i use max_RAF and viper_RAF as names for my chars...

are those OK?

Well, it can be assumed that many people don't read server-specific rules when they log in anyway. Usually if you don't pk in NY, don't mod, don't make racial slurs, don't dock-camp etc. you are good to go.

The banning (or even deleting without warning) punishments are completely out of proportion to the crime. It's much like a country having the death penalty for going 60 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. It may be written in the law but come on get a grip. It is reasonalbe to expect the punishment to fit the crime. It seems like a player doing anything to attract the unwanted attentions of the admin is an instant recipe for the loss of their time. That is the ultimate punishment. In fact it is the same punishment meted out to cheaters. Deletion is no different than banning when it comes down to it, since after a player loses his lvl 38+ character I highly doubt he will ever be back :p

There are about 10,000 ways for the admin to control naming conventions if he wished. Warning a character that he has 3 days to transfer to another character/cheange his name would do the trick. Instead, the character gets the axe?

I'm sorry. I don't think that the admin has the 100% right to do whatever he wishes without repercusion. A server is a group project. It is owned and operated by the admin, but is absolutely puposeless and non-functional without players. Take away the players and all you have is a lonely admin with an overpriced connection and so much scrap server hardware rusting away. As players, we have a right to warn other players that the admin is a Nazi. I have never played on Seattle, but was thinking of doing so. I may in fact STILL do so. But I am forwarned that my time and effort means nothing to the Nazi-admin, and I am thankful for that forwarning.

And PS: With a ban ratio of 1:8.5 there is a serious problem. If you Gene imagine that 1 out of every 8.5 players is deserving of a ban, then you are smoking some really good product. There is a problem with your system. Either it is in the way you have stated the rules, or it is in the way you have carried out the punishment. 1 to 8.5 is not an acceptable statistic IMO. If a police force has a statistic like that the administration of that force would be fired. The objective should be to deter crime, not to maximize your opportunity to mete out puishment.

Gung Ho says several things I would like to address from a server admin point of view....

"Well, it can be assumed that many people don't read server-specific rules when they log in anyway."

This is probably true in most cases, but the responsibility is ultimately on the players, not the server admins at that point. Ever here of a EULA? You know the ones nobody reads but are legally bound by the contents contained within once you click on the accept button? In Freelancer you're warned twice on servers with rules posted, once when you initiate the MP of the game itself and secondly when you click on a server with posted rules. Ignoring the responsibility the users has is nothing but an excuse, pure and simple. You try that on a EULA and see how well this excuse holds water and tell me how that works out for you.

"There are about 10,000 ways for the admin to control naming conventions if he wished. Warning a character that he has 3 days to transfer to another character/cheange his name would do the trick. Instead, the character gets the axe?"

This is completely out of the question from a server admin standpoint. You really expect an admin to sit there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and monitor their server just waiting on the person to log in so they can chat? How many people do you think we're potentially talking aobut here out of the thousands of players on a big server? The time involved does NOT justfiy this "option."

"As players, we have a right to warn other players that the admin is a Nazi."

First of all, the coorelation between the Nazi's and server admins is WAAAY out of line..but I digress. If this is turly the stance you want to take, then fair is fair and the server admins also have the same right to communicate with each other and essentially ban earmarked players accordingly ensuring they don't get on any server because they screwed up once....right?

"The objective should be to deter crime, not to maximize your opportunity to mete out puishment."

The OBJECT should be to provide a clean server for the masses, not cater to the whimes of an individual in spite of the others who accept playing within the server rules.


You make some good points Gung Ho, but you can not have your cake and eat it too. When you talk about what is right and fair, you're presepective appears to be slanted towards the one side and that being the players. It looks like your stance in regards to the server admins is "screw em" we're entitled to have our way no mattter what.

remember, the servers represent the homes of the admins It's widely accepted in every corner of the globe that "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." Making up your own rules and expecting everyone's compliance is a pipe dream.

---

First of all, the coorelation between the Nazi's and server admins is WAAAY out of line..but I digress.

---

Right. It really should have been phrased:
"As players, we have a right to warn other players that the admin is has displayed, in our view, some characteristics, that to some, may indeed resemble a person or persons, loosely or closely affiliated with the Nazi party, at least in certain aspects of their observed behavior."


Nada nunca.

I think everyone understands both sides and both sides have good points. Genedefect also understands the players point of view, he is just a very harsh punisher. He has a wipe clean philosophy.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Correct. It just helps to know what Romans do, so you can comply.

Here is an additional way for Genedefect to get the word out about his rule.
Argonia-Station has a Console message (I'm pretty sure it is automatic)that shows up every few minutes. The name rule can be stressed in an auto-console message. The only problem with this, is that it gets annoying. If it was once every 2 hours or so, that would help a bunch.

Cooperation between admins in banning is not bad at all. If a persistant cheater arises, then ban them together.

"remember, the servers represent the homes of the admins "-Stinger

This is true and I do not argue against this at all. I just think that courtesy and understanding should be afforded to new guests. When you get a new guest in your house and he invests his time and money to set up his bed, it is kinda hurtful to kick him out on the street because you don't like his name. He may have missed the sign on the door on his way in that says "Your name my not sound like "###", to be accepted in." In addition, he may have had plans to improve your home as a thankyou, by putting a sunroof in or whatever, which is like a player that would create events.

I believe in "Justice for All"
You can see that other admins do as well by looking at this thread link. Examples of nice admins helping to promote justice for all.
This is how admins should treat disgruntled players. Hear their case, and investigate if you have the time. Or atleast be respectful to them and explain nicely why they got banned or deleted. Calling them cry-babies and telling them what they should have done is not very productive. It just causes flame wars.

Regulator

Genedefect,

I know this takes some time and is probably a stupid idea because it would require extra needless effort, but instead of deleting names you could post thenames in a thread. In the server news, refer players to the thread. You can update the name list by editing the first post, rather than adding a new post. That way players can just look at the first post to see if their name is on the list. They can also ask for approval for names in that thread. Periodically, you should delete the names that have already been warned in the thread, if they have not already been deleted. Maybe weekly or every 2 days.

If their aren't that many offenders, it shouldn't take too much time. Also, it may even decrease the amount of offenders, since it would draw their attention to the rule even more. Maybe less people would be pissed off and it would definately give you more ammo against complainers.

I don't know if you do this, but you can also change the password occassionally to keep people reading the server news.

Regulator

Edit The reason for this is that the rule can sometimes be unclear. You said that some names do have numbers in them, even asside from ranks. Therefore, 0bSiDe0 could be presumed to be an ok name. If the name is obviously stupid, then just delete it. But for borderline names, give some courtesy.

You could also do this only for names that are above rank 10 or 15 or so. It is the loss of all the stuff and playing time that is hurtful. It would be nice if you were sensitive to that fact.


Edited by - Regulator on 30-07-2003 22:52:04

One more thing. A cheating kick does not necessarily mean that the player was cheating. Of course, a wipe clean philosophy doesn't account for that. Sorry for the excessively long posts.

Regulator

No problem about the long posts.

I actually like your ideas but sadly do not have the time to impliment and follow through with them.

Once (About 4 months back) I had to take the server offline in order to regain time I needed for work and other personal responsibilites.

Yes, I realize that I am probably the strictist admin out there for FLServer. But I provide a different experience for those that are interested. When you play on my server you get names that are 99% of the time, readable. They don't pull you out of the game mindset to try to comprehend what you are seeing. Not to mention, if you run in lower resolutions, you don't get your screen scraped by a large amount of capital letters and which can hurt the eyes to see.

Most character names that I delete (about 3 a night) I catch before they have passed the first few ranks. It is very rare when it happens otherwise. Also, on several occassions I have seen the person online, referred them to read the rules and change their name accordingly or it would be deleted that night.

When I have chance, I do give people a chance. Most of the time I do not have the time to.

As for changing the server password, I only do that when I make an alteration to the server news that I believe should be read (almost never)

Visit my server
24/7 Seattle Based
[email protected]

Actually to be completely politcally correct

"As players, we have a right to warn other players that the admin is and or has displayed, in our view, some characteristics, that to some can or may indeed resemble a person or persons, loosely or closely affiliated with certein charactaristics resembling certain political viewpoints and certain behaviour purportedly connected to a political mainstream being in power in Germany during the period 1932-1945 expressing totalitarian rule and disregard for personal expression in religion or racial features while forcing membership in said political party whcih went by the name National Socialist Deutche Arbeiders Party (Nazi for short)

just as a side note taking the admins nick name into considderation he would not qualify to be a member of this party <smirk>

Edited by - Corwin02 on 31-07-2003 17:56:57

LoL that's a good observation Corwin.

Ok Stinger you have some very good points, and many that I had not thought of. You are correct to say that my viewpoint is biased towards that of the players, as I am not a freelancer admin, and so I am unable to fundamentaly alter my bias, other than by reading posts such as these.

It seems that communication between players and admins can not be assumed. In that case then it doubly behoves us to come to the forums and illustrate the mariad things that can get you banned on a certain server. I would imagine that Gene is 100% in the morale right to do as he does. However, this kind of post arms us (the players) with foreknowledge so that we may maximize our own enjoyment, and behave on various servers as is expected of us.

The flaming is kind of an unfortunate side-effect I guess, but really, the number-rules are extremely open to ridicule by their very nature. It's like walking into a coffee shop and seeing a sign which says "No Red clothing allowed". Presumably you could make an argument that red clothing draws too much attention and threatens the relaxed atmosphere of the cafe, but I'd expect not everyone would be pleased with the rule.

**** OFF

I am probably more patriotic that the whole bunch of you and here you sit calling me a Nazi?

Have you ever run into a burning building to save someone you didn't know? or just their property? How about standing by a car while it is on fire and could theoretically explode, just to help the public at large? Did you have your lungs permenantly damaged during an apartment fire? How about had to carry dead bodies away from fires, auto accidents, and just plain bad luck.

I have fought off the media to stop them from taking pictures of your loved ones that died in an auto accident. I have saved your local businesses. What happens, I get called a ****ing Nazi or even compared to one.

When was the last time you gave blood. When was the last time you gave money to the homeless on the street or some random cause.

As a side note, my nickname was given to me because I am abnormally outgoing and trying to help people. It has to be some genetic defect, no one does that.

I still am outgoing and help people left and right. One day it will probably get me killed. But excuse me if I choose not to be so outgoing with a free server I run. Excuse me if I would rather create a couple of simple rules and let those that can follow just a couple of simple rules play from that point on without issue on my server. Even in our great USofA, we have some rules to abide by. A lot of them are even stricter than my name rules and 10 times more worthless. I should know, I have faught against some and signed petitions against others. What have you done to help preserver our democracy? When was the last time you voted? When was the last time you called a polotician to voice your opinion? When was the last time you actually used your "free speech" for something other than to slam the hell out of someone giving you a free service.

Visit my server
24/7 Seattle Based
[email protected]

This is turning into a flame war. The comments to Genedefect were unnecessary. Those comments were already stated in this thread and did not need to be repeated. It appears to be an effort to start a flame war, which is not the topic of this thread.

StayOnTopic- Please, post this to a pre-existing thread on your topic, or make a new thread only if none exist. This helps make the forum more useful for everyone. Edit in a link to your topic if you would like. Thanks.

Edited by - StayOnTopic on 31-07-2003 22:00:27

If you read this post, you would see that the arguement has pretty much been settled. Genedefect, expressed his understanding and explained his limitations on time and abilities.

Seeing only what we have seen on this forum, one could creatively invent the idea that Genedefect may be a nazi. Those comments were certainly not based on true personal info and only based on the character that he has portrayed here. So Genedefect, try not to get angry, since it is not truely a personal attack against your real-life life, since none of us know anything about it. I think Corwin was primarily making a joke by pointing out the Irony of Genedefect and the genectic perfection that nazi's were striving for.

Incase my wording above is mis-read, my intent is to stop the flame war, and make Genedefect feel less offended by the comment. The topic here has been settled, unless someone has something else worthy of mentioning. Small hurtful comments are not needed and only flood the thread until its purpose is defeated. Please do not ingage in petty flaming here anymore.

Regulator

Genedefect,

LOL. I just noticed what you said about the capital letters. I make fun of people that do that when I see them. I have seen names like GIVEUPTHEGOODS and even longer bigger names than that. I usually say to them, "Move out of the way. I can't see the planet so I can dock." Or something to that effect.

Regulator