I am voting that [He Who Must Not Be Named] may be removed from the forum and discord but NOT the rankings leaderboard. This is a decision that affects us all. The rankings are supposed to be something which discriminates based on one metric only - times achieved on Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. If this objectivity is compromised, it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent from which I believe there may be no return.



The reason people tore Twin Galaxies apart was not simply because their rankings were false, but because they were false as a result of systemic corruption and were clearly skewed towards people who toed the party line, while dissent was actively discouraged and suppressed.



When the TG saga was in full swing, more and more people started appearing with stories of how their queries had been shut down and how questioning the decisions of the old guard had been met with intimidation and threats of removing scores and times. This CANNOT be allowed to happen in The Elite; setting the precdent that "Having X opinion is sufficient reason for having scores removed" allows enormous scope for those in power to intimidate and manipulate, and this is what WILL happen if this ban is implemented. Power, once subject to arbitrary whims rather than immutable standards ALWAYS expands, never recedes. The idea that people could start seeing “It has been decided that your behaviour is unacceptable and, if you do not desist immediately, all your times will be removed from the rankings” for anything other than compromising the integrity of the rankings itself is a recipe for disaster.



These standards exist specifically to prevent overreaching in times of turbulence which, time and again, have provided the "just one exception" which ALWAYS leads to abuses of power. You either believe in the same rights for everyone or no-one at all. I would therefore like to use this thread to publicly state that while I wish to remain an active member of this community and on good terms with its members I cannot now in good conscience create a rankings account as had been my intention.



This is kind of gutting, Goldeneye was my first game as a kid, and when my console arrived from Japan this week I was so psyched to finally see my name on the rankings. However, if I were to join the rankings now, I would do so knowing that my place there is guaranteed not by my own hard work, but is instead a privilege granted to me by a Ministry of Truth for the utterly irrelevant fact that I am lucky enough to have opinions which happen not to fall under their particular definition of wrongthink.



I will definitely still be playing the game once my cart arrives, I am still looking forward to interacting with the community and discussing my experiences playing the game again after so many years. I have no ill will towards any individuals, nor do I believe that those making this decision are doing so with bad intentions. I just believe this is a huge mistake that will spiral out of control, so I will not be joining the rankings board as I believe my active presence there would be my consent.



I do this NOT to defend [He Who Must Not Be Named] but to defend myself and the rights of everybody in this community and to attempt to prevent what WILL go down in history as the move that put The Elite on the same road as Twin Galaxies and will initiate a slow descent into nepotism and bureaucracy.



(I know no-one gives a fuck about some nobody, but I hope it will at least be an indication of how The Elite comes across to new players. I guarantee I am not the only one totally put off by this: only recently, a completely innocuous thread on the basics of Goldeneye speedrunning, which could and should have been a great introduction to a generation of new players, was completely derailed on r/speedrun because of this drama, and now people have begun defaming Elite members as Nazis at a time when speedrunning is increasing enormously in popularity year on year. I believe this could be a catastrophic and possibly fatal PR move at the worst possible time.)



Twin Galaxies self-destructed because favouritism and acquiescence to authority were valued OVER accuracy and objectivity. It took years to bring them to book only because the internet wasn't around. I guarantee the demise of The Elite will be much swifter, though no less dramatic. Once objectivity is subjugated to the whims of individuals, you have officially established a Ministry of Truth. Rankings should be objective documents of fact, not press releases of "Hardest Working Members of the Official Workers' Party”.



It is [He Who Must Not Be Named] today, it will be you tomorrow. If you think "well I don't have his batshit opinions, so I'll be safe". You are wrong. Outliers are always used to establish the precedent which leads to abuse of power; make no mistake, this is "The Elite Patriot Act", it serves to utterly demolish the value of The Elite Rankings as a historical record and extirpate the founding fundamental basis of the rankings: To be the most reliable possible ranking of gamers based on their in-game achievements and NOTHING ELSE. This is as close to a constitutional right as we have in speedrunning, and once we are stripped of it, just as Twin Galaxies found out, the only way is down.



The community (forums, discord etc.) are a completely separate matter. These are not only much more complicated platforms but the behaviour of members is completely relevant to their ability to function, so in these cases arbitration and moderation can be carried out according to site rules, and if the mods decide [He Who Must Not Be Named] has broken these rules then he should absolutely serve a ban.



But the rankings really are the closest thing to sacred artifacts or a founding document that we have. Throughout its history, no matter what has occurred in The Elite on a personal level, the rankings have remained respected by all as objective, austere and utterly indifferent to any metric other than ranking players on the basis of the times they have achieved. We fuck around with that at our grave peril. What has been passed down to the present generation is not simply a set of names and numbers, but, even more crucially, the absolutely non-negotiable principle that we must value the integrity and accuracy of the rankings as the highest possible virtue.