A Statement

This is the final statement of brogrammer – the head admin of 12.0, partially a response to the recent Zyklon_Ben’s post about the end of 12.0. I publish it in it’s original form, source: https://a.pomf.cat/squlyn.pdf.

I don’t know where to begin. This post is the product of some train of thought combined with reaction to Charlie’s post. I don’t expect this to mitigate any of the resentment towards me or to fix any of the damage that has been done. It may, at the very least, provide some insight into my decisions and administration

I did not come on board the staff to be a leader. In 10.0 and 11.0, my complaints against the administration were seated primarily in the poor state of the infrastructure behind the site. I offered to fix these myself, which began my involvement with staff affairs and deeper involvement in /int/craft. During this time I implemented TLS across most of the server’s web pages, upgraded the server’s databases to MariaDB, and installed Gitlab as a means of hosting and sharing the server’s coded components and configurations. I wasn’t in so much a leadership role as a mechanical one. I assert that I would have preferred this; “I can do better” was always a technical statement.

I came to the head of the server as iteration 11.0 waned and “reset fever” kicked in. Monsquaz, shortly after Pepecraft was launched, left the project wordlessly. I was the sole user with SSH access inclined to actually maintain the server, and it was around this time that myself and Derflammenwerfer cooperated on developing some ideas for iteration 12. We eventually concluded upon taking CrackShot and using it to implement a 1600’s style iteration set in Europe, with conflict rooted in a war between the Catholic/Protestant League of the period. This was approved, if only because no other concept with the same amount of detail was put forward.

The initial plan was to implement this system over Factions. The vision eventually was scaled down to implementing CrackShot and a tech tree for player towns to progress along. The general prevailing notion was that for an iteration to last, there had to be a sense of progress and point to the conflict. To create such a server, we added complex systems, including currency, that would come to define the argument of the opposition initially.

We set to work implementing the weapons mechanisms and server over the course of nearly a month after the end of Pepecraft, working intermittently to get everything up and running. With monsquaz gone, a lot about the mechanisms of the server had to be inferred or learned. It was also around this time that I continuously got pulled into the Skype room to discuss progress on said mechanisms, which often were still in development. Working independently of Derflammenwerfer for the most part, I would rarely have information or adequate understanding Derflammenwerfer’s work.

I’ll be the first to say I’m not good at one-to-many communication. My personality is nothing if not abrasively, contradictory, and deeply individualistic. I also have a firm dislike of Skype, for not just being “proprietary software” but for its communities. I saw similarities in the Skype group to IRC, and over the course of the project began to view the current Skype “nobility” as disconnected from actual image board culture. I will admit to describing the situation as an echo chamber and a cesspool, in that the group that currently populates it felt disconnected from the greater /int/ community. I resented the culture of constantly seeking server death, and opposed “reset” as the ultimate means of progress. I also resented the stagnation of the community and the difficulty in attracting new audiences to the server. My values were different, formed largely from my experience I had in 11. One battle had been enough to permanently fatigue the remaining population, as players began to call for reset so they could start over without the resultant disadvantage. That I had only previously participated in Iteration 10 and saw 11 as better would define my actions. I saw reset as bad; if there was a thing I stood against, it was the destruction of progress and the “flash in the pan” nature of /int/craft.

I was honest about my intent being selfish. I wasn’t building a project “by” the community so much as “for” it, and would consistently oppose arguments for a democratic design. The people I cared to answer to were solely other contributors; primarily Dave, Derflammenwerfer, and ChienAndalou. My attitude about the server in general was different; I was designing something, and I operated based on my own beliefs for the most part rather than those of the community. I did not pretend to understand what the community wanted or why; I only did my best to design something that would be fun by what I had observed. I saw “design by committee” as one of the problems affecting the community, and felt trying to satisfy everyone would lead to an inferior product. The factor behind a premium iteration was a design one; the current authentication system had been broken enough to significantly affect server performance in 11.

Towards the end of iteration 12, ironically, I came to oppose the standing community’s position less. With the exception of VivianJames, whose conversation evolved into unintelligible tirades about Reddit towards the very end, I came to change some of my notions about the group that existed in Skype. Several decisions, such as returning to Towny and reducing the upkeep of towns, were compromise decisions with what players valued. I tried to walk a middle route of preserving the core idea but being flexible on the approach. Systems such as Gringotts, Disease, PermissionsEX, and Marriage saw their birth and sometimes death as player suggestions.

Me and Derflammenwerfer were left to our devices with little to no input from ChienAndalou for a month. Throughout the project we worried that like monsquaz, ChienAndalou had abandoned the effort. It was only towards the end of development that we began to hear about progress on the map, and even then further discussion about the mechanics weren’t had with him. We worked based on prior approval of the design document from the staff group of 11.0. He finished the map a week from the launch of the initial testing server, and with a month spent in development me and Derflammenwerfer acted to launch the server as soon as we could with short notice. Understaffed and inexperienced, the gravity of the mistake would quickly manifest itself.

Despite being offered a position administrating, ChienAndalou would opt to act as a player rather than an administrator. Dave would be given administrative access but was largely uninvolved in the moderation of the server. Nervyzombie also had administrative access at the outset but rarely used it and eventually was demoted back to a player role. I and Derflammenwerfer were largely left to administrate.

There’s only so much I can comment on here while maintaining objectivity. I was unused to the role of conflict resolution and the often heated nature of disputes between nations. I was still unused to one-tomany conversation, and frequently failed to express adequately my intentions and reasoning behind decisions. I was hesitant to disband combatant nations or take permanent action against players save in the most extreme of cases, especially when I had not witnessed the incident myself. Understaffed as we were, not witnessing the incident happened more often than it should have. Inter-factional disputes brought problems of their own, as the problem of alt account sabotage and theft remained, often with no adequate solution. Disbanding non-RP nations and “can’t handle the bantz” happened frequently before grace, often to the protest of those affected and a half-hearted reversal of the damage. I am rarely repentant, and I can understand the frustration of those affected by decisions made at the spur of the moment.

Derflammenwerfer’s abuses took form in the ill-conceived “mercenary” system. It was a compromise with the nature of the administration to want to play the game and moderate it. I had advocated against such behavior in 11, when Chien had been involved in similar conflicts of interest. Iteration 12 would make me a hypocrite, allowing a similar but documentation-supported form of it.

Incidents such as the attacks on Varna proved its imbalance and the inability for the system to remain free of abuse. Derflammenwerfer would often be accused of abuse even after the system was dumped, and despite my protests against his conduct I would rarely be taken seriously. In hindsight, I should not have given Derflammenwerfer power and I should have stripped him of it after Varna. But it’s hard to take an ax to the head of a friend, especially when the action leave you alone to the entirety of management tasks. So I covered for him, and was lenient in situations I shouldn’t have been. Meanwhile I would govern Dave’s and ChienAndalou’s conduct too seriously, where there was little cause for harm. It was presumably shortly after Jerusalem was restored due to a disagreement that Chien was set in his opinion of me.

The end of the iteration began with an exploitation of my trust. Zyklon_Ben, whom I was led to believe was a sincerely good person and representative of the community, was suggested by Chien as an admin. Low on staff and eager to let new people into the process of managing the server, I didn’t give a second thought to his appointment to an admin position considering his suggestion by former staff. He briefly made a charade of wanting to run some player events, and I discussed these with him and showed interest in his continued administration of the server.

Sometime before this, Dave had asked ChienAndalou that the server be shut down. ChienAndalou and Zyklon_Ben conspired to make a spectacle of this with a few other users, and without my knowing Zyklon_Ben opted to scorch the map, briefly frame VivianJames for the attack, and then rub the destruction in my face. I opted to silently remove myself from the situation as this became apparent.

Dave could have just asked me to begin phasing in new staff and preparing for a new iteration, but later explained he didn’t have the courage to do so and left others to their own methods. I would not have resisted a decision from the owner of the server if it had ever been overtly made. I would have left what was in place to new administration. But the order never came.

Not content to shut down the Minecraft server, ChienAndalou and Zyklon_Ben not only torched the map, but the server’s Multicraft installation, website, wiki, Gitlab instance, databases, and TLS setup. There was no public announcement, though it is likely several players were warned in another Skype conversation. Anyone outside these groups was likely left confused at what happened.

In the former server’s place presumably is a box now running an instance of Gentoo Linux. The loss of this much progress for a stab about my preference for free software is what confuses me most about this, and left me at a loss for words up until now. There’s a small chance the server hasn’t been overwritten with Gentoo, but for now I’m lead to believe this actually happened. Maybe this sort of destruction is normal for /int/craft, but it’s new to me. For ChienAndalou to destroy the work that’s been done over my actions, and for Dave to be unable to the very end to just say to me what he wanted, seemed absurd. I especially didn’t expect Zyklon_Ben to not only orchestrate but take pride in such a wanton action. I would have felt comfortable leaving him to the next iteration before this.

There’s not just my effort but Monsquaz’s in the rubble, and presumably this means that this progress was made over a span of time from the middle of Iteration 10 up until now. The iteration may be up in 2 weeks as per Dave’s estimate, but it will probably not launch in the same state it was when Iteration 11 ended.

I said would stay through until the iteration is over, and leave when that happened. I figured whatever I did here should be temporary, and that I would only be involved so long as it took to find somebody else.

There’s probably a substantial investment in maintaining a narrative and making a demon out of my actions, who I am, and what I did. I contend that this narrative will probably neither be entirely wrong or right. The community will likely see revival on the back of that narrative regardless, and I see no reason to impede it. There’s but one solid kernel of absolute truth to anything that has been discussed, and it is that I did not understand the community.

So that community is free to judge my actions and intent as they will, they are free to rebuild their community, and they are free to an /int/craft without my further involvement. My part in the story ends here.