) and to post it publicly on the forums.

Also of serious concern, is his implication as to whether my online status correlates with a desire that he places upon me, that I might not want my data retained.

I feel that such a statement and public reveal is intimidating, to say the least. He is ready, out of the blue, to "help" me with any data deletion services that I might need on .Org. How convenient .... *sarcasm*

[GARRETTtheGREAT]

Are you requesting that we delete your data from themanaworld.org? Please be clear and specific.

I was sarcastically suggesting that all copies of all the server data should be deleted using the humorous lose/lose terminal game so that no one will have any ownership to claim in response to the aforementioned suggestion of the same type by the user Len I had quoted directly prior to the post that you now question.

I'd like to think I've transcended the dead horse kicking and metamorphosed into more of a Socratic gadfly role at this point.

[Freeyorp101]

I cannot speak for Nard, but I did give him as an example, because it was very public, so anyone can look it up. It looked like a "living hell" to me, the way he was singled out and sanctioned on the forums, for doing nothing more than members of the meritocratic club were allowing for themselves.

Nard was placed on the moderation queue after spamming a thread in the development sections across many posts which consisted almost entirely of the data of an image expressed as a C string. This was completely useless and disruptive to the thread, and was only made as an attempt to prove a point from an unrelated thread that had become quite heated.
While I may not have agreed with all the details in the response, I cannot say that it was unreasonable, and it certainly wasn't unprecedented. When enchilado lost his cool and flooded threads years ago, he even ended up with some forum accounts being outright deleted along with all their posts, despite all of the fantastic work he'd done up until that point.

The moderators have little patience for bad faith disruption of development threads, even by active developers. To say that nothing more happened than others were allowing for themselves is quite misrepresenting the situation.

In any case, the situation is over now. I've asked for any further conflict from either side of that incident, whether it be moderation actions or complaints about administration to go through me, in the hopes that I can sort things out amicably without needing to resort to lockdowns. I'm also trying to see through the resolution of various sore points. The wiki should be up to the latest distribution stable version now, and there should be various extensions currently in the process of being added. There's a lot of unhappiness around, so rather than put that energy into arguing, why not put it into something productive and finally fixing fixing the things that need to be fixed?


---Freeyorp

[blackrazor]

Yes, and o11c put a "nuke Nard" link not even clearly identified as such in his signature, and was not sanctioned. MadCamel called Platyna a "raging thundercunt" on the forums, and was not sanctioned. In the poll made by Tux9th to ban me, o11c allowed it, saying only the TMWC should not vote in it. And Crush's original closing remark in that thread was much more disparaging to me, "I'm sorry, but I will not ban a forum user just because nobody likes him" (his change in bold). Frost made remarks that could be seen as threatening and intimidating to me, offering to delete me as a helpful service.

Plenty of people do plenty of wrong, but let's face it, if you're in the TMWC, you're basically immune, unless you do something totally outrageous and long-term. But someone like Nard will get sanctioned, even while 011c got away with instigating him with that "nuke Nard" at the same time.

If I somehow had the power to delete Frost, and offered it to him as a friendly service, I would be banned, IP blocked, etc. But heck, he can do it to me, no worries. It's not like he was enforcing the rules, he was just pissed at me for my point of view. Power corrupts. You can dance around that fact all you like, but it's the truth for all humans: me, you, Frost, o11c, Platyna, everyone. That's why democracy is the best thing humans have come up with so far, because we will invariably need a mechanism to keep power in check as individuals can become poisoned by it over time.

I know many people active on these forums do not like my point of view. When that becomes a reason to delete me, I guess I'll be gone then. I'm not asking for that, but I'd rather live free or die. I think a lot of what any person believes in all of this, will come down to trust. Whose version of events do you trust? To be honest, I don't think Frost (2010) or o11c (2011) have been with the project long enough to know firsthand it's true original structure and purpose. This is not a knock on them, it's just impossible for them to truly know what they were not there firsthand to witness, so they have to rely on secondhand accounts. Also, I feel that Elvenprogrammer and Bjorn basically abandoned the eAthena side of the project, because it was not of interest to them. The only two red names, here since at least 2005, and here consistently, who I would trust for a firsthand account of events, would be Platyna and Crush.

It's no secret that while I have been harsh on Platyna too, I basically believe a fair portion of her recollections. She can be harsh, abrupt, distant, careless with details (like not writing an organisational constitution, or a hosting vs. an admin takeover contract, or writing up and having people with file-move access read and sign a contract clearly defining their legal limits to that data .. YES .. organisations DO that to their employees and volunteers to protect their assets) .... but I believe her to be unwaveringly honest, even when the details are not in her favor.

I believe that the main difference between this open-source small MMO and a typical non-open-source small MMO, is that the non-OSSMMO will have developers working on a repository of information that they will later control, so it makes sense to give them GM powers. Basically, they are developing for a game that they will actively participate in and run, so even if they hire GM staff later on, they will often grant themselves super-GM status, and lead the project on both the development and administration sides. "Subspace-Continuum" http://www.trenchwars.org/ and "Hostile Space Revived" http://hostilespace.co.uk/forum/ and 8BitMMO http://8bitmmo.net/ are all good examples of this.

But this OSSMMO, TheManaWorld, was different. All the code and art assets are GPL-licensed; anyone can make a server. When this project started, the development team had no primary interest in maintaining a community or a specific running server. They were satisfied to develop the software and content, which any administration team could later download and run. In fact, eAthenaTMW was supposed to be just a temporary thing, only to jumpstart the project and have a place to deploy and test the art assets, storyline, quests, and other content. In parallel with that was supposed to be ManaServ, their custom designed server software, that was supposed to replace eAthena, as soon as it was ready, or at least stable and useful.

With this structure in place, it becomes obvious why there was a "no Dev as GM" rule. The development team was to work on the code and art assets, open source, for any GM team to use. And the admins and GMs of any particular project would run the code and art assets, and they would control, own, and be liable for the datafiles containing the player saves and player personal info for their particular server.

After a while, it became clear that ManaServ was not moving forward fast enough for people's liking. Deploying the content to eAthena had become a two-edged sword, because players had become comfortable with it there, and it became clear that to translate all that content work into a form compatible with ManaServ would not be trivial, and to transfer the datafiles with the player-saves could well be intractable in any meaningful way. Elvenprogrammer and Bjorn saw the writing on the wall, that ManaServ was not going to be developed, at least not for TheManaWorld, and since that was the thing that interested them, they abandoned the project, leaving it to Platyna.

Platyna maintained the above structure, as best as she could, of having the developers kept separate, to continue work on the eAthenaTMW serversoft and art assets, which was still GPL-licensed. Many GM/Admin teams tried running their own iteration of this TMW OSSMMO, some with heavy modification (Evol), and others less so (LOF). I know I am not doing justice to this list, there are a great many examples, many of them now defunct, and writing up a complete story of that could be its own post.

Platyna also ran a version of TMW, on her computer Platinum, with her own GM team that she asked players to nominate and vote on, subject to her final approval, with her GHP advisors. She inherited the data-files from Ultramichy, who in turn inherited them from Elvenprogrammer. There was never any written hosting or ownership contract, so there is no reason to assume that Ultramichy or Elvenprogrammer maintained a vested legal interest in those files; they abandoned them into Platyna's care. Elvenprogrammer kept the ownership of the "themanaworld.org" domain name, but that is all.

I believe that over time, as the community grew, and the content grew, and running such a wonderful thing became more complicated and enticing, the line between developers and GMs, and the line between TMW OSSMMO project development and running the specific Platinum iteration of it, began to blur, at least in some people's minds. But not in the mind of Platyna. After a while, as this divide grew, people began to see her as increasingly stubborn and intractable, since she refused to move with the times. But the thing was, Platyna was satisfied with that separation of roles that formed the original basis of TMW OSSMMO, and if some people really wanted a change from that, into a more traditional MMO structure of developers developing for their specific project and running it themselves, they were always free to leave and start their own project that would have that structure. But it's more complicated than that, from a pragmatic point of view. The community is small, and there probably are not enough people to support two competing projects for long. So people with increasingly widening views of how the project should be managed, stuck together out of pragmatic necessity of still wanting to be part of a community, but the bitterness and tension steadily grew.

Against this backdrop, Platyna gave certain trusted admins file-move access so that they could perform updates. Unbeknowst to Platyna, a mutiny was brewing as those tensions reached the boiling point. The trusted admins with file-move access used that access to clone the files to a new location, away from Platyna and Platinum. They contacted Bjorn and Elvenprogrammer, and got their support for the relocation, and Elvenprogrammer, who still owned themanaworld.org domain name, set it to point to the new location.

Now the thing is, everyone has the right to stay with a project, or leave it to start their own, especially with OSS. And Elvenprogrammer has the right to point his themanaworld.org domain name where-ever he wants. But the thing that has gotten me into such trouble with this community, is that I honestly in my heart believe that they had the right to do all of that, except not to clone the data files without Platyna's affirmative permission, which they did not have. I have been called a troll, been threatened with banning and deletion, all because I insist on holding this unpopular viewpoint, and expressing it, repeatedly, in the appropriate thread set aside for this purpose, which everyone else can quite frankly ignore, if they do not wish to be involved with this.

To put it bluntly, I don't believe Frost and o11c had the necessary legal or moral framework to clone that data without Platyna's permission. They could have chosen to make a new server without that data, but with their other quite substantial development assets, but they chose to do it this way, instead. Pulling Bjorn and Elven in, just to rubberstamp the relocation, in an attempt to give it historical validity, is not an alternative for the proper legal documentation to clearly show that they had the right to relocate the data. They keep telling us, trust us, we had the legal right, and it's best for the game, and necessary for its survival to have done this move. There is no proof of any of that. And you don't do something this drastic, without proof. Whatever you may feel about Platyna or the game's survival, there is no way to make this right without that proof. Yes, you can spin, and bluster, and call me names, and shut me down. But none of that is proof, and none of that validates your argument nor does it validate what you have done.

In an attempt to be pragmatic, I had suggested that both Platyna and the TMWC both relinquish what they feel are their rights to the data, and submit the whole affair to the community, in the form of a democratic process. This was acceptable to no one. Failing that, I still believe what I believe, and I have set it to words, in the proper thread. I am insulting no one here. I feel mistakes have been made, and I am quite specifically calling out the appropriate people on them. I am entitled to my opinion without reprisal. I am following the rules. I have no bias here; I gain nothing from having any particular person or group run the show, and I think I am more-or-less equally disliked by everyone, even if I have broken no rules. Anyways, you can dislike me all you want, but maybe what you really dislike is what you have done, and I just make you very uncomfortable by constantly reminding you about it.

EDIT: And please don't answer "The data belongs to the project", because that is ambiguous, and there is zero documented legal proof of who owns what project, or even whether the project even exists as a legal entity. And to further complicate that argument, there is the manaserv branch, all the legitimate forks over the years, which have been traditionally separate from the development repository in any case.

[EJlol]

Great summary of what happened.

[SudoPlatypus]

Data Owner: Administrative manager who is most responsible for the data.

User data was hosted on Platinum.

The "new" themanaworld.org had the right to take everything but that with them when they pointed the domain away from Platyna's server.

At this point I say just wipe both servers and nobody can complain about who owns what.

Wiping all users data would establish TMWc's integrity in my eyes.

[Freeyorp101]

Firstly, an aside on moderation.

Yes, and o11c put a "nuke Nard" link not even clearly identified as such in his signature, and was not sanctioned.

Plenty of people do plenty of wrong, but let's face it, if you're in the TMWC, you're basically immune, unless you do something totally outrageous and long-term. But someone like Nard will get sanctioned, even while 011c got away with instigating him with that "nuke Nard" at the same time.

It was a post, not a signature, and I missed it precisely because it wasn't clearly identified. I've apologised for this, but it really does help to report a post if you notice something off. When a post is reported, both the post and the thread in the thread list are highlighted in bright red for all moderators that see it, in addition to showing up in other places. Neither the post nor the thread were hilighted in bright red in any of the times that I saw it.


Now, onto the main point - differing understandings and perspectives.

Great summary of what happened.

Indeed. It's nice to at last have a complete and well defined position to compare and contrast. I'll do my best to summarise the opposing perspective, with the supporting evidence I've gathered so far.

The only two red names, here since at least 2005, and here consistently, who I would trust for a firsthand account of events, would be Platyna and Crush.

I admit haven't been around for as long as they have. But when I joined in mid 2008, Elven was still regularly around in IRC, and he would drop by from time to time for years to come. I still have logs of discussions with him in #themanaworld in at least May 2010 (I have a lot of logs to sift through). But I do have mostly complete logs, and I hope that such evidence is enough to get an idea of what's going on without having to lean heavily on my word and the foggy memories behind it.

That said:

5. And now to deny the biggest lie ever: after I agreed to not interfere with development and Bjorn and Elven agreed not to interfere with community and administration (that was in 2007 AFAIR). NO developer EVER had to ask me to make ANY change in game, they even changed the server files as they see fit. So I had NO WAY to keep development of TMW in stagnation.

I would love to see a transcript of the exact agreement between bjorn and Platyna that I keep seeing referenced. The impression I got of the agreement, and what I told my successors in 2012, was that bjorn agreed to leave moderation to Platyna, and Platyna agreed to leave development to bjorn. I have never heard anything about administration, and I would be very surprised if it did.
If it did take place in 2007, things had apparently changed substantially before I arrived. From a discussion where Platyna asks for Global Moderator forum permissions in 2009:

(01:11:39) Platyna: I have resigned from being eathena admin, and resigned from development, all I Duck wanted to do here was maintaining the forums.
(01:12:01) thorbjorn: I doubt the attackers know me at all.
(01:12:04) Platyna: Since I bloody doesn't give a Chocolate Cupcake about all tht ass kissing and fights for power that are around the powers on the server.
(01:12:26) Platyna: turmfalke: When katze became GM it was gross.
(01:12:50) Platyna: But when bjorn removed my privileges on the forums I have basicaly kept alive since almot 4 years.
(01:12:53) Platyna: This is what made me mad.
(01:13:16) Platyna: And I have no motivation of doing anything for him anymore.
(01:13:33) thorbjorn: I don't need anybody to do anything for me.
(01:13:34) Hellow_ left the room (quit: Connection timed out).
(01:13:50) thorbjorn: Any contributions people make here are for TMW. Never for me.
(01:13:57) Platyna: O'rly?
(01:14:01) turmfalke: aside from hosting tmw
(01:14:31) Platyna: thorbjorn: Then get the Duck out my powers on forum, since me having them ws good for TMW, and you making some randm dipshits GMs no.
(01:15:02) turmfalke: http://server.themanaworld.org/gm/gm.log.2009-07
(01:15:22) turmfalke: something that might interest you
(01:15:24) Platyna: LOL.
(01:15:30) Rotonen: Platyna: actually the bot catching rate has gone up significantly
(01:15:33) Platyna: ;D
(01:15:34) Platyna: WTF is #hugo?
(01:15:37) thorbjorn: Platyna: If you get general agreement that you should be a global moderator on the forums, sure.
(01:15:49) thorbjorn: Platyna: I am not the only one deciding such things.
(01:16:09) Platyna: O'rly, so you are no ^?w hiding behind institution?
(01:16:10) turmfalke: hugo is used to warp through the online players
(01:16:19) Platyna: Intitution that consists idiots who I was keeping awy from power since years?
(01:16:22) Freeyorp: @hugo warps a GM to the next player, I believe
(01:16:23) Platyna: Tricky you.
(01:16:38) Freeyorp: @linus takes them to the previous player
(01:16:52) Platyna: Well, very nice GM log, shows what the GMs really does (nothing).
(01:16:53) Platyna:
(01:17:08) thorbjorn: Platyna: You're not making a nice start to become a moderator, I think, but that's just my humble opinion.
(01:17:45) Platyna: Nice start huh?
(01:17:47) Platyna: WTF.
(01:17:48) Platyna:
(01:18:06) turmfalke: better a gm who does nothing then one who does to much
(01:18:15) Platyna: WTF start you are talking about? This is 2009 not 2005.
(01:18:16) Platyna:
(01:18:56) thorbjorn: I am talking about calling people idiots and saying that GMs are doing nothing.
(01:19:11) thorbjorn: There's something to be said for criticism, but this isn't the road to friendship.
(01:19:13) Platyna: thorbjorn: I agreed to give up eathena and all I wanted is continue maintaining the forus, and we had an agreement.
(01:19:29) Rotonen: thorbjorn: i approve her as a global moderator, at the moment we don't really have an active global moderator

Apparently the agreement involved of all things giving up eathena? Were there many different agreements? Are there any that are more recent than the [organisation decided post-manasource split]?

I would also like to apologise for a mistake I made in one of my earlier statements. Previously, I had stated that when bjorn gave Platyna full founder permissions on the forum (which he eventually did later on in the discussion, which went on for an absurd amount of time) he wondered aloud afterwards whether it had been a good idea (as she had only been asking for global moderator permissions). I had confused the event with another, where full ownership (as opposed to the much needed push access or even administrative rights, which would have been overkill) of a repository was transferred from him to the +tmw-developers group on gitorious. The argument here ended when bjorn left the room to focus on discussion in #tmw-dev, after the arguing continued even after bjorn gave Platyna full founder rights to the forum. I sincerely apologise if this caused anyone to take the wrong impression, as bjorn then trusted Platyna enough to give her full founder permissions.


Months later, with forum powers reinstated (and then some) and not long before the manasource split, roles don't seem to have changed much after:

(08:18:12) Kage_Jittai: MrDudle: we add buildings for people to use for meetings
(08:18:49) Platyna: MrDudle: Your opinion has been tossed to trashcan, thank you.
(08:18:50) Platyna: ;]
(08:18:59) Platyna: Kage_Jittai: It sounds like that.
(08:19:45) Kage_Jittai: Platyna: you wanna be a GM again?
(08:20:37) Kage_Jittai: not that I want you to be, just wanna keep our options open
(08:22:43) Platyna: I want to be a server admin, but only for community stuff. But rather because thorbjorn doesn't seem to want to do the job, and Jaxad0127 is ok as for technical person but he has no idea about the community side of the job.
(08:23:13) Platyna:
(08:23:13) Platyna: Anyway I will be now updating the hosting machine.
(08:23:13) Platyna: And a about 00:00 services will be restarted.
(08:23:39) Jaxad0127: ......
(08:25:34) Platyna: Like encouraging people to break the rules.
(08:25:35) Platyna: ;]
(08:25:43) ***Platyna pats Jaxad.
(08:26:04) Jaxad0127: wasn't me

I don't think it's too unreasonable to take this as evidence supporting my original impressions. Platyna acted as host and as lead moderator (community stuff), and bjorn as lead developer and, by "because thorbjorn doesn't seem to want the job" overall in charge of things after Elven (with the exception carved out for Platyna to be in charge of moderation).

But this OSSMMO, TheManaWorld, was different. All the code and art assets are GPL-licensed; anyone can make a server. When this project started, the development team had no primary interest in maintaining a community or a specific running server. They were satisfied to develop the software and content, which any administration team could later download and run. In fact, eAthenaTMW was supposed to be just a temporary thing, only to jumpstart the project and have a place to deploy and test the art assets, storyline, quests, and other content. In parallel with that was supposed to be ManaServ, their custom designed server software, that was supposed to replace eAthena, as soon as it was ready, or at least stable and useful.

I can't speak for the original intent of the project back in 2004 when the project started. I suspect only Elven could. But when I joined in 2008, the project was very much about running the game. Manasource split this out, creating a generic project that could be run by anyone. Manasource is certainly not a fork; rather, it was a continuation of the software side of the project where coders could work without having to deal with the distraction of seemingly endless arguments. The TMW project continued to operate, using its own content, running using the generic software created by Manasource. I missed the holistic project deeply, and still do. I've heard people say that they worked on the client for the community, and manasource didn't give them that. In a way, I suspect this is largely why manaplus has been so successful.

I suggest rereading the thread laying out the [organisation of the project] immediately following the manasource split, when people were organising in light of the departure or lessening of many people from their previous roles. It's the closest that TMW seems to have a complete description of the project post-manasource that everyone visibly agrees to, and it's the closest you'll find to your constitution.

Rotonen made more recent versions of [his TMW organisational chart] after discussion on IRC, but I haven't been able to find them yet. I have a lot of logs to sift through.

After a while, it became clear that ManaServ was not moving forward fast enough for people's liking. Deploying the content to eAthena had become a two-edged sword, because players had become comfortable with it there, and it became clear that to translate all that content work into a form compatible with ManaServ would not be trivial, and to transfer the datafiles with the player-saves could well be intractable in any meaningful way. Elvenprogrammer and Bjorn saw the writing on the wall, that ManaServ was not going to be developed, at least not for TheManaWorld, and since that was the thing that interested them, they abandoned the project, leaving it to Platyna.

The Manasource split was made so bjorn could get away from the arguments with Platyna. As he tactfully put it in the [proposal for the manasource split] on 2009-10-22:

Developers get dragged into community politics, even though they really don't want to. It could be much better if developers were separated from this, or could choose their preferred player community independent of having to choose a development team.

As far as I can recall, the tmwAthena side of the project was indeed going to be handed over entirely to Platyna once everything had moved to tmwserv, later known as manaserv. The manasource split didn't trigger this; many developers, including Jaxad and myself, stayed with TMW and were still actively working on tmwAthena, not just tmwserv/manaserv. When the manasource split happened, bjorn left project administration to Jaxad.

Jaxad had been acting as deputy well before the split, since Jaxad began managing things from 2009-07-25, when bjorn had briefly been absent on vacation. The manasource split was proposed on 2009-10-22, and happened on 2009-10-24 (not 2006, as the [themanaworld.net 2013-06-02 news post] states). See the inaugural news post at the bottom of the [manasource news page]. Bjorn was still around for a while, then fully passed on project administration to Jaxad on 2010-04-16:

08:29 < thorbjorn> Jaxad0127: Are you interested in taking over administration of The Mana World or do you know about anybody else who would be suitable and willing?
12:08 < Jaxad0127> thorbjorn: I could
12:27 < thorbjorn> Jaxad0127: Ok, so you are now owner of the TMW team on Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~tmw-team
12:28 < thorbjorn> Jaxad0127: And maintainer of the TMW project: https://launchpad.net/tmw
12:28 < Jaxad0127> ok
12:30 < thorbjorn> Jaxad0127: I also think you should get access to the 'tmw' account on platinum then, which is where the home page, wiki and mantis are hosted.

Jaxad also brought me in as deputy on the same day. When Jaxad left, I took over, and brought Frost in as my deputy in turn on 2012-03-30. The provider for my shell I ran my IRC client on, which had become increasingly unstable, died entirely. I sought to find replacements, but eventually had to concede that I could no longer keep up with development. On 2012-11-22, I announced that I had to move on, and sought to hand everything over to Frost. This didn't proceed as expected, as Frost had gone on vacation, and despite him giving notice, Platyna had removed his keys for some reason. So instead, I passed things on to o11c, with instructions to pass things on to Jenalya and Frost. This has unfortunately complicated the situation quite a bit, but it seems to have reached equilibrium for now.

After all, if Platyna was the community leader, and you keep saying that Elven and Bjorn were still relevant at the time of the move, you should have asked their permission for every content update or anything else related to development, just as you asked Platyna's permission for anything that is related to the community (like rules). I bet it would have taken them much more than 3 weeks to reply to your questions.

As a tangent regarding responsiveness, there's no need to be rude. In 2010-10-23 when we had DDoS on the nameserver, Elven responded to me in three and a half hours. Last week, on 2013-06-18, when I asked about adding the manavis.themanaworld.org domain, he responded in under a minute and the DNS was updated 11 minutes later. He's always been around and extremely fast to respond when needed, even if he isn't involved as much in day to day management anymore. Bjorn was around even more, online in at least #tmw-dev and #mana 24-7, and generally responsive within the next day. Time zones make real time communication awkward most of the time, but that couldn't be helped anyway.

In 2008 and 2009, until Jaxad was brought in as deputy, the needing to ask about everything was pretty much what happened. There was then a lengthy chain of succession as outlined above. For something as major as the move, though, they contacted everyone for advice. Finally, as founder, [Elven does own the trademark], so it is his right to decide what he wants TMW to be, both technically through the domain and legally through the trademark. Even those maligned and upset by the move seem to acknowledge his position:

[...]ElvenProgrammer started this project, so he may now destroy it, it is his immanent right.

[...]I honestly in my heart believe that they had the right to do all of that, except not to clone the data files without Platyna's affirmative permission, which they did not have.[...]

To put it bluntly, I don't believe Frost and o11c had the necessary legal or moral framework to clone that data without Platyna's permission. They could have chosen to make a new server without that data, but with their other quite substantial development assets, but they chose to do it this way, instead. Pulling Bjorn and Elven in, just to rubberstamp the relocation, in an attempt to give it historical validity, is not an alternative for the proper legal documentation to clearly show that they had the right to relocate the data. They keep telling us, trust us, we had the legal right, and it's best for the game, and necessary for its survival to have done this move. There is no proof of any of that. And you don't do something this drastic, without proof.

Firstly,

I was a content developer myself, so you are wrong that I never did any work. Yet still this was my account where tmwserver ran, and rules of Platinum says clearly - a user is the owner of account and all the files he generates. So the owner of LoF is Pihro as it is his account.

No point in spreading false information. The Mana World was running under a shared 'eathena' account and nobody ever gave you sole ownership of the data stored or generated under that account. The forums and wiki were similarly running from a shared 'tmw' account.

If you are truly convinced you owned this data, then this move could not have been performed early enough. It even means it was a wrong decision to move hosting to platinum in the first place. We should be glad TMW managed to move on regardless and hope it will be more careful to choose its hosting services in the future.

Secondly, it's worth pointing out that the discussion was more than just a rubber stamping, and virtually everyone was contacted, including me, not just Elven and bjorn. As much of the team was brought in as possible, too, not just the admins; developers and GMs were there too. They also claimed to have sent out an email to Platyna about the move, which Platyna has denied while other people have confirmed by virtue of being on the CC list. I was not one of those CC'd, so I cannot attest either way.

The primary complaints I observed, at least as well as I remember them, were as follows:

The project admins were concerned that Platinum wasn't suitable as a host anymore.
The pool of available libraries kept shrinking, even libraries that were in use (See: registration scripts, utilities such as the ip checker). Their keys kept being revoked (I noticed mine had also been revoked at some point. While that at least is understandable, I would have hoped that if I had been recognised as leaving then my successors would be left in peace). They observed complaints about network problems, and when the host machine crashed, partial writes would almost always mangle the database files, necessitating a rollback (I can confirm this was the case when I was around, and also that the tmwAthena flatfiles on the new host have always been left in a consistent state after the host crashed, so it's seems unlikely to have been a problem with tmwAthena as I had previously thought). As the backup volume was available less often than not, some of the rollbacks were quite extensive.

The GMs were concerned that Platyna wasn't suitable as a lead moderator anymore.
They felt they had neither the independence to perform their duties (I think someone complained that following instructions of using common sense led to remarks about cutting off hands?) nor the clear direction needed to follow through with cases. The canonical example that seems to be presented as evidence for the latter appears to be the [request for a ruling thread], where Platyna posted after three weeks, to ask a question that was answerable by the first post.

Everyone, even if they did not directly support the move, at the very least abstained and conceded that, as the new project leaders, they indeed had the right to do so.
Via email:

Hi,

Generally, Platyna responds reasonably quickly via IRC and email,
especially email.
Has anyone tried contacting her via such means? Normally I would have
done so, but I've fallen out of touch and off IRC as of late and
wouldn't want to add unneeded duplicity for her.

As far as moving TMW goes, I guess it's up to you. I'd try getting in
touch with Platyna via other channels, especially email, if you
haven't already. Platinum is far more robust than most people think,
especially considering the load tmwAthena places it under with a large
playerset.

I don't really see how such a move could be done without some degree
of affront. After all, such a move would be essentially telling
Platyna that Platinum's support isn't good enough.

If you do decide to go ahead with this, you'll need to contact TMW's
founder, Elven. As far as I am aware, he still funds and maintains the
domain. He also may have advice on the matter, or other ways to
contact Platyna if email fails.

Regards,
---Freeyorp

Later, on IRC, 2013-03-03:

(15:27:29) < Freeyorp> Well, I can't really speak for the team anymore. It's your decision to make, here, and if there's anything I can do to help whatever everyone ends up deciding, just let me know.

Finally, having at last being able to read the raw messages between Elven and the now TMWc leading up to the move, I can attest that there was at no point anything that could be construed as blackmail, deception or threats involved. Discourse proceeded amicably, and Elven thanked everyone for keeping it up with his beloved project.



To conclude, between her statements about being the only admin after bjorn and Elven left, and her referring to the project leaders as developers, rather than the project leads, I would conjecture that Platyna was not aware of, or did not recognise, the then current project leadership. From blackrazor's summary, if representative of Platyna's position, there does seem to be a world of difference between Platyna's perspective and the perspective of the rest of the team.
I do balk at the thought of any one person having exclusive control of the tmwAthena flatfiles, as evidently does bjorn, especially given the shared ownership of the tmwAthena account. The thought that a supermajority of everyone that had ever held some position of authority together, the GMs to senior developers to every leader from the active young current leaders all the way to our venerable founder, would not be able to initiate a move when the one person with exclusive claim to the data appears unreachable, seems absurd. It was never considered a remote possibility; it was never brought up or even thought of.

While I wish that matters had been resolved amicably, and I hold no grudge against Platyna or anyone else, I find it unreasonable that everyone could not move the data under the shared eAthena account, especially when the last known agreement, which took into account the manasource split, still put Elven at the top. I don't think anyone acted in bad faith. Lastly, while I would still like to see the details of historical agreements, I seriously doubt things are going to change from the status quo.



---Freeyorp

[Nard]

Firstly, an aside on moderation.

Yes, and o11c put a "nuke Nard" link not even clearly identified as such in his signature, and was not sanctioned.

Plenty of people do plenty of wrong, but let's face it, if you're in the TMWC, you're basically immune, unless you do something totally outrageous and long-term. But someone like Nard will get sanctioned, even while 011c got away with instigating him with that "nuke Nard" at the same time.

It was a post, not a signature, and I missed it precisely because it wasn't clearly identified. I've apologised for this, but it really does help to report a post if you notice something off. When a post is reported, both the post and the thread in the thread list are highlighted in bright red for all moderators that see it, in addition to showing up in other places. Neither the post nor the thread were hilighted in bright red in any of the times that I saw it.

Freeyorp was not involved on this topic, but crush followed it closely. o11c's link was indeed a post, I put a similar link in my signature to point out his post until it was removed. The fact that crush missed o11c's post while he didn't miss any other one showed me that he was focused on my posts rather than moderating. The same still holds with this post : http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 45#p135245 which has been reported, read and removed from report queue.
Thus I must conclude that o11c is right and that, in "loose moderation" forums:

• Contributors have the right to believe that some people are idiots due to their inability to follow a logical argument, and that it is worth ignoring them.
• Contributors have the right to say their beliefs.

Forum rules have to be updated with this. Because, at the moment and according to Forum moderation guidelines:

Insults will only be removed and punished when someone complains about them using the button below each post.

It seems that o11c has a special set of rules to manage his lack of "tact".
refs:

[00:58] Narus: this got you banned: "[14:29] T*: You're idiot [Y*]? I can't read your words out of words?" after warnings about your behavior and you harras her and insult h**
[...]
[01:06] Big Crunch: it is an insult

[01:15] F*: T*, I've been too busy dealing with idiots in the game today
[...]
[01:15] T*: OK, am I one of your so called idiots?
[...]
[01:15] F*: You weren't until I logged on

Exceptions: Prsm
public apology after .Re: [PASS] [REJECTED] Mrgrey for GM. But honesty made him the only one to be "punished".
There were also Delasia and Doorsman.: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 980#p71980 and http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 092#p72092

[blackrazor]

@Freeyorp

I really appreciate your calm reasoned approach to this thread.

I read all that you wrote, and it is nice to have another point of view.

However, I do not think that IRC logs are an adequate substitute for legal documentation. People say things in the heat of the moment, in the middle of a spirited conversation, that they do not intend to bind them legally. That goes for Bjorn and Elven as much as it does for Platyna. (and everyone else human, as well)

You gave a link saying that Elven holds the trademark on TMW, but the link is just to a forum post, where o11c says that Elven does, in response to issues with a .tk phishing site.

What I think is really needed, to justify legally such a move, is actual legal documentation that either Elven owns the trademark on the whole of TMW (valid up to 2013, because trademarks can also expire), or legal documents clearly defining the hosting vs. admin arrangements worked out with Platyna, or a legal document defining the ownership of the playersave files or the ownership of the project.

In the absence of real legal proof, I think it was still wrong to move the data files residing on Platinum, especially after it became clear that Platyna did not authorize their cloning and she claimed ownership of them on her machine. You don't make such a change without legal documentation, even with near unanimous support and even if you really feel it was your right.

As a legal aside, O.J. Simpson got away with murdering his ex-wife and her boyfriend; what landed him in legal hot water (and prison) was his assumption that he owned something that used to be his, and that he claims he never gave away. When he tried to regain ownership forcibly, the weight of the law was brought down on him. Now before anyone gets furious over this statement, I am not threatening or accusing anything here, just saying that even if you really think you own something, you need legal proof before you try to claim it, if it is not already in your possession, and if the person in whose possession it resides claims it also.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson See especially the section on the Las Vagas robbery.

Possession is 9/10 of the law, while not strictly correct, the correct application of its meaning applies here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession ... of_the_law

Possession is nine-tenths of the law is an expression meaning that ownership is easier to maintain if one has possession of something, or difficult to enforce if one does not. The expression is also stated as "possession is nine points of the law", which is credited as derived from the Scottish expression "possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve".[1]
Although this isn't actually correct, this principle can be restated as: "in a property dispute (whether real or personal), in the absence of clear and compelling testimony or documentation to the contrary, the person in actual possession of the property is presumed to be the rightful owner. The rightful owner shall have their possession returned to them; if taken or used. The shirt or blouse you are currently wearing is presumed to be yours, unless someone can prove that it is not".

[xSlash]

*many pages*

blackrazor, there are some forums I need to annoy. can you help? I pay good.

[Big Crunch]

This thread..
http://9gag.com/gag/aG99GnX?ref=android