TFM etc...

[Gryzor]

Hello guys,


Quite a few of you have asked me what is going on with TFM and Markus. Also, thanks to those who alerted me to what they've been saying around the web about us.


I didn't want to address this publicly, hoping it'd just go away, but since you keep asking -and since accusations are being made against the wiki and me personally elsewhere- I thought I'd write something short.


Of course I don't need to reiterate the problems we've had with TFM for years now. It was not the first time he got banned either, and each time that happened he'd come back, be a model citizen and then slowly but surely start abusing people.


The funny -and different- thing this time was that after I imposed a temporary ban, TFM went on to subscribe me (or rather, attempt to) to gay-related mailing lists and further, he tried to (clumsily) hack into my account here on the forum. While I can't prove the first, he was stupid enough to attempt the latter from his university IP address. So that's that with TFM.


Then Markus decided to leave. Whatever, his decision. He was always of the opinion I'm too hard on TFM, I think, and he's entitled to it. He requested for his account to be deleted, but we don't do that - no meaning to it. he was the one who locked his own thread, not me. And I was the one who moved his thread (not deleted it as he publicly claimed) because I didn't particularly care for his insinuations in it. If he wants to pack up and leave, so be it, if he doesn't want to talk about it then again fine, but don't bait and jump ship.


So... yeah, that's about it, not much has gone on. Let's move on, hopefully in a better atmosphere than ever before. Just be kind to each other. Thanks.

[Shaun M. Neary]

While I'll miss Markus, A little of TFM would go a long way with me. Thankfully, he didn't post much in the games section of the forum, so I didn't have to deal with his muppetry most of the time, but yeah, he's been a headache on this forum for quite some time, would be a complete dick to people on the forum, and then throw his toys out of the pram whenever he was called on it.


But when you start abusing an admin outside of the forum, then fuck that. Shouldn't be tolerated. Good riddance to bad rubbish.


You probably don't need me to tell you twice, but keep an eye on his IP addresses and ISP's from his location on new accounts in case he tries to re-sign and masquerade as someone else. It's common on forums. 

[Gryzor]

then throw his toys out of the pram whenever he was called on it.

Yup, that. Never quite understood that aspect. Always bothered the hell out of me but I tried to be as lenient as possible, even though people always complained about that.

But when you start abusing an admin outside of the forum, then fuck that. Shouldn't be tolerated. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Precisely. It's ironic that it was what he did outside of posting that brought a perma-ban. But not as surprising, given his behavior...

You probably don't need me to tell you twice, but keep an eye on his IP addresses and ISP's from his location on new accounts in case he tries to re-sign and masquerade as someone else. It's common on forums.    [/size]

Not much one can do, actually - his email and IP are banned, but one can always use another address or IP. But we'll deal with that as (if) it comes, no big deal! I don't think he's capable of masquerading that well

[1024MAK]

It's such a shame that people cannot behave themselves 

It sounds like TFM had plenty of warnings. And by trying to break into the admin account, he does deserve a full and permanent ban.

Mark

[Gryzor]

It's such a shame that people cannot behave themselves :-(

It sounds like TFM had plenty of warnings. And by trying to break into the admin account, he does deserve a full and permanent ban.

Mark

Oh, he had tons of warnings. PMs, warnings in threads, numerous partial bans, posts under moderation, deleted posts, you name it...

[Shaun M. Neary]

Yup, that. Never quite understood that aspect. Always bothered the hell out of me but I tried to be as lenient as possible, even though people always complained about that.

Precisely. It's ironic that it was what he did outside of posting that brought a perma-ban. But not as surprising, given his behavior...


Not much one can do, actually - his email and IP are banned, but one can always use another address or IP. But we'll deal with that as (if) it comes, no big deal! I don't think he's capable of masquerading that well

I remember him being a real condescending dick to me earlier on in the year, hammering on about how intelligent he is with his PHD.
Too bad nobody gave him a postgrad degree on basic social skills. 


Yeah it's so easy to circumvent bans in the era of cell phone 4G and what not. Double check his sig too, didn't he put something nasty in his sig after his last ban?

It's such a shame that people cannot behave themselves 

It sounds like TFM had plenty of warnings. And by trying to break into the admin account, he does deserve a full and permanent ban.

Mark

Oh dude, he's pissed off SO many people on this forum over the years, he was asked on several occasions to tone it down and not to be a dick, he wouldn't listen, he'd get banned, cry how the forum is against him, tone it down for a month and then it'd be lather, rinse and repeat all over again.


Heaven forbid you asked a genuine question without him being all self righteous with "It's in the manual, read it" or "It's actually easy to do" (and not delve further in). I'm positive shit like that has deterred people from asking questions, and hopefully it'll be a thing of the past now.

[Gryzor]

Well, all that notwithstanding, please let's keep our own language at a higher level

[andycadley]

Sigh, it's a small scene and we're all (presumably) old enough to know better by now. You would think people could just get along. Still hasn't left you with any real choice after that sort of behavior.

[Gryzor]

Indeed... for years I've struggled with it: I get that adults can fight or disagree or even be distasteful to each other. But behaving like a child is something beyond my abilities.

[mr_lou]

TFM posted arrogantly and provokingly sometimes, but so does many other people here. An offensive word here, and a degrading smiley there. Then when called out on it, no one can ever see themselves as the bad guy - "It was just for fun, come on!"

I agree that TFM's outbursts has been more frequent than most other users, but I also think most people here has been a lot harder on him than they've been on other people. Vicious circle. I'm honestly not sure where to point any fingers.

I remember TFM creating a thread about something, I forgot what, not relevant, and Gryzor posted a somewhat provoking reply. In my view not any better behaviour than TFM.
This made me write a PM to Gryzor that I thought he should do better as the site owner and admin. The cold shoulder I felt afterwards for quite some time was quite noticeable.

What's the average age of the users here again? I feel old and tired... maybe I am.

Can we all get along soon? Thank you.

[ukmarkh]

You should lock the forum down, if new users want to join, they have to write to you in person. As mentioned, we're a small community and we should be happy and proud in that.


On the subject of intelligence, there's lots of different types, sadly, many people appear to me to lack the most important 'emotional intelligence'.


Regardless, I love CPCWiki, wish I could spend more time here, but unfortunately real life is constantly getting in the way ;-)


Markus will be missed, he's a good guy...

[mr_lou]

I have Markus on my Skype, and obviously had to ask him what was going on.

I got his side of things, which I asked permission to repost here, because I think it's only fair to hear his side too.

Just some clear words about and to Gryzor and his forum:
He lies!
He wrote, that he doesnt delete me?
Tells, that I shouldn't bait and leave the shi(p)t?
I didnt do anything, I just wrote a good bye thread.
But, Themis, before you write such bullshit, let the people the ability to react to your shit!
I wanted to re-activate my account, and then saw this:

An Error Has Occurred!
Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!
This ban is not set to expire.

This is really the poorest thing you ever made...
So being honestly: PLEASE delete my account, as I am not able to delete it.
I dont want to stay in YOUR forum as a piece of shit.
Who is the liar?
Do you have any evidences that TFM hacked you? Or do you slander?
What is this? Democracy?
Even if he added your emailaddress to gay mailing lists, that is not hacking, that is kindergarten.

Oh I lie? I am not banned? I am always welcome?
Sure...

And about the reasons: (Themis says, he don't even know, why I left the forum)
- Banning of TFM and re-banning of him (IMHO because he liked some topics and begged me to react to Dragon's posting, where was talking about FutureOS development)
- Not banning the opponent, who wrote at least same offending stuff like TFM
- Stupid deleting of postings, without discussing that with other admins/moderators
- Changing important features in forum software, without testing them first
- Ignores polls: "Want the shoutbox back or not" -> ~75% said "no"
- Breaks other features in forum, like spoilers, like system etc...

Such mistakes may happen, but when I cry about donations, because my server cost ~500€ in year, I first test all changes on a seperate subdomain....

[MaV]

And there I naively thought, Markus left the forum because of the new forum portal or some such.

Just one thing: Inscribing other people to gay sites is not kindergarden. That can have serious implications in some countries, of which said person being beaten up is one of the lesser problems. You don't mess with a person's private life in that way.
Of course, there's no proof, only a strange causality.

There's a history, lots of people are fed up. Gryzor did his job.

[SOS]

And there I naively thought, Markus left the forum because of the new forum portal or some such.

I doesn't like the new things too, but i will not leave the forum (next year, i will fund the wiki again    )
=> So it's not my kind of "everyone must do what i want" (i'm not a child).

I don't know what is the real reason for Markus to leave to Forum....
(Markus is banned?)
But i can't understand a language like "shit", "bullshit", "slander",   -> no, i dont't want to have this language in my hobby
"Even if he added your emailaddress to gay mailing lists, that is not hacking, that is kindergarten. " 
It's not kindergarten, he made a mess  
Gryzor did it right!

[Shaun M. Neary]

It's crazy, most of us must be in our 30s and 40s by now, but some of the stuff that's been shown in this thread is quite laughable.


Regarding Markus - Using reasons for leaving because the shout box poll didn't necessarily reflect the poll, or that some things broke during an upgrade, etc. Where does it say that CPCWiki is a democracy? Do I like some of the changes? No, I personally think the portal is cluttered, unnecessary bringing background to the forefront, etc. But i'm a big believer in if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's not my forum, and I just bookmarked the link to the forum directly. It works. End of.


The strong language thing. This is a two way street. Some like it, some don't. The way I see it, don't tell me to tone my language down, and I won't tell you to not be so sensitive. In some cases for descriptives the s word, the f word etc provide better emphasis on things. But the day any of us ever have to be censored for being ourselves, will be the day I'm out of here, sorry. It's 2016 and we're not in primary school.


One more thing on TFM. Sure we're all guilty of the occasional provocative post, I'll even raise my hand up and admit that. Occasional provoking can spark interesting debate. But TFM did it was more than the entire forum was guilty of, and even when he was proven wrong, he could never handle it. He thought he was always right, would get more and more worked up and in turn would piss off more and more forum users as time went on. He burned a lot of bridges, and he only has himself to blame in my honest opinion.

[mr_lou]

I have never seen strong language spawn an interesting debate. All I've ever seen it do is ruin what could have been an interesting debate. All it is to me is noise.

The only people you can use strong language towards, make fun of and be ironic and sarcastic with - are your friends who know you really well and knows perfectly well that you don't mean it.
Everyone else will see it differently. And as soon as someone has been offended, the thread gets sidetracked and off-topic.

And it's amazingly easy to offend someone online, because most people here aren't your friends. And old age doesn't make you immune to offensive comments. Especially not when it's about topics that mean a lot to you. You don't even have to use irony or sarcasm or provoking smileys. You only need to ask an innocent question, or state a different opinion. I could give you many examples from this very forum, but I would write too much then.

A little politeness helps a lot. I fail miserably to understand why that's so difficult to apply.

[Shining]

Regardless of the topic here. For me it is a total no go that the people,you are talking about, have no chance to defend themselves here. Here are accusations against one person and we cannot proof them all right or wrong. Is this behaviour any better then ?


There are always easy to handle and difficult people in active communities but I think that every community can handle this.

[villain]

I think the right place for this discussion would be the Hall of Shame. It will lead to nothing, things are as they are in this case and simply not everybody will be served.

[Gryzor]

TFM posted arrogantly and provokingly sometimes, but so does many other people here. An offensive word here, and a degrading smiley there. Then when called out on it, no one can ever see themselves as the bad guy - "It was just for fun, come on!"
I agree that TFM's outbursts has been more frequent than most other users, but I also think most people here has been a lot harder on him than they've been on other people. Vicious circle. I'm honestly not sure where to point any fingers.
I remember TFM creating a thread about something, I forgot what, not relevant, and Gryzor posted a somewhat provoking reply. In my view not any better behaviour than TFM.
This made me write a PM to Gryzor that I thought he should do better as the site owner and admin. The cold shoulder I felt afterwards for quite some time was quite noticeable.

Actually, I'm feeling insulted by your post.


I can honestly and categorically swear on my mint 664 I never gave you the could shoulder, and if you can point to anything that could lead to that assertion I'd be ready to kiss your feet and apologise. The reason is, I simply don't care. People are entitled to their opinion; you don't cause troubles in the forum, far from it, so expressing your disagreement is something very normal and which never had any repercussion.


And, as I said in our discussion (which I had really forgotten, actually): again you prefer to ignore the fact that I stated, again and again, that it's NOT strictly about what someone says at any given time. I've known TFM since 2006, and the amount of problems he's caused over the years, both here at the forum AND on the wiki (let's not forget that) snowballed very fast, very early on. People being harder on him was *precisely* because of that, but you seem to want to ignore that, despite me repeatedly telling you. As for doing a better job as owner and admin - I agree: I should have banned TFM way back when and be done with the issue.


As for Markus' comments - I don't usually hold conversations via proxy, but this is bordering on stupidity.


Of course I didn't delete his post. And of course it wasn't just a goodbye, since he did insinuate "things". The rest I've explained before. "React to my 'shit'"? He's the one who locked his thread and left the forum. As for the banning, I thought someone could make up his mind for him - it's not the first time he's left, then come back. And he already said himself he felt the need to reactivate his account. Yeah, not dealing with this kind of crap. If he wants he can email me and ask for the account to be reinstated.


And, naturally, the proof about TFM is there - the server logs and the email I got from the system exist, but I don't really understand why Markus go out of his way to be a lawyer to TFM.


The rest is just frosting, discussed again and again, no need to address it. But the ultimate reason that Markus is reacting this way is plain for all to see in his posts elsewhere (for instance, on FB - where he has hidden his posts from me, but I still get the news). His ambitions are nothing new, we'll see how it plays out.

You should lock the forum down, if new users want to join, they have to write to you in person.

I toyed with the idea some time ago, actually to help fight spammers. Or I could make it so that an admin must approve new users. But it's not such a big issue I feel...


About the language in the forum: we're adults. I could have a censorship filter on, but this would be utterly silly. Using 'bad' words is nothing in the adult world. Even when addressed to someone, most of the time it's easy to understand if they were meant in an insulting way or not - and therein lies the essense of it. TFM used more mild words most of the time, but was a master of trolling with gloves on (and usually retreating and blaming it on language difficulties). Actually there have been several posts of his that were reported but no action was taken because we was barely toeing the line.

Regardless of the topic here. For me it is a total no go that the people,you are talking about, have no chance to defend themselves here. Here are accusations against one person and we cannot proof them all right or wrong. Is this behaviour any better then ?


There are always easy to handle and difficult people in active communities but I think that every community can handle this.

Not sure what you're refering to. TFM has been given chance after chance after chance after chance. He's defended himself time and again, and his own behavior (always calming down for a while )has been proof enough. Markus? He locked his own thread and left. So, again, I'm not sure what you're refering to...


I'd love to hear your ideas about easy ways to handle people. Here's what I did, over time - my strategy in increasing degrees:

   
• I reverted his edits, multiple times
• I protected pages he was vandalizing
• I sent him messages and asked him publicly to adjust his behavior
• I edited posts of his to remove offending parts
• I removed posts of his
• I put him under moderation so that his posts should be approved before appearing
• I banned him for a while and made it abundantly clear that that would escalate to longer bans and an eventual full ban.

...and, ironically, as I said earlier, this was going to be a temporary ban too, if he hadn't done what he did outside of posting.




So if there are other ways to handle such problematic people, I'd love to know them, though I'm not starting bending over any time soon. And, you know what? After all, we give our personal time to make this community thrive. We're not obliged to take shit and try to deal with such persons while we could be enjoying a drink or a game of Arkanoid.

[Bryce]

People, can I clear one thing up here which has been wrongly stated so so many times:

Gryzor is NOT the only Administrator, there are three of us. Gryzor does NOT delete, ban or make ANY other decisions without consulting the others and a long and detailed discussion takes place before any action is taken.

I have no idea why Markus has left the Forum, but that's up to him. Even the reasons he stated above don't seem enough for someone to leave the Forum, especially as most of them occurred AFTER he posted his goodbye thread.

As for TFM, those of us who are long enough here will have seen enough examples of his behaviour. However, I think that sometimes his "performances" were removed too early, that many people didn't even get to see them and now underestimate the levels he reached.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

As for TFM, those of us who are long enough here will have seen enough examples of his behaviour. However, I think that sometimes his "performances" were removed too early, that many people didn't even get to see them and now underestimate the levels he reached.

Valid point; basically we were met with a situation where newer members would sign up, not understand what the fuss was and demand explanations, not accepting the fact that there was stuff going on before they joined us.


And that's why it was decided to implement the HoS, actually, so that there's a record left. Too bad we don't have the earlier posts, but eh, we live and learn.

[reidrac]

Valid point; basically we were met with a situation where newer members would sign up, not understand what the fuss was and demand explanations, not accepting the fact that there was stuff going on before they joined us.


And that's why it was decided to implement the HoS, actually, so that there's a record left. Too bad we don't have the earlier posts, but eh, we live and learn.

I confess I'm guilty of this, although I never expressed it publicly in the forum to me it felt wrong when TFM was banned last time. I personally couldn't understand how he was banned and the other forum members that were involved in the flame thread were not sanctioned in any way.

I know that it can make things harder for the admins but look at it in other way: we're nice people that can't avoid reacting when we think something's unfair. I don't know you, but I like @Shining and @mr_lou for that.

That said, I don't know what's the answer regarding TFM, but that's online communities for you (I have seen them worse TBH).

Thanks to the admins for their patience and for keeping the forum going.

[EgoTrip]

Maybe now we can have another coding contest here without TFM there to destroy it for us all.

[||C|-|E||]

People, can I clear one thing up here which has been wrongly stated so so many times:

Gryzor is NOT the only Administrator, there are three of us. Gryzor does NOT delete, ban or make ANY other decisions without consulting the others and a long and detailed discussion takes place before any action is taken.

I have no idea why Markus has left the Forum, but that's up to him. Even the reasons he stated above don't seem enough for someone to leave the Forum, especially as most of them occurred AFTER he posted his goodbye thread.

These could be my words as well. Changing or deleting anything in the forum is a very rare event and every time it happened it was discussed in before. Actually, this forum in particular is administered in an extremely transparent way.  Regarding Markus, I do not know why he decided to leave, but I respect his opinion.

Finally, going back to the democracy thing, we must remember that a forum is not necessarily democratic in the strict sense of the word. This is necessary to keep it running in a healthy way and protect the vast majority of the users. However, as I said, everything here is really transparent and I cannot imagine a reason why a person could feel threatened or lacking the freedom to publicly say what he or she things. This post is a good example of it 

[mr_lou]

I can honestly and categorically swear on my mint 664 I never gave you the could shoulder, and if you can point to anything that could lead to that assertion I'd be ready to kiss your feet and apologise.

I don't document these things, like some people do, by taking screenshots of every little thing someone said at some point, or how much this person suddenly Liked any post that counter-argued something I said.
I gave you feedback, that I did not think it was fine to attack TFM like you did in a new thread unrelated to any other thread. It was a new thread. Nothing harsh had been posted by TFM - but you did in the first reply - and that's not cool - no matter what kind of history there is. I told you my opinion on this - that it's not fine - especially for a moderator - to reply like you did when he had said nothing harsh in that given thread. Your reaction was a very different attitude towards me for quite some time. A natural reaction towards anyone who doesn't agree with on any strong-opinion topic. But still rather disappointing to see.

Denying that happened? Fine, I don't really care at this point. I'm definitely not spending any time digging up any old posts for this.

My point is - say the "wrong" thing to anyone - and they will react. Includes everyone here.