Hello, juky here

I am here to talk about a couple of things I think are important for GFLclan.com. More accurately, things that are important for gaming communities at large in which GFLclan.com should be exemplary, but not solely for the sake of being exemplary. GFLclan.com is (and has been) a big community, affecting obviously the people playing on the servers, but also to a decent extent how gaming communities are perceived to relevant prospects and third parties. This is extended by how gaming communities view and interact with each other.

A good chunk of this post will be about morality (or lack/irrelevance thereof). While not directly relevant on a macrolevel as described in the previous paragraph, it can still serve as an important lesson.

Being in the position I am, I will use my situation anecdotally. My personal situation isn't the point of this post, though it will be heavily referenced throughout this post.

Some background information; in april 2016 BotoX and I moved a server away from GFLclan.com. The idea first arose when management reached out to the community facing financial problems. At the time security was lackluster and, using some 'crafty mechanics', anyone with ftp could query the SQL as root (and with that access the PayPal API key). Having access to the API key is the equivalent of full access to the PayPal, and allowed us to request a bunch of information.
Over the period of at least 14 months, a sure but steady stream of money had gone missing, with no definitive way of telling who was(n't) on the receiving end.

Now, there's a lot more to say about what happened and how/why it happened. Without going into too much depth, here's some more variables to take into account that should be agreeable.

- there was a general sense of apathy with the people involved with the technical side of things for an extended period of time
- very few relevant staff understood even the basics of the technical side of things
- said apathy/lack of knowledge stifled communication between staff on technical issues

There is a lot that could be said about each of these points, I could write a separate post on each of these. Assuming I can see and reply to the comments in this thread (assuming this post ever makes it anywhere), I'd be willing to elaborate if asked.

Now, as for the "why's" of the server move. It is easy to write of the biggest part of the people on board with the move as malicious or generally out for trouble/drama. Assuming you speak in good conscience (and are knowledgeable to some degree), simply downplaying the whole situation as a powergrab or even with malicious intent at all becomes a lot harder if it had somehow gained my support. Like/believe it or not, this community won't come across a lot of individuals that have been/are/will be as dedicated to furthering GFLclan.com as I was.

As hinted at earlier, from my perspective it was unclear where exactly the cashflow was being redirected to. The idea of money going missing wasn't new. At a certain point in time (~early 2015) there was 7.7k+ USD sitting in the PayPal. These funds melted faster than the poles. Though they were speculations (i.e. had no hard proof to back it up), it had been pointed out at multiple occasions by multiple different people that potentially something fucky was going on. After I pointed out the discrepancy to Roy personally in a final attempt to get some clarity without directly accusing him (back in early 2016 again), referring to the numbers processed by a plugin inside of IBP (of which the name escapes me), I was simply referred to the number of donator/VIP packages. This made no sense given there obviously were other sources of income.

Knife (old-council) made a post in 2012 foretelling this exact scenario. "Never allow yourself to blindly rely on a single person for too many responsibilities" (this was even specifically aimed at SoJa). At this point I felt like I was reading a bad book.

At the time Roy was also making a push towards monetizing GFLclan.com, moving to a business-like model. Which is respectable and understandable, but at this point you'd have to be crazy to not put 2 and 2 together.

At this point there were two ways this could turn out.

1. Roy and SoJa are in on this together. This was (given the picture I painted above) likely.
2. SoJa is in this on his own. His guilt was already confirmed by orders going straight to his address. Could Roy actually be ignorant and innocent? The amount of incompetence required for that is incomprehensible. Could any self-respecting individual that actually puts in time and effort continue contributing knowing this?

I am not taking shots here though it does serve some purpose, as does the aspect of laying out the situation in a way that's comprehensible for an uninformed third party, which I'll elaborate on later.

I figured we were shit out of luck, and decided to safeguard the one server I viewed as my own before bringing the bad news. In my time I had set up/managed a bunch of servers, but with over 5k active hours clocked in, cs:s zombie escape quite literally contained a part of me. I understood that the server wasn't mine, but I felt no real restraint in claiming what I felt like belonged to me.

Which brings me to the next part -

[b]morality[/b]

So while I understood that the server legally wasn't mine, morally I had no problems moving the server. I obviously didn't physically break into NFO HQ to take a server, but I was most definitely stealing something, goodwill. You could argue that most of the ZE community at that point held a strong sense of animosity towards GFLclan.com (fueled by a vocal minority), ergo having some form of negative goodwill, but that's besides the point ( muh mental gymnastics ).

I justified stealing to myself by detaching myself through morality. There is a baseline set of truths and ethical standards you cannot bypass. Stealing is bad, violence is wrong, but also more subtle things (e.g. manipulation). Engaging in subhuman behavior through moral disengagement is SJW-tier levels of autism. Let it be clear that crossing certain lines as though it has a moral purpose in order to make it socially acceptable is delusional.

Granted, none of the above applies considering SoJa held ownership(smh), but for the sake of argument~

What I (we) should have done is just make the preparations, bring the bad news and hope for the best outcome.

There are more lessons to be extracted from this situation. Specifically, looking towards the way this situation was handled. Naturally, given I had roughly a month of mental preparation, I had started to picture where the conversation could have headed. Unfortunately I was terribly wrong. In fact, there was no conversation at all starting off. Of course, Roy being on a trip/just coming back from a trip was unfortunate timing. Any conversation that did happen mostly revolved around petty garbage focusing on right/wrong as opposed to dealing with the situation at hand, we also spent a silly amount of time talking about the name. Admittedly I threw the (relatively new) sitting council/board of directors/directorate under the bus by making the selfish choice, expecting constructiveness might have been a little wishful.

What is also interesting is a look at how this situation was and is elaborated on ,and how it is viewed by the current community. The factual accuracy of peoples perception of the ordeal is all over the place.

When it was first elaborated on it felt lackluster, but I can see how there is an impossible quantity of variables to elaborate on. Each variable naturally being different from the next, holding more/less relevance, being more/less painful/harmful to elaborate on. Even so, there was still an obligation to strive to be as truthful and complete as possible. The original post depicting the situation was not nearly genuine or in-depth enough. That was make or break moment for a great deal of important people and it was too superficial, too shallow. A focus on stressing legal ownership to remaining managers over assuming a position of [i]humility[/i]. Maybe it was a twisted sense of the relevance of professionalism that pushed it towards obscurity.

Humility is the keyword here. Even now, there seems to be this weird status quo where it's considered a sensitive issue. By downplaying relevance of a part of the issue (partially through assuming victimhood) and shoving it under the rug, and with that inadvertently not having the focus on self-improvement you are effectively minimizing the learning experience. Which is the only thing that ultimately matters. This is true on a personal level as well as for the maturing of the community as a whole.

The fact that there's still some animosity towards me was surprising, but it does provide some insight. I understand that it's also fueled by the perception of the garbage happening afterwards but it makes sense in the picture I painted above. It aligns with the inability to focus on the necessity of getting both sides of the story, of not having the focus on self-improvement in general. I can see how there's little to be said about additional servers being taken for no apparent reason, and no, that doesn't mean I'm implicated, approve or played an active part in any kind of decision making relevant to the issue. It doesn't mean I wasn't either (not saying I was), but it doesn't matter. It's the unwillingness to find out, to just roll with the cognitive bias because it's easy and the inability to assume humility by the movement (and those navigating the movement). To even imply I personally was/am out to damage GFLclan.com doesn't make sense by any standard.

tl;dr: you think you do, but you don't - morality/the fallacy of moral justification -  humility is great -  self-improvement is just about the only relevant entity in the long-term

This post does not serve as a ban appeal. It also doesn't serve as an announcement for you to mindlessly accept, I'd happily publicly argue/discuss anything in this post given the chance, or in a private setting otherwise.

Either censor this post in its entirety or leave it, do not edit any part under any circumstances.