Wrong, admins aren't here to babysit the population. They are people who monitor the players and teach them the rules by punishing them if they break them. A phenomenon called coercive power, the power to distribute punishments.
If you look at this case, POOP actually helped the person in question by punishing him for his foolishness, and afterwards offering a repayment, but they didn't find it necessary. Now suddenly they do.
You know, I don't like living saints myself. People who do only "good", never could harm anyone and cry for every killed ant under their foot.
But in this case I think it's not really about such people, and that's not what I meant with the exaggarated expression of a living saint.
I want fair and unbiased admins, who have balls, who have a backbone.
Let me say it this way: perhaps accepting that deal was not "unfair", but it definitely was "not fair". Thus POOP's behaviour was "not fair".
You would (and already did) argue, that it was not while administrating the servers, and you are right about this of course. But as I said, everything an admin says or does will be taken as "official".
One user ripping of another is perhaps acceptable, depending on what kind of community you want to have. But an admin ripping of a user, signalising "it's totally okay to do so" seems somewhat awkward and wrong to me. It doesn't fit to my image of a good admin.
A good admin needs - as I already said - balls and backbone. If he sees a player he hates wholeheartedly gets teamattacked, I expect the admin to think "Ha! That asshole got what he deserved! But I have to punish the attacker nonetheless, because it's most likely only luck that he picked a guy I don't like." Or, if he sees that the guy he doesn't like accidentally commits a teamkill, he should think: "Oh how much would I like to ban this asshole, but this tard literally jumped into his swing. It would be wrong to punish him for this, asshole or not.". And if he sees how one of his clanmates attacks a teamattacker to protect other teammates, he has to say "Sorry, mate! I really like you, but deliberately attacking teammates is forbidden, even if it is for helping others. I have to kick you, the rules force me to do so."
See what I mean? He has to stay fair.
Unfortunately/fortunately (depends
) noone can take a look into the head of another. So people only see how someone gets kicked and banned, and then they make their assumptions, as usual.
I think if POOPHAMMER would have shown balls and backbone, and said "Guy, nice offer, but it wouldn't be fair to pay you 100k for a +3 item. I will pay you 700k" he would have gotten a lot of credibility, which is one of the requirements for being an admin.
But he decided for the other way. He probably only thought "YESSSS!" and accepted, which shows a certain amount of selfishness. It doesn't neccessarily mean that he shows the same behaviour ingame, but at least it's an indication.
Many positions which require trust are bound to a clean sheet. If you were ever accused of having molested a child, but never been sentenced, you still won't be allowed to do anything with children any more. Which is totally right, IMHO. In such cases the saying "benefit of the doubt" must be turned into the opposite.
Of course you can't really compare those two examples, but still I hope you understand what I mean.
Yes, perhaps it was a bit too much to lose the admin rights this way, he should have had the chance to defend himself, and perhaps it would have been enough to put him on "probation" for a few months os so, to prove that he is still a good ( = fair) admin and a leading example for a member of this community. (Or would you say average or even despicable members of the community should be allowed to be admins?)
I still love cRPG, although I went over playing it only from time to time, but I wouldn't like to see it diying. I think the most important condition for a game to persist is a good community. I don't want to have some kind of softy atmosphere with group cuddling and so on, don't get me wrong! But I would like to have an atmosphere where the members hold together. It makes you feel more comfortable, and thus you enjoy playing the game more. You feel connected/bound (?) to it.
A short time ago I saw a documentation about intelligence and the development of humankind. There they said, that although chimpanzees have like 92% of our gene code, they can't stick to rules, because they can't imagine the better state of affairs when everyone is following these rules.
Here I think we have something similar. Of course I do NOT think that the members disagreeing me are chimpanzees with lower intelligence, how arrogant would this be? What I think is, that they didn't think about it long enough. They are used to the state as it is, it's the way the world works. But did they notice that the cRPG community can be something self-contained in this world? Obeying different rules?
In real life the assholes win, because there is no greater power that can fix things. In cRPG it's different, there we have chadz ( + his tail represented by his staff). If people wanted to, they could create something "better" than what you find "out there". There are enough other communities which prove it's possible. Where everyone helps out everyone. But it depends on the will of the community and the staff. If chadz would post here and say "I actually don't care about what the users do", then I would say "Okay! I tried it! Then I will find another community I try to contribute to.". But if chadz would say "I indeed would like to have a better atmosphere in the community", then I'd suggest to set up certain rules, for example. E.g. some kind of complete penal code, which is being constantly extended with actual cases, so that both admins and user can judge rather clearly which punishment for which crime is appropriate or not, rendering a good part of "admin abooze!!"-cries obsolete. (Though god knows not all of them
). And you could set up a catalogue of requirements for being an admin, preventing more situations like this one. And in cases where different opinions exist (e.g. are you always admin or only on the servers?) chadz decides.
