Managerial Changes

[Pandar]

The Playerworld Administration deal with situations on a case-by-case basis. That is why they have removed Jerret from his position as Manager of Zodiac for his posts on the official Graal forums, while the Zodiac community uses its own forums. Makes sense.

[Imperialistic]

Originally Posted by Emera

I know a fantastic example of a manager that has had no prior knowledge of the server they're managing and is doing an outstanding job of managing the server and has been doing it since January 2012. Novo has been doing an amazing job with limited knowledge of Delteria's past. I agree that once they're in a managerial position, they should make an effort to get to know the server they're working for though.

Well, you don't really need to know anything about the old Delteria's past because the new Delteria is NOTHING like old Delt. So that example is completely null.

[Eskimo]

Originally Posted by Pandar

The Playerworld Administration deal with situations on a case-by-case basis. That is why they have removed Jerret from his position as Manager of Zodiac for his posts on the official Graal forums, while the Zodiac community uses its own forums. Makes sense.

If this thread hadn't been posted on a forum that 90% of zodiac doesn't use, there would be a LOT more reaction from zodiac players

[Tigairius]

Originally Posted by Rufus

You sound like you're just making up rules now. Since when were people allowed to evade and work on servers when they're globally banned? According to the code of conduct, 'Users whose accounts have been terminated by any Graal Online administrator or LINUX Cyberjoueurs himself may not access the Graal Online system in any manner or for any reason without the express written permission of Cyberjoueur'. Moreover, if Jerret has a history of 'asking people sexually charged, highly inappropriate questions in public' and there has been 'a degree of harassment from him' then why would he be allowed to work on Zodiac at all? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?

I don't agree with the hypocritical nature that you seem to work in favor of yourself and the projects that you work on. You might think it is acceptable to make Jerret out to be some big bad that the PWA had to remove, but based on how you've allowed people (namely those within your circle of friends) to get away with much worse, I do not know how you expect anyone to take this seriously. I can only assume that you'll throw in that Jerret was a manager and thus is expected to have acted in a more professional way than what your buddies were doing. If he was actually doing his job though, which he clearly was, wouldn't it have better served THIS case to have left him banned from the forums?

Originally Posted by Imperialistic

Rufus is on point, Tig you're just making up new rules as you go. (and enforcing them on non-friends)

Is that so? Because I don't recall ever referring to anything I said as a "rule" by which we abide. No, in fact, I explicitly said that we handle each situation on a case-by-case basis. If someone is banned, and wants to prove himself/herself, we welcome people to purchase new accounts and play on them until they misbehave again (unless we consider their presence a threat to the community in some way). We're allowing Jerret to stay as a developer on the -dev server only- where he will not be interacting with players, so I'm not sure how you see it's "stupid" of us to allow him to work on Zodiac privately. His presence on the dev server would only help Zodiac.

I work in favor of Graal and Graal's community, and every decision the PWA makes is in, what we consider to be, Graal's best interest. You may not agree, clearly you do not here, but you said it best yourself, Jerret was not behaving properly as a manager (on a very popular server), a position we hold to higher expectations, and we gave him ample warning before making this difficult decision.

Of course we weighed his value in the community as a scripter against his negative personality traits, but again, we unanimously agreed that he is not worth his trouble. Anyways, I feel that I've really exasperated this discussion more than I normally would, and there's really nothing more that can really be said by anyone. I think everyone has pretty much voiced their complaints and we've explained our stance.

[evilchaseofdoom]

Originally Posted by Eskimo

If this thread hadn't been posted on a forum that 90% of zodiac doesn't use, there would be a LOT more reaction from zodiac players

90% of Zodiac doesn't use? More like 98%. If any of you guys go on the Official Zodiac forums, Jerret actually takes that seriously and is very professional. Sure, there's some of his posts that aren't 100% with it, but for the most part he's nothing like he is on these forums.

[DeathOfRa]

Originally Posted by Tigairius

It was not an easy decision to remove Jerret. There's no denying that he is, in some limited sense, an asset to the community. However, it was a decision that we reached (unanimously, I might add) after discussing it for months.

The decision about his removal was not over one issue (like this triple_combo stuff). It was over a series of issues over an extended period of time. Fowlplay4's public behavior has been increasingly poor over the years, especially in the last year. Need I also remind you that he has been permanently banned from the official GraalOnline forums for repeated poor behavior (this was before his removal)? We have history of him asking people sexually charged, highly inappropriate questions in public, we've seen a degree of harassment from him, and on top of this, we asked him to stop multiple times.

In fact, I remember back on March 4th (yes, that's nearly half a year ago), warning Jerret that if he cannot improve his behavior, especially on the official forums, we do not want him staying in his position. In fact, I said these words to him exactly and He agreed to stop, and then continued misbehaving. Posting things on the forums like "I'm pretty hard right now" and "hey bayne vvat does thor's loads taste like?"

We warned him again by banning him from the forums for 31 days. He returned to the forums starting threads like "MD is garbage" (taking shots at MysticalDragon on Delteria) saying things like and posting things in other un-related topics like "hey galdor wat do my nutz taste like *****" (these are direct quotes).

And many of you have brought up triple_combo (who is in no way at fault here), where Gabriel asked Zodiac for proper proof for having banned him/her. Gabriel was only doing his job -- something he would've done for any of you -- by making sure Zodiac had full indisputable evidence to be banning someone for life. They did not have proper proof, so Gabriel removed the ban and in order to spite Gabriel, fowlplay4's administration placed a trade restriction on triple_combo, essentially rendering the game unplayable. This is unacceptable to do to paying customers for essentially no reason. Gabriel approached me about the situation and then proceeded to ask fowlplay4 to remove the trade restriction if he/she was not suspected of actively breaking any rules. Fowlplay4 removed the trade restriction, but decided to reset triple_combo as a retaliatory response to Gabriel's persistence. Quite frankly, I don't care if you're the king of the world, we do not accept this kind of behavior from managers. We saw bias coming from fowlplay4's administration not only in this sense but in others as well.

Let me reassure anyone who is in doubt that this was NOT an impulsive decision. It was well thought-out, planned, and long talked about among the PWA. Triple_combo is only the tip of the iceberg as to why Fowlplay4 was removed, and he/she is certainly not the primary reasoning. Jerret had plenty of warning, plenty of chances to improve, and plenty of opportunity. I know none of you ever claimed to know the whole story, but please keep in mind that there is always more to the story than what you can see. Obviously I do not want to discuss Fowlplay4's entire rap sheet because I find it disrespectful to do so, but he is in no way some angel that you all have painted him to be.

This is a load of horseshit. Anyone with eyes can see you covering your tracks here. Your decision has damned one of the best servers Graal has to offer, including Graal Kingdoms, which never introduces anything of mention, which I know because people would hear about it and I talk to people who hear things.
And Jerret "interacts" with us with humorous messages, Zodiac people are a hardy bunch who take news a bit differently than the rest of the people. If it's not funny or outstanding, we generally think "tl;dr;not important enough".

[Pandar]

Originally Posted by Tigairius

Is that so? Because I don't recall ever referring to anything I said as a "rule" by which we abide. No, in fact, I explicitly said that we handle each situation on a case-by-case basis. If someone is banned, and wants to prove himself/herself, we welcome people to purchase new accounts and play on them until they misbehave again (unless we consider their presence a threat to the community in some way). We're allowing Jerret to stay as a developer on the -dev server only- where he will not be interacting with players, so I'm not sure how you see it's "stupid" of us to allow him to work on Zodiac privately. His presence on the dev server would only help Zodiac.

I work in favor of Graal and Graal's community, and every decision the PWA makes is in, what we consider to be, Graal's best interest. You may not agree, clearly you do not here, but you said it best yourself, Jerret was not behaving properly as a manager (on a very popular server), a position we hold to higher expectations, and we gave him ample warning before making this difficult decision.

Of course we weighed his value in the community as a scripter against his negative personality traits, but again, we unanimously agreed that he is not worth his trouble. Anyways, I feel that I've really exasperated this discussion more than I normally would, and there's really nothing more that can really be said by anyone. I think everyone has pretty much voiced their complaints and we've explained our stance.

Anybody on Graal whose voice is worth listening to, will disagree with you up and down. You made the wrong decision.

[MattKan]

Originally Posted by Tigairius

I work in favor of Graal and Graal's community, and every decision the PWA makes is in, what we consider to be, Graal's best interest.

Well, you're wrong on that. It isn't Graal's best interest. Everybody on Graal is against it, so it definitely is not in Graal's best interest.

[Eskimo]

Originally Posted by Tigairius

We're allowing Jerret to stay as a developer on the -dev server only- where he will not be interacting with players, so I'm not sure how you see it's "stupid" of us to allow him to work on Zodiac privately. His presence on the dev server would only help Zodiac.

I'm not sure how you automatically assume his actions on the forums reflect how he interacts with the community on the server. Maybe you should try playing the server before you judge that. If he is still going to be allowed to develop for zodiac, the only reason i can see that you would have for removing him from the management position is a bias towards your Vimes friend.

[evilchaseofdoom]

Courtesy of *whatzgoingon:

dont even know where to start
jerret is a great manager, he's contributed a lot to zodiac. he's always helped out when being asked for serious help, even on other servers yet you fire him out of personal dislikes
i still dont feel like the reason he was fired is justified. after seeing tigs quotes i do agree it was some inappropriate stuff but it wasnt supposed to be offending
its just his bad sense of humor, he didnt mean to harm anyone
the warnings that were quoted refer jerret pointing out that someone was receiving preferable treatment

he wasnt told to stop the sexual harassment, he could have figured that out himself but again, its just bad sense of humor from his part
and as for triple combo, he/she has been banned serveral times for usd/cst, even with proper proof
i.ve been gp before so i actually am able to say that jerret has always been fair when it comes to handling those things
he shouldnt be fired for stepping on someones toes or even for pointing out another persons mistake
you want him to keep developing yet he isnt allowed to still be manager despite doing a great job
it isnt going to be easy to even find a decent replacement
even if you dont agree with what he did, you might as well consider whats good for zodiac and what the people who play it want, not what you want
keep him banned form the main forums, dont care though leave the management out of it

[lag_PKer]

Tigairius, I know you're the PWAdmin and I'm just you know.. a player.

But I'd highly recommend rehiring Jerret, hoping he will rectify his behavior.

Keep him off of the Graal forums, sure. Maybe ban him from everything forum, minus Zodiac and the Scripting forums and see how his behavior goes from there.

But I've never seen such a reaction from players when a Manager is fired, so clearly his negative that you believe outweigh the positives of his administration aren't such a big deal to the majority of the players.

Perhaps he does need a break from Management. Of course, people have always had problems with his attitude, but it looks like something's been up with him lately, as if he just wasn't caring how he behaved.

Either way, sooner or later, I strongly recommend re-instating him.

What happened after PWAs fired Streety?
We've had:
BD > GK > Crono > Dwarfy > Kevin > Fuza/KB

So 6 different management reigns since you fired a stable Manager, who even though I personally disliked a lot, was good for UN and cared for his work. Now you just fired another stable Manager.

Don't want this to get tl;dr, but as a last note.
I agree Jerret's completely in the wrong for not heeding your warnings.
I just hope you guys will work with him, because if you guys let such a good Manager go so easily, you're just hitting the server and game ever harder.

Edit: as a sidenote, this reminds me of American politics lol a few making decisions, much against what the majority want for the "best" of what they administrate.

[Imperialistic]

Tig I can't even reply to your last post because it was obviously an attempt to cover your tracks and deter players from the facts of how you favor your Vimes family lol. The facts have been laid out on the table.

From what I can see you clearly judged his behavior simply off the forums. He was a Manager of Zodiac, not the Forums, it shouldn't matter what he has to say on here.. and if you don't like it feel free to ban him from the forums but don't rip him from the seat of Manager when has done absolutely nothing but made a positive influence in the community. Zodiac obviously had no problem with him and it seems like the only issues with him were the ones you were personally holding against him because of his personality on the forums. You just don't make sense at all.

I'll take Minecraft for example;

If you break rules on the forums and act like a fool they will ban you from the forums, simple as that. Do you see egotistical admin's going to their servers and interfering?


Also, I would love to see the approval from a Cyberjoueur representative that allowed Chris to play on alternative accounts.

"Users whose accounts have been terminated by any Graal Online administrator or LINUX Cyberjoueurs himself may not access the Graal Online system in any manner or for any reason without the express written permission of Cyberjoueur."

[maximus_asinus]

It is nice to see Graal operates exactly like it did when I was actively playing. The whole situation is pathetic. An adminstration consisting of (former) players appointed by (active) players or selecting members from an internal process just doesn't work because it seems the administration cannot distance themselves from the in game politics (or soap opera like drama if you prefer). The fact that a 'family' was even allowed to be established within speaks volumes towards the stagnation of the administration and the lack of moderation by Cyberjouers. That in itself should warrant the firings of the PWA.

[maximus_asinus]

Also would like to note that a true administration would have stated the firing, reasons if not personal, and would not engage in this crap flinging contest like Tig is doing now.

[MattKan]

I don't understand how you guys can just sit here and see the Graal community, including extremely active members of it, horrified and dismayed and not fix the problem.