As from to day 26th - Feb - 2008
Aleksander was removed from Special Attack by me after discussing about it with SainK

Reasons were as follows:

1. Abusing adminpowers
2. Making ppl leave community
3. Encouraging racist actions

This decision is final.

On behalf of SpecialAttack Management

AgnI

_________________
You must die! I alone am best!

I'm not an alcoholic, I'm drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings.

Tbh I'm not entirly surprised. It seems the guy was a tad immature. I hope he's not all bent outta shape over it though.

_________________
*Insert Witty Comment Here*

Thanx to the reporter!

Its impossible for the SpA Management and/or Tier 3 admins to have everything controlled.
So I really appreciate what the reporter did.

I hope it won't happen again, and ofcourse sorry for the inconveinence.

Greetings from me

Geylani

_________________
"Knife King of SpA" "I can see trough people, but not walls - [SpA]Geylani"

Personal Records:
Monsterkill with Knife
Monsterkill with Glock

Well i must say...

You guys almost accept everyone. The only rule is that you dont won't have any under 16 or 18 i can't remember.
But still. What happend to that SpA-Trial??? Exceptions are ofcorse okay, if you played with the newcomer for a long time, and knows him well. But i don't know how you guys let them in, having a chat on IRC or whatever. But it doesn't take long.

You should know more about the people you let in the clan. Instead of just... letting them in with the biggest hopes, and then just threw them out again, if they're too annoying. You still did the right thing throwing Aleksander out, but you could have been chatting with him a little more time, before you invited him (or dind't) to the community.

SpecialAttack is verry "open" at the moment.. You're giving everyone a "chance". And that's good ofcorse. But the chance is to big. Give them a small chance, and warn them about, that they still not are a 100% member of the community, and can be thrown out at any moment (when they are on a trial).

There are also the thing, that sometimes people change. If they do, and thats the reason to that you throw them out of the clan. Don't. Give them a warning. Tell them that they changed to something, that isn't good. If they still act like, well i dont know. You might just have the only choise to kick them out. But often, people listen to what they've been told, and be the good one again, they once was.

I wont be discussing this, as this is my one and only opinion. But i will read your answers or comments. So feel free and type what you wanna type.

I will go back to my homework now..

_________________
^.-
motherfuckin rabbits ejaculating sunshine

_________________
...:::~*We Can't Be Adults! We're Steadily Growing!!*~:::...

Since this decision was so sudden, I decided to wait with commenting on it until I could tell my story to the admins first and see if they would change their minds. They didn't, so I now want to tell this community what happened, and why I was kicked from the community membership. I have little understanding for their decision, and in case there are people here who will think the same way, I want them to know the truth. This is gonna be a long read, but if you can't be bothered, at least read the conclusion at the end.

However much I've annoyed people in the past, what sparkled this was a game I have on the SpA TF2 servers the night of 26th, with no other SpA members around, and no other people from the community than StormFront (who I do, btw, not blame for any of this, it was not his decision to kick me, and since the admins have all the facts he can't have distorted the truth). It started out with me saying n00b to someone (which I do regularly, will anyone who's played with me before know), which set StormFront off. Then someone else said "nigger", which made StormFront even more angry. I followed up with some racist remarks which SF didn't notice ("Racism is OK as long as it's directed towards white people", "Racism is an art, Hitler was the master" if I remember correctly, ask Saint for the server logs). Later, StormFront got more and more infuriated with various people on the server, who spoke alot on the in game chat about various things, and during the game was much AFK to complain about me and them in IRC. I proceded to slap him some times with 0 dmg because he was alternating between spamming the ingame text chat (and voice chatting too for that matter), and being AFK. In the end he made a forum post complaining about me and others, and because it was late and I was tired I made a stupid "funny" reply saying I didn't want to defend myself, when what I really meant was that StormFront was so easily infuriated that I was hesitant to take him seriously. I was going to make another post the morning after explaining myself a bit more, but because of an extraordinarily quick decision making in SpA, this was too slow. In the end, had I refrained from making that first reply, it is entirely possible that this could all have been avoided.

The reason I will now explain this situation further, is because the decision is not what it seems to be, i.e. not based only (and hardly at all) on the reasons stated first in this thread. I will remind you:

1. Abusing adminpowers
2. Making ppl leave community
3. Encouraging racist actions

These reasons were ostensibly constructed from StormFront's comments, and from the server logs (which shows all the in-game chat). As you can see from the time of posting, this decision was made the morning after the incident. I was never asked what happened, in fact I wasn't even contacted about the decision. I discovered because I couldn't log into the forums with [SpA]Aleksander.

I did not abuse my admin powers. What I did was that I slapped StormFront with 0 dmg because he was too much AFK during the game. It can't possibly have mattered for him in the context of the game, but of course it made him even more angry. But as I interpreted the situation, things weren't so out of hand on the server to necessitate one player being AFK half the game to report it. In the end, the leaders of SpA haven't mentioned admin abuse to me when I've talked to them, so I can at least speculate that maybe they also see that this wasn't necassarily admin abuse (they could not have known SF was AFK for example). It cannot have been crucial.

The two other reasons are interconnected. I will spend some time on a fundamental issue here, because it is important: what is disrespect? As you will remember, the word "nigger" infuriated StormFront because it is racist to say that. I guess it obviously is racist to say "nigger". Explicit membership rules (which I can no longer see) state something like that we should show "respect", and this is the word Saint referred me to when I asked if racist jokes were forbidden. Had racism been explicitly outlawed, I would have understood the decision well, but it hasn't, and I've read the rules so I didn't think it was. Now, about the same time that Saint explained to me about respect, StormFront was on IRC, complaining about Nanne and Cookye's exchange of the word "faggot". It is interesting, because I can quote SF on saying

[quote=StormFront]StormFront: sorry - burt I class "faggot" as in the same bracket as "nigger" - jsut me maybe[/quote]

Well, StormFront, I completely agree. Jokes about sexuality is just as bad as jokes about race. Or murder, or war, for that matter. Most jokes tend to have the potential to offend someone. The point here is that the limit of when to stop is not obvious. In fact, I tend to take a graver view on jokes about gay people than jokes about black people: racism is pretty much universally accepted as evil, and closely associated with nazi germany, so any racist joke is usually deemed immidiatly as absurd. Homosexuals, on the other hand, are still officially treated as subhumans by for example churches around the western world, and stereotypes about them are often deemed more "realistic"; in other words, people tend to take them more seriously. Well, there is definitely gay jokes around SpA. People call eachother faggots for fun. Maybe if they do it too much it becomes annoying. But saying that they encourage action against gay people is ridiculous. If StormFront can't take seeing "faggot" and other words regularly, maybe he just isn't right for this community. My point is that in the end, I didn't do something which was much different from what is regularly done in the community. I made a couple of jokes against black people instead of gay people (which again SF didnt even see). And to be honest, they were quite obviously very sarcastic jokes, much milder than most gay jokes around. Personally, I think it is OK that people say "nigger" occasionally on the server. If the leaders say otherwise, that's OK (I think it's great that people show some responsibility as server owner), but I could not have known. No, it is not obvious. In the Comedy forum, there is a thread called "Rape Finland", with a picture of black people raping a white woman, stating "Refugees can do anything". It is obviously racism in some form, and I don't see Pim getting instaban. Yes, I may have made StormFront leave the community. But if I did, it was because of something I did that I shouldn't have done, and it wasn't racism. That requires more research on my behaviour.

So in the end, the reasons I was kicked as stated by community leaders say absolutely nothing, and are largely not true.

I had a talk with Saint and Bucky on IRC to clear things up, and it turned out that this incident, as Saint put it, was only the last drop. The reason for the server bans was of that incident, but the reason I was kicked from the squad was largely for what I've done earlier too.

I know I can seem pretty immature on forums and IRC at times. Saint put this pretty neatly:

[quote=SaintK]
[SpA]Saint: next to that, your constantly feeling a need to type in caps letters on the servers
[SpA]Saint: You feel a need of constant spamming somehow[/quote]

To make things simple, I've decided to lay myself completely open for attack on this one. It is true, I have a need of constant spamming . In fact, I often have trouble seeing the difference between my spamming and other people's spamming (in other words, I don't see how I'm different from the rest of the community), but since everybody else always see it, it must only be me. I am sorry for that, and if you find that really annoying, I can see that all the other things that I wrote in the game chat that day would necessitate a talk with me, something like "Aleksander, youre maybe not made for this community...". Saint can provide server logs if he wants, I guess I wrote "OMG I WIN" at the end of each round, much like I always do. Again, it's OK that community leaders want less spam in game chat (and IRC).

But this is also were the leaders have failed completely to address the problem correctly. Like I said before, I was abruptly kicked as a member without even receving a PM about it, much less talked to. This is something I would expect to happen in real serious cases, for example if I DDoSes the servers or something. But as Saint have told me, this was just as much for being [SpA]Aleksander generally as for what happened the night of 26th. Again, I know I can be too much of a spammer at times. And people in the community have sometimes told me "kk shut the hell up now ". Bucky, AgnI and Saint have never said anything like this; not as members, and certainly not as leaders of the community. By all means, if my "haha n00b" whenever FuckTastic walks on my stickeys is jeapordizing my SpA membership, I will be able to stop myself, but I never knew this was so irritating to the leaders as to make them consider kicking me. They have never said anything at all, until the final decision was made.

So in the end:

I was instabanned from servers and community membership for doing something I thought was OK all along, with virtually no hints to the opposite. The 1month ban on the servers for me and others was completely inconsistent with regards to what happens daily on the TF2 servers; ask for server logs of the night. Server owners can do what they want, but this was done on a whim, and with an unusually quick decision process, and with no presedence. It was unquestionably completely uncalled for. About my removal from the community, in my view it cannot even be argued that this was handled the right way: something in the process was too automatic for a community like SpA.

Now, if anyone do slightly agree with me, that this process wasn't worthy of SpA, I don't expect them to go out in the open and critisize Saint, Bucky and AgnI for it: this is a pretty close-knit community, and this incident shouldn't make any difference between established members. I rather do this to clear my name, to make it clear that I didn't "do" anything, I am not a racist, and only myself, so I can stick around the community still for some time and not be treated as an outcast. I also hope the big decision makers here will read this and think "OK, maybe we were a bit too rash. Maybe we should have talked to Aleksander about this before. Maybe the server logs didn't give us enough context. Maybe we'll handle this a bit differently next time." Yes, you are supreme commanders, but I know none of you want a nazi community where important decisions are made on the whim of a leader

I will answer any questions should they be needed to clear matters up here, I want everyone who wants to know what happened to learn what happened.

Until my (completely unheard of) 1 month ban on the server has been lifted, I'll try to stick around, but I'll (obviously) be playing on other TF2 servers. When the period is over, I'll probably start playing on SpA servers again; I rather like it here and I nothing against any individuals in the community.

What is sad is that noone bothered to read this whole text but if you want to know what happened, you should: it's the truth.

Kudos for actually turning up and making a post rather then just flaming the community: I honestly expected less of you.

Couple of things though: First up, if I was AFK so much, how did I get round to ranking so high on the server those games? I know I'm good but I still have to actually play to score the frags. Only a tiny nitpick but still...

Secondly your entire way of thinking, of applying logic to the world, is staggeringly flawed. Unfortunately you are far from the exception here.



This is the entire issue I have with your attitude and the attitude of a huge amount of people I meet on the internet. The words "nigger" or "faggot" do not have the potential to be offensive. They are not innocuous words that can be misconstrued if someone is determined to find fault with you. They are designed from the ground up as horribly offensive, derogatory and abusive insults and you simply do not get that.

The internet provides far too good a cover for narrow minded little bigots to say all the things they want to say without fear of retaliation. If we were to meet in person there is no way on gods green bloody earth you would ever use those words, but hiding behind your monitor, safe from hands that would otherwise knock some sense into you, you feel empowered to be a big man and use "naughty words".

Simply put you need to wise up as to how the world works, not just how your tiny group of friends function. Sure, among the straight, white guys you hang out with using those words are no doubt acceptable, but out in the world at large I can assure you that you will push the wrong person someday and you may not get much of a chance to regret it.

After seeing that you made this post I was hoping that we could say "let's just move on - we've all learnt something" but I don't think we can as I do not think you have or will. Rest assured that each and every single time someone decides to get wise arsed about what they see as "funny funny" jokes, I will be all over them like a cheap suit. Do I think this will make a difference? No, but zero tolerance means zero tolerance. If this clan do not appreciate my attitude then so be it, I will sidle off and find somewhere else to play, no harm done. I am more than aware that I am the guest here and I will respect decisions made by [SpA].

(Oh, as an aside, I am neither gay nor black – I am merely one of those odd people who wishes to live in a world were discrimination, any discrimination, is incomprehensible let alone acceptable.)

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

(Post was made prior to StormFront's, I will comment on it at the end.)

One thing I forgot to make a proper comment on: Yes, my reply to StormFront's forum complaint was inappropriate, and I should have refrained from posting until I had actually something to say, the next morning for example. In fact, had I just explained myself immediatly (and shut up about those "racist" remarks noone even noticed ), the CLs probably wouldn't have even bothered to look through the chat logs, only to find "shocking" evidence of spamming, at least when reading it outside the game (the context), and continuously (i.e. not running around fragging people for a couple of minutes between each chat line). And however right they were in their decision, this could probably have been avoided (at least for some time ). At this point, however, StormFront had made some comments that I will still contend were out of bounds, and without foundation. As a result, I simply didn't take him seriously. And at wrongly thought you wouldn't either. I should have taken him seriously at once: at this stage in the process, I made a mistake.

However, after a little chatting on IRC, I realized that it was, in fact, the racist remarks which turns most people there against me (though like I pointed out, Saint told me earlier that it was very much my behaviour this whole time which made him make his decision). It may be that rules are different in the game chat on the one hand, and the forums and IRC on the other. I did not know this, though in hindsight I can see how it makes some sense. Something like "it's ok to make rough jokes between friends, but not when you're only member on the server". My understanding of the community humour came from the forums and IRC, where homosexuality and other grave business is joked with regularly. Now, I don't often make racist remarks, this is probably my first time in SpA, sparkled by someone else saying "nigger" (not defending it with that btw). I don't make many homosexual remarks either, tbh, though I make some, because they are so common in SpA community (and other places). I don't want to seem extremely pedantic here (like "no but you say ghey, then i can say nigga!1!!!"), and like I pointed out I respect that you completely outlaw racism, but I still want you to understand my position properly. Discriminating people for sexuality and discriminating people for skin colour is, in my opinion, equally evil. And in my opinion, when you say that gay jokes are allowed, but racist jokes are not, I feel that discrimination against gay people is more accepted than racism, which I disagree with. I'm not here trying to say people should make more racist jokes to outweigh the "gay" remarks (LOL), but just that to me, it is not obvious that one should be outlawed and the other shouldn't. I didn't understand the "system". I must now again refer to StormFront, who I quoted as saying that "faggot" was as bad as "nigger". It doesn't seem that the system is so obvious to him either.

Many also pointed out that my racist comments were not obviously meant as "jokes", but might actually seem sincere. This I can only blame on my bad understanding of the human psyche. Just like I can't possibly see how anyone can take cookye saying "fag" to someone "seriously", I cannot honestly see how anyone could take my remark "Racism is an art" seriously. To me, it is inconceivable that anyone interpreted that as anything but a sarcastic remark following the "nigger" comments from others. I can see how SpA doesn't want to stand for racist jokes in the game chat, and maybe if I had payed more attention I would have noticed you do not make gay jokes as SpA members in game chat either; I am not certain. Like I said, I didn't think of the possibility that there are different rules for different places, and I blame myself for that.

To conclude, I did not know, and I contend it was not a 100% obvious fact (and to me not an obvious one at all), that rules on racism are so strict here. I pretty much never make racist jokes or remarks, and that this would be blown so much out of proportions as it has was inconceivable to me (obviously, or I would not have done it). I will calm down on my "childish" behaviour from now on, and definitely not touch any subjects concerning race, as a community "sidekick". But I still hold that the CLs made a too quick and too rash decision on this, and I hope everyone understands that I by no means made any racist remarks that could actually be taken as anything but sarcastic comments, and that I apart from that did done nothing anyone in SpA haven't seen me do many times before: this was a SpA TF2 night like any other. And It's really sad that random things should make me have to leave my membership in SpA, it's a good commmunity.

StormFront just made a reply, and I will comment on it: I again completely agree with you: I too would like to live in a world with no discrimination of any kind. However, I don't view jokes as discriminating. Almost all jokes would then be outlawed: or maybe not, but where do we then draw the line?

Now, I don't have a goal in life to offend people, so I actually make very few gay jokes (or racist jokes for that matter). And if I do, they are never connected anywhere to reality (I will say "j00 r gh3y11!" so someone whome I have no reason to believe is homosexual), so far fetched that I hope they will be taken rather as an attack on the discriminators - calling racism an art is in my opinion so ridiculous that it should be more an attack on the racist than the descriminated.

But anyway, if you can't take seeing people call eachother faggots, then no, SpA isn't the place for you. They outlaw racism, but gay jokes (or discrimination in your view) are usually OK. In that sense, there is not zero tolerance here. Go figure.

To be honest dude, just for this one sentence i would right ban you out of the community, the forums, the servers and also of IRC.

I'm don't know you very well, and i can tell you i don't have anything against you. After all i thought you are a pretty well mannered dude who know's how to handle things, but making Jokes of Hitler is just dumb, silly and childish - there may be some stupid childs around who didn't learned a lesson about this but i assume you don't belong to those people so i just can't understand why you throw out those totally useless sentence.

Even if you meand it as a joke - I personally DON'T want to see it anywhere and i think most of the others agree in that thing.

Just about the "I did no racist jokes" thing you wrote about, i didn't read anything and maybe i got something wrong as i'm german (you might know) and at those i won't tolerate any sentences like that.

That noes not mean you can flame black people instead with "Niggers", yes i know some black people around and sometimes i call them like that myself too, BUT the difference is that they know it is not an insult, rather meant as a joke eachother as i know them for a while.

My Point is - you can still be lucky for only punished with 1 month ban, it's not that i don't like you anymore - since you didn't flamed against me directly - but that just lets you look of a bad way.

Atleast i can say, i'm very suprised of your well mannered, detailed post instead of just flaming the clan/community/actions which were taken.

Of course you're welcome to play on our servers again after youre 1 month break, and i'm pretty sure you learned out of this.

Cheers Ruscher

I will have to make another concession, because I see that the vast majority of complaints on me now originate from my racist remarks, which was really not heavily emphasized by Saint when I asked him specifically why I was kicked. And I guess I did not consider the factor that this clan is pretty much based on the continent, in countries in the area of Germany, where feelings on racism (and most particularly Hitler) will necessarily be more pressing than other places. I'm not saying we're constantly calling eachother "niggers" in Norway, or on Norwegian TF servers. I rather mean that...I'm used to that if you can, in a community, call eachother "gay" or "fag" as an insult (even a friendly such), you might not receive so hard reactions if you make similar "insulting" nicknames based on skin colour. To be sure, gay thrashing is more accepted in Norway than racism, so you might get a sharp answer. But I'm not so sure it should be.

Anyway, I just had an automatic feeling of the community that it accepted insults (at least friendly such) and jokes based on all stereotypes (gay is bad, woman are fuckmachines, etc). When someone said "nigger" to someone, I decided to take that into the extreme, to something that was so absurd that it could not be taken serious. It would make the "nigger" comment seem rather absurd too (at least that's how I see it).

Now, I obviously didn't mean anything by it, and I thought it was pretty obvious at that time that I didn't, too. But I didn't take into consideration that there would be an abnormally large chance that someone might be offended by this nevertheless. I doubt homosexuals had an easy round under Hitler either, but feelings are feelings, and racism has a special place in this part of the world. I'm not saying only Germans have a "right" to feel offended by this, I don't know where everyone in the community lives, but I do recognize that this was an abnormally stupid place to say this.

Finally, you might not believe me, but it is not my goal to offend anyone any time, so to whoever was offended by this racist comment of mine, I am sorry. However, I also hope you who are left in SpA understand that if you are offended by such comments, for whatever reason, be not so sure that everything you say is so much more "harmless". I said it because I felt that people in this community didn't take everything so personally, so that were not so much need to be politically correct. For example, I don't care at all whether anyone calls me black, white, straight, gay, virgin, nerd, Norwegian, TINY LITTLE DINOSAUR ARMS, or whatever else I may or may not be. Every community has its own taboos. If the forum admin was raped once, you just don't make jokes about rape, unless you're looking to offend someone. I've honestly never so hard reactions to something like this (and I've seen similar racist comments before, to be sure) as what I've seen is SpA, so I guess I really found the keyword the hard way this time. Again, I obviously offended people, and I want to apologize to them for this; I had no idea you would react this emotionally. And I can only hope the next SpA n00bs choose other stereotypes to make jokes with, to not rip things like this up again.

Sure we do flame eachother in the community (as long as you know it's not meand for real)

It's fun to flame around, having fun together and do some funny insults, BUT this has to stay with members only, flaming people on the server's makes them leaving and having a bad taste of SpA, and honestly nobody wants to think of SpA: Only a community full of flaming retards who like to insult.

And that's just what you did, playing on the server and random getting out "jokes" - yes maybe you meant them as a joke but there are ~30 player's around who definatly wont agree with you and this just can't be tolerated - as you will understand.

I also use to call FT a noob in IRC (as he is one ) but he know i'm just playing around with him so it's no problem.

I agree with the upper admins alex - you are indeed very harsh to both SpA members as well as potentials

It's a shame really but I don't a reputation like clan [67] who are prats to who flame each other and everyone they play with just because that's their way. It's not nice!

~Bex

_________________

My PC Modding Plog

Wow, I missed a lot here. Aleks, it's not about the fact that you BELIEVE your words meant no harm, the downright fact of the matter is that the words were invented TO intimidate, demean and destray a persons dignity. Is that the message SpA wants to send? No.

Good call on this one really.

I feel I should reply to this one too...because this is just the point I've been trying to make the last few posts here. Yes, the words were harsh and easily insulting, and I can see how people are offended by them (and again, I am sorry). But they were not fundamentally different from other derogatory (sp) terms that are used without receiving any reaction. I call people "n00b" from time to time, usually in a more or less friendly way. Some don't like it, but most people laugh it off. I'm not contending that people should just laugh off what I said if they feel offended by it, because they're really off the scale compared to "n00b", but "n00b" was also invented TO intimidate, demean and destray (sic) a persons (sic) dignity. Note that I also do not say that SpA thinks it's OK for people to say "NOOB!1!!" in all directions all the time, but I think you will agree that some lightly insulting terms, directed at friends in a friendly way, are OK. And so, the downright fact of the matter is that some terms are almost infinitely more insulting to some people that others, and should probably be avoided. And again, I am sorry, and I will definitely be more careful in the future.

Ok, let end this once and for all:

There are limits to and boundaries in any society and any community. The use of certain words and phrases are generally excepted as wrong and not to be used in public or social content; as they are offensive, demaeaning, intimidating and down right wrong.

To be a member of SpA it requires a certain extent of knowledge and maturity about these boundaries, when you have crossed them and how to not cross them.

You crossed the boundaries set out by general society and communities and that includes here at SpA.

Greasy.