Armageddon Staff's Rejection of Shadowboard Players

Hey,

I've been avoiding logging into my GDB because I didn't need it to read the forums which I periodically check for updating the Armageddon section of Optional Realities. That being said once RedRanger (who was a very distinguished player who never went off the player at staff) was banned I decided to bite the bullet and check.

imgur.com/a/y0wzO

PS - I was also banned with no e-mail notification.

I just find it kind of funny they banned me (moderate) and Red Ranger (also moderate) both who actually would like Armageddon to improve and have never condoned hacking or doxxing or posted anything that threatened harm on any member of the community. Like... I don't even play, I checked the GDB to update a section of Optional Realities about Armageddon. I'm also wildly neutral in this whole boondoggle and Red Ranger didn't even post on the topic until after everything happened. What was his transgression?

So I knew something was up yesterday morning (Eastern Time) when the typical GDB account I've been using was banned. It wasn't until yesterday PM that I checked to confirm that I was also banned from the MUD itself. Interestingly, when they did all that banning (without the courtesy of any notification to me or, apparently, to Jeshin either) they never got around to banning my original GDB account (on the current iteration of the GDB account #69 dude!) handle Red Ranger. So this morning just now I was browsing the GDB using my Red Ranger GDB account when I was suddenly banned.

Again, none of this is surprising. What was genuinely surprising was that when they were handing out the bannings they neglected to ban my best known GDB account.

The game belongs to the staff, not to the players. The staff can do whatever they want with it, including banning whomever they want for whatever reason they please. They can declare that IC’ly one plus one equals three or that Kurac doesn’t exist or never existed. They can then ban any player that makes the mistake of mentioning Kurac IC’ly (or OOC’ly!) thereafter. It’s their game! Of course, just because they CAN do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or that everyone should agree with their decisions.

In my opinion, to understand their motivations for banning me one must understand that it’s all about control. It’s understandable that they don’t like me because I disagree with their decisions and I post about it on a public forum openly using my Armageddon identity. But I had nothing to do with the wiki leak and I even hadn’t posted anything about it on the GDB or on the SB one way or the other. I also haven’t had the heart to play Arm since late 2014, as I’ve posted multiple times before.

So why ban me from the GDB and the game? Again, IMO it’s about control and they understandably feel even more vulnerable and out of control because of the leak. So they’ve lashed out and I’m a convenient target. Banning me from a game I haven’t played lately doesn’t hurt me and banning me from the GDB doesn’t hurt me. It also does nothing to stop me from posting on the SB, which they don’t like, why would I stop? But in addition to whatever vindictive glee they get from banning me, the real reason for my ban is to reassert control by sending a message to other players: “If you speak up, you could be next. We own this MUD, not you.”

In the Staff wiki/docs thread @jaunt has made good points about the need for collaboration, and I agree 100%. In fact I lamented that loss of collaboration in my very first post on the SB when I outted myself:

I think that those in the playerbase, both on the GDB and on the SB, that have really thought about the problems of Arm have come to the conclusion that there’s a lack of collaboration and they wish there were more. But collaboration requires compromise and ceding some control and I just don’t think that the staff of Arm are interested in loosening their control over the game at all.

Update: Adhira lifted my ban earlier today 2/23/16.

absolutely nothing. what do you feel that you're owed?

You can expect the player numbers to go back into decline again. We're right back where we were before nyr went on "hiatus".