The Elite Forum
The Big Three Plus One => General Chat => Topic started by: HarryCoupe on November 27, 2018, 09:46:22 pm
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After today's events something needs to be changed in how the elite is run.
After 2 council members going rogue and making decisions pushed as "council majority" when some members were not contacted at all and others pushed to do things for them.
This decision is widely disagreed with by the majority of the community and has caused an uproar.
I will not discuss why this decision was made or who it effects but something needs to be changed in how the "council" is run.
There are one of two ways i see to remedy this which is to either:
A) Liquidate the "council" and allow all matters to go through community vote with admins who instigate the polls when issues arise and act on the community feedback.
B) Re-vote the "council" with new community decided trusted members who have the elites best interest in mind.
Either way something needs to be done on how this community is being handled and abused by certain users and other issues can be handled later.
*** NOT FOR MEMEING FOR DISCUSSION IF YOU WANT TO MEME GO TO DISCORD***
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put it in the fuckin bin
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remove the council
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bin the council
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKgBfL9sT7M
^ Put this man on the council
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rip council
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKgBfL9sT7M
^ Put this man on the council
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This decision is widely disagreed with by the majority of the community and has caused an uproar.
Based on the rules the Elite Council has posted to the rankings site, it looks like you're doing this almost correctly so far:
If public opinion of a council member becomes negative, discussion will be held in public forum to remove or replace members of the council. Likewise, when public opinion of a member of the community is favorable for addition, they shall be instated to the council.
It seems like you could try to have a public discussion about removal of a specific Council member to see if he should be removed from the list. Or a specific discussion about adding someone to the list. So far your thread is probably a little too general.
...if you're planning on sticking to the published rules, that is. If you're going for anarchy, then anything goes!
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Oh, side note while I'm here, in case someone from the Elite Council reads this topic:
All council decisions will be made public to the community here: Decision Log Thread
It looks like the Elite Council may have taken action on number 4 already. Do you normally post about such results in the Council Log thread?
I noticed there was some Elite Council activity a while ago but it seems like nothing was recorded in the Decision Log Thread.
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Thanks for the reply scott!
Im fine to have a community wide discussion on how to go forward from this cause as of right now if something is not done many members are considering abandoning the elite.
Which ever is best to go forward im fine but something needs to be acted on.
Multiple members were not contacted about this decision, one admin and member was asked to make a decision and put under pressure and the result was posted to r/speedrun with no statement
on here or to anyone within the elite community
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I truly deep down feel a council is not necessary for anything other than financial decisions - if we ever made a consistent revenue stream from ads/donations/merch, then yes - but otherwise a full community discussion and poll has always been my preferred way of operating for the majority of decisions. Disciplinary, decision-making, scheduling, rule changes, etc. Stuff like that.
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My opinion probably doesn't count for much, but I think I agree with Jimbo. This looks like it was handled very poorly, and I think a community vote on certain issues would be a good way to start at the very least.
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I'm going to agree with Jim. It has been shown that the council is not trustable for all decisions and does not always reflect the community opinion. When Luke came in and said he wasn't even consulted in the decision or aware of it this was made clear to me. I think community wide votes would be much more beneficial to the community.
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This was handled extremely poorly by several members of the established leadership of the Elite. This is unacceptable. I agree that changes in leadership need to be made. I do not have a suggestion as to how to do so, but if something is not changed, the community's trust in the leadership is broken if not gone entirely.
My only suggestion is that we not react to this situation too quickly. The community as a whole needs to be involved in this, and since many of our members are international, nothing should be done without at least a 24 hour grace period so the entirety of the community can be awake at some point during the decision making process.
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Scrap the council entirely.
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If any poll or decision is made it will be very public and posted to everyone with a given at least 24 if not 48 hours to allow max viewing by all members of the elite
I agree best case is the removal of the council and having admins act on behalf of the community and the outcome of their decisions that way everyone is involved in decisions not just the council.
Who these admins are is also a later decision to be made but the first step is deciding which path to take once everyone ha had a chance to view the issues at hand and respond.
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I think the best solution is a combination of both of these solutions. To handle the day-to-day needs of the elite and take care of things which don't require a community-wide vote or would otherwise be bordering on trivial, it would be nice to have a group of trustworthy people who we know care about the Elite and have a good track record in terms of not starting drama. At the same time, bigger decisions really should go to a community vote, assuming we can actually mobilize the community in an effective way. I think this is best evidenced by the response to the console reset proof policy idea that came up earlier this year. It was unpopular with the community and at that point was struck down.
What I can say for certain is that I'm ashamed to be a member of the Elite today. This entire situation has been handled extremely poorly and those involved should take a long hard look at what they've done to this community.
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I'm resigning as moderator of this board, it's not in my future plans at this point, thanks to everyone who kept it clean and made it easy on me
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For me, it makes no sense to have grav and karl, two of the only high ranking players and long term members that are completely disconnected from most community discussion and happenings (choosing to remove themselves from the discord etc.) be two of the key members making decisions on the community's behalf.
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What I can say for certain is that I'm ashamed to be a member of the Elite today. This entire situation has been handled extremely poorly and those involved should take a long hard look at what they've done to this community.
This especially. I think I speak for a huge percentage of the community who may or may not want to be vocal about it that I don't want to be associated with any of this disgusting garbage. I just want to be able to play Perfect Dark and Goldeneye fast, but this is not at all worth being a part of the image the community is giving off.
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Leadership of The Elite is at an all time low right now. Clearly the higher ups here deem the council and transparency with the community irrelevant as is. The council is very clearly going downhill and should be binned to prevent these actions happening again. Community wide decisions should be made by the community and not by a small group of members with some who's best quality is a great untied but has little to no care for the actual community.
Get rid of the council, have big decisions be decided by a community wide vote moderated by a couple admins who have just as much say in the vote as everyone else.
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I agree it is an awful day to be an eliter and am ashamed to be a part of this community as is.
If nothing is done toward this i don't speak for others but i will be requesting the removal of my times page and leaving the community and i know others hold this sentiment also.
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So,
Council made the decision a while back to ban CV from the rankings due to his character. While broadly, this looks like a rash and uneducated decision, it was in fact not. It was a thought-out process. Basic human moral code/ethics can dictate that at least three subjects: incest, cannibalism, and child exploitation, are of negative impact to society at large. What creates society are a culmination of communities. The-Elite.net, while internet-based in its communications, is a community.
The council makes majority decisions. We believed that CV created a negative, even reprehensible representation of image to The-Elite.net. His association to the community was discussed; it was a poor idea to allow someone so outspoken in the harmful subject of child exploitation to be given privileges of ranking to the competitive site, and to participate in the community as a whole. He was removed completely from the rankings, banned from the Discord, and these boards.
An unfortunate mishap also occurred here with this decision. The council, for an unknown reason (assumption of laziness or forgetfulness) failed to add this decision to the publicly-viewable decision-making log. This sparked a snowballing and very unfortunate set of circumstances, causing added confusion among The-Elite community, the speedrunning community, and the widely-involved internet as a whole. RWhiteGoose had been the most noticeably outspoken about CV. That was a circumstance. Many wordings and conversations about this individual were exchanged through direct messages and voice chatting. Goose has taken a lot of heat in the aftermath of CV's removal/ousting, simply for the fact that his opinions of him were most viewable by public eye. It is reprehensible and downright irresponsible of people to weigh his (or any) political views against such harmful a thing as child exploitation. This is what's called a strawman argument. The argument is that a person is representative of a community. If such persons are to be uncharacteristic of a community and go against what most regular people find to be foundationally unattractive to societal norms, a person can and will lose their right to be ranked. This is what happened.
What has recently transpired now is that the council has a majority decision on allowing CV back onto the rabks as a provisionary basis. Our misgivings of not properly informing the public of the original removal decision was also irresponsible. He can be ranked by the name and initials of CV. His account is frozen. He can submit his times to ranking mods and administrators to continue to be ranked.
What changes in the future is dependant on how this exaggerated dumpster fire of sorts is put out. Council is still a good fundamental idea, in my opinion, and I don't say this simply because I hold a spot on it. I like to think I'm very transparent when it comes to sharing my perspective, and I hope it can be appreciated among those who read what I have to say.
Cheers folks
EDIT: I'm not against community votes. I like the council as a body because of the esteem of knowledgeable persons, high-ranking players, those of large perspective in multiple areas, and those who've shown dedication of the community. I don't disagree that some changes could be made to the roster.
...but i will be requesting the removal of my times page...
The times page will stay. Read the proof policy!
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I agree it is an awful day to be an eliter and am ashamed to be a part of this community as is.
If nothing is done toward this i don't speak for others but i will be requesting the removal of my times page and leaving the community and i know others hold this sentiment also.
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Along with the aforementioned issues the main issues is he is just a bad community member, anyone who interacted with him no longer wanted to whether it was this or previous communities.
He is banned from multiple sites including reddit for the way he acts towards others and is a generally bad person to have in a community whether he holds the views he has or not.
The main issue as of right now as stated is how to deal with the community as the general uproar does NOT agree with this reinstatement and feels cheated by the elite leadership and something must be done about that.
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A reason for his reinstatement (on a provisional basis), is a play of fairness by us on the fact that we as the council screwed up by not informing people and being as transparent as we hope to be. People make mistakes. We're rectifying it.
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The times page will stay. Read the proof policy!
What about anonymizing?
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What about anonymizing?
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What about anonymizing?
This has been done many times in the past out of respect for individuals who wish to go by a different name.
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What about anonymizing?
This has been done many times in the past out of respect for individuals who wish to go by a different name.
Exactly!
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I don't mind if the council is removed and you guys want to do public votes on things. The original decision to ban [Banned User #7] wasn't a public vote and was done pretty quickly tbh. It would be really great to absolve specific members of responsibility with some of these matters because they are getting a lot of backlash for it.
Now that [Banned User #7] is back on the rankings feel free to settle the matter in whatever way you want. If that's a public vote cool, but at least it will be a community decision and definitely not a perceived personal vendetta (as in the case of Goose).
Also, a big fuck you to the people who think hanging out in a discord means you care more about this community. I've been here for almost 20 years and I've seen a lot of good community members come and go. I still run the game almost daily and have more reasons than almost all of you to care about the community or GE. You might not agree with my actions or behaviour but to say I don't care is one of the most moronic things I've heard.
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I appreciate your reply on reasoning and how you feel thank you Karl.
On the line of moving forward which do you think would be the best action from your perspective in terms of community leadership and decisions?
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tl;dr dinosaur post carry on
It's amusing to me that Goose got someone else kicked off for character in the-elite. He's definitely gotten people wanting him gone around here at least a few times himself in the past. (goose at least was a drama queen if you are unaware of the-elite history) I haven't been in discord at all lately so idk what's going on here so I'll just keep this simple--some of the shit several of the council members have said I've seen are lifetime ban worthy themselves.
Getting banned from reddit is not a good look I'll admit, there's a lot of shit allowed on reddit.
idk when you have a community of speedrunners on the internet you're gonna get a bunch of not totally right people and it's tough to draw the line as we also should be a welcoming community. (btw this community still has nothing on the kart 64 world on that wtf front).
There's also a difference between banning discord/ranks and all that jazz. It's annoying to basically have to do this on a case by case basis because outrage and divisiveness like this between the-elite and whatever the council is these days tends to happen. We also have a lot of people with a mentality "DO THIS NOW OR I'LL START CRYING LIKE A CHILD" and it takes time to get a hold of everyone in the council, get them informed as much as possible, then come to some kind of decision"
fwiw, my preference is not to kick times we think are legit off the ranks unless we have to.
For me, it makes no sense to have grav and karl, two of the only high ranking players and long term members that are completely disconnected from most community discussion and happenings (choosing to remove themselves from the discord etc.) be two of the key members making decisions on the community's behalf.
That was the criticism of some of the dinos on there previously. (it was a fair one, they just weren't around anymore at the time). Karl's playing about every night at least even if he's not in discord per se.
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For the council, people have stated their opinions of it prior to the official statement by Trouble but I still agree that it should be taken down or at least people within the council need to be removed. There have been people stating their disdain for certain higher ups and I feel this was just the straw that broke the camels back on their opinions of these individuals to bring it forward to others.
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After today's events something needs to be changed in how the elite is run.
After 2 council members going rogue and making decisions pushed as "council majority" when some members were not contacted at all and others pushed to do things for them.
Which 2 of 3 I immediately thought of was it this time?
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Council made the decision a while back to ban CV from the rankings due to his character.
A quick clarification: site administration ruled (not due to any council decision) that all of his identifying information would be removed from the site. The council decision was between leaving his timespage up with removed name/initials and removing him entirely. This vote was 7-1 (with 1 not responding) to remove him entirely. Also, I find it a bit misleading to say "because of his character". I believe a more thorough explanation might be in order, given the misunderstandings already present.
That being said, I think community votes would be a very good idea, given the underhandedness and quick, thoughtless, unsubstantiated actions demonstrated by the council today.
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I appreciate your reply on reasoning and how you feel thank you Karl.
On the line of moving forward which do you think would be the best action from your perspective in terms of community leadership and decisions?
I always felt that at the end of the day the community decides what should happen. While I'm on the council I will have a say but if people don't want that I'm fully OK with that. If there is a public vote and people don't want a council that's fine.
I don't necessarily even want to get too into what I think because I'd say most people don't care for it anyway. I'd hope not to become mixed up in future drama and just be relatively peaceful. That's not to say I don't care btw, because I care a lot, but it's just hurting me more than doing me any good.
In this particular instance though I felt it was my duty to wrong a right that was done in the past. Now you can move forward how you want but me and Goose will be absent. Our potential careers are either helped or damaged by the communities actions.
To be clear there were SIX total council members today who were ok with these actions being done, and things were done hastily because of tons of attention being brought to the elite on reddit atm. Again, never fear, you can publicly vote to do what you like now.
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Council made the decision a while back to ban CV from the rankings due to his character.
This vote was 7-1 (with 1 not responding) to remove him entirely.
Which poll. The [Banned User #7] banning poll is 4-4. The 7-1 was about what to do with removed persons, not about removing [Banned User #7] specifically.
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I don't mind if the council is removed and you guys want to do public votes on things. The original decision to ban [Banned User #7] wasn't a public vote and was done pretty quickly tbh. It would be really great to absolve specific members of responsibility with some of these matters because they are getting a lot of backlash for it.
Now that [Banned User #7] is back on the rankings feel free to settle the matter in whatever way you want. If that's a public vote cool, but at least it will be a community decision and definitely not a perceived personal vendetta (as in the case of Goose).
Also, a big fuck you to the people who think hanging out in a discord means you care more about this community. I've been here for almost 20 years and I've seen a lot of good community members come and go. I still run the game almost daily and have more reasons than almost all of you to care about the community or GE. You might not agree with my actions or behaviour but to say I don't care is one of the most moronic things I've heard.
I never said you didnt care or did not have a reason to care about the community, just that you are likely pretty out of touch with the majority opinion. In fact I think this was made evident through your efforts to unban CV, then make a public statement on reddit as the number one prioroty, doing this before communicating directly with more than a few other eliters. You seem to do your own thing and have your own community with your own stream/discord/etc. There’s no issue with that, and i appreciate your commitment to the game, but I just dont believe youre in the best position to represent a collective of individuals views when youre completely disconnected from the majority of the individuals who you are representing. Assuming this situation arose from perfectly genuine intentions, and had nothing to do with individual members of the commitee worrying about personal reputation, I think this is an explanation for the clearly troublesome behavior and decision making of the committee today.
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Council made the decision a while back to ban CV from the rankings due to his character.
This vote was 7-1 (with 1 not responding) to remove him entirely.
Which poll. The [Banned User #7] banning poll is 4-4. The 7-1 was about what to do with removed persons, not about removing [Banned User #7] specifically.
Yes, the 4-4 poll was not the impetus for him being removed nor did it have anything to do with the admin's decision to ban him, and occurred months before he was banned. I am referring to the poll on what to do with him once he was removed. The removal was not a decision by the council nor something the council has or had any say in once it happened.
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MW, I explained the "because of character" piece further on in my post.
For the now and future precedent, I'll create an official community and council thread for the outright ban of CV/Banned User #7/ [Banned User #7].
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I don't think this case should be a council decision. I strongly recommend a public community vote.
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On the character point i expanded after you wrote it's being pushed as due to his reddit history and political opinions when it is also to do with his conduct within this and other communities as he is just someone toxic to have participate in a community as show by multiple site bans and peoples opinion toward him in the-elite.
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Community-only poll was created.
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Outside opinion, I don't know the full details:
If the community did vote in favor of banning [Banned User #7] for the purposes of not wanting to be associated with someone who supported pedophilia, incest etc. but allowed some of the posts to be said by certain users in the discord server, what does that look like? It looks, to people outside of the community, like we're advocating in favor of some of things that are said in that server that others might not find stellar. By banning a user for certain controversial beliefs but leaving other users who post controversial beliefs, it leads outside users to begin to believe the administration supports said beliefs. Just an observation
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Outside opinion, I don't know the full details:
If the community did vote in favor of banning [Banned User #7] for the purposes of not wanting to be associated with someone who supported pedophilia, incest etc. but allowed some of the posts to be said by certain users in the discord server, what does that look like? It looks, to people outside of the community, like we're advocating in favor of some of things that are said in that server that others might not find stellar. By banning a user for certain controversial beliefs but leaving other users who post controversial beliefs, it leads outside users to begin to believe the administration supports said beliefs. Just an observation
> Weighing political views against the exploitation of children 🤔
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Literally had to create a throwaway because of how dumb this post is:
Basic human moral code/ethics can dictate that at least three subjects: incest, cannibalism, and child exploitation, are of negative impact to society at large. What creates society are a culmination of communities. The-Elite.net, while internet-based in its communications, is a community.
None of this nonsense you invented is relevant to an online ranking board and forum, regardless of how hard you try to crow bar it in. Nothing related to "cannibalism" has any effect on an online community.
The council makes majority decisions. We believed that CV created a negative, even reprehensible representation of image to The-Elite.net.
Posts a user makes on one site don't reflect in any way on a different site the user also posts on. This just isn't true. Nobody holds online websites responsible for the moral character of their largely anonymous members, as long as they don't post bad content on that site. Again, you've invented this idea of representation.
it was a poor idea to allow someone so outspoken in the harmful subject of child exploitation to be given privileges of ranking to the competitive site, and to participate in the community as a whole.
No it wasn't. It literally doesn't matter.
It is reprehensible and downright irresponsible of people to weigh his (or any) political views against such harmful a thing as child exploitation. This is what's called a strawman argument.
That's not what a straw man is. And screaming "child exploitation" as much as you can in a post doesn't make you right.
The argument is that a person is representative of a community.
It's not. Nobody sensible believes this. It's insane to even consider.
I could go on debunking the nonsense in your post, but instead think about this: It's the council's decision to go on a power trip and not mind their own business that was what really did the damage to this site. Your talk of "pedophilia" "child exploitation" and "the-elite.net" are now plastered all over reddit with tens of thousands of people watching. I wonder what the the-elite.net's search engine ranking is now for "pedophilia"? :thinking: concern
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> Weighing political views against the exploitation of children 🤔
A person posting opinions on the internet is not equivalent to actual "exploitation of children", regardless of how much you seem to want it to be. This is the classic "words = violence" rhetoric you hear from rabid sjw leftists who's real goal is to simply silence people they don't agree with.
Whether you like it or not, views on age of consent are sexuality in adolescents ARE valid political views, together with views about incest. Opinions on these issues vary radically depending on country, culture, and time. Even if you live in the West, laws on these topics will change if you drive 200 miles in any direction.
What really happened is that you were so offended by somebody else's political views that you decided to use your power to censor them wherever you could, even where not relevant, and then invent post-hoc rationalization about something to do with "community representation". Exactly like every other SJW hive mind does.
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i tell you if i read another "political view"...
also: Posts: 2
please go away
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i tell you if i read another "political view"...
also: Posts: 2
please go away
This. ^^
Also, creating an alt, whoever you are, is also despicable. Own up to your identity and share your disgusting views as a respresentative of yourself.
Oh wait, anon keyboard warrior syndrome... My condolences.
/Thread
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This. ^^
Also, creating an alt, whoever you are, is also despicable. Own up to your identity and share your disgusting views as a respresentative of yourself.
Oh wait, anon keyboard warrior syndrome... My condolences.
/Thread
Why should I? You've brazenly revealed yourself to be a Fascist. Anonymity was created to protect the world from people like you.
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You should learn about harmful words, and all words, before utilising them. Look up the definition of facism, then come back with a proper response, knowing how truly ignorant you sound.
You ought to contribute to the thread in a positive way instead of hurling baseless and laughable insults at others.
Facism isn't a joke. Don't treat it as such. Grow up and adopt some responsibility.
EDIT: No longer feeding this troll.
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I'm curious as to why some people keep framing this as [Banned User #7] being maligned simply for his opinions. I could give a shit less what opinions that weird little fucker wants to hold, or whether or not his times are even ranked. It's when he steps outside of himself and directly fucks with other people that I draw the line. I might think he's a scumfuck, but his opinions don't mean shit to me. It's how he treats the rest of the community, who has done nothing but put up with his stupid ass for farrrr too long. This isn't about politics or any of that shit, at least not for me. It's about one cancerous tumor that does nothing but stir shit up, and sit back to watch it implode. How hard is that for some people to understand?
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You should learn about harmful words, and all words, before utilising them. Look up the definition of facism, then come back with a proper response, knowing how truly ignorant you sound.
You ought to contribute to the thread in a positive way instead of hurling baseless and laughable insults at others.
Facism isn't a joke. Don't treat it as such. Grow up and adopt some responsibility.
EDIT: No longer feeding this troll.
You attempt to censor and oppress anyone with opposing views. You assert yourself as morally superior, despite not being able to defend any of your views when confronted. You scurry away and hide behind "post count" ad hominems.
You dislike anonimity and seem to wish to smear and mischaracterize people's views and assign guilt by association when they try to defend others from your attacks.
What are you if not a Fascist? Just a coward?
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Alec, thanks for explaining what's going on in post #21. The first 20 posts didn't give me any idea about what all the fuzz is about. 20 fucking non-informative posts.
PSA: Please do not assume that everybody is up to date with the latest Discord gossip when making a thread. Especially under such groundshaking circumstances.
Counselors going rogue sounds really bad and should be prevented. In general I am pro-council though, mostly because I remember public discussions and votes from the pre-council days where just too many guys chimed in on technical matters who didn't play GE or PD in more than 5 years or were just weird in order ways.
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Alec, thanks for explaining what's going on in post #21. The first 20 posts didn't give me any idea about what all the fuzz is about.
PSA: Please do not assume that everybody is up to date with the latest Discord gossip when making a thread.
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tl;dr dinosaur post carry on
It's amusing to me that Goose got someone else kicked off for character in the-elite. He's definitely gotten people wanting him gone around here at least a few times himself in the past. (goose at least was a drama queen if you are unaware of the-elite history) I haven't been in discord at all lately so idk what's going on here so I'll just keep this simple--some of the shit several of the council members have said I've seen are lifetime ban worthy themselves.
Goose really hasn't changed over the entire time he's been here. It's the same old shit, just maybe worded differently because he's a decade older. It's also amusing to me that he's apparently been banned from AGDQ and posts a twitter apology saying he'll change, when he's about the last person who probably would.
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I'm no fan of the council but I can't pretend to have any say in what goes on around here.
Had some time to read up on everything. Posted elsewhere. Seen this before. Been on many sides. It's annoying. It sucks. I think updated conduct rules are in order....or you know, just ban the troublemakers from discord/forums, at least until things calm down. Censorship, yeah, no, just like chill out. I'm interested in another 30 years of the-elite. Just, uh, act like adults? Please? Directed at people slinging insults and words.
Anyways I'm playing an RPG right now so I'm gonna be on my way.
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I agree it is an awful day to be an eliter and am ashamed to be a part of this community as is.
If nothing is done toward this i don't speak for others but i will be requesting the removal of my times page and leaving the community and i know others hold this sentiment also.
don't do it, you can anonymize your profile mate
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Alec, thanks for explaining what's going on in post #21. The first 20 posts didn't give me any idea about what all the fuzz is about. 20 fucking non-informative posts.
PSA: Please do not assume that everybody is up to date with the latest Discord gossip when making a thread. Especially under such groundshaking circumstances.
Counselors going rogue sounds really bad and should be prevented. In general I am pro-council though, mostly because I remember public discussions and votes from the pre-council days where just too many guys chimed in on technical matters who didn't play GE or PD in more than 5 years or were just weird in order ways.
I agree wholeheartedly. I read through three threads and 100+ posts before even having an inkling about what this [banned user #7] mumbo was all about. And I'm still not sure I understand everything.
Polling the community is great for input, but at the end of the day there needs to be people to make a decision. Majority decisions aren't good, particularly when there isn't even consideration of a quorum, just "whoever happened to vote". However much Goose and other despised the previous council for being disconnected, they still maintained some level of sanity to the constant cries for change. The current (or at least as of last month) council had both strong and weak aspects but better than nothing.
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Who is actually left on the "council" as of right now?
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Who is actually left on the "council" as of right now?
https://rankings.the-elite.net/proof
The current members of The Elite Council are:
Luke Szklarz
Alec "Troubleclef" McDonald
Daniel "Wodahs" Coelho
Bryan "Boss" Bosshardt
Kyle "Flicker" Wiebenga
As far as I can tell, this page has been kept up to date within hours of each recent resignation or booting-out. Dedicated site members mw and Huzi have been staying on top of things! Nice job guys.
I happen to know that one of the removed names still has the "The Council" role on the forums, though.
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I'm actually fine with that council lineup, for the most part.
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Extremely disappointing times for the community right now...
This current political climate of hostility has gotten out of hand.
Only in this generation would rational opinions get you called a "fascist".....
When we reach the point where we can't play 20 year old video games fast anymore without getting heated and splitting the community based on political beliefs, it might be time to step back and reassess what's going on here.
With BU#7
It seems like we're going to have to decide if we care more about people's feelings, or the integrity of the rankings.
If we decide that we don't want somebodys opinions and morals to be reflective of ours as a community, wouldn't it be enough just to ban said user from Discord/Forums? Make a public statement disavowing them if necessary?
A very slippery slope, and a community where you can be purged for having the "wrong opinions" isn't one I feel very comfortable putting hundreds of hours of time into.
If you haven't cheated, your times should stay up.
I'm here to compete, not looking for a safe space.
Seems to me that we need either
A) at least a bi-annual election for ALL council members, limited to say.. 5 spots?
B) Community driven polls requiring 60%+ support of all decisions and the disbandment of the council.
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It’s maybe fair to say that it’s unbelivable that the discord messages going around the internet were allowed on here. Whether or not it was the elites most famous speedrunner.
The elite needs to be more careful with how it acts on public forums in general. Ive seen people posting nudes of their one night stands in twich chats. There are discord messages going around from other eliters some very well known that are quite offensive too
It’s really serious. If all this went mainstream you would end up losing your entire community and it’s website.
All that kind of stuff you need to clean out ASAP. Even if it means removing people from
The elite
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Why are you vaguely condemning us all for the actions of a couple? Does it need to be stated again that the bad discussions floating around were said in either 1. The politics channel of the elite discord which almost everyone had muted or 2. Goose's own discord which most of us didn't use or regularly check either. Most people went into it and left within a minute. It doesn't take long to realize people who you don't agree with are posting things of opinions you don't share. And it doesn't take an awful disgusting convo to get that idea either. I will not let myself or most others take responsibility for this mess. With everything coming to light no one is ignoring what was said, and everyone is condemning it for the most part. Judge us on our actions now, judging us on our actions before this mess is just being a keyboard warrior. It is NOT fair to say these discord messages were allowed on here, actions are being taken to fix the situation. Sorry that discord banned goose entirely, so the elite wasn't able to ban him individually, thus proving to you "we don't allow it" but it being so bad discord banned him altogether should just help further point us in our direction as a site.
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You'll probably recognize him from the Steven Z topic, just completely against the entire community over that whole spat and especially against Goose. Then after this whole spat theres blood in the water and has the perfect opportunity to hit all of you guys as a whole. It isn't right, the vast majority did nothing wrong, are against it, and trying to move forward
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everyone is condemning it for the most part
Yeah, everyone except the person in charge of the moderation team on the forums and the rankings, who hasn't posted a single peep on here to that effect.
Is Goose banned from the forums? No? His account seems to be active still. Is he welcome back? Can he still post records?
I feel like there should be some sort of statement so that 1. everyone knows what happened, and 2. everyone knows what the situation is. People all over the forum are stumbling into this and have nowhere to see what is going on.
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SZ?
Are you on that!
Did you see what was posted on that discord! The elite let that stuff be said for 18 months without doing anything.
More than that no discussion has been allowed. It had to be discussed on Reddit, which is far worse
Do any of you not think about the non white or Jewish people who uses this site might think about the silence on this? They’ve got seriously offensive comments from at least 2 of your most respected runners
Thai isn’t a vendetta. I left this site happily and only back because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I’m not the only one.
I think it’s safe to say past me made the right choice. God help all of you. I doubt this is over.
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SZ?
Are you on that!
Did you see what was posted on that discord! The elite let that stuff be said for 18 months without doing anything.
More than that no discussion has been allowed. It had to be discussed on Reddit, which is far worse
Do any of you not think about the non white or Jewish people who uses this site might think about the silence on this? They’ve got seriously offensive comments from at least 2 of your most respected runners
Thai isn’t a vendetta. I left this site happily and only back because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I’m not the only one.
I think it’s safe to say past me made the right choice. God help all of you. I doubt this is over.
Thank you, next
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I've been lurking The-Elite for many years now as it is by far my favourite speedrun community. I'm a bit late to the party because I pretty much never browse the General Chat forum, I only ended up here on this occasion due to recent drama which was subtly referenced in the Goldeneye forum.
I am astounded at the decision to remove BU7 records from the rankings. I agree with trying to erase The-Elite's connection with that person, but it is insane their records are not preserved at least anonymously. The-Elite has been going strong for 20 years, it could easily continue for another 10 years. 10 years from now no one is going to give any thought to who BU7 was or what they stood for, but as a result of this recent decision the provenance of the rankings will remain forever tainted, and for what? Because one lone participant had some highly disagreeable views unrelated to speedrunning?
With the amount of time, care, and dedication that have gone into maintaining the rankings since inception, I consider them to be a holy relic of speedrunning as a whole, having originated when speedrunning of any video game was first taking root. At some point in the far future Goldeneye speedrunning will eventually die, it is sad to think there will eventually be a final occurrence of an untied being set, but it will happen. Even though Goldeneye speedrunning will inevitably come to an end, the rankings will remain forever. One day when I'm an old man I hope I'll still be able to lookup the rankings and see where things stood, rewatch some of the historic runs, and relive how great it was to be a part of the ride as it unfolded.
Think of the many deliberations which have occurred over the decades where maintaining the integrity of the rankings was held to be paramount. Up until now I was highly impressed with how The-Elite handled itself, but the sanctity of the rankings has now been thrown away in favor of public relations. Public opinion of The-Elite in this matter will fade into obscurity in no time at all compared to the legacy of the rankings. This is a disservice not only to the people who put a lot of effort into administering The-Elite and submitting times, but to all gaming enthusiasts.
Think of the precedent this sets if there were to ever be other community members deemed to be too unsavory to be associated with The-Elite. Removing legitimate times from the rankings should be avoided for times of any significance, but especially for world records.
After some more time has passed and emotions have settled, I hope the community will reflect upon this decision.
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Perhaps you need this to blow up in your face for you all to realise how serious this all is. This isn’t one guy dropping the n bomb. This was discussing the Jewish question and racial mixing ffs
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Here is what Spagooda had to say about the matter, if you don't think we realize this is serious then i don't know what to tell you. For anyone willing to give us any bit of a chance this should help clear things up. Some just want to watch the world burn, other's can maybe stay patient and have this "blow up in our faces" if it isn't dealt with months from now, not tomorrow. Nothing happens overnight.
Posted byu/Spagooda
The-Elite7 days ago
A Message from a Member of The-Elite.Net
Discussion
(Disclaimer: The below are my own personal opinions and, while staying as representative of community opinion as possible, my views do not constitute any sort of "official" stance of anything but The-Elite Discord server.)
Hi /r/speedrun,
There has been a large amount of discussion surrounding the offensive comments made by certain members of The-Elite (T-E), as well as decisions made that affect the GoldenEye rankings. It isn't my intention to talk about the rankings situation. I do want to talk about the chat log screen captures taken from T-E Discord server, how it has affected us as a community, how it isn't representative of us as a community, the change I want to see going forward, and the people who can make that change happen.
For context, I am the current owner of T-E Discord server. I created it in Jan 2016 after proposing it in the forums. At that point, I had been a member of the community for less than a year. The server was a success, bringing together a cliquey and fragmented community that had massively grown during what we call the "Twitch era." Discord was a true social gathering spot that had not existed since the forums were highly active. It was (and is) an absolute blessing for sharing speedrunning knowledge, discussion, and building camaraderie. Unfortunately, being in such tight quarters with individuals also exposes you to their less favorable sides. Much of this discussion occurred in our #news-and-politics channel which was created to filter discussion around the 2016 Presidential election away from the majority of members who had no interest in it. Without getting too political, the channel evolved into something of a haven for right wing ideology while being ignored by all but a handful of members.
While not all of the chat logs that have been passed around are from T-E Discord server, some of them are. I take responsibility for allowing those discussions to take place on the server. I'm absolutely not going to make excuses for the members involved in those comments nor for myself and the moderation team for not nipping it in the bud. Through inaction, I allowed the development of an environment where hateful and hurtful ideals were espoused and inevitably adopted by more impressionable community members that looked up to the instigators, and I sincerely regret it. Without intervention, these conversations did stop taking place in the server and, from what I can gather, moved on to other servers.
I (and T-E Discord server) absolutely and unequivocally oppose any hate speech and bigotry, including attempts at masquerading as "intellectual discussion," "telling it like it is," and "memeing." Moving forward, any of those will not be tolerated in T-E Discord, nor will personal attacks or uncivil conversation that devolves into mean spirited mudslinging. This is not a line I anticipate being crossed very often, as the members who participated in these discussions have already left the server on their own accord or have been banned.
If there is a single clear message that I want to convey, it's that the chat logs that have been passed around with an irresponsible narrative are NOT representative of T-E at large, and the vast majority of the community are vehemently opposed to any anti-semitic, anti-equality, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. It makes me both sad and angry that the perception of the community and people that I've grown to love is that "half of them are Nazis" and other similar comments. So many people have this stigma attached through no fault of their own other than they enjoy speedrunning GoldenEye and Perfect Dark competitively. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the community to change that perception that we are come cult of personality subservient to a single member. So many people want nothing more than this all to go away so we can get back to r-leans and bot zooms, but we Eliters have to work together to bring to light The REAL Elite.
It is unfortunate that the most public and well-known community member is, at a minimum, sympathetic to these views. I offer no defense for him, as there is none to be had. What I CAN offer is a sampling of content that SHOULD be what people think of when they think of The Elite:
The Kapap series is a love letter to the community by our own dsxchallenger, comprised of never-before-posted times in both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark set to great music and interspersed with funny bits and inside jokes.
2015: A GoldenEye Odyssey is another film by dsx, looking in to the life of 3rd-ranked GoldenEye player Wodahs-Reklaw following his Facility Agent 0:43 world record.
Eliter Flechr is actively working on a full series of videos explaining how to get in to speedrunning GoldenEye, including the “meta” of T-E rankings.
We held MOAMathon last month to raise money to get some of our Eliters from out of country to our meet around AGDQ 2019. By all accounts, it was a ton of fun and we are looking forward to putting on more joint community content in the future. You can find the vods on dsx’s channel. To highlight a run, here’s our own MW “speedrunning” Jeopardy with help from the chat.
Irie [https://www.twitch.tv/iriebutler] is a relatively new Eliter who quickly shot in to the top 20 for GoldenEye and has been streaming the whole way. He’s almost always the first one to offer help to new players, and has an extremely positive attitude through all of the rage-inducing moments in these games.
Luke [https://www.twitch.tv/homieonice] is our current GoldenEye champion and very swell mate. Please drop in his stream and bring up Stephen’s Sausage Roll, his favorite game, if you get a chance.
KevinDDR [https://www.twitch.tv/kevinddr] of Tetris fame has recently started breaking Perfect Dark wide open, achieving world records at an amazing pace.
Clemens [https://www.twitch.tv/davidclemensn] is a long-time top player who has been very active recently in both games.
After all of this, I urge you to take a second look at our community and see what wonderfully kind, supportive, intelligent, and empathetic members we have. I am working to, at a minimum, make our Discord server an inviting and helpful place for existing and prospective Eliters.
Thank you,
Spagooda (John)
TL;DR; The-Elite is not represented by its most public members. We are upset at how people perceive us as a result of actions by the minority, and are actively fixing that. Watch some good T-E content above.
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everyone is condemning it for the most part
Yeah, everyone except the person in charge of the moderation team on the forums and the rankings, who hasn't posted a single peep on here to that effect.
Is Goose banned from the forums? No? His account seems to be active still. Is he welcome back? Can he still post records?
I feel like there should be some sort of statement so that 1. everyone knows what happened, and 2. everyone knows what the situation is. People all over the forum are stumbling into this and have nowhere to see what is going on.
I second this.
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I plan on helping as much as I can in addressing many of these issues soon.
Currently I plan on moving forward with some council changes for transparency/ clarity sake and will work with Jimbo (who is our forums administrator) on what to do here.
These things take time I just started a new job and I wanted to make sure everyone is on the same page, etc.
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The reason the perception is bad is because a quarter to a third or so of the newest group of eliters are either full blown gravitrons or hover on the fringes and they are typically not quiet about it.
It's embarrassing because a real man wouldn't give a shit. Trans? who gives a ****. How many men a woman has slept with? Only an insecure little boy gives a ****. Complaining about someone seeking attention when that's literally your personality? GTFO.
You don't have to agree with me politically (the left hates me too btw so that's not an excuse for THAT shit) but the path you are following currently--at the very minimum you'll all have major health issues by 40.
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It's embarrassing because a real man wouldn't give a shit. Trans? who gives a ****. How many men a woman has slept with? Only an insecure little boy gives a ****. Complaining about someone seeking attention when that's literally your personality? GTFO.
Amen
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It's embarrassing because a real man wouldn't give a shit. Trans? who gives a ****. How many men a woman has slept with? Only an insecure little boy gives a ****. Complaining about someone seeking attention when that's literally your personality? GTFO.
Overcompensating
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How many of you have actually seen all of the discord messages in question. I won’t
Link them out respect but you can find them on r/speedrun
This was a guy who was discussing hiding his real views, taking over r/speedrun, forming an all white nation and going to war with non whites. All under the elites eye. They implicate a few other pretty popular members too
A problem is that many people like me didn’t see this when it happened, and because you’ve kept it quiet, no one really knows what your stance is on this, or the seriousnesss of the stuff in your discord.
I found this out from the Spagooda Reddit post, who along with jimbo and Karl I thought did quite a good
Job Of being transparent and honest and helped a lot. But given that this apparently started with you banning some other speedrunner for dodgy views on pornography, which was probably a good call, you’re
Going to have to consider doing the same here.
It doesn’t have to be forever. If things get better they can always come back, and maybe should. But views
Like that don’t just flip in 6 months
This place losing all credibility or worse going under would be terrible. Most of its runners and users are good people. Moreover it’s a site with a fascinating cross section of speed running history. You need to realise though how people currently see this site, and by extension it’s runners, whether it’s fair or not.
You at least need to be transparent about this. Reacting angrily to criticism is not
Helping you. I genuinely hope the site can make a clean break from this
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How many of you have actually seen all of the discord messages in question.
I don't really use Discord much and if I do, I'm certainly not visiting every little corner to see what's going on there. I do trust that someone is in charge and keeping track of things, though. At least I can somewhat understand that program, unlike the mystery that is Reddit.
I found this out from the Spagooda Reddit post, who along with jimbo and Karl I thought did quite a good
Job Of being transparent and honest and helped a lot
That's cool, but Reddit isn't an official place to communicate things about our rankings site, wider community, or forum.
Neither is Discord.
Notice how the proof call posts are on the forum, not a "pinned item" on Discord? Or how the Elite Council Decision Log topic is on the forum? If someone makes an official statement, it is easily visible to the entire community as a specific topic, not a message lost in the sea of the day's Discord activity.
All I want to see is a post:
1. On the forum
2. By someone in charge
3. Clarifying what the official stance is regarding any of these members
It doesn't have to be a novel, more like a fill in the blank. Something like this:
Topic: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Official response to recent information about [names go here]
Hi everyone, this is the forum administrator.
Recently we found out that some community members had inappropriate behavior within our Discord server and elsewhere on the internet. The following decisions have been made regarding these users:
[User 1] is banned from the [community, rankings, discord, forum, twitch, whatever] for [how long]
[User 2] has his rankings account frozen and cannot post on the forums for [duration]
[User 3] is banned from [Discord] for [duration] but can still participate on the forums and will be carefully evaluated.
That's it! That's all we need to see.
I have been personally bullied and targeted by at least one of these individuals for 10 years on the forums, Twitch, and Discord. I just wish someone would say what the result of this is.
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It's embarrassing because a real man wouldn't give a shit. Trans? who gives a ****. How many men a woman has slept with? Only an insecure little boy gives a ****. Complaining about someone seeking attention when that's literally your personality? GTFO.
Overcompensating
Overcompensating for what?
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The public opinion of the site continues to deteriorate due to the delayed action taken on the matter of where to go from here, so I figured I'd chime in my 2 cents in the hopes that it encourages discussion amongst the council.
I'll be the first to say that I think the only way forward to both make the community a more inclusive place (and a place that newer members might feel welcome in, even though I already think that the actual community of active players vs. Discord/forum non-players/trolls/hangers-on is generally quite inclusive and welcoming to eager new players) is to at a very minimum ban Goose from the forums/Discord and either freeze times page or remove times for an indefinite period of time; essentially permanently unless the council/administration feels that an extraordinary situation (a long term trend of changed behavior, etc) merits a reversal of the decision. Ultimately there is no way around the fact that Goose has come very close to advocating violence against multiple groups of people, and this would never be accepted whatsoever in any of the gaming communities that I have participated in (which admittedly make strong efforts to be inclusive and are usually much better for it). In all the time I have spent gaming, I have never had a more negative reaction when I tell people what games I play than when I mention Goldeneye. The reason for this has every time (with the exception of one time when someone made fun of lookdown :rolleyes:) been the involvement and promotion of Goose despite the many hateful things he has spewed on all forms of media over the years. This is not a guess on my part, this is literally people telling me this to my face.
Recently, the community has decided that it cares enough about the values it promotes (either implicitly or directly) to remove a user completely from the ranks and banish them permanently from the site. The reasons stated were that the user was promoting abhorrent/harmful ideas, harassing admins/users, and making the community a place that new players would not want to join or be associated with. I doubt anyone could look me in the eye and tell me that Goose has not done all three of these things repeatedly over many years even recently. Whether or not you personally think the severity of Goose's offenses are equivalent to the aforementioned banned user, it is obviously clear that to a very significant extent he has been involved in all three of these activities with no outwardly visible sign of stopping (backed up by the fact that some of his fans actually responded to his apology with the equivalent of "wtf don't apologize you cuck, what happened to Stay True?"). Let's not turn this into a pissing contest of what ideas being promoted are the most egregious; I think we can all hopefully agree that many (if not most or all) of the abhorrent/hateful comments made in the-elite's public official Discord (as well as Goose's at the time public Discord) have definitely crossed below what I would hope is the minimum bar of acceptability and would not be tolerated in any kind of remotely socially conscious community. If enough people are telling us that there is a problem, then there is a problem whether or not some users like it. This problem will continue to exist and threaten both the site and its users as long as hateful ideas/comments are not only allowed to flourish in the community but then also indirectly promoted through promotion of the users that espouse/make them.
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As a temporary move, wodahs and I agreed to change the identity on the ranks and remove any contact information from Goose's profile.
Typing up walls of text are a huge waste of time imo, I'm encouraging anyone who's interested to participate in a voice chat on discord sometime this weekend to really hammer out the final actions to take on this matter.
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Bangladesh?
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As a temporary move, wodahs and I agreed to change the identity on the ranks and remove any contact information from Goose's profile.
Typing up walls of text are a huge waste of time imo, I'm encouraging anyone who's interested to participate in a voice chat on discord sometime this weekend to really hammer out the final actions to take on this matter.
Reprehensible imo. Should have been a council or wider discussion.
NOT FOR TWO PEOPLE TO DECIDE!!! I tried to get Jim to call me because I have a great solution.
Rip that idea I guess
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Reprehensible imo. Should have been a council or wider discussion.
NOT FOR TWO PEOPLE TO DECIDE!!! I tried to get Jim to call me because I have a great solution.
I fucked up, I thought we were talking about the forums (which Jim was moderator for), and even then I would have preferred a council vote before doing anything.
As soon as I realized what he actually did (rename on the ranks) I told Jim to roll back the change stating that it should be something the Council decides and we are in the process of addressing that issue atm.
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I fucked up, I thought we were talking about the forums (which Jim was moderator for), and even then I would have preferred a council vote before doing anything.
As soon as I realized what he actually did I told Jim to roll back the change stating that it should be something the Council decides.
Ryan's email needs to be reinstated and name needs tobbe relinked/restored ASAP, then we can all decide how this changes or not
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It's embarrassing because a real man wouldn't give a shit. Trans? who gives a ****. How many men a woman has slept with? Only an insecure little boy gives a ****. Complaining about someone seeking attention when that's literally your personality? GTFO.
Overcompensating
Overcompensating for what?
Don't wish to de-rail, but there is plenty of extremism in what Goose and others have posted, which ought to be the focus of the criticism, the points wheat focussed on are much more contentious really
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oh certainly. you could write essays going over all the most extreme stuff, i was just quoting a sentence which particularly resonated with me.