[qazwsx]

Hey folks.  Just to reiterate, there is a very active discussion among staff underway at the moment on this issue and we have now settled on negotiated terms.  A public statement is coming once the rest of the staff have had a chance to look over the draft text.  Thanks for bearing with us.  I know *exactly* how frustrating it can be waiting for a decision from other people on a matter of consequence, and we have been working at this as quickly as personal schedules have allowed.

You will likely see a public post later today.

My main concern is that goober's actions and opinions throughout the years have caused members to quit because of the position that he holds. Having a person with "administrator" on every one of their posts who goes around threatening to sue users cannot be good for HLP.

[Nightmare]

My main concern is that goober's actions and opinions throughout the years have caused members to quit because of the position that he holds. Having a person with "administrator" on every one of their posts who goes around threatening to sue users cannot be good for HLP.

Do you have any evidence for that? I don't remember anybody quitting and saying "I'm not going to HLP anymore because I don't like the Admin there", also again the HLP staff mostly consists of left-wing people so I don't get where that should be an issue.

[Mito [PL]]

Uh, there was that one time where he engaged in a "women should stay home and reproduce" discussion in some Freespace related topic, which resulted in a certain Ryan leaving the forum. Can't remember which topic it was, though.

[Nightmare]

Ah yeah I remember that one; that gender-ratio in FS slapfight. That was a pretty singular case though (atleast in terms of FS discussion), with weird arguments on both sides. But aside that one loosing just it, nobody has left HLP-modding bc of some political argument.

[0rph3u5]

Let me just start by saying that I appreciate genuine time and care dedicated to making these kind of decisions - as the saying goes "No one ever heard of sensible sloth or haste."


That said...

1. An administrator threatening a member/members of the community they have taken the responisibility to help organize is a breach of trust - and considering the access they have to whatever little of personal information is kept in the user databse should result in stern sanction on a matter of principle, in my opinion.

2. Speculation as to the motive(s) for the actions of absent people is of low utility - its a rabbit hole of projecting your own wishes.

3. Take it from someone who can lay claim to be in a societal minority: "being apolitical" is a luxury not everyone gets to afford; Most of the all that people who use this idea are saying by that is they don't expect to be harmed from a position of authority. Even if the authorities are obligated to protect you de jure, the conciousness that your standing in society is a matter of authoritative approval, therefor political, can and will influence your life.

3a. Back when the decision was made to establish PolDisc I didn't speak up against the form it has taken (for reasons I don't feel obligated to share) and I've settled on modus vivendi with how that has influenced the way I work on HLP. After all, "living in their world" is the undeniable reality of adult life.

3b. I don't frequent PolDisc mostly because I rarely have the time to dedicate to discussions of low utility - the members of HLP I know I share a political discision making process with can be counted on one hand. And while occasionally something unknown to me comes to my attention via avenues like PolDisc, these instances are far and few between.

3c. Not having a place dedicated to "political discussions" is of no utility either, actually it helps a great deal to work out how to structure your working relationships, e.g. who do you ask when it comes to matters of content and how. I found it very high utility to observe some members of community "in the wild" so to say, and it has helped me to identify e.g. some people that I will not working with despite appricating their work to some degree.


Now, what I am saying may be of little utility by itself as you will be seeing increasing less of me in coming year(s) - the whole thing is just a matter of time and energy management, as running around HLP without concrete buisness just seems a poor allocation of my time and effort. I will welcome of the community of HLP as my audience when projects are finished, but for the time being my work proccess my need a little privacy so I can work with contributors of varying comfort levels to public exposure.

[Aesaar]

Do you have any evidence for that? I don't remember anybody quitting and saying "I'm not going to HLP anymore because I don't like the Admin there", also again the HLP staff mostly consists of left-wing people so I don't get where that should be an issue.

How about Battuta?  I know for a fact (because I speak with him on a regular basis, and I know he's self-banned) that he actively avoids HLP because of people like Goober and the weird stereotypical enlightened centrist attitude that you can disagree with something as long as you don't hurt anyone's feelings or pride doing it.  It's ok to defend white supremacy if you're civil about it, but tell a white supremacist to **** off?  Oh now you've crossed a line!

Can't even call Goober out for supporting white supremacists because that hurts his precious feelings.  Can't remove his status as an admin, because that'll hurt his feelings.  What if he ragequits HLP because we hurt his feelings?  No, better ****ing accommodate him.

EDIT: oh, Scotty too!  And I can't say that it's not one of the reasons I don't visit HLP much anymore. 

People who start avoiding this place because of a huge asshole with power don't tend to make a huge deal about it.  They just... avoid this place.  Goober's admin status is a tacit endorsement of what he does and how he acts, whether or not that's the rest of the admin staff's intention.  If he doesn't lose it here, then that's the rest of the staff deciding to present a united front and saying "we stand behind Goober", regardless of what was said behind closed doors.

[Nightmare]

Do you have any evidence for that? I don't remember anybody quitting and saying "I'm not going to HLP anymore because I don't like the Admin there", also again the HLP staff mostly consists of left-wing people so I don't get where that should be an issue.

How about Battuta?  I know for a fact (because I speak with him on a regular basis, and I know he's self-banned) that he actively avoids HLP because of people like Goober

Well I don't know about Battuta but he left private project servers too and from what I heard a bunch of other social media too. I know he despises Goober though.

Can't even call Goober out for supporting white supremacists because that hurts his precious feelings.  Can't remove his status as an admin, because that'll hurt his feelings.  What if he ragequits HLP because we hurt his feelings?  No, better ****ing accommodate him.

If bringing up this kind of weirdness is all you think PolDisc is useful for it should probably be just as well closed.

[mjn.mixael]

How about Battuta?  I know for a fact (because I speak with him on a regular basis, and I know he's self-banned) that he actively avoids HLP because of people like Goober and the weird stereotypical enlightened centrist attitude that you can disagree with something as long as you don't hurt anyone's feelings or pride doing it.  It's ok to defend white supremacy if you're civil about it, but tell a white supremacist to **** off?  Oh now you've crossed a line!

Can't even call Goober out for supporting white supremacists because that hurts his precious feelings.  Can't remove his status as an admin, because that'll hurt his feelings.  What if he ragequits HLP because we hurt his feelings?  No, better ****ing accommodate him.

EDIT: oh, Scotty too!  And I can't say that it's not one of the reasons I don't visit HLP much anymore. 

People who start avoiding this place because of a huge asshole with power don't tend to make a huge deal about it.  They just... avoid this place.  Goober's admin status is a tacit endorsement of what he does and how he acts, whether or not that's the rest of the admin staff's intention.  If he doesn't lose it here, then that's the rest of the staff deciding to present a united front and saying "we stand behind Goober", regardless of what was said behind closed doors.

Well I don't know about Battuta but he left private project servers too and from what I heard a bunch of other social media too. I know he despises Goober though.

Goober and I have been at odds on and off for years for a whole lot of reasons... it's why I left FSPort, Scroll, etc. If it weren't for the other fine people here I do enjoy working with (Axem, Nyc, Odd, the BtA guys, and many others over the years) it's likely I wouldn't have stuck around as long.

[Nightmare]

Well that's perfectly reasonable - modding should be fun, and nobody wants to work in a team with people they don't like.

[JSRNerdo]

If bringing up this kind of weirdness is all you think PolDisc is useful for it should probably be just as well closed.

This but unironically. What purpose, if any, does PolDisc serve in a freespace modding forum, apart from to incite this sort of drama? Keeping political discussion on the internet sane is hard enough to do in dedicated political discussion spaces, let alone a community dedicated to modding a 20 year old game. We don't need to see modders driven away because of issues solely stemming from moderation of political discussion, we need modders. Nobody is going to go download FS2, download a mod and look for support but stay for the political discussion, and nobody is going to go looking for a place to post their political opinions and look at HLP, see the Trump thread and also discover some nice FS2 mods along the way.

On the topic of Goober: It's true that, without him, Inferno wouldn't have released, as he was the one who gave me the power to revive the project and add testers. I'm not sure what role he played in getting the HLP forums back up and running after the HDD failure, but I would not be surprised if it was a major one. I think he is an important contributor to the HLP community as an administrator. But the behaviour that sparked this complaint is frankly completely unacceptable, and I think if he is to continue in this role of administrator then at the very least the community deserves an apology and genuine assurances that this something like this won't ever happen again.

[mjn.mixael]

Politics affect everyone especially in 2020 where the common decency of wearing a mask is apparently a political statement. People are going to talk about it. At least with a PolDisc board, it keeps it out of the modding forums (most of the time).

EDIT: The realty also is that we don't mod in a vacuum. The people we work with become friends and it's natural to discuss things other than freespace with those people. The Trump thread has been going for over four years with minor drama like this. The problem isn't PolDisc, it's individuals.

[MP-Ryan]

PolDisc exists and will continue to exist as a members-only sub-board to function as a pressure relief value and stop the relatively few of us who are active moderators from constantly having to chase down political discussions that pop up in other places.

No politics rules, especially among old communities with lots of establish members, are extremely difficult to enforce and I, for one, would rather deal with all the **** in one spot.

[Nightmare]

I don't think "our mods are inactive, hence we can't enforce rules properly" a good thing in many ways. The forum is by no means exploding with activity (neither in GD nor elsewhere), compared to Discords with hundreds of messages per day it seems rather easy. There's a report button which might be used in that case from the users end; also, you can recruit new mods (mostly for board-limited mods for GD) anytime. Most board moderators are mia or absent for *several years* by now.

[Grizzly]

otoh, this moderation issue would have been solved in 5 seconds if the person causing it wasn't an admin. That's less time then it is to determine whether or not a thread is sliding into politicalness.

[Phantom Hoover]

Absolutely. There is no question that if someone was under consideration to be a new admin this behaviour would disqualify them in a heartbeat.

[Galemp]

Me checking in on what HLP is up to:



Generally I'm in agreement with mjn, hoover, and mobius.

I've known Goober since HLP was hosted at 3D Action Planet, and he was a guest at my wedding (in 2014). I consider him a close friend.

I also don't talk politics or religion with him, because I cannot reconcile the guy I know with the stuff he apparently believes. But keeping political discussion on HLP to a dedicated board that I can avoid, helps me maintain that relationship by walling off the toxicity. I consider Goober to be the kind of guy I'm glad to work with during office hours, but since 2015 I've stopped going out to Happy Hour with him.

 The contributions Goober has made to the community are immeasurable. He's been producer and editor on FSPort, ST:R, and Scroll, and those are just the ones I've worked with him on. He's also done tireless administration here. But the fact remains that he's unhinged in his personal life - remember that he pushed through the release of Scroll because he thought the world was ending?

Where that bleeds into the FS community, we need to be impartial and treat it on a case by case basis. A member threatening legal action against other forum members is out of line, and would merit discipline. Threads that are inflammatory should be locked, and left to decay unless there has been a gross violation of forum rules. Abusing moderator/administrator privileges to delete threads unflattering to the mod/admin is also unacceptable.

I hope that I can continue working with Goober on HLP in the future. I also hope I can continue working with other talented and thoughtful members of this board, and that they all feel welcome and respected. I look forward to what the admins have to say about keeping those both in effect.

[Axem]

I'm locking this thread now that the official response from the rest of the HLP staff has been posted.

You can move your productive and even-measured discussion there.