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DAV2 (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 05:17 am: | 
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It's good this thread has restarted.
Let's see, scroll up to mules' post on 30 Nov 2001.
'1). They think Seipman, Raven at least if not Gilly as well have been unfairly sanctioned and filtered. (The reasons for the recent filterings of Seipman and Raven seem to be trumped up and unfair).'
Mules was completely unaware of the actual reasons and we couldn't say a thing.
I can tell you what I couldn't back then and perhaps you'll see now that all stories you hear on the bugboard or channel 24 have two sides.
It is correct that gilly was long term banned over hacked timeseal. He did a really silly thing and regretted it. He's back now and I'm sure he'll be a model user from this point on. I hate banning people (heck I hate having to sanction people, it's a waste of my time if nothing else), but sometimes it's the only resort - we cannot spend time trying to reason with people who won't, we don't have the time, we are not paid to waste our time. I made a strong point on how I feel about it back in 2001 and still feel that way.
So where do TheRaven and Seip figure in this. Ahh ... penny drops now... Seip and TheRaven were banned because of admin list/comment leaks. TheRaven had admitted to receiving confidential information in a mistell in 24. Not suprising I blew a fuse at him and demanded to know from where and his refusal to talk got him banned as a co-conspirator. TheRaven actually turn out to be the more 'innocent party' (although he really was receiving this info), and he got unbanned (there was a lot of pressure from other admins who were not in on what was going on at that time - I just didn't know then who I could trust so I was confiding in foxbat). TR was refusing to name Seipman, he didn't name him either. I'm not angry at him over this.
Seip on the other hand, well look at him trying to blackmail us, what kind of person is he? I really don't understand him. It's like FICS is his universe and us taking it away from him took away his life. But he was not willing to enjoy the server like everyone else. He was abusing it in perhaps the worst way possible by violating our trust, stealing and rotting the admin core which is FICS' lifeline. I don't know about anyone else here but what other sanction apart from life ban is there? What would you have done if you were us? If I had my way it would have been litigation.
Sorry that I wasn't allowed to say anything to clear it up back in 2001 - Seip made it public domain now so I can. It was a choice between either FICS falling apart (critical admins were threatening to leave), or route out the problem. Sorry for being so heavy handed, but I had no choice, it was them or the server.
DAV (whose forgotten what password he used here long ago).
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Fermy
Senior Member
Username: Fermy
Post Number: 147
Registered: 03-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 05:47 am: |
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Every story has two sides. I'm sure often admins receive a lot of stick not because your decisions are wrong, but because they are not transparent. And of course, sometimes they are wrong.
But people make the judgement on what was presented to them. If you don't tell the story and Seipman tells it, we will judge based on his story. That's inevitable. So tell your damn story and not 3 years after, but after it happened.
Bottom line is: make the whole process more transparent and people will have much more confidence in the whole system. |
Seipman -- (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 08:51 am: |
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As usual, DAV just doesn't get it. Hey DAV, I already addressed the blackmail accusation in the other thread in point #1. You chose to ignore it because it didn't fit with your view. Much like you always reject anything that doesn't fit with your view.
As for rotting the FICS lifeline, how about you refusing to share programming duties with other programmers, much more skillful than you, who have been willing to help over the years? Sharing the programming duties would have led to new features for FICS, but your ego got in the way. You say you don't have time to deal with things, so where does your time go on FICS? One look at the "help new_features" file shows you've done basically nothing for years.
As usual you choose to ignore reality. When you banned me for this hacked timeseal stuff, I guess you repressed the memory of the decision to ban me being reversed six days later. And when you say you couldn't clear it up in 2001, I guess you forgot that you went off about the whole thing in channel 24 back in 2001.
I guess it's only a coincidence that you try to "clear it up" hours before the admin list discussion comes out. |
DAV2 (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 08:53 am: |
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Fermy, I agree totally with what you say in principle, every word in fact.
The reality is that to make everything transparent is:
1> A real drain on our time in having to put evidence public
2> Having to hide evidence such as tip offs or methods of investigation would probably still not represent our side of the story and just give a forum for abusers to speak up public to cause a stink rather than go through the proper channels.
3> We aim to keep things confidential and so it's for that user to ask for clarification, not someone else.
In this case given that we didn't know the full details at that point in time, it was an embarrassment for us to be tricked in this way and, with the confidentiality we aim to keep, telling everyone what was going on was simply not possible. Nor were the users in question asking us to tell our side of the story, they were just causing a stink.
Given no one is paid to do anything here and we're all juggling against real life syndrome a transparent system is just something that would not fly. Even in real life you can't find out why someone else got 'arrested', and the number of people to administer such a system, the paperwork and so on is enormous. We're primarily here to run a chess server. The abuse dealing bit is the rotten bit of the apple, and not something that should consume our time.
I agree admin decisions are sometimes wrong, overly hasty or too tough or even too light. There is the official appeals process via abuse and the head admin if necessary. The problem is some users burn all their bridges or be a constant pest that it's very hard for any appeal to not be coloured by the user's past actions. Sure we could have juries, public councils and so on, but we'd spend all our time with that and the red tape instead of providing the server for you to use. I know I didn't sign up to be part of a judicial system. The end of the day it's a chess server, not your life (please don't make it so, there is so much else to also enjoy) and if someone is unfairly sanctioned their life does not end there or have an effect on any other aspect of it. Most users seem to be able to get by perfectly well though as model users racking up no comments at all.
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cday (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 09:03 am: |
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You can find out why someone got arrested its public record in the United States. |
DAV2 (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 09:08 am: |
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Seip, let's see.
Whatever I decide about programming is none of your business. It's off thread as well. Don't try and gain support by attacking the work I've done over the years whether you agree with the methods or not. I've spent many hours of my life doing things for the server, you haven't. Your daysleeper time is invalidated due to your actions - it wasn't for the server it was so you could infiltrate. I did the work because I believed in the server - even in the GP years.
Secondly, I didn't forget the 24 incident. You got unbanned because of appeal, because I couldn't bring other admins in because you were infiltrating us, and probably because you weaseled your viewpoint into the abuse committee that the ban was unjustified. Given the events shortly after, the ban was fully justified.
Thirdly move on. You are never coming back as Seipman. The bottom line is if you are ever reinstated, be it tomorrow, next month, 2015 or whenever, most of the admin staff will resign and the server will close there and then!
You've burnt your bridges, you're an evil person and I want nothing to do with you.
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cday (Unregistered Guest)
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 09:53 am: |
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We lov u dav and appreciate the work youve done for fics. Seipman enjoys fics as well. Yes he infiltrated as an admin but so what? You busted him and really it is no big deal. Why can't he be reinstaed? We would all like to see him back. |
Knighttour
Moderator
Username: Knighttour
Post Number: 395
Registered: 10-2000
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 04:06 pm: |
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The admin list emails Seipman originally posted in this thread have been moved to another thread:
http://www.thebugboard.net/messages/348/1990.html |
Fermy
Senior Member
Username: Fermy
Post Number: 148
Registered: 03-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, May 07, 2005 - 04:41 pm: |
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In response to DAV:
1> A real drain on our time in having to put evidence public
That's of course, is the crucial problem. More democratic system, however, would actually reduce time that each admin spends on adminstrative issues. Right now, all admins have similar functions. That means that in addition to writing FICS code, you have also to police channels. Similarly, the guy who is responsible for fics website has to police and hence have access to all sensitive user data. That means that you have very limited choice of people who can be admins and do all the work involved in running the server.
Democratic system means not only that you do policing transparently. It also means that you divide responsibility and rights. So there should be different groups of administrators: the ones doing programming, the ones doing websites and the ones doing policing and (in general) these are different people with different rights. That way you can involve much more people into running the server and hence decrease the workload on each. For example, there would be no need for you to deal with abusers, instead you could concentrate on code.
Secondly, transparent policing would eliminate a number of cases. If the policing is transparent, the standard is also transparent. Hence, there will be a smaller number of both users and admins overstepping it.
Finally, in most cases, transparent policing does not require huge time investment. For example, in case of muzzles it's enough to supply channel log.
Now, let's look at the more complex case: Seipman and Raven. If more democratic procedure was in place, you should not have banned them on the spot. Instead, first you'd have identified an admin leak and figured out that it was Seipman. At this point Seipman would have been banned and you could safely let the users know the whole story. That would not take any more time that it took in reality.
Having to hide evidence such as tip offs or methods of investigation would probably still not represent our side of the story and just give a forum for abusers to speak up public to cause a stink rather than go through the proper channels.
First of all, you should never convict on the basis of tip-off. What you do, you verify the tip-off and convict on the basis of YOUR own evidence. Hence, there is no need for you to divulge the tip-off. How much of investigation methods is divulged depends on the method, of course. Frankly, i feel that the only thing that you might want to omit is "as reported by timeseal" phrase.
3> We aim to keep things confidential and so it's for that user to ask for clarification, not someone else.
There are 2 possible solutions here, and both work for me. First, you can indeed make the whole story public, only if the user requests it or goes himself public.
Secondly, you might change the policy and make the process transparent regardless of the wishes of the user. The fear is that this might turn some users off. I think, that it's unfounded fear, and perhaps that will make some users act more responsibly. That's debatable issue IMO.
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I wrote a long message, but it all boils down to one simple thing: in reality you guys are running a community, it's a very special community, but it's nothing else but a community that happens to be called "chess server". You don't need to invent bycicle, society worked for centuries on the best ways to govern itself. Just copy what society does, it will work.
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