Banned from siege?

[Starfucker]

Hi all. I was just banned from the community siege server. I was given no warning or reason for the ban. I wasn't doing anything trollish (not even an accidental team hit). I suspect it has to do with my name "Starfucker". I've been playing for 3 or 4 months pretty regularly with this character and am somewhat of a regular on the server. No one has commented (negatively) on the name until now. It doesn't appear to violate any of the server rules from what I've seen.

If that's not the reason, please give me one as well as the length of my ban. If it is the reason let me know and I'll work on a name change.

[Earthdforce]

Your unban date is 25.08.2011 05:14:53 currently, and I believe it is because of your name. Donkleaps, the new head admin, has been big on cracking down on rules that were already in place that weren't being enforced as heavily. Get your name changed and I'll work on unbanning you.

[Starfucker]

Okay, I thought so. A couple of questions.
1. Would I do it through the 1000g name change thing, or would I have to retire?
2. I would like for my name to at least be recognizable to people I've been playing with. I know you didn't ban me, but do you think STRFKR would be allowable?
3. Would you mind pointing me to the rule I'm in violation of? I'm not finding it written down anywhere.

[Donkleaps]

I did ask twice if if you would be willing to leave and change your name before coming back to Community servers but I'm guessing you didn't see it.

Starfkr is not a good change option but once you get it handled to something suitable I will gladly unban you and you can play on the Community servers as normal.

It is nothing personal just a policy that is being followed.

Thanks!

[Starfucker]

I haven't been playing for the past three days until tonight. When did you ask me? I'm almost positive I was reading chat for the 5 minutes I was playing. Also, as I said before, I checked the server rules list and don't see any rules that my name is in violation of.

[Starfucker]

So I was reading the forums and apparently you banned (or threatened to ban) someone named Star_Fker recently. I'm kinda curious about this. If this is true, then it could be that you confused me for him. I'm also curious if someone actually stole my name while I was gone.

[Darkkarma]

This just another reason to not bother with the community servers at all anymore.. Seriously, what a joke. Starfucker, your name is quite awesome. I do hope that you don't change it.  I honestly do hope that the NA official siege server starts to pick up in popularity just so trivial shit like this doesn't happen. "My 12 year-old-son can lodge his 12-foot blade into a guys face but please don't swear around him. He is highly impressionable!"

[Keslord]

The only rule that comes close is the one against racism. There is NOTHING about obscenity in the official rules.

Star Fucker is an awesome name and this player is routinely at the top end of the server scores. Please concentrate on important things like removing broken maps from rotation instead of banning the bread and butter of the community.

1    Starfucker KIlls   2949    Deaths 2320    0    0     KD 1.2711    BEST STREAK 14

[Grok]

I'm having a bit of a problem with the current name violation policy that's being enforced as well.  And, this is coming from someone who DEFINITELY does not like "bad" or overly juvenile names.  So, I think some of the players who have been forced to change their names has been perfectly acceptable (at least that I've seen).

But, yesterday the Pike Bastard issue was just plain silly.  There's no violation of any supposed policy here.  To suggest otherwise is...silly.

Starfucker is certainly a bit more dicey, but again I think it's a bit borderline -- though I could certainly understand if it fell on either side of the fence.

The problem I'm seeing, is what seems to be a lack of common sense being applied to the "policy."   And, frankly, that's how any admin's enforcement of a any server rule should be applied.  Sure, you want players to have a relatively black and white understanding of what is and is not allowed, but that does not mean there is no gray area.  I guarantee you'll never have enough rules to properly provide a black and white answer for every single situation you ever run into in CRPG.  And, that is exactly where common sense should be being employed.

Overall, I like the general direction on the name issues, but I think there's some food for thought on the admin team's part in regards to specific enforcement.  More common sense, less rule book citation.

[Starfucker]

I agree that common sense should be used when enforcing the rules. In this case, I don't appear to be in violation of any written rules. If you want to change policy, you have to at least tell people. I had no way of knowing that I was breaking policy until I was banned.

Banning swearing isn't common sense to me. People swear all the time in chat. If you're going to ban people for swearing in their name, why wouldn't you ban people for swearing in chat? Where is the line? It doesn't appear to be written down anywhere.

I'm not changing names. If this ban stands, I'm changing servers.

It was never my intention to be offensive or juvenile. I don't use the name to troll, I use it because I like it.

[Donkleaps]

Taking an early lunch today and I'll make you both a deal. You find me one solid game admin team in the US that will let those names stand in any community/public setting and I'll rescind the decision in a heartbeat. I guarantee you will find 0.

No project I have helped setup or worked throughout has ever allowed this in the many years I have done admin work. As I said before it is nothing personal but the Community servers which are paid for by the public are going to have have a  ruleset which is respectable.

Still to this day 11 years after being in this business the mindset of people to think that every decision is a direct personal attack against them still boggles my mind. The most difficult part of me coming into this job and resetting the infrastructure is that it is not pay to play and for whatever reason every Tom, Dick, and Harry feel that they are entitled to have carte blanche on whatever they feel like doing just because they are in that setting.

The decisions that were made and the policies that are being put into place are there to foster the growth of a community and open it up. We did a mass petition to Steam to put Warband on sale guaranteeing them 100 copies sold. This was done 1 week ago to the day and we have already seen an influx of players to the game which is what everyone wants as they were kind enough to match a 23$ deal offered by direct2drive I believe it was. We hope to be able to mimic things like this in the future and are confident we can get it done.

Also another point that seems to be getting overlooked is that the NA Community servers are not the Official servers. It is a server group solely ran off of the good will donations and suggestions of those individuals that are interested in making the community grow and give an alternative playing area that are not Private organization servers where everything is sporadic. Community servers have admins from almost every organization within the cRPG community and they are helping me to come up with a uniform way to run this operation.

The main team working on the Community servers right now consists of 4 people. With what we are doing and trying to setup for the future it is a lot of work done on volunteer time and a massive amount of guess, test, and revise.

I hope this clears a few things up and I am more than willing to discuss just about anything via private message as this forum is really not meant to be used for this.

This is the last open air post I will make dealing with this subject matter.

Thanks,
Donk

[Darkkarma]

Nindur,Native and Goretooth regularly let most of my and my friends' DICK characters run around and played without any real hassle at all from admins. And when they did get stopped or warned by admins, it was for misbehaving , being rude or something along those lines. I can understand and respect that these are NOT official servers and that this is being run entirely off of donations and the dedication of a few people. I can also respect that you want to run your servers the way that you see fit and I totally believe you are within your rights to do so. No one here is alleging that you are engaging in personal attacks or vendettas against individuals. I can understand that you are simply trying to enfore the rules. However, if this means that you will be enforcing your rules to a degree where the a name with the word "fuck" in it are punished on the same level of severity as a Teamkiller, delayer or what have you, then i'd just as soon not play on those servers at all. It is not a direct attack on anyones character, not a racial slur or anything of that nature. Also, solid players like Jankum,Starfucker consistently do well in game and rarely if ever break rules or act poorly. Again, more power to you guys for running your own servers but personally, I will not be coming into your servers at all and will personally be recommending that any of my friends and clanmates do the same in the future. It would honestly be like me petitioning to to have you kicked for having the word "donk" in your name because of it being a slang term used to describe a woman's shapely butt and being offensive to me for not respecting women. It just seems a bit ridiculous anyway you look at it. In any case, thanks for taking to time to respond.

[Sphinxer]

*Unlocked*

There are still discussion to go on, can't just lock the thread after you reply and don't want people to answer back.

Moderators have to submit to rules as well, we ain't Gods (I wish sometimes)

[Lorden]

I support 100% the tightening up of the rules in general, especially the ones about talking back to admins, trolling admins, etc knowing that if we react players will go QQ ADMIN ABOOZE. I am sick and tired of players telling me how to admin, or getting involved in admin actions that have no relation to them. 

However, I have no problem with vulgar names as long as they are not racist. That's been the standing policy of the server, and I don't see any valid reason to change it. We've never had complaints regarding names before, therefore there's no reason to enforce anything new on that end.

My 2 cents.

[Earthdforce]

I've never been a man of many words, but names don't bother me man. I'm like Lorden here, if you try to impress your buddies by mouthing off to the admins or making an ass of yourself, you should be punished, not really if your name is a little vulgar. Of course, racism in all forms are not tolerated and will be dealt with severely, but I don't think a Starfucker should be in this much trouble. True, it's borderline, but as long as he isn't out there trololoing, he's cool by me.