New crew moderation methods.

[Peter]

You suddenly told me that crew are human and hence biased, but then told me to compare a player's behavior to some mathematical formula (mathematics being unbiased...)
Okay...

Oh no, not at all. The crew, as any other person, are biased. Even you are, strongly I'd say in the case of HC4L. Your reply has been the worst I've seen from you in a long time, which disappoints me. The results of actions taken by the crew can be seen as a mathematical formula, not the actions itself. The why is what matters here -- why does a player break the rules, why does an admin act more strongly when a HC4L player breaks the rule and why do we have rules at all. What is the point in having rules if no one follows them? Lately there has been a lot more rule-breaking than ever before, there is no one who can deny that. The responses are incremental; first time it's a three day ban, the second time it's longer. This is unlike some of the normal juristical situations: you get jailed five years for the first murder you commit, but often five years for the second one as well. This principle does not work in a community like ours, seeing we don't put people in jail for years, no, a few minutes at most. It's applied everywhere: if someone talks in a non-English language, they'll get muted for two minutes. If they do it again after that, it's three minutes, etcetera.

That's where you're wrong, there've been plenty of people with attitudes equal or worse than that of the "worst" HC4L. In the last 3 years of LVP, only in the last year have the crew been as tight as they are, which pisses more people off and causes more hatred.
I'm sure you've seen videos on the internet or stories of Police brutality, especially in New York, or perhaps Los Angeles. The citizens don't have a very good opinion of the police there, and hence don't feel the need to abide by the rules they enforce, and there is a higher crime rate. Policing can be split into two major areas- Community based, and action based (community be helping out citizens, action be making more arrests and such). Not only is the LVP crew 99% action based, but they are also acting more like NYPD or LAPD than more unbiased police forces.
I never said the crew needs to be perfectly unbiased- but at least a good 90% unbiased.
I've been temp-modded a few times, and when I was I was flamed by people who have flamed me probably more than some crewmembers have been flamed all together ingame- but I didn't feel the need to make any kicks or bans (I didn't even make any mutes apart from one occasion- not that I'm saying you shouldn't mute people).

You seem to be getting the wrong point from my posts here- I'm not debating solely how the LVP crew treats HC4L, but how they treat the players in general. I don't see why if a random joins the server and speaks one line of caps they should get a kick- a warning or a mute should do fine.

As you did last time, and the times before that as well, you fail to give concrete evidence to backup your statement. Which other person commits actions like HC4L does? Tell me just one name except for the two which I already named, please. Which other person gets banned over and over again for doing the same? Which other person goes to all other LVP related services afterwards to make sure they get banned there as well? Who gets backed up by a clan of similar people who feel a strong need to break the rules if one of their leaders does? Believe me, there are no other players like that on LVP. In that way HC4L is unique, which is exactly what this is about.

The bottom line is, as I pointed out a number of times before, swearing, flaming, discrimination, racism and the like is not allowed on Las Venturas Playground as defined by her rules. On what possible grounds can you justify a person deliberately breaking these rules? People with more than 300 hours of in-game time, like shoebox and Nerd, Zezima, you and quite some others, certainly know the rules. Yet you break them. How would it be fair to not act against that? You don't go around on the streets, vandalizing the whole city before you get arrested, and tell the officer he shouldn't moan! The rules which are in place are final for that precise moment. They can be discussed for the future, please, create some discussion about a rule you don't like and we'll listen, but that does not count until the very rule has either been changed or removed.

Las Venturas Playground might go more community based, following an idea started by Corleone. That won't influence the rules a lot however, the rules are there to be followed, not to be broken. This is an international community with thousands of people around from ages between eight and seventy two, boys, girls, men and women, people who are right-wing extremist as well as communists. People from countries where talking about drugs and sex is the most normal thing in the world, people from countries whose eyes constantly get closed by the censorship as applied by their governments. People with white skins, with black skins, red, yellow and everything in between. These factors make it extremely hard to create a set of rules that will keep everyone happy. Where Dutch people think it's ok to swear with diseases millions of people die from every day, American people use the word nigger to describe their "homies" and relatives. As you might expect however, people from other parts of the world often feel insulted by the latter. We cannot allow one of these things and deny the other, that's simply impossible and unfair. We have to find compromises, to keep everyone as happy as we possibly can. That is the very difference between us and the local, or even national police departments.

Glad you admit the crew isn't innocent- admitting it is the first step towards fixing it Constantly you say on irc that you don't have the power to fix a bad situation, but seriously, you run the server, you own it and you have more power than any of the other admins- you just let a lot of the management walk over you far too easily. If Deaken bans Terror, you're allowed to unban him as you are the owner and founder of the server (based on something you said yesterday on irc).

Death Threats? When I cop death threats over the internet they give me a good chuckle- certainly nothing to slit my wrists about. If the admins can't handle death threats over the internet then there's plenty of Mario games still selling well.

I'd like this thread to develop further than a simple "LVP crew vs HC4L gang" court case, because I know plenty of people who have strong opinions and strong points but are perhaps weary to post their point of views as they may be biased against ingame. If anyone wants something posted anonymously, contact me on irc or pm here and I'll post it for you.

It is impossible for the crew to be innocent, and in fact, that's not what we want. When I give a player temporary moderating rights, I usually say I'd like them to play around with hydra's and hunters a bit after they feel they've done enough. This simply is because of the exact reasons you fail to reply to: the crew gets a huge amount of complaints every day. There always are people crying because they disagree with actions taken by them, there always are people swearing and sometimes even whole communities which target a single person. If anyone should know about that, you very well know it's me. In my time as a San Andreas: Multiplayer developer a large part of the community, mainly the gangs, hated me. NB frequently posted movies about me, I got at least five messages a day filled with insults and there wasn't a lot I could do right. One time someone even took the time to write a letter telling how he was going to kill me, signed with blood and posted using regular mail, not to mention the Dutch people who would "come by" and physically punch me in the face for actions I did. Trust me, it absolutely is not funny to get that kind of crap over you, but someone has to do it, and in this case it is the Las Venturas Playground Staff.

Nothing related to this goes as extreme as that did, luckily, but the point is that it's quite a good feeling to be able to go in-game and blow players away with the hydra. Purely to take of some of the pressure all the moaning has put on to you. I truly believe both administrators as moderators should be allowed to do this. You have no idea of the pressure that's on some of the LVP Crew: most of them are young and not all are equally experienced, nevertheless, they got the chance because of their behavior. Some crewmembers are afraid to ban certain people, some don't even want to talk about them. That is the point where we are right now, and that must stop, immediately. In both my opinion as in the opinion of the LVP Management, Nerd and shoebox were two major causes of the problems which are at hand right now, and were therefore denied total access to any of the services LVP offers. When rests comes back and people actually follow the rules again, the strictness can be lowered, however, there evidently is no place for that now.

With people like you around, making fun of everything we say, that's a hard job to do. There are people who call LVP corrupted on any action taken, people who make references between the LVP Crew and high-ranked people in the nazi-era end people who simply go around and spread crap rumors. People who do nothing else around Las Venturas Playground than complain about everything, people who disobey the rules time upon time and cry each time they get banned. Is it such a suprise we don't want them in the community anymore? They serve no purpose, nor add value to the community as a whole.

Btw don't give me "crew members dont do it for personal gain," because a good deal of them have.

I'm not even going to bother giving a detailed response to that, in every community there are people who simply do it because of the rights they'll get. There are administrators who pursued the position because of that, in fact, I'm positive there are some in the crew right now. On the other hand, the majority of the crew members are around to help improve the server they like to play on.

Thank you,
Peter