Posts by wild1145

I'll post further clarification today. But as I've said on discord and in both of my recent posts, the close down of the minecraft sever is not only in response to this recent wave of abuse it was simply the trigger. The bottom line is tf has a number of other problems in the sustainability of the minecraft game mode which our community has historically played and my requests for help up to now has been ignored.

I've also said on my thread that if folks can step up and help come up with some solutions to our current set of major issues with the freedom game mode, then I will happily reconsider my position on this and will do everything in my power to support keeping the minecraft servers running as well, however right now at this moment with the lack of active players, the harassment and bullying targeting me and others, combined with the lack of active developer capability tf has it seems to me closing down that aspect to the community is the best way to safeguard the long term future of the forums and discord...

This wasn't a decision I came to lightly or one that I ever wanted to make, but I'm trying to do what I feel is best best for the community as a whole with the folks who we have left. The alternative is tf continues exactly as it is and slowly dies because we can't keep the server up to date, and we end up looking dated and damage the legacy on our other platforms like here on the forums. That's something I felt best to avoid.

I'd like to add some additional clarity, as I've already gotten a lot of shit for this post, which while expected unfortunately is yaknow part of the original issue but also shows people didn't read the thread, so go read the thread then keep reading this.

As I said, I've been part of TF as an admin for the last 9 years, and a player for longer than that... This to be honest has been one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make for a very long time, and it upsets me that this has felt like the only option left and without living with the guilt of putting what I can only describe as a never ending full time burden on someone else's shoulders.

I wish I could say I have a plan, I wish I could reassure people that this is all a joke. Right now this is how TF is looking to me.

1 - The "Community" is primarily made up of individuals that only login to the Minecraft server when there is significant drama to be had. I've been totally unable to actually change things on TF despite making it clear it was my entire purpose as owner, even recently when I highlighted this I've continue to be blocked and abused every time I've tried to make changes.

2 - We realistically at this point have no way to keep the server up to date, which means we will continue to lose interest from new players who want to play with new blocks. As well as this we're not able to develop functionality the community wants, meaning our current community that had been active, gets bored and goes elsewhere.

2.1 - Due to the major Changes Mojang rolled out and the limited time the dev team have had, we've not have a functional developer server, which has caused issues with new plugins, making the original issue more significant.

3 - Lack of player retention, despite my best efforts to find and empower people to promote and more importantly retain some form of player base without this we've found the previous points to get worse and worse to the point we're at today.

4 - The bullying and targeted harassment at me and other executives, has honestly gotten to be too much... And it's been impossible in the last year to take any real time away from TF, because every time I did I'd get a ping within a couple of days telling me there was something that urgently needed my attention.

All of the above, with the reduction in active players and active community participation, means I've felt my options rapidly diminish, when that's been combined with the abuse against me today, it put me in a spot I couldn't find a way out of.

So to clarify some of my original post, the Minecraft server is what I intend to close, the Discord and forums will at least for as long as I have servers to host the forums on and a valid Discord account, remain accessible to the current community in some form or another.

I also want to acknowledge some of you that have reached out, I know for some folks here TF has been a part of their lives for a long time, and has been here through some very difficult times, I'm honestly thankful for the aspect of our community that is welcoming and supportive, and I have no intentions to make that go away, so many of you have been excellent friends now and over the last nearly 10 years of me being a member of TF, and there are quite a few from back when I was a much more active admin that I'm proud to call friends IRL now rather than only online and via TF.

As I said on Discord, if folks have a serious plan for how to try to bring TF back to be something better than it has been for the last few years, I'm open to suggestions, I've tried my best, I've tried to bring in the right people, but I also appreciate "Major Drama" like this brings out folks from the woodwork that haven't been here for a while, and sometimes they can have an insight that we've all been missing.

I am sorry for those that I have ultimately let down in my time as owner, and those who I've let down here by trying to bring TF to a graceful close. I've only ever wanted what's best for TF and the community, and I am sorry that I seem to have failed it in trying to do my role here as owner.

I certainly don't see this as being a goodbye, I see this as being able to say Hello in a better place for us all.

30th Sept 00:30 - This announcement has been superseded - https://forum.totalfreedom.me/…apologies-a-plea-for-help

Hey folks,

This is a bit of a thread I never expected to be making, much less within a year of taking over TF and on what is around my 9th Birthday here on TF.

With a combination of significant factors becoming more apparent over the recent weeks, I've taken the decision to significantly scale TF back, before closing down the Minecraft game server entirely. The combination of a substantial drop in players, a significant increase in the abuse I've received (And at this point much of it is legally classed as harassment) and ultimately this and a number of other factors have put things into a position where I no longer see TotalFreedom being viable to continue in the current format.

With this in mind, and having informed the servers executives and reviewing the ownership policy to ensure I can do this, and that it cannot be a means to then trigger the ownership policy, I am outlining the following plan with regards to the gradual and planned close down of the TF Servers.

Between Now and October 2nd

The Hubs, Development servers and any other Minecraft servers which are not Freedom-01 or the bungee will be closed down, the bungee then re-configured to route people directly into the Freedom Server.

At this point we will make a number of sections on the Discord and forums read-only, mainly those server chats and discussions / applications impacting them.

15th October 2021

The Freedom-01 server will be turned off along with the Bungee.

Schematics from Freedom-01 will be moved to a new location to facilitate the downloads in the longer term.

Additional categories on the Discord and forums will be moved into Read-Only Mode

The forums will disable the ability to sign up for new accounts, steps will be taken to prevent new joiners from accessing existing Discord channels.

Later in October / Early November 2021

All outstanding sections of the Discord and forums will be moved to read-only mode. A new tag and channel will be created for those already signed up to allow some ongoing conversation, and everything else will be snapshotted in time.

FAQ

I'm invoking the ownership policy, fuck you
Cool, the ownership policy doesn't prevent me from doing this, I've checked and double checked. I'm still active, I have not resigned as owner and the server did not unexpectedly go down, that's the purpose of this thread. You've been notified and as such even when the MC Server goes, I will still "Own TF"

Why not hand it over?
Honestly, because I don't think it's fair to inflict the level of harassment that I've been getting on anyone else here, All that I can see happening is TF cycling through owners quicker and quicker. Also because everything on all of TF's servers is the intellectual property of my company (ATLAS Media Group Ltd) and as such they will own the legal rights to the content on those servers, and it's not something that can then be transferred to someone else.

Will downloads be made available
Eventually yes, I will be actively archiving everything prior to the servers actually being deleted, while I will not be publishing any of the world files, configs or anything else any time soon (Mix of security and other reasons) I will make the full backups available on the world download tool in the future, as long as Mark (Original owner) doesn't pull the DNS authority from me.

Where will the schematics go?

I'm still working on this, there's a few options as to where they might get hosted, but I'll be looking to do it in such a way that even if the DNS is pulled / expires / anything like that.

Why Now?

Honestly the abuse on the "reperakfreedom2" forums targeting me was the straw that broke the camels back. I've been putting up with varying levels of abuse for a while, but when it's coming from my own community, and the community doesn't like removing people and riot when I do it, my hands are at this point tied. I either continue to spend hours and days of my time taking on the legal work to get sites like that taken down while trying to grow TF, or I just bring TF to a graceful conclusion and let folks get on with their lives.

What about the pro boards forums?
The pro boards forums mean a lot to me, between now and the end of this year I'll continue to work with Steven to ensure the Proboards forums are preserved and archived going forward, and make it easy for tools like Wayback machine to access it and archive it for future prosperity.

Likewise this forum at some point in 2022 will be made public read-only in all boards to allow for the same archive process by external tools.

Closing Note

I just want to thank everyone that has been genuinely supportive of my ownership, being able to own TF while probably a huge mistake for my mental health, has also been exceptionally rewarding being able to try to contribute something back to a thing that has for a reasonable amount of the last 9 years of my life been a steady and supportive community. I don't know what the future will hold for me, if I'll do something anything like TF again in the future or if this just isn't my jam.

I would also really ask folks to respect this decision, you don't have to agree with it or like it, but I've intentionally tried to safeguard TF's history by ramping things down in this way. I know a lot of people may not even like me, but I would please ask people to try to be a little understanding of why I've come to this conclusion, and understand that I'm going to do my best to ensure things are preserved for us to look back on fondly in the years to come.

Thank you to all admins and players, past and present. It has been a true honour to own the community and I wish you all the very best of health and every success in the future. Thank you.

Just to let folks know, with immediate affect @"videogamesm12"#4 will be transitioning from an interim EAO to the permanent EAO For TF. In reality it does not change his roles or responsibilities, but I wanted to formally recognise him as such.

Congratulations.

Locked at ops request.

↩  ThePyroManActualAccount The other thing HP do have going for them is that the print head is part of the ink package. The plus side of that is it's one less thing that you'll have to replace in a couple of years (Like our current Epson is trying to get us to do and we're having to hack the firmware a bit) but the downside is aftermarket ink is a lot harder to get that will work with them.

Epson give you a full set of ink in the box, and back when I was selling printers I tended to recommend them for that reason, you can pick up a cheap Epson printer for £30 and they're honestly semi-disposable given the ink is more expensive than buying a new printer...

I've got a Cannon TS700 Series printer which was pretty cheap, but I wanted it specifically because it could print on to CD's and I could replace that tray for some other things I wanted to print on to, it's a solid printer but as with all printers Ink will fuck you either way now.

On second thoughts the user has decided to spew IP addresses of payers on to the forums. Indef forum ban away.

Given a forum mod has approved both of those posts, I'm inclined to show some leniency on the matter, and in fairness that second post could be argued that it is "Media" even if it's low quality at that.

3 Day forum ban issued for posting S&D in the wrong category intentionally.

↩  DragonSlayer2189 Odds are its all being logged and traced anyway... Most of the time it comes as part of things like the filtering services. Weather or not they ever look at that data is another matter.

↩  Tizz The issue is that niche community is shrinking at a fairly rapid rate... We rarely if ever see more than 20 players online at once, and are increasingly seeing times where Freedom-01 has 0 players on. That's the issue I currently have, I appreciate the community is a large part of TF, but for that community to survive in a meaningful way we need to be brining more people into the community as a whole.

Also not sure I even could merge TF into something bigger, given that'd effectively remove the ownership policy from being valid / a thing I'm sure that'd cause riots.

Already reviewed and approved as per https://forum.totalfreedom.me/d/2363-cctv-plugin

In short, when your ticket reaches the top of the queue. We work from the oldest response up and it looks like you bumped your ticket at least once pushing it to the bottom of the queue. I'll make sure it's picked up today.

When you look at our long term stats we've been losing players over the last 6 months in terms of online activity, however the new players have remained around the same (For the most part). This means we know we have an issue with player retention at the end of the day rather than promoting the server (Generally speaking again).

In an effort to kill a few birds with one stone, we decided that the best route forward would be to diversify TF and offer different game modes that players could chose from, and where possible do so with minimal developer effort for the time being, this way our dev team could focus on the work on Freedom-01 and usually I've found more players = more motivated developers.

We started this process by acquiring the Skyblock server from an existing community and started to work towards integrating it to be part of our wider network, however with the backlash and abuse that was received, work has since ground to a halt with this (Though some will probably pick back up). At the same time as this we were working to move to a new forums to help the community better connect outside of the game, were developing the anarchy gamemode, were working on the planning for a totally bespoke game-mode that we were hoping to get the developers to start working on in the near future and had started looking at what we needed to do to help improve the Freedom-01 infrastructure sustainability.

As a result of the abuse that I and other executives got, the vast majority of this was burned and I decided that if the community weren't willing to back what I wanted to do with TF as owner, there was little point throwing more capacity, time and money behind it.

Right now for me, I view TF as being in a "Sustain" phase, we'll keep the lights on, we'll keep things as up to date as we can, but I can't see us doing any major innovative things until something changes. The 90% of the community that abuses me and the executives and are generally speaking the loud voices on the community are generally the same 90% of players that haven't joined the server in months, and don't actually care about our community's experience in game. That's not the case for all our community, but a lot of the forums and discord community don't play the game...

For me to even consider putting more of my time / money into new game modes or major re-work / improvements, the community needs to make a shift to actually care about it's longer term success. I'll keep TF running until we reach the point there are no players left that join the game... But at the same time we will start finding that plugins are harder if not impossible to update, and our ability to be agile and responsive will continue to deteriorate unless things change for the better.

For me and a lot of the senior staff on TF, it's often not a welcoming community to be a part of, I'm abused by people on a weekly basis, and if I removed them from the community I'd get abused by more people for "Silencing those who speak out against me" I'm sure.

TLDR - Some of the community need to stop being dick bags and want to change, or we'll just keep going how we're going.

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↩  characterslimits It started out with shrimp, he was banned from the Discord for NSFW content, he said "I am going to use my hacking skills to suck your balls" and "The sack will be in my mouth and I will shuffle the balls with my tongue". How is this NSFW? Well, according to Ryan it breaks the Discord TOS for NSFW content. However, if that was true, many servers currently existing would been shut down by Discord. Because there are other servers where people said similar stuff and those servers haven't been taken off. If I said "fuck you" is that NSFW content? I'm not going to actually "fuck" someone and likewise shrimp isn't going to actually suck someones balls. shrimp never should have been banned from the Discord

Shrimp broke the discord rules. He posted content which I believe was nsfw in our discord. We have a rule specifically for nsfw content and is even separate from the discord tos argument. There's not much I can do if people don't want to follow the rules.

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↩  characterslimits Now, I'm going to talk about ggawdw next, if you don't know who ggawdw is, just take a peak at this thread. So, as you can see, ggawdw posted a Discord ban appeal and it got denied. However, I counted the votes and there are 5 vouches and 4 objects, which means that he should have been unbanned, but no! Ryan had to deny his appeal and use images from March which aren't relevant because of how old they are. ggawdw should have been unbanned

Ban appeals have not and should never be judged based on which result was more popular. In that specific case the objections made a better case for the individual remaining banned. The couches failed to convince me that the user had changed and justified their ban coming to an end.

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↩  characterslimits Finally, I would like to talk about Beta_Alpha, he was banned from the forum for spam posting on spam and drama threads. There called "Spam and Drama" for a reason. The whole point of "Spam and Drama" is to contain spam. Is it considered littering if I throw trash in a trashcan? Beta_Alpha should have never been banned

The forum posting guidelines apply throughout the forums. That user was power posting heavily and actually in reality the reason he was banned was the cumulative power posting across the entire forum not just spam and drama.

The spam and drama category probably needs to be re named because it's not really what it means, spam and power posting has no place on the forums at all.

↩  batchest that depends how nice the person catching you is. Odds are yes if you're intentionally doing it you'll be banned forever.

Given the topic has nothing to do with the thread (Forum rules and discord rules are separate and in many cases have clear differences including here) I'll split it now before it goes too far out of topic.

The rule as it stands is pretty clear, NSFW content as a general rule is not permitted, it's down to the staff team moderating to use their judgement to apply sanctions as appropriate. Part of the confusion I agree is that they're worded as rules and not guidelines, and perhaps that needs to change, but the bottom line is the user in the ban appeal was posting inappropriate content (More than 2 messages, they were just the ones that I deleted and reported to Discord) that I felt were inappropriate given the context they were being posted in.

The forum rules are totally different, and the post Video linked does not currently violate any of the forum posting guidelines which is probably why it's allowed to stay. Should it break the forum posting guidelines? Yes it probably should, do we need to continue to evolve and improve the guidelines, absolutely.

I believe the punishment that I issued on Discord was fair and justified in the context, if Nick disagrees as he's the manager of the Discord, that's his right to overrule my ban.

It is absolutely irrelevant to the ban appeal though to bring up other cases, I've said time and time again that the rules will be applied as fairly as we can but we're all human and we judge things differently, and we often miss things. I drop in and out of the chat and miss probably 99% of what's going on when I'm in there as I'll minimise, switch channels and hop around. If I see something blatantly inappropriate I'll do something, but I do miss things, I will have missed things, and I'm sorry that I've not banned 100% of people that should have been.

↩  videogamesm12 Irrelevant to this appeal for one thing.

From what I can see the post hasn't been flagged so nobody bothered to report it so there's a chance nobody read it that could have moderated it, I'm not sure...

I'll also say the post isn't (currently) in violation of the forum posting guidelines anyway. If it should / should not be is an entirely different topic of conversation still not relevant to this appeal.

↩  StevenNL2000 And it comes down to judgement, that I do not disagree with. My judgement is the content was graphic and inappropriate, and had no place being the first thing new players see when they join our Discord, and that it's likely in breach of the discord community guidelines.

It's one thing to disagree with my position, and that's fine, I have no issue with that, but from my reading the vast majority of replies here are not disagreeing with my position, they disagree that it's a rule... I have no issue if the answer if "You're wrong", but there are very few people that have made an actual argument for why this doesn't break the NSFW rules and is not absolutely inappropriate for a non-NSFW Channel...