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[Maddolis]

Peter, that is the strongest argument I've seen put forth by an LVP crewmember ever, by far.
Although I am not online often when they are doing more "extreme" flame, it is believable that they'd commit such actions so I won't bother arguing with the facts themselves, more around them.

A small fact-sheet to clarify the happenings which led to this, purely for the sake of emphasising that this ban is not solely about the flaming:

First of all, when you say the ban isn't solely about the flaming, I'd argue with that.
All those points (and many others made by the crew) have all been about flaming or related to flaming- as clearly none of them indicate cheating or bug abuse or many of the other rules I specified in my last post.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be banned because all they were doing was "flaming"- other people have had "permanent bans" from flaming- Terror and CrazieFurie just to name two.

• A total of 36 bans and 40 kicks due to flaming, swearing in general, racism, discrimination and disrespecting the LVP Staff.
  

I do realise its a large number of offenses, but from my perspective, if the harsher admins (or admins who put up with less crap than others) were online at the same time as many other users- Swifty, SoNiX, DMX- I can list 30- then these users would also have the same number of offenses (items on the log), if not more.

• shoebox offered the sum of € 2000 to a crewmember for banning four individuals from Las Venturas Playground, permanently.
  

This is one point I do not really understand- I'd jokingly offer $5000 to perm-ban four users at my discretion- it doesn't really seem like an offence to me. Perhaps you can elaborate on this point, unless it was thrown in to make the list look bigger.

• Nerd has made various references between LVP Staff and people who played important roles in the second World War on the German side (the nazi's), as well as saying that LVP Staff should die from cancer and aids.
  

The "die from cancer and aids" part I'm not arguing with, however using the Nazis as a metaphor for any community or organisation with an extremely tightly-wound leadership is very common. I wouldn't call that part bannable- and I've personally seen many others (including myself) compare leadership of LVP to the Nazis (without refering specific members to specific Nazis), such as in one of my recent CSI posts, as the 'Nazi' or 'right-wing' metaphor is very strong and gets the point across like nothing else. Basically Nerd isn't the only one who's done that.

• Spreading rumours and so-called "facts" about LVP Staff behind their backs, making fun of them.
  

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen or done that... heck I've also seen LVP Staff deal a decent load of crap onto other players (sure, not comparable with shoebox or Nerd- but in reference to this particular argument, more than enough).
Point is, shoe and nerd aren't the only ones doing this.

• shoebox blatantly tried setting up Terror so he'd get permanently banned as well (doesn't that beat the purpose of a clan?)
  

I heard that shoebox was "perm-banned" before this incident took place, so the point has little relevance to his own actual ban. shoebox and Terror know each other very well in real life, so it's not so much like he's trying to get his overseas internet-bud to get banned by giving orders, but more like he's having fun with his mate/letting the ideas flow or whatever.
Even still, this is a game and not real life- if a soldier in real life kills on their superior's order, the superior can cop the blame as well- however in LVP, Terror has a good deal of independence (like the rest of us), so its his choice in the end- you can't blame this on shoe too.
Using the same train of thought, I could say that I gave shoebox and Nerd orders to act like this, and swap bans with the two of them...


As I said earlier, it was and still is a very strong argument, but not flawless.
In the long run, I'm not arguing the fact that they got banned- I am merely arguing the length of the ban.
Perhaps a couple of weeks is necessary, a month max. However, a "perm ban" with a non-parole period of two months is rather over the top in my and many others' opinion.

[Maddolis]

Reinforcing an earlier point, 99% of the flame shoebox and Nerd deal is provoked in some way.
A whole ton of the crap a lot of these RT and sK guys say is unprovoked- whether they kill a random newbie playing LVP for the first time or a veteran.

Small example, I was in /world 2 since I logged in with [UvH]Vuze, mucking about with gravity, and I get fed this crap:


Funny as it may be, it annoys me to know that interesting guys like shoebox and Nerd get a perm ban when this sort of behavior goes unanswered.

[Peter]

First of all, when you say the ban isn't solely about the flaming, I'd argue with that.
All those points (and many others made by the crew) have all been about flaming or related to flaming- as clearly none of them indicate cheating or bug abuse or many of the other rules I specified in my last post.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be banned because all they were doing was "flaming"- other people have had "permanent bans" from flaming- Terror and CrazieFurie just to name two.
I do realise its a large number of offenses, but from my perspective, if the harsher admins (or admins who put up with less crap than others) were online at the same time as many other users- Swifty, SoNiX, DMX- I can list 30- then these users would also have the same number of offenses (items on the log), if not more.

As I tried to emphasise, and already did more clearly in the private HC4L forum, it's not specifically the flaming, more the actions around the flaming. CF was a general ass who got banned from the normal SA-MP forums, from GTANet IRC for major racism and also bothered LVP Staff and players with both racism as discrimination, the flaming was pretty much ignored. Terror, assuming you mean the HC4L member in this case, actually is allowed to go on LVP again.

Flaming is one thing, as I said, other gangs and people do so a lot as well. It's considerably hard to stop all flaming, seeing there are more places to control than just in-game. In most cases, the flaming limits itself to the normal gameplay, whereas HC4L has been banned for flaming on pretty much all LVP services: IRC, the forums, TeamSpeak and evidently in-game as well. Of course this plays a role, bottom line is that it's not allowed on LVP, though not super-strictly moderated either. This has caused both members to be banned a total of three, perhaps more months in total, which does not equal a lifetime ban.

They got banned for their behaviour after the flaming. If they got muted in-game, they'd head to IRC and use !msg to continue flaming. That would cause them to be banned from #LVP.echo, after which they'd join #LVP and start being kick-ass there. Would they be banned there as well? No problem, there's #LVP.nl, and quite often the forums would follow after that. That's three of our services they'd be banned at already, where members of sK/BB/RT would just keep quiet until the mute ended (a few isolated occurances ignored).

It's this cool behaviour that got them permanently banned. Any ban would get follow ups with chats in #LVP about how cool they are, how the admins were abusing, how the Staff was pro or any other fitting description in their eyes. After they got banned, they'd join all other LVP services to make sure they'd get banned there as well. Now tell me, which of the other gangs is doing that? I can assure you that there is none.

This is one point I do not really understand- I'd jokingly offer $5000 to perm-ban four users at my discretion- it doesn't really seem like an offence to me. Perhaps you can elaborate on this point, unless it was thrown in to make the list look bigger.

Franky, it does make a difference. Not all administrators are equally experienced and some might even be considered slightly ignorant on some subjects. They certainly are not to blame for this: it's a young community and people have to grow in their roles. The offence here is that shoebox blatantly abused this ignorance, he made the Staffmember believe he'd get the money and made sure to remind him of the money multiple times, causing the Staffmember to get strongly enthusiastic over what he would do with the money.

Ban worthy? Probably not, but certainly worth a frown. It simply adds up to the number of offences he has committed. The reason isn't very solid; in a young community there will be less experienced and sometimes slightly ignorant people, however, I strongly believe it's bad to abuse this for your personal agenda. Compare it to promising twenty lollypops to a five-year-old if he jumps in some river mid winter: it's funny at the time, but on the long-term brings large health risks and you wouldn't give the lollypops anyway.

The "die from cancer and aids" part I'm not arguing with, however using the Nazis as a metaphor for any community or organisation with an extremely tightly-wound leadership is very common. I wouldn't call that part bannable- and I've personally seen many others (including myself) compare leadership of LVP to the Nazis (without refering specific members to specific Nazis), such as in one of my recent CSI posts, as the 'Nazi' or 'right-wing' metaphor is very strong and gets the point across like nothing else. Basically Nerd isn't the only one who's done that.

In most communities yes, I've seen it used that way, and frankly, have used it myself in that context. There also are occurances in which it's not used in this context, in which someone doesn't use it as a metaphor but rather to illustrate a connection. Regardless whether it's the nazi's, NSB'ers or specific people higher up in the nazi hierarchy, they're not always used as a metaphor.

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen or done that... heck I've also seen LVP Staff deal a decent load of crap onto other players (sure, not comparable with shoebox or Nerd- but in reference to this particular argument, more than enough).
Point is, shoe and nerd aren't the only ones doing this.

Agreed, there are however levels at which you can do this. You can pm some random IRC user saying estroe sucks, but you can also spread huge structural lies to groups of people. I do however agree with your reasoning, so let's drop this

I heard that shoebox was "perm-banned" before this incident took place, so the point has little relevance to his own actual ban. shoebox and Terror know each other very well in real life, so it's not so much like he's trying to get his overseas internet-bud to get banned by giving orders, but more like he's having fun with his mate/letting the ideas flow or whatever.
Even still, this is a game and not real life- if a soldier in real life kills on their superior's order, the superior can cop the blame as well- however in LVP, Terror has a good deal of independence (like the rest of us), so its his choice in the end- you can't blame this on shoe too.
Using the same train of thought, I could say that I gave shoebox and Nerd orders to act like this, and swap bans with the two of them...

Yes and no. It indeed happened after shoebox got informed of his lifetime ban, he opened up a second IRC client and joined with the nickname "Terrorstepelsonbeer" and started talking to himself. A log can be found by clicking here, do you truly believe friends do that to eachother? You get arrested for shoplifting and say [W]IDmad was in with you, even though he wasn't anywhere close to Australia at the time.

As I said earlier, it was and still is a very strong argument, but not flawless.
In the long run, I'm not arguing the fact that they got banned- I am merely arguing the length of the ban.
Perhaps a couple of weeks is necessary, a month max. However, a "perm ban" with a non-parole period of two months is rather over the top in my and many others' opinion.

Their ban is a minimum of 8 weeks, with no defined maximum timespan. They have both been banned for about three months a person already, and obviously did not learn from this. A month would be the absolute minimum, which I consider too low for the running circomstances. They were totally aware of their actions, the way they abused the lack of experience of a LVP Staffmember, the results of their actions and the way they meant their comments. I also believe they were not high at the time, seeing no chats about drugs happened in their gangchat earlier that night (which isn't that rare).

Nice response, but the ban still stands. I'm looking forward to seeing your response.

[Darius]

Now tell me, which of the other gangs is doing that? I can assure you that there is none.

I can assure you, your wrong. [sK]SoniX was doing it earlier this morning to Maka. He got kicked/muted or something whilst ingame then went on LVP.echo on IRC to call Maka a 'nerd', 'fucker' etc.

[Maddolis]

Your response was even stronger than your last one- I reckon perhaps I don't see the "worst of it" personally (as when I'm on, we are more preoccupied talking to each other than others), but I will pick out a couple of minor points.

As I tried to emphasise, and already did more clearly in the private HC4L forum, it's not specifically the flaming, more the actions around the flaming. CF was a general ass who got banned from the normal SA-MP forums, from GTANet IRC for major racism and also bothered LVP Staff and players with both racism as discrimination, the flaming was pretty much ignored.

In my opinion the "actions around the flaming" are still related to flaming, whether it be acting smartass or displaying disrespect in some way- either way, its just our disagreeing on the meaning of the word rather than the action.
It also doesn't really matter whether its called "flaming" or something else, I just use the term to generalise anything disrespectful that has been typed on a computer, whether it be directed at anyone or not. No real point in continuing the discussion of what they were banned for (or what its called), as we both have a pretty good idea of it now.

Franky, it does make a difference. Not all administrators are equally experienced and some might even be considered slightly ignorant on some subjects. They certainly are not to blame for this: it's a young community and people have to grow in their roles. The offence here is that shoebox blatantly abused this ignorance, he made the Staffmember believe he'd get the money and made sure to remind him of the money multiple times, causing the Staffmember to get strongly enthusiastic over what he would do with the money.

I still feel that the crewmember should know that perm-bans are one of the more serious aspects of LVP, and require the management to have their say in the ban. Perhaps on recruiting admins, a reasonable cut-off level of maturity should be employed (which I'm sure was the case months ago- but it seems a couple of people in the last half a year or so have been given their positions by simply mini-modding and spending a lot of the time roleplaying, instead of being reasonably smart enough, say, enough to call a bluff as major as shoebox's).

Yes and no. It indeed happened after shoebox got informed of his lifetime ban, he opened up a second IRC client and joined with the nickname "Terrorstepelsonbeer" and started talking to himself. A log can be found by clicking here, do you truly believe friends do that to eachother? You get arrested for shoplifting and say [W]IDmad was in with you, even though he wasn't anywhere close to Australia at the time.

[W]IDmad deserves to go to jail for the disturbing links he posts on irc

On a more serious note, and one of my more major arguments in this post, after reading this, I feel that you were perhaps a bit overzealous on the action of perm-banning people.
Say that it actually was Terror who wrote that, I don't believe the things he said would warrant a perm-ban as much as they would simply putting up with it- or max, +kb'ing from the channel. Terror was uninvolved in the most recent incident (for which shoe and nerd were perm-banned), and say he was called in for moral support and did say the things shown there, looking back on the situation from a more neutral perspective (such as now), you mustn't find those few lines nearly harsh enough to warrant a ban, let a lone a perm-ban.

Perhaps in the same way you were fast to jump on the "permban" button, you have also been slightly harsh on the penalties dealt out unto shoe and terror.

I think it'd be wise to attack the source of this problem (disrespect towards LVP crewmembers)- which I believe stems from how often HC4L and the rest of us see many flamers (such as some sK/RT/BB on occasion, certainly not all, but most) carry on flaming harshly and consistently without punishment, but when the HC4L/us do get punished (whether it be in the presence of sK etc or not), they feel that it is the crewmembers playing favourites, although in some situations it can be simply that no crewmembers were watching on the irc or ingame during the massive sK/whoever flame. I've felt this way often myself, that crewmembers can be biased against me (which, looking back on it, I'd find to be true 60% of the time, or therebouts), and that when I'm on with HC4L with few enemy flamers there's very little (if not no) disrespect towards the administrators.
Perhaps with more equal and constant restrictions on the 'no-flaming' rule on LVP (which is hard, but possible), there'd be less disrespect towards crewmembers.

I still feel that the bans are slightly too harsh, and suggest a sooner unban date (such as in 5 weeks) for two main reasons:
a)I feel you have been overzealous in your punishing various HC4L members recently.
Sure, some punishment is deserved, but for example, the banning in the "tepel incident" was over the top, which was agreed from both sides of the argument- and I do feel that (after reading this and finding you IMO too quick to jump on the "permban" conclusion, beit Terror or not) you have been a little harsher than necessary on them (which, consequently, drives them to act even more rebellious, as I would think from 1st hand experience).
b)It is the end of the year, and many of the LVP players are approaching holidays (I know I hit them almost 4 weeks ago). 8 weeks will feel a lot longer on holidays than it would during school/uni classes.
Besides, Christmas will be over in 5 weeks, and not only will the players feel refreshed but in a good mood, and after 5 weeks without prolonged contact with LVP crewmembers, they will feel less of an urge to rebel.

Please consider 5 weeks as an option

Your Local G~

[Terror]

yea lets delete every post wich says they should be unbanned and bann/kick half of lvp because my eye is itching.
+ shoe has been playing for 1100 hours + longer than 1 year so that part of the story already isnt right, as far more , were is shoebox getting 2000 euro from ?

+ you are using me backingup shoebox as an argument but you did the same with barry and i can quote that part were estroe said ''Well arent you gonna help shoebox if he has problems . Well Peter did the same with barry.'' it was close like that

[Maddolis]

I can assure you, your wrong. [sK]SoniX was doing it earlier this morning to Maka. He got kicked/muted or something whilst ingame then went on LVP.echo on IRC to call Maka a 'nerd', 'fucker' etc.

Yes, but Peter did also mention "(a few isolated occurances ignored)."
Players like SoNiX and Swifty would be those isolated occurances (which shouldn't be ignored, yet don't display the same behavior as every other member of their clans.

[Terror]

Barry snitched Nerd[HC4L] for flaming on msn and he is starting conversations with n-words and insults aswell.
I would like to report this msn behaviour to peter and i hope barry gets permbanned

[Peter]

Your response was even stronger than your last one- I reckon perhaps I don't see the "worst of it" personally (as when I'm on, we are more preoccupied talking to each other than others), but I will pick out a couple of minor points.
In my opinion the "actions around the flaming" are still related to flaming, whether it be acting smartass or displaying disrespect in some way- either way, its just our disagreeing on the meaning of the word rather than the action.
It also doesn't really matter whether its called "flaming" or something else, I just use the term to generalise anything disrespectful that has been typed on a computer, whether it be directed at anyone or not. No real point in continuing the discussion of what they were banned for (or what its called), as we both have a pretty good idea of it now.

It's simply the way they share their disrespect towards our authority, compare it to a birthday party: it's your birthday and you bought a pie. A friend of yours brings two of his friends, who you do not personally know, and these two friends start eating the whole pie. You want other people to get a piece as well, so you tell them to stop eating the pie after which they slap you in the face and continue eating the pie. What would you do, condone it or telling them to leave?

The same applies here, we provide a free service and they refuse to follow our rules, after which we tell them to stop. Until that part it's fine: other clans and clanless people get there as well, however, Nerd and shoebox then slap us in the face and continue. We asked them to leave, in fact, forced them to leave by banning or kicking them. Not just one time, no, 76 times.

I still feel that the crewmember should know that perm-bans are one of the more serious aspects of LVP, and require the management to have their say in the ban. Perhaps on recruiting admins, a reasonable cut-off level of maturity should be employed (which I'm sure was the case months ago- but it seems a couple of people in the last half a year or so have been given their positions by simply mini-modding and spending a lot of the time roleplaying, instead of being reasonably smart enough, say, enough to call a bluff as major as shoebox's).

I agree, but then again, smart and mature people are considerably rare in this community. It's more difficult to find fighters as moderators, seeing they usually are driven by emotions whereas role-players want to develop strategies and invent new ways of playing, it's a fundamental difference. Someone who isolates himself, plays nicely and reports everything that's out of order seems an easier candidate than someone who constantly spams adminchat with that single person who teleports away from his fight. Nevertheless, it should be noteworthy that even [NB]DrVibrator gets temp-mod status frequently and FateTrip is a moderator. estroe was the leader of BB and now is a Management member, while various other members of the crew are also involved with clans.

On a more serious note, and one of my more major arguments in this post, after reading this, I feel that you were perhaps a bit overzealous on the action of perm-banning people.
Say that it actually was Terror who wrote that, I don't believe the things he said would warrant a perm-ban as much as they would simply putting up with it- or max, +kb'ing from the channel. Terror was uninvolved in the most recent incident (for which shoe and nerd were perm-banned), and say he was called in for moral support and did say the things shown there, looking back on the situation from a more neutral perspective (such as now), you mustn't find those few lines nearly harsh enough to warrant a ban, let a lone a perm-ban.

You have to realise there have been frequent discussions about clan-banning HC4L as a whole. Nerd and shoebox continued to piss off crew members time upon time, and after 26 bans it's safe to say most of the crew would be quite pleased to see them leaving. They simply refuse to learn; I'll go more into detail after your next quote.

I think it'd be wise to attack the source of this problem (disrespect towards LVP crewmembers)- which I believe stems from how often HC4L and the rest of us see many flamers (such as some sK/RT/BB on occasion, certainly not all, but most) carry on flaming harshly and consistently without punishment, but when the HC4L/us do get punished (whether it be in the presence of sK etc or not), they feel that it is the crewmembers playing favourites, although in some situations it can be simply that no crewmembers were watching on the irc or ingame during the massive sK/whoever flame. I've felt this way often myself, that crewmembers can be biased against me (which, looking back on it, I'd find to be true 60% of the time, or therebouts), and that when I'm on with HC4L with few enemy flamers there's very little (if not no) disrespect towards the administrators.
Perhaps with more equal and constant restrictions on the 'no-flaming' rule on LVP (which is hard, but possible), there'd be less disrespect towards crewmembers.

I still feel that the bans are slightly too harsh, and suggest a sooner unban date (such as in 5 weeks) for two main reasons:
a)I feel you have been overzealous in your punishing various HC4L members recently.
Sure, some punishment is deserved, but for example, the banning in the "tepel incident" was over the top, which was agreed from both sides of the argument- and I do feel that (after reading this and finding you IMO too quick to jump on the "permban" conclusion, beit Terror or not) you have been a little harsher than necessary on them (which, consequently, drives them to act even more rebellious, as I would think from 1st hand experience).
b)It is the end of the year, and many of the LVP players are approaching holidays (I know I hit them almost 4 weeks ago). 8 weeks will feel a lot longer on holidays than it would during school/uni classes.
Besides, Christmas will be over in 5 weeks, and not only will the players feel refreshed but in a good mood, and after 5 weeks without prolonged contact with LVP crewmembers, they will feel less of an urge to rebel.

Frankly, I too am biased against you. You're in my opinion the best argumentative person around on Las Venturas Playground, however, on other occasions you're a total ass and I'd love to ban you. I'm however more relaxed in ignoring the latter due to your ability to have proper discussions, plus the fact that I have to read huge messages if I ban you.

Back on-topic however, I'm willing to cut the ban back to new year on one strong condition: I want properly written letters from both Nerd as shoebox in which they apologize towards the LVP Staff and express that they have understood and accepted the reason of their ban. They also have to understand that future incidents around them will result in ban times of two weeks times the incident count (e.g. 2 weeks for the first incident, 4 for the second, 6 for the third etc.). Any grounded rumours about them not meaning it seriously will make this deal void.

Your turn,
Peter

[Maddolis]

Someone who isolates himself, plays nicely and reports everything that's out of order seems an easier candidate than someone who constantly spams adminchat with that single person who teleports away from his fight.

Thats the thing, if somebody isolates themself for a long time, then becomes mod/admin and finally gets confronted with all the arguments and all the bullshit in one huge wave, they won't be able to take it.
Anyway in my last post I wasn't refering specifically to fighters but basically non-emo mature people.
It's not important to the issue anymore so lets leave it at that.

plus the fact that I have to read huge messages if I ban you.

Lol, damn straight you will~ same goes for my friends.

Back on-topic however, I'm willing to cut the ban back to new year on one strong condition: I want properly written letters from both Nerd as shoebox in which they apologize towards the LVP Staff and express that they have understood and accepted the reason of their ban. They also have to understand that future incidents around them will result in ban times of two weeks times the incident count (e.g. 2 weeks for the first incident, 4 for the second, 6 for the third etc.). Any grounded rumours about them not meaning it seriously will make this deal void.

Sounds good, I'll make sure they hear this.