From: Salah ad-Din al-Jawahiri
Sent: 2018.02.12 09:33
To: [redacted]

Hi friends,


If the message below is tl;dr for any of you, it's not my problem. You want my opinion, you have it.


It isn't about CODE. or non-CODE., TCE or non-TCE, it's about the problem of drama cultivation in the channel. My approach is simple: when people start flinging shit at each other, it's time to drag them apart and give them some quiet time to cool down, That is basically the definition of the word "moderation".

Now, when some random carebear starts flaming in the channel, we all enjoy trolling him, saving screenshots for the blog and then showing him the door. It gets complicated when there is a quarrel between fellow CODE. members. There can be no winner in this situation - except for ag, maybe, and everone only leaves with the taste of a well-known substance in their mouth in the end.

I'm writing this little essay here because I love the New Order and and care about it, I want it to grow and prosper. But I also know that highsec warfare is extremely marginalized, and CODE. doesn't have the benefit of the organizational structure that Miniluv and the likes of them enjoy. So, in order to at least compensate for the naturally occuring loss of players (people do tend to move on at some point, unfortunately), the community has to be inclusive.

Yeah, I said "inclusive" knowing how much some of you hate this stupid leftist narrative, but that's the word I feel is appropriate. Someone in the channel may be a lowly pleb, he may be doing nothing but ganking Ventures all day, it even might be that he's not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but he's a cool enough dude, brings us no harm, makes his minor contribution and praises James - what's not to like here? I've seen more than once when certain people wrote stuff like "you should listen to your superiors" and generally talked down to people even when discussing trivial matters. Guys, this is a video game, FFS, no one here is superior to anyone, and nobody owes anything to anyone. I don't mind giving shit to carebears and anti-gankers because they're useless anyway, and when someone is doing something wrong while enforcing the Code, it has to be pointed out to them and all appropriate correctional measures must be taken, but treating friendlies like crap turns them away, They never come back, and their potential in ganking, whatever it may be, remains forever unrealized.

Thus, inclusivenss does not mean that minerbumping has to hug carebears - by no means. Carebears need to buy a mining permit and get out of the way if they don't have anything else to contribute. If they start thinking they're hot shit and become annoying to the public, they've got to GTFO. But if there is even a fraction of potential to develop into something more, respect needs to be given where respect is due.


All written above is my conclusions from my personal experience, including that with Jerry. I don't know what happened between Jerry and Dom tonight that pissed off Jerry so much because I wasn't online at the time, so I can't comment on that.


But, to summarize, this community is home to different people. We all have different beliefs, different tempers, different ideas about enforcing the Code. DIsagreements and arguments are a normal thing. But, when one or both sides refuse to compromise and reconcile, resorting to personal attacks, one of 3 things can happen:
1. The case gets handed to a higher authority to resolve;
2. One of the sides leaves;
3. The conflict rages on, and the community eventually turns to shit.

Personally, I'm an extremely soft and even-tempered person. If I don't like someone, I prefer to avoid talking to them and leave them be if possible. But there still were issues with certain people, like karma balancer, who has an existential grudge against me for no apparent reason. I even have a recording of him calling me a piece of shit on Teamspeak and saying that all Russians must be bombed. When he started talking shit to me directly on minerbumping, of course I had to use my mod permissions in the channel - he was beyond reasoning.

You know what happened next. All I can say is that if he had had the free rein in that situation and not me, I wouldn't be here with you right now. Whether it is for the better or for the worse is up to you guys to decide for yourself.

I'd rather we didn't have to escalate this matter to James, but I'm glad you did, loyal. Because now we can actually reason about it.

My (personal) opinion about minerbumping is that it should be an open (albeit moderated) public channel, not a sealed cesspool like anti-ganking. If you have a different vision for it, now is the most convenient time for you to show it.

As for mod rights, I'm all for redistributing them, but there has to be a set of guidelines that we as moderators have to follow. Otherwise, we'll return to stupid slapfights and start revoking each other's permissions all over again in a couple of months.

Praise James!
 -- S.