[Lorric]

If staff are interested to know whether we accept the apology, even I have to say I was disappointed by Goober's apology, and I had relatively low expectations and requirements for it since I don't care about the legal action thing. It meets the bare minimum requirement of apologising for the deletion of the thread, but nothing more. It comes across as a grudging apology, I won't go as far as calling it insincere, but I do not believe it would have been offered freely, and I do not get a sense that he feels sorry. It's an admission of wrongdoing coming from the head, knowing he was wrong in his head, rather than coming from feeling he did wrong in his heart.

Even the legal action thing which didn't matter to me, I don't buy the "rules lawyering" as others have called it defence of the action. If it was me, and that was the truth, I would still realise how easily it could be misinterpreted as a threat, and apologise for that. It would have been better in my eyes if he'd said nothing on that.

Goober hasn't done anything to make me feel any confidence he won't reoffend if he gets his authority back with his apology. It is only the removal of that authority and threat of action on him if he does break his word that make me feel relatively okay with letting him keep his administrator status, for the good of HLP with the work he does that requires it.

[BlueFlames]

Well at the very least let the man see the last developments on this thread.

Assumes he's still reading the thread and doesn't consider his obligations met.

[BlackDove]

I think I get it.

Our goal is to "bring modders together", and provide them (you all) with whatever tools and advantages we can so that your artistic dream creation can be realized. Everything beyond that is essentially "fluff", if you get what I mean.

Undeniably, the goal is to bring modders together. The disposition of those modders, if they are or are not white supremacists, is secondary. It equally does not matter if they threaten community members with legal action, while being in a position of absolute power (the likes of a "benevolent dictator" level of power), on a website where they collect and store the IPs of every poster.

Fair enough.

I am somewhat confused when it comes to the following though:

I would hope that we don't espouse the view that political support for one candidate or another doesn't mean that the supporter agrees with 100% of what that candidate says and does. I don't think we view national-level support in that way ("I support my country in general, but gosh-darn they screwed the pooch in this situation!"), so why political candidates?

I support a limited subset of what Trump has done or says he will do, and a limited subset of what Biden says he will do.

Does that mean I support 100% of what Trump says, does, stands for, or is accused of supporting? No.

Does that mean I support 100% of what Biden says, does, stands for, or is accused of supporting? No.

So when a person has stated general political support in one direction is accused of supporting the extreme racist views held by other people who support that same candidate, in what world does that mean that that one person must be a supporter of the views of those other racist people?  That's an insane connection to make, and even more insane to outright accuse someone of it, openly and repeatedly.

I think someone in this thread mentioned the example before - if a person says that they love Hitler's (I know, going back to that old chestnut, I'm sorry) taxation, foreign policy, infrastructural policy, but do not approve of in any way his literal orders at the Wannsee Conference to build concentration camps so as to enact The Holocaust, then, is that fine? I mean, they say they love his political ideology, and him perhaps as a person, because they read he was an avid dog lover, and he was great with children too, but it is just all the mass slaughter of ethnic minorities that was not cool.

I am not saying Trump is comparable to Hitler (then again, the United States does have concentration camps for Mexicans and South Americans, but they are not actively committing mass murder there, so there's a big difference I guess), but I mean, the principle is somewhat the same, and fits your analogy there, does it not?

According to your definition, as I understand it, the above hypothetical example seems to be perfectly fine. Like, I personally would think that approving of Hitler on any level would be terrible, because we know what the end result of all of his policies was, and it was absolutely ****ing horrifying, but some people may actually think differently.

Or am I misunderstanding something?

I am also not being glib. I am genuinely curious as to what goes here on HLP discussion wise.

[DefCynodont119]

I also want a re-attempt on that apology, being an admin is more then just maintaining site backend, it's about building trust with a community that you share in interest with, and what goober did was break that trust.

I don't care if he was making a threat or threatening-to-make-a threat, what he did was intimidating, unnecessary, and it made everyone angry.

If goob cannot understand that we have no assurances that this won't happen again.

[MP-Ryan]

-snip-

While your questions for Sandwich are legitimate, we've already asked a few times that we keep the political discussion out of this thread (including a reminder that Sandwich do so as well).  Please take it to PM with him - at least as far as your second quote-reply goes.  Thanks.

[General Battuta]

Failings and mistakes ALL around. NOT just Goober, and NOT just mjn.mixael or The E or Aesaar or whoever. Yet without my voice in this thread, the chances are slim that anyone would be reminded that there were TWO sides to this issue, both of which have justifiable grievances. There are two sides to every coin.

There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere

[jg18]

If goob cannot understand that we have no assurances that this won't happen again.

Why is an "extra chance" even deserved here? Can an admin get away with any action, no matter how egregious, as long as they do it "just once" and promise that it will never happen again?

EDIT: Retaining admin status qualifies as "getting away with it".

[General Battuta]

This is where the fun begins.

[jg18]

Putting the message in my last post more diplomatically, is there anything an admin could do "just once" that would result in their admin powers being revoked with no "extra chances"? If not, why not? If so, why isn't this on that list?

[Colonol Dekker]

I think the forums behaviour policy should be in quicklinks as I couldn't find it.

[BlackDove]

This is where the fun begins.

Game Time Started. Our dichotomy opens the combat.

[Colonol Dekker]

This is where the fun begins.

Game Time Started. Our dichotomy opens the combat.

My god, that's a genuine work of genius.

Apologies for going off-off topic.

[Sandwich]

*stuff*
I am also not being glib. I am genuinely curious as to what goes here on HLP discussion wise.

I would genuinely love to discuss this with you (and others). Want to create a new thread in PolDisc for it? Not sure how active I'll be due to no email notifications yet, but I'll try.

I think the forums behaviour policy should be in quicklinks as I couldn't find it.

It's a sticky in this very same board: https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=87037.0

Which part of the UI are the "quicklinks" you refer to?

[Grizzly]

Mabye the forum rules should just be in their own subforum, at the top of the pages, that merely says "The Rules". It makes it easier to find then it is now at least.

[Colonol Dekker]

*stuff*
I am also not being glib. I am genuinely curious as to what goes here on HLP discussion wise.

I would genuinely love to discuss this with you (and others). Want to create a new thread in PolDisc for it? Not sure how active I'll be due to no email notifications yet, but I'll try.

I think the forums behaviour policy should be in quicklinks as I couldn't find it.

It's a sticky in this very same board: https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=87037.0

Which part of the UI are the "quicklinks" you refer to?

Just at the top, anywhere in the nav bar.   Figured it might be there.


Appreciate the link though.

[0rph3u5]

I stand by my statement, and I confirm it's impossible to determine community consensus on anything.

Good luck even trying to group 1,700 so-called active members and hearing their opinion on the matter. Secondly, even if somebody created an account in February 2003, posted one-liners 5 times and became inactive in December 2004, by the mechanisms I posted above, should get the chance to voice his opinion on the matter in case he decides to come back in October 2020. That'd make the effort of implementing a "general election" or "consensus verification" on HLP extremely difficult.

Speaking as someone who has experience with organisation and execution of official referrenda and elections: While consensus (as in 100% percent agreement of the electorate) is usually an illusionary goal, determining an electorate and holding a vote across HLP wouldn't be that hard. A long and boring process to establish and execute, yes, but hard, no. Most of the effort is usually spend on securing the vote would not be prejudiced by the procedure and as long as there are no bad faith actors involved that can be settled rationally (most of the time there is usually spend on explainations and mix and matching various options to the cirucmstances, again boring and lengthy not difficult).

The only issue is that due to the subject matter, there is a problem with having an accountable authority to vouch-safe the integrety of a poll on the matter at hand...

[0rph3u5]

Put a pin in that - I didn't consider a few technical problems with securing the secrecy of a vote. (But that wasn't really the thing, I think Moebius was talking about, so seperate issue)

(While on principle optional, secrecy is kinda important to a social desirablity bias out of the vote)

[jg18]

Might I suggest including in the forum rules a "Rules and Expectations for HLP Staff" section. I've heard that mods/admins are (supposedly) held to a higher standard than users, but I've never seen an explanation of what that actually means. The higher standard apparently applies even to former staff, as this ironic blast from the past quoted below would indicate.

Guys, you really ought to know better -- especially Fury!  He gets a month's ban for being a former admin who should be leading by example, not leading negatively by example.

But anyway...

Many of the recent comments seem to point out that there's a community consensus over what should happen to Goober5000 as an admin, except there isn't. Many of the community members (and I'm one of them) posting on this thread actually disagree with the big-red-button-termination protocol, and our opinion is treated as some sort of background noise. Those who ignore us should at least acknowledge that they're not speaking in the name of every single community member on HLP.

I, for one, never said there was a consensus. I said

[...] a number of its prominent and/or longstanding members are all saying essentially the same thing.

Note that I said prominent and/or longstanding; that is, people who've shown commitment to the community over time, where "commitment" can take a variety of forms and doesn't necessarily entail content/code contributions. It can mean playing or even just contributing to discussions. In numbers, their collective opinion should carry extra weight, even if not every last member who's shown commitment agrees with them and even though they don't speak for everyone.

We should be fine with people having roles. Watching the admins as they make decisions on forum regulations is by no means a way to admit that we're too dumb to make said decisions. It's part of their role.

Yup, I don't think making HLP more democratic would necessarily be a good thing, and I get that admins will sometime make decisions that make a lot of people unhappy. I had my own taste of that with wxL. But notice that, in that post, Iss Mneur and I explained in detail why we made the decision we made, even if it was an unpopular one. I just re-read this thread's OP and found no explanation for why the staff considered points 6 and 7 to be the best way to handle an admin who openly threatened other users and abused their powers.

Can't we just move on and hope that future interactions between community members will be better?

Speaking personally, without real answers to my questions above and a real apology from Goober, I can't. I know that the staff is under no obligation to reconsider their decision, and they probably aren't even obligated to answer my questions.
 
And while I'm always free to vote with my feet, I'd rather try to see if the staff can find a resolution that doesn't leave me walking away from a chance to support this community, which over these past 9 years has meant more to me than I could ever put here. When I lost most of my vision nearly seven years ago, I never wrote about it then on social media, only here. Ditto when I had to ditch an important friend.

 
BTW, speaking of "support", I was able to resolve the two recent Knossos support requests. So I certainly didn't come back just to stir up this thread.

[mjn.mixael]

Might I suggest including in the forum rules a "Rules and Expectations for HLP Staff" section. I've heard that mods/admins are (supposedly) held to a higher standard than users, but I've never seen an explanation of what that actually means. The higher standard apparently applies even to former staff, as this ironic blast from the past quoted below would indicate.

Guys, you really ought to know better -- especially Fury!  He gets a month's ban for being a former admin who should be leading by example, not leading negatively by example.

But anyway...

That did not age well.

[karajorma]

Putting the message in my last post more diplomatically, is there anything an admin could do "just once" that would result in their admin powers being revoked with no "extra chances"? If not, why not? If so, why isn't this on that list?

There are plenty of things that would result in no extra chances. Deleting the thread wasn't done against the wishes of the other administrators but more because Goober believed he had permission to deal with that thread. The way he dealt with it raises serious questions about his competence as an admin but I wouldn't classify it as a "Do that and you're gone" style abuse of administrative powers. Especially since Goober did say that deleting the thread was a mistake.

That said, Goober did promise to apologise and what he has posted thus far is completely lacking.