Community Meeting / Promotion / Addressing a Few Issues

Hello everyone!

First of all, let me address the fact that we will be having a community meeting this month on July 16th @ 3:45 pm EST. I know it's a bit later than when we normally announce community meetings, but hopefully 4 days is enough time for all of you to prep yourselves for any questions you may have for me or the staff that are attending. If there is a low turnout, we will just host another one at a later date. With VIP just being launched, I figure it is a good idea to host a meeting and explain a few FAQ's and answer any other questions you guys may have about it or about anything else.

Next, let me give a big congrats to Ngo on becoming a Legend. This is my fault that it has taken this long to get him LG, because I forgot to do it before I left for vacation a few weeks ago. He has been insanely helpful through his hours upon hours administrating the servers and has shown his love for the community through all his giveaways he does for us. It was an easy decision among the higher ups to give him LG. His new duties include:

• Show off with their cool purple font
  
• Keep servers clean from rule breakers
  
• Issue warnings/kicks/bans
  
• Screenshot/demo proof for permanent bans
  
• Request permanent bans via on the forum
  
• Post in-game server problems on the forum
  
• Help in any way to make the servers fun
  

The other issues I'd like to address involve some recent hearsay that has been going around here the past few months - and after recent events, Spiked and I felt it was best to issue a sort of formal response to all of it. Mainly, I am talking about rumors among the higher up staff of bias, overall unfairness, favoritism, etc. I know in particular that some rumors started by former higher ups may seemingly carry more weight, but I have posted proof of certain people lying through their teeth just to look cool in front of others, which I am extremely glad that said people came to me and asked me about the situation. The moral that I'm going to be getting at here during this post? Don't take people's word, especially on the internet - at least get both sides of a story before rendering a judgment. I can't tell you how many times I even hear people say 'Caution hates me'. I don't hate anyone, so unless you hear something directly from me, you probably shouldn't take it as fact. Ass/u/me

I'll start off by saying every story has at least two sides to it. While I, nor anyone else, can force you to obtain each side before rendering a personal decision, it would probably be in your best interest to ask all parties involved what their sides are. I've heard absolutely ridiculous rumors over the years, some of which I'm involved with and some which I'm not. Mainly, one about me issuing a perm on someone because I was dating them and broke up with them - which I'll say now is false. But it's easier to just believe the first thing we hear than to actually obtain all sides of an argument. I have had a few people come up to me asking me about said situation, and I usually explain as much as I can without getting into details that are super personal, but still overall describes what happened. There are a decent amount of rumors that, by the time they get back to me or the person involved, we just say "...wait...what the fuck?' because of how absurd some of them are. I have seen / heard some of you get so mad / infuriated over issues that you usually don't have the full spectrum of things that are going on. While the higher up staff tries to issue full clarity on most topics, stuff like admin complaints, ban issues, random assortments of punishment discussions, etc., have to be kept relatively private because we don't want to put other people's personal info on blast for everyone else to see. I'm not going to flat-out tell you that every single negative thing you have ever heard about me is untrue - I'm sure that some of them are true, such as me being a dick sometimes lol. But any one of you is more than welcome to come to me and ask me about something for clarification...I'm not going to ban you for asking me something lol.

As far as bias / favoritism / unfairness in decisions rendered in this community - I am going to deny that notion in pretty much its entirety. There is a reason that I have a staff of BD's to help me in making decisions - we pretty much vote on every single decision made in this community. If the BD's can't come to at least 4/5 agreeing on something, we take it to the AO's. There are plenty of times where something isn't done my way, and it's fine because I truly believe in our (mostly) democratic process. The only times that Spiked or I will overturn the decisions made by a majority of people is when it's just not possible for us to do or if there's some sort of legal issue, etc. 99% of the time though, the majority wins. Just recently, there was a decision to overturn the community's general approval of an admin application. I am friends with the person applying for admin, but was outvoted completely by the rest of the Board - thus, his application was rejected. Could I have told the Board to fuck off and given the guy admin anyways? Sure, I definitely could have - but, as pissed off as I was about the decision and as much as I may have disagreed with it, we do things the way we do them for a reason. I'm probably not supposed to give you guys details like that about Board decisions, but giving a specific example is probably the best way for me to try to explain our side of this whole favoritism thing. Complete objectivity is completely impossible. It is natural for us as humans to take past interactions and experiences and add them into account when making a decision about somebody - for example, issuing a punishment. Usually, however, we self-recognize our bias and either keep it in check or excuse ourselves from the decision making process. I have heard things like 'Oh Caution and Spiked hate me and are looking for any reason to ban me.' This doesn't make any sense - if we wanted to ban you so badly that we were looking for any excuse to do so, we would just ban you. Obviously, that's not how we run this place lol. I'd rather just ignore someone if I thought they were that much drama, in all honesty.

Hell, sometimes I wish we were biased and made decisions on the spot. I don't know about you guys, but I personally hate sitting in TeamSpeak for hours upon hours discussing punishing someone. It would be extremely easy for us to just go 'Meh, fuck it, remove their admin - it's the easiest thing to do'. Obviously, we don't do that. We have discussions on TeamSpeak that have lasted hours, and discussions on the forums that have lasted weeks. So can you imagine how obnoxious it is for us to have to talk for, say, 3 hours about somebody, then deciding to give them a warning not to do something. Then, a few days later, they do the same thing and now I have to have another 3 hour discussion about the exact same thing. I don't mind discussing on ways to better the community - I love that stuff; I do not, however, enjoy people wasting my time by having to discuss ways to punish them for the actions they committed. I wish that we didn't have to ban anyone - it would be sooooooooo much easier if nobody did anything wrong and everyone got along. Unfortunately, that's just not possible.

But the point is that we do our best to come out with the most fair / logical decision, which includes punishing friends. My friends can personally attest that, no matter what rank they are, I will hold them accountable. This notion of us giving special treatment to friends is so far beyond ridiculous - I have banned, demoted, struck, and yelled at a plethora of friends that I have here, and most other higher ups can say the same. At the end of the day, my job here is to keep this place running smooth, not have as many friends as I possibly can. I would rather have every single person in this community hate me than allow people to run around doing whatever they want with no one to hold them accountable. I truly love this community and will not see it go down the shitter on my watch - and I'm sure the rest of the Board feels the same way.

At the end of the day, I am a person - just like you. The Board of Directors are people - just like you guys. We have lives (except Spiked), we have friends (except Spiked), and we make mistakes (definitely Spiked). I would be full of myself if I said that I have never made a mistake here, but I really had next to no idea what I was doing when I took this community over, other than basic management as a BD. But running this place is far, far different than any other position in this community, including BD - because I am directly responsible for any failures or issues that happens within this community. I am probably criticized every single day by at least one of you out there lol. Even if I did every single thing right, someone would still say it's wrong. Which is fine - it's something I knew when I was offered the role of President. Haggard, Garfield, Amit, Spartan, etc., were all criticized as well - there's nothing wrong with that, to an extent, some of you just need to learn a little bit more about tact. Some people are under this impression that I will ban you for it outright - which I am saying (and have said) that that's ridiculous. I have no problem with any of you coming to me and saying 'Hey man, I don't agree with this decision you made. Can you explain it a bit more?' I'll probably say either 'Sure, no problem' or 'Sorry, there's some stuff that's restricted because you're not a higher up so I can't talk about it.' But obviously, I can't allow you to go onto the shoutbox and start calling my BD team and me a bunch of retarded faggots or something. We will not always agree or see eye to eye, but that doesn't mean there's bias or it's unfair - most of the time it's simply just because we don't agree.

I love this community and I love leading it in the right direction, but it is by no means a walk in the park. I can assure you, however, there is no hidden agenda or secret games or anything of that nature. I honestly don't have the time or the patience for that stuff, and I doubt my higher up staff does either. I am probably one of the most upfront people here, so you guys are more than welcome to use that to your advantage to dispel or clarify any type of rumors you may here. But I will definitely say that while I may steer the ship, it is my staff of managers that are hoisting the sails, finding the buried treasure, keeping the ship from sinking, (insert other pirate stuff here), to make sure that you guys (the ones just along for the ride) don't drown...while I, of course, occasionally plunder some booty - take that however you want

Anyways, I know that this was a long post, but after seeing some people get so mad they get themselves in trouble over things that aren't even accurate, I figured some form of explanation was probably due. You guys are more than welcome to come to me for anything - if I can't answer your question, I will either find out the answer or point you in the direction of the person who knows the answer (assuming it's not too personal or rank restricted). You don't have to like me, and I don't have to like you, but we should all be working towards a common goal of bettering this community.

I look forward to seeing you all at the meeting!

Bet were finally gonna get the SG subsidized microphones I've been suggesting for our subscribers, holy shit I'm hyped.

I love this post

July 9th...

Oh yeah, I'll just get on for good time's sake

Will be there.

If I don't have somewhere to go Sunday, I'll be there.

Congrats @Ngo

Congratulations @Ngo!

Congrats! @Ngo

Congratz @Ngo!