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but oash was founded by a defiler?

Oash created Allanak

*blinks* Wow. Okay.

*pauses a moment to gather herself* Am I seriously about to defend the frickin' Official Armageddon Staff Position?(!)

*rubs face* All right.

First, let me concede JC's point, or factual statement rather - he and Barka are the only people who made an effort to remove sensitive info from the Arm wiki leak. And as he points out, no one has taken him up on his offer to point out additional material that cannot abide. These are important points, and I don't want them to get lost in the rhetorical shuffle.

With the above as context: This board, when it was formed, was an absolute Goddess-send. It allowed, for the very first time I'm aware of, organized, (sometimes) reasoned discussion of what was going on over in a shared universe we, as a community, obviously care about a great deal. As someone pointed out earlier (I'm sorry, I couldn't find the quote), in the early days of the Shadowboard, the mere act of posting here was courting a ban from the game, if not outright blacklisting. I know JC doesn't care a fig whether these boards are "good for Arm", but on balance, from my perspective and many others, they have clearly been a net positive. There are a number of vets who are seriously considering returning to play, now that old grievances can be aired and new ones have a place they can go as well, instead of the insular "black box" of official Staff Complaints. And that's just my immediate group (say, a dozen folks). I'm sure this sentiment isn't unique. For the first time in 20 some-odd years, we, as players, have a real and potent voice. As someone who has spent a fair number of decades in both the political and advocacy trenches (Raise your hand if you were a child activist!), this is a precious, precious resource.

[I'll stop and note here the irony that I get to directly contradict the man who founded the Shadowboard in the first place, because of the very fact that he permits almost unlimited free speech. ]

We're kind of at that point as a community where we now (sometime in the last year?) have a Place at the Table, whether The Other Side wants to admit it or not (the very fact that Nergal is quoting full posts from this forum, and then arguing against them in public, makes the point). While we're at this table, I advocate that we don't eat with our elbows on it, use utensils, and try not to belch in the face of our counterparts.

Ultimately, I would love to see Arm. achieve its potential, to continue to grow and evolve well into this new century. And I hope we continue to be an important part of that process. At its best, the Shadowboard is akin to investigative journalism, rooting out sleaziness and bringing to light nasty little transactions that otherwise would go unchallenged. Perhaps even holding up a mirror to the Arm. staff and making them reconsider something from a different angle. At its worst...

Speaking to this particular instance, I never saw the material, so I can't intelligently comment on its appropriateness or not. I do agree that anything currently in play should be off-limits; and yes, I realize we have a "Spoilers" section. Looking over it, though, there's hardly anything Zalanthas-shattering posted. Discussion of (a then-living) Ruke? Yeah, grey area - but it was a critique of role-playing dynamics as opposed to someone posting his character sheet and/or attempting to organize an assassination.

Much harder to say is history, especially when you start factoring in Ny-retconning. How far back is fair game? How well are players able to avoid meta-gaming? How much detail is too much/not enough? These are tough questions. I don't believe any of them have absolute, infallible answers. The world, any world, just isn't that black-and-white.

I will draw attention to the fact that it appears Oldtwink felt strongly enough about the situation that he's bowed out of this forum, at least for now. If so, that's a real loss. Agree or disagree with his positions, I think his posts are/were generally eloquent, well-reasoned, and sincere. I'd be sorry to see him go permanently.

My perspective, anyway.

THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

Cross-post the good parts, dammit.

It creeps me out when you make this much sense. Seriously though, well put.

Yeah, exactly. @barka pulled down the contact info page as soon as he noticed it. the page was online for what, 10 minutes? I spotted that Adhira and a couple other people's info were in the comment of the deletion log for that page so I quietly PMed @barka about it and the log was erased 2 minutes later.

Naturally, nobody who's gone DEFCON 1 cares about the facts, because it is so much easier to get people outraged by claiming @barka doxxed them. It's certainly a more appealing claim than the truth: the ludicrous secret epic the staff were writing was revealed so people actually have some idea what they've been contributing to for 2 decades. Boo fucking hoo. I was more surprised by how much information didn't make it to the wiki from the IDB (the defacto place where information lives) than by what was actually in the Wiki.

Anyhow, here's the staff announcement LordOfChange alluded to:



They fully understand it. They don't care because they're busy trying to come as close to describing what happened as rape without using the word.

---

Edit: Talked with @kiyetal on Discord. If @barka actually committed a hack, I definitely don't agree with that, but I've seen no post where he claimed to have done it. My stand on the posting of content of this type in general is the same.

I can understand both sides.

The ARM Staff feel violated. Nobody likes to look like a fool, and being hacked makes you look like a fool. I know from experience; when Atonement was hacked, I was irrationally angry too. I just had Tiamat in my corner, and let her filter my posts so that I maintained some semblance of calm to the public. Holmes, Tiamat, Kithrater and I handled that hack rather well, in retrospect, but probably because we followed the number one staff rule:

Don't post angry, in any sort of official staff capacity. It will make you look like a dick, even when you're right.

That said, after reading up on the entirety of this issue with the ARM hack, it's very clear to me that the hacker didn't intend to release peoples' private contact info online, and immediately removed it because the hacker's goal was to ruffle feathers without causing any real damage. I think that seems incredibly clear now, at least to me, an impartial outsider to the situation. There is very little meaningful harm done from the actual leak of information -- certainly less than Shadow of Isildur's two majors: Mauradergate 2015 or Northlands' Revolt back in 2009. This is pretty tame, and if the drama lingers for more than another day or so, it's probably due to a lack of other interesting things to talk about or do within the community.

However, at the end of the day, hacking is hacking, and hacking is unethical no matter the intention behind it. I'm actually not opposed to well executed-and-intentioned whistle-blowing, but that wasn't this. Whistle-blowing happens from the inside, without illegally breaching security measures. This seems like it was just a hack for the lolz (or maybe they hoped to find something more interesting/damning than what they actually found), and while entertaining to a few folks and infuriating to a bunch of others, it ultimately just fuels the Us vs Them mentality that's sort of wrecking the community at large.

In short: it was a bad thing to do, and the biggest injury it caused was furthering a rift between two groups of people who should be collaborating if they want the ARM/RPI Community to improve, or even survive. Simultaneously, the ARM Staff are equally complicit (arguably more so if they continue this sort of self-victimization without filter) in the damage done to the community through their reactivity.

The best thing that could happen now is that everyone calms down and tries to reach across the aisle to have a meaningful conversation about social collaboration vs social antagonism. It's something that has to go both ways.

Addendum: I just wanted to note that I realize that the best thing that could happen may not be a likely outcome given the history of all parties involved and current situation.

oldarmer: Since your contact information was "leaked", have you felt personally threatened? Do you feel as though your family is threatened? Have you received any threatening or hostile correspondence from anyone as a result of your information being mistakenly leaked?