Ownership Policy Discussions

Miwojedk · January 11, 2021 at 8:19 PM

@Darth#4932 It's like you're a recording: repeating your same redundant point over and over. I said in the very first post I made in regards to this discussion that he is not necessitated to pay for a forum platform (Proboards has always, and will always be an option). And if that is what's required to split up the ownership of the server, then I more than want to continue this direction. Mark also paid for the forums, but that was simply to keep ads off.

I also don't get why you claim that the ownership policy is flawed, when it was crafted in such a meticulous manner as to NOT be inherently flawed. Mind elaborating on what's flawed about it?

And feel free to actually rebut any of my points any time, whether that'd be a response to my point on ownership- and platform policy; why Wild doesn't have to make a suggestion to make this major change implemented, when this has been the precedent;

via your logic: a government head (President, prime minister etc.) should be the sole person making the decision in regards to THEIR OWN position. Again, I am going to keep repeating myself until you quit strawmanning me: I am not against Wild enacting any changes that has to do with how the server is run or internal policy; but when it comes to enacting changes pertaining to his own ownership status, then that is where a clear line should be drawn.
Just because we've had a turbulent few months doesn't negate the fact that you shouldn't merely be able to make such drastic changes (or be able to at all) without ANY community input.

And again, I will repeat your own words:
"raise a suggestion" if you want this ridiculous nonsense to be policy.

**wild1145** · January 11, 2021 at 8:47 PM

So I'll chime in here because we're already way off of topic, and I can't split this out on to it's own post which I would like to because it's a fair topic.

Historically the separation of duties has not been intentional, or for any reason as I understand it, other than that Mark did not have the desire / technical knowledge to maintain those platforms. I came up with the idea of the discord, set it up and showed it back to Mark, offered it and he was happy to let me do my own thing with it, with some stipulations on what could ensure it retained it's official status and what not.

My personal view is if I've been voted in to act as the owner of this server, that includes all of it's platforms, else it's not really being the owner, and if I'm honest that I think is what pushed Seth to where he got to, and it's a genuinely uncomfortable feeling which I've had myself. I've not yet ran the numbers, but TF in it's current format isn't that cheap to host, which is fine, I own the server, it's my "Problem" to find the money to pay for it - As soon as people start wanting to split chunks of TF off you end up with 2 things.

1 - If you still expect me to pay for it, you're making me look and feel like a fool because you want to get the perks of running a server, without needing to pay for it.
2 - You end up with no clear person running the server, with everyone running their own little bits, and over time things will fracture and split, and the community will end up divided / no more at all.

I personally feel I've been as transparent as is reasonably possible with how I intend to run the server, and I won't repeat that here, but in short I'll do what I think is best, even if that's against the popular vote. If people don't like it, we have an ownership policy and you can vote me off.

With regards to the admin voting, unfortunately at the time we had ended up setting up Flarum, it was a near new release and because Flarum is a buggy shitty piece of crap none of the plugins including polling was updated. The choice was between waiting potentially 2-4 weeks for that to be updated and leave the server in limbo, or to do the poll via a trusted 3rd party application. The e-mails were sent to every admin on the Flarum forums at the time, and if people chose not to vote then to be honest I'm not sure what more I could do given it was 3 clicks from the e-mail to open the poll, click a choice and hit submit... People were given a lot of warning and notice and reminders to vote, and we followed the policy to the letter and only deviated where there were technical limitations preventing us from doing so.

What I will also say, is if people want to start taking chunks of the server "Away from me" to run under different people, then I will need to personally review my thoughts and feelings on the matter, as I've said before, I'm not here to bankroll a server I have no real power / involvement in, and I can't see the server surviving for that long on only community donations. There are also a whole host of legal concerns that come up once you start splitting ownership, and a lot of these I'm still working through for things like privacy policies, data protection laws and all that absolute mess that comes with running platforms such as this.

I would also ask the community to tread carefully, because there are only so many of us willing to put our neck out there to run the server, and when people start wanting to take chunks of it away it screams of "You're not doing a good enough job, fuck you I'll take that" which I've been on the receiving side of oh so many times before, and it's not a healthy way to run and maintain a server.

I will also say because this has come up a few times, I'm not running TF as any sort of democracy, at the end of the day I do own this server, and I'll do what I feel best. If that means moving to new platforms, overhauling things drastic changes and the community doesn't like it, then they have the ownership policy that they can vote me out with, or they can always play on another server. To put everything to a community vote especially when it does come to larger things like the hosting and platform of the server, is not a sustainable or sensible way to run things, when most people I don't feel will have both the knowledge required to make a FULL and informed decision, and will almost certainly have their own motives often not to change / move forward because they can't see / aren't aware of the bigger picture at play.

I hope I've not missed anything out, but it feels like I've covered the major points here.

Miwojedk · January 11, 2021 at 10:23 PM

@wild1145#4948 I don’t know why you nor Darth have such a hard time of comprehending what I am saying. Am I simply not clear enough? I have not once, on this thread or these new forums, claimed that you should run Total Freedom as a Democracy. And I know that you are aware of this, because on your own thread “Priorities, Ownership Style and where I see the future of TF”.I literally commend you for the transparency and openness. Frankly, this is a blatant disregard of any arguments I’ve made in this thread and I can only say that I am dissapointed. I made the “Total Freedom is a Shitty Creative Server”-thread because I want this server to succeed, otherwise I wouldn’t have stuck around for more than 10 years. Of course Mark’s tenure will always have a soft spot in my heart, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy with any other past or new owner’s vision. It’s a breath of fresh air from time to time.

Yes, there was never a formal policy outlining the seperation of the Total Freedom brand into branches, and I will acknowledge that the only reason why Finest95 was the owner of the forums during Mark’s tenure, was because he was the only one who took the initiative to make and maintain them. However, that’s also the point: he was the only one who did it, and thus a precedent was set which has lasted for over eight consecutive years. During Windows’ tenure, Finest was the owner; during Seth’s tenure, Finest was the owner. The only solitary reason as to why Finest is no longer the owner/maintainer of the forums anymore is because Seth went again community opinion and forced us to switch to a deeply unpopular forum, and then onto another unpopular forum. Guess how many players/old timers we’ve lost in this process? I have messages on my Discord/PMs where they would happily return to the ProBoards forum. See, the very issue of this debate is the fact that this was a forced transition that was deeply popular and should obviously have been a decision for the community. Why do I say obvious? Because the very apparent fact of the matter is that a democratically-elected ruler/owner of a platform should NOT make decisions in regards to how the server is run politically nor platform-wise. This would be the exact same scenario as you entirely removing the ownership policy. This already happened during Seth’s tenure, which was made with such a huge backlash, but alas: he didn’t revert the changes. And look where that got us? A mad server owner deleting the forum, discord server and minecraft server and causing a huge headache that (luckily) got fixed. This circles back to my point as to why we should have clear seperate branches of the TF brand to prevent any future issues like this. A democratically-elected leader should NOT be able to change how those very same elections that got them into power should be held (or not held), nor should they be able to completely overhaul the very same platform’s core policies. Can a President disregard a constituion, yes or no?

Your job title is literally “Server owner”, not CEO of “Total Freedom Network.”. Mark was a server owner; Windows was a server owner; Seth was a server owner; You’re a server owner. If you want to be anything else, then you must make a proposal, and I will certainly object to this. And no, this is not a matter of “no clear person being in charge”, unless you can come up with any sort of scenario where anybody on Total Freedom though that Finest95 or you (Discord) were the owner for the past 10 years. I’m sorry, but it’s quite ironic to see how your tune has changed from when you were annoyed with Seth wanting complete control of the Discord server (in which I supported you), to now you wanting complete control of all Total Freedom platforms.
And no, nobody is or will ever “force you” to pay for a forum. Of course we’re grateful that you wish to provide this service for the server, but you certainly should not be able to “buy” your way to a position, which is frankly what your entire argument here boils down to. We’ve been more than fine with Proboards for over 7-8 years, which is evident by the vast amount of people objecting to making a switch, whilst we were still on that forum software. Mark also provided a similar service where he paid for ad-free browsing on Proboards, which we were of course more than grateful for, but he never expected to be made owner of the forum because of it.

And in case anybody else still can’t understand my main thesis: A DEMOCRATICALLY-ELECTED GOVERNING HEAD SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CHANGE THOSE DEMOCRATIC MEASURES WHICH GOT THEM IN TO POWER IN THE FIRST PLACE. NOR SHOULD THEY BE ABLE TO CHANGE THE CORE NATURE OF THE PLATFORM IN WHICH THEY CONTROL. THIS SHOULD BE THE ONLY THING THAT MUST FOLLOW THE COMMUNITY’S WISHES. I trust you Wild, which is why I have been nothing more than nice to you before you were owner and now. But I also said the very same three words to Seth when he was elected owner, and look where that went at the end? If only Finest, you (or anybody else) had maintained control over a branch of Total Freedom, then that whole debacle would’ve been far, far less severe.

**wild1145** · January 11, 2021 at 11:46 PM

@Miwojedk#4957 If I missed a point when replying to your thread then apologies. I tried to cover a lot of points off and tried to cover all of the points I'd seen and give my perspective on them. If I've mis understood what your getting that then perhaps that's why we're all going around in circles because if I have mis understood then I won't be the only one that has. If there are any points you wanted me or someone else to specifically cover off then please say and if I have a view or opinion on them I can actually give you a specific reply.

Your entire point here is that Seth made an unpopular decision, which for the record Finest as I understand was offered the position of forum manager for, but turned down. I can't argue for / against why Seth did that, and again I'm not really sure what you want from me. Did he do something unpopular? Yes. Did we lose people that were historically active on the forums? Yes. Did we actually lose any active players / admins that were in game? I don't think so...

It sounds to me like you want to re-define what being a Minecraft server owner is in the context of TotalFreedom, to be literally that, the owner of the Freedom server on TotalFreedom, and to then strip me / whoever else of all actual power, which for obvious reasons I'm deeply against and I've already explained why that is... I will also say around this point that I've been vary careful with my changes to the ownership policy, they've all gone through the community, and I've made suggestions in good faith that removed the control over the process that I formally had due to a loophole in the process but you also need to remember we're talking about a Minecraft server, not a country.

Your entire argument that I am "Just a server owner" is frankly bollocks, and I would genuinely like you to find me examples of other servers where "Server owner" means literally just owning the Minecraft server. I feel you will be hard pressed to find a server where the server owner doesn't hold ultimate and total power over everything, which quite frankly is what you need, else you end up with "Too many cooks" and nobody to steer the ship. If you don't like the fact that I own everything then it's on you as far as I'm concerned to find a better proposal that the community and I am happy with.

This entire argument to me boils down to whatifism where you (and fairly so) believe the Seth issue could have been mitigated. And it technically could have, but at all sorts of other costs that people "forget" because putting shackles on me or any other server owner is a sure fire way to remove any desire for us to actually try to grow the server and work with the community, and quite frankly your suggestion that I shouldn't be allowed to grow TF to expand to more platforms and to be able to run the ones that I am ultimately responsible for as "Server Owner" feels like a joke.

To go back to your very original point on this thread, the reason the idea never got picked up again is 2 fold

1) I and others highlighted the legal, financial and other complications that needed to be addressed, and nobody here could find a good solution in the weeks we discussed it on various platforms
2) Nobody bought it up again... the suggestion was batted around on Discord, and died there. If you really want it implemented make a suggestion with a viable proposal that doesn't make me look and feel like nothing more than the servers wallet, that ensures we still have a server owner that can do their job and that means the server owner has actual autonomy and doesn't have to risk treading on egg shells around the owners of the other platforms to do their own job effectively, which would be another major reason I'd object to not having control over everything myself now I'm sitting here as the owner.

I'll also say, it's different perspectives, I don't agree with how Seth took the discord ownership from me, and I don't like he took it from me at all because I put the work into creating it and forming it into what I wanted it to be but at the end of the day he owned TF and everything about it in it's format at the time, and to be honest I'd have wanted to take control if I were in his shoes, I've just had too many other things on to be the one pushing Fionn for ownership which is why that only happened when it came up on this thread at his own doing.

Miwojedk · January 12, 2021 at 12:19 AM

@wild1145#4982 What I want you to respond to me is my main thesis, which you clearly did not, even in 7 paragraphs. You have to actually address – why – you should be allowed to make changes to the core foundations of the server without community approval. You were elected as “server owner” and all previous owners have been the same up until midway through Seth’s tenure, and this change was only enacted forcefully and look how that turned out. Perhaps you should actually address my points instead of calling them “bollocks” and sweeping them under the rug. Candidly, I think it’s inappropriate and “bollocks” to compare Total Freedom, a server with 10 years of history and a completely unique server model to any other server. If you want to play this game, then name me a server with four different owners within a time-span of 3-4 years? Name me a server that has been deleted because the (server) owner got mad. Name me a server in which the owner went AWOL. I can keep these ridiculous questions coming, and they are just that: ridiculous, because it’s ridiculous to try and compare Total Freedom to any other server.

I want you to be the owner of the server, because that’s what you were voted in for. And to suddenly change this precedent is stupid, when it has obviously worked for eight years, and has been demonstrated to be a nessecity by the last two owners before you. Quit being underhanded and saying shit like I, or anybody else for that matter, want to strip you of “all actual power”. It’s an obvious ridiculous sentiment. I’ve continously said that I want this server to succeed, and thus stripping the owner of “all actual power” would be counterintuitive, when I’ve already that I support your vision for TF in a previous thread. Of course you should be able to grow TF or expand to more platforms, and I have never said you couldn’t. I merely said that the forum (at least the forum) should be in the hands of another person to prevent corruption and abuse. What’s stopping you from expanding TF if the forum is not in your hands. You can communicate with them to get the changes you wish implemented, and you can even have access to everything on it? Sorry, but this is what feels like a joke, when you come up with such a asinine notion that your hands are tied because you don’t have the keys to the forum, one might even call it a non sequitur, and you previous arguments against a strawman of my points. I know you're trying to argue in good faith, but at least come with a rebuttal to my points instead of merely calling them shit.

We have concrete evidence that seperating the TF brand into different platforms has worked in the past, and thus it should be your initiative to propose changes to the status quo. I shouldn’t be suggesting to keep the server as is (wtf?). If you’re so certain that the community will agree with you, then it shouldn’t be that big of a hurdle to create a thread on the topic.

**wild1145** · January 12, 2021 at 12:22 AM

Quote

@Miwojedk#4989 What I want you to respond to me is my main thesis, which you clearly did not, even in 7 paragraphs. You have to actually address – why – you should be allowed to make changes to the core foundations of the server without community approval.

Because I'm going to bed ill keep it short.

Because when I was voted in as the server owner. That meant I owned every aspect of total freedom and am free to run it how I see fit. The server is quite frankly mine to do whatever I wish with, and if the community really don't like it. They can remove me.

It's blunt but quite frankly that's the bottom line. I own the server, and everything in it and related to it. If I decide overnight that we're going to get rid of the forums completely and move to telegram instead of discord, that's my right as the owner to do and quite frankly the community can join me in changes I make, find another server to play in or vote me out.

I do not need the communities approval for every decision I should chose to make. And to think that's a sustainable way forward is something that baffles me.

**wild1145** · January 12, 2021 at 12:24 AM

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@Miwojedk#4989 If you’re so certain that the community will agree with you, then it shouldn’t be that big of a hurdle to create a thread on the topic.

For the record. Changing the current setup we have is something I would deeply disagree with and as I've said before as far as I'm concerned would raise questions around my suitability to continue running the server in the capacity to which I've been appointed to do so. Why would I make a thread for something I think is such a horrific idea that I'd immediately and strongly object to?

**wild1145** · January 12, 2021 at 12:25 AM

Apologies for picking only very specific bits. I need to get some sleep but wanted to answer the bits I felt I could quickly. Will re review tomorrow if there is anything else on your post I missed.

Miwojedk · January 12, 2021 at 12:43 AM

@wild1145#4993

You keep misconstruing my words, willingly or not. 1) I never claimed you couldn’t be the sole decision-maker ultimately. Because you’re the owner, and that’s the manifesto you laid out in a thread previously. And I don’t get why I have to reiterate myself: I AGREE. You were elected as server owner, and should ultimately have the final say in any way you want to govern the server. I never claimed otherwise, so quit stating otherwise. 2) I never said you should advocate for an idea you disagree with.
What I have a fundamental issue with, is the fact that we precedent we’ve had for eight years+, and this precedent is what saved the server after Windows went AWOL, and would’ve saved us a major headache if it was still in place when Seth went mad. It was a deeply unpopular decision to overturn this precedent, which is why I want to continue it. A governing body shouldn’t be able to change the foundations on which that governing body governs.
I said that you should propose changes to this precedent if you believe it’s the right thing to do.

I honestly can’t come up with a single decision thus far you’ve made of which I have been vehemently against, other than this one besides the ridiculous idea to have the server owner appoint executives, when it's those exact executives who get to decide whether or not to boot an owner out.

Edit: you mention in the Discord issues with GDPR. If we had stayed on ProBoards this would not be an issue.

Ownership Policy Discussions

wild1145 July 16, 2022 at 11:38 PM

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