Rogean ¯\_(ツ)_/¯





Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 5,349

Staff Changes



As most of you have seen, Sirken had his Forum account switched away from Staff, among other precautionary measures we took after some evidence was brought to light regarding certain actions. I never take action against staff without first verifying the authenticity of such claims. At first glance, at least one of the items did correlate with commands that were run within the game. All of this happened while I was at a customer site at work, but given what I had immediately found and with a quick phone call to Nilbog, we decided to take preliminary action until the rest could be investigated and we could speak with Sirken.



Having now had the time to look a little further into the claims, as well as speak with Sirken, it appears that only one incident has turned out to have happened. This is in relation to Spawn Timers. The rest of the claims against him were either false (Giving items away) or opinionated (Favoring Guilds). Note that a screenshot of a conversation regarding the former has a hint of sarcasm in it, and we confirmed via command logs that those items were not summoned for the player in question. Additionally I also spoke to the player who took those screenshots, and they confirmed they did not receive those items.



Sirken has a long tenure with Project 1999. He has been a CSR member here for 7 years. As you can see by many of the responses in various sections and websites of our community, there is a mixed response to what most have assumed is his complete removal from staff. Some are sad to see him go, while others are happy. Every CSR in our history has had enemies, it's a nature of the job. Part of a CSR's responsibilities is to take disciplinary action against rule breakers, and mediate disputes where not every player is going to come out a winner. As someone who's been here for so long and handled much to do with the raid scene, Sirken has many enemies, but also many friends. He's done a lot of good work for this project, and that is something we weigh into any decision we make.



Everyone makes mistakes, or has occasional lapses in judgement, especially under particular circumstances when it comes to people that are known to us. This is why we have rules on the books that any CSR member should pass off decisions related to anyone they know personally to another member. CSR members are expected to bring a neutral mindset to every situation they come across. But we are a staff of volunteers, and once in a while mistakes are made. We handle these mistakes, taking a number of factors into consideration such as the impact, seniority, intentions, repetitive likelihood, and more, and then we make a decision to move forward. Most of these situations are done internally, and the community never knows about them. Some of them are partly uncovered later, sometimes even months or years. Just because this situation was exploded into a community event doesn't mean we need to treat the outcome any different.



But that doesn't mean our intention is to play it down. The offense here is a serious one, and puts doubt on moving forward with the way things were. The information that was shared is a disruption to the competitiveness of the raid scene, and a violation of important confidential policies that the staff must follow. Even though the raid scene has never been this server's strongest representation, nilbog and I still take the integrity of any aspect very seriously.



On the other hand, Sirken has given a lot of time to this project, and wishes to continue doing so. A change is needed, but nilbog and I believe that a complete removal is not the correct course of action for one mistake and a bunch of unhappy raiders (Let's be honest, when has this server ever had a GM that the raiders were happy with). There are plenty of ways that Sirken can continue to be an important part of this project and staff. We will be moving him into a different CSR position away from GM, where he will no longer have access to spawn data and item creation, but still able to contribute and assist players as he always has.



This currently leaves questions for what happens to various responsibilities, including raid disputes. For the time, please continue following the same raid rules until we have had a chance to address what changes are needed. We are considering a few things, including more than one person having a final say on raid disputes (Raid Dispute Committee? Triad?), evaluating and replacing raid rules, and possibly even a return to the Class system from Kunark. We will be bringing more guides on soon to help with all of this. DO NOT think that the raid scene has suddenly become a free-for-all. If I have to start watching raid spawns myself, I WILL come down hard on the guild I catch being dumb. It won't matter who did it before or who got away with it. What WILL matter is the guild I catch to make an example of. DON'T be that guild.



Regarding any past disciplinary actions, this event does not change the reasons or outcome of those decisions. I don't want to see an influx of ban appeals for people who were legitimately disciplined for breaking rules. With that said, some of the bans specific to forum rule violations, or violations relating to staff bashing in the past, may have resulted in harsher punishments for first offense than intended. We will evaluate those situations on a case by case basis. But don't get me wrong - If you are toxic to my staff, I personally believe you don't have a place here. That includes passive aggressive public comments as well (I happen to think those are worse).



I would also like to address the method that this situation came to be. Personally, I'm quite pissed off that I have to find out things like this from a post on an external website. As if nobody actually thought to themself, hmm I think it would be a good idea for Rogean or Nilbog to take a look at these screenshots. For 2 years it was sit on, and instead of coming to us at any point, I stumble across them on an offsite thread. The method to report such behavior is and always has been a Forum PM to myself and/or nilbog. Do not send it on a communication medium that I haven't used for over a year, and don't bury it within a 50 page essay of all the other opinionated circumstantial disputes as if it's some surprise at the end. There's a distinctive difference between opinionated disputes ("Soandso ruled against my guild and is only banning my players") and definitive evidence of a misuse of access ("Here's proof Soandso gave away information and summoned Prismatic Weapons for someone"). The latter needs to be reported immediately and unfiltered. I don't ever want to hear that someone didn't report a serious breach of policy because "We reported raid dispute favoritism and nothing was done, why would you do something about this". I've made a lot of changes over the years to keep staff members accountable to each other, including command logs viewable on Discord for all Senior+ Guides (Even my own commands, you can



Thanks everyone. This has been an interesting week for Project 1999, to say the least. I didn't anticipate having to deal with this on top of an 85 Hour work week, so please excuse the delays.As most of you have seen, Sirken had his Forum account switched away from Staff, among other precautionary measures we took after some evidence was brought to light regarding certain actions. I never take action against staff without first verifying the authenticity of such claims. At first glance, at least one of the items did correlate with commands that were run within the game. All of this happened while I was at a customer site at work, but given what I had immediately found and with a quick phone call to Nilbog, we decided to take preliminary action until the rest could be investigated and we could speak with Sirken.Having now had the time to look a little further into the claims, as well as speak with Sirken, it appears that only one incident has turned out to have happened. This is in relation to Spawn Timers. The rest of the claims against him were either false (Giving items away) or opinionated (Favoring Guilds). Note that a screenshot of a conversation regarding the former has a hint of sarcasm in it, and we confirmed via command logs that those items were not summoned for the player in question. Additionally I also spoke to the player who took those screenshots, and they confirmed they did not receive those items.Sirken has a long tenure with Project 1999. He has been a CSR member here for 7 years. As you can see by many of the responses in various sections and websites of our community, there is a mixed response to what most have assumed is his complete removal from staff. Some are sad to see him go, while others are happy. Every CSR in our history has had enemies, it's a nature of the job. Part of a CSR's responsibilities is to take disciplinary action against rule breakers, and mediate disputes where not every player is going to come out a winner. As someone who's been here for so long and handled much to do with the raid scene, Sirken has many enemies, but also many friends. He's done a lot of good work for this project, and that is something we weigh into any decision we make.Everyone makes mistakes, or has occasional lapses in judgement, especially under particular circumstances when it comes to people that are known to us. This is why we have rules on the books that any CSR member should pass off decisions related to anyone they know personally to another member. CSR members are expected to bring a neutral mindset to every situation they come across. But we are a staff of volunteers, and once in a while mistakes are made. We handle these mistakes, taking a number of factors into consideration such as the impact, seniority, intentions, repetitive likelihood, and more, and then we make a decision to move forward. Most of these situations are done internally, and the community never knows about them. Some of them are partly uncovered later, sometimes even months or years. Just because this situation was exploded into a community event doesn't mean we need to treat the outcome any different.But that doesn't mean our intention is to play it down. The offense here is a serious one, and puts doubt on moving forward with the way things were. The information that was shared is a disruption to the competitiveness of the raid scene, and a violation of important confidential policies that the staff must follow. Even though the raid scene has never been this server's strongest representation, nilbog and I still take the integrity of any aspect very seriously.On the other hand, Sirken has given a lot of time to this project, and wishes to continue doing so. A change is needed, but nilbog and I believe that a complete removal is not the correct course of action for one mistake and a bunch of unhappy raiders (Let's be honest, when has this server ever had a GM that the raiders were happy with). There are plenty of ways that Sirken can continue to be an important part of this project and staff. We will be moving him into a different CSR position away from GM, where he will no longer have access to spawn data and item creation, but still able to contribute and assist players as he always has.This currently leaves questions for what happens to various responsibilities, including raid disputes. For the time, please continue following the same raid rules until we have had a chance to address what changes are needed. We are considering a few things, including more than one person having a final say on raid disputes (Raid Dispute Committee? Triad?), evaluating and replacing raid rules, and possibly even a return to the Class system from Kunark. We will be bringing more guides on soon to help with all of this. DO NOT think that the raid scene has suddenly become a free-for-all. If I have to start watching raid spawns myself, I WILL come down hard on the guild I catch being dumb. It won't matter who did it before or who got away with it. What WILL matter is the guild I catch to make an example of. DON'T be that guild.Regarding any past disciplinary actions, this event does not change the reasons or outcome of those decisions. I don't want to see an influx of ban appeals for people who were legitimately disciplined for breaking rules. With that said, some of the bans specific to forum rule violations, or violations relating to staff bashing in the past, may have resulted in harsher punishments for first offense than intended. We will evaluate those situations on a case by case basis. But don't get me wrong - If you are toxic to my staff, I personally believe you don't have a place here. That includes passive aggressive public comments as well (I happen to think those are worse).I would also like to address the method that this situation came to be. Personally, I'm quite pissed off that I have to find out things like this from a post on an external website. As if nobody actually thought to themself, hmm I think it would be a good idea for Rogean or Nilbog to take a look at these screenshots. For 2 years it was sit on, and instead of coming to us at any point, I stumble across them on an offsite thread. The method to report such behavior is and always has been a Forum PM to myself and/or nilbog. Do not send it on a communication medium that I haven't used for over a year, and don't bury it within a 50 page essay of all the other opinionated circumstantial disputes as if it's some surprise at the end. There's a distinctive difference between opinionated disputes ("Soandso ruled against my guild and is only banning my players") and definitive evidence of a misuse of access ("Here's proof Soandso gave away information and summoned Prismatic Weapons for someone"). The latter needs to be reported immediately and unfiltered. I don't ever want to hear that someone didn't report a serious breach of policy because "We reported raid dispute favoritism and nothing was done, why would you do something about this". I've made a lot of changes over the years to keep staff members accountable to each other, including command logs viewable on Discord for all Senior+ Guides (Even my own commands, you can see an example here ). Commands alone sometimes do not show us the true intention, and for that we will always rely on the community to report suspicious behavior.Thanks everyone.

Sean "Rogean" Norton

Project 1999 Co-Manager

Project 1999 Setup Guide __________________