Okay. In going to chime in. I have not been a part of Dev work related to 1.8 due to academic obligations but have been closely monitoring the forums. Another perspective. Regardless of Aikar being a staff member or even the owner. He is the Original Poster of that thread. As with all OPs, the community expects that they can report derailing posts from their own thread. In my opinion, that is what happened, and is why I am okay with what took place. *side-comment* certain Individuals in America have a severe misconception of freedom of speech they interpret this as the opportunity to say whatever they want without any repercussions regardless of how cruel or untrue it may be.
I see no point to this thread other than what the subject of his PM warned against. You can dress up the post with questions and points at free speech and talks of censoring, but as they say: "If it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck..." This could have easily been addressed via PM directly with Aikar or even add another Senior Staff, or Community Manager, into the conversation to moderate/bear witness.
EMC is a family friendly server, therefore your comments should also be family friendly. Why is that so hard to grasp? I mean you wouldn't see Spongebob Squarepants going around talking like a sailor, now would you? Nope, cause it's a family friendly show... Just don't cross the line between the occasional swear, and filling your texts with every other swear word...
The persons post wasn't really 'deleted', it was under moderator review because they chose to personally attack other members (they had already been attacking me through out the thread, but I can take it, but I won't tolerate attacking other members). The response added nothing beneficial to the thread so it was not approved. I asked Mead to not start drama, because a user causing trouble having his off topic post review denied is not censorship. I was trying to get the thread back on topic, so why in the world would I approve something to continue on the drama the second I was posting to get things back on track? I removed your comment Mead because it was also just going to continue the same problem, and it was starting something out of nothing, so I sent you a PM to explain why it was removed. But as I said in the thread. Drama/hostile post about my actions achieves nothing. If you want to leave feedback, do so politely and best in PM. But my work on this server goes off of passion and motivation. If you try to "Force" me to do something I don't want to do(work on), then it won't get done. I work on the things that have my interest... and those things are usually the items I feel make a positive contribution to the health of the server or an absolute must/need (IE: 1.8 update) as I said on the other thread, CONVINCE ME something is a better idea, politely, and then things can happen. "EMC is going downhill, Aikar's has all the wrong priorities" does absolutely nothing to help things. Now, I'm going to get back to work. If anyone has ideas on things they think I should prioritize over something else and wants to do so in a polite and beneficial way, please PM me.
Well, I almost pm-ed you but I might as well put it here. I think you should prioritize smiling. You seem like an awesome guy and do so much for so many. May the 4th be with you Aikar.
Assuming this is the recent thread, send me a message and I'll take a look I can't speak for Aikar, but staff can miss things, especially in large threads
Keep in mind: EMC is not a "democracy" no matter how much you want it to be. Aikar owns 100% of it. It is a dictatorship. Now Aikar is a nice dictator, and only censors posts WHEN NEEDED to keep the community away from drama. Because when drama happens, lots of people get upset and some leave.
I saw nothing attacking you personally or by name. But like AC said things are missed. Report the posts or pm us and we will look into it. Back on topic. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to a business. I wouldn't suggest anyone go tell there boss that they think (she/he) is miss prioritizing and need to do things differently. I know with my boss that would earn a nice little reproach.
I get what you're saying, but you're using a bad example - this is more like customers grumping at the store manager, Aikar is the boss but he's not our boss. You are correct in that "Free Speech" doesn't apply here, however. I do stand by my earlier statement, that editing and deleting posts (and whole threads) is one of EMC's worst habits and it really needs to be stopped, for anything below the most extreme cases. "Causing drama" is just silly - warn or ban players as needed, lock threads where required, but making them just vanish from the public eye is a bad policy. I've said as much, and more vehemently, in that old "Got an issue?" thread.
I am a store manager in real life so I tend to think that way more often then not lol Customer get far more out of management when they come nicely. I'll give away all kinds of things to a nice customer before I will someone accusing me or yelling. I'm sure Aikar feels the same. Just my two cents.
Just 'removing' things because you don't agree with them is very wrong in my opinion. But if it is just a player cussing out another player, or someone just raising hell, and being off topic, that is different. I may post again here, but for now I'm just convinced that I can post as long of a post as I want. It could mean a lot to the players, and it could be exactly how they see it. But that doesn't matter if Aikar and staff just read it and don't do anything about it. I love EMC. No doubt in my mind about that. But things like Censorship really are starting to ruin it for me. It has Definitely been happening more and more recently, for unnecessary reasons.
The things that were removed in the post in question had to deal with what was reported by players. All forum reports are looked at thoroughly before any action is taken. I've only had to do 2 censoring/deleting in the last week. Both of which resulted from a player report. Now that being said, I AM going to go through the recent forum reports logs and see what action is/is not being taken so that I can make sure the staff are all on the same page.
I can not argue with this. I feel where you are coming from. I did not want to comment in this thread at all. As a matter of fact I didn't want people to make it. Sure some days I get out of line, it happens. I did explain my frustration in the heat of the moment to some on mumble but it shouldn't have gone further than that. This is no place for an apology but I do admit to the things sent to me in PM by Aikar. Moral is, Everybody has a breaking point, its best to sit out for a while when told to and come back with a 'cool head'. Threads like this shouldn't exist honestly. Public outcry/ Protest don't really work virtually like this. It may be proving a point to whom who are involved but doesn't really express a legit case to make changes from. Like I have been told before and to others reading this now, all problems/dispuites should be sent to (that CM Email that a staff can edit into this parenthesis because I don't memorize it off hand).
I would like to add my 2 cents: I have been an active forum member for years. I am the tenth highest posting member @~6300 posts. NEVER ONCE that I can recall- has a post of mine been removed. Sure I have had threads locked in the past because of off-topic discussion, and I am sure that staff has told me to take a chill pill at one point in my emc life. A pm to staff never hurts. You can talk things over with them.
You sir, are one of the lucky ones. I have had many posts removed without staff PMing me saying what I did wrong. Just simply removed, and forgotten.
Yep, I've had a post of mine deleted just so the moderator could post the exact same thing. I realize I have no authority (nor do I want to have it), but it just felt completely unnecessary.
Honestly, I cannot comment on this subject, as I would unfortunately be "causing drama", as well as breaking several other rules in place, unfortunately.. ..So I can attest for the the censorship's true causer on Empire.. Its a joke really.. xD
