Okay, a few things here:
1. Piracy vs. stealing. Okay, technically this is correct, and I will be mindful of the language going forward. It is not my intention to criminalize everything or everyone. Please do bear in mind, however, that I've said multiple times that what you do on your own time is really not my concern. See how I keep waving that flag? It's because a lot of us have probably done this at least once. This is not, absolutely not, a matter of moral superiority.
2. The argument that "well no one cares" or "well it's not really piracy if it's just the MP3"...that's kind of busted. If I download the OST of a game I like, and I do it illegally (i.e., don't pay for it), I'm not getting to play that game, but I'm getting to play the music of that game. Arguably, if the game itself isn't accessible, then I'm taking what I -can access from it, the same way someone does by taking the MP3 out of a movie or TV show. Is it a horrible, heinous, god-awful thing? Absolutely not. Does it bring complications? Me, I'd say yes,. And while I'm not universally supported in this - which I totally understand - I'm not totally alone either. At the end of the day, taking parts of copyrighted material is still taking copyrighted material. Whether you have it in whole or in part, you have things that don't belong to you. And I remind you again that none of these things are life's necessities; they're useful, they're fun as hell, they make life a whole lot more interesting, but they do not, in and of themselves, make the difference as to whether you or your family live or die.
3. Some of you are trying the "imagine how it feels to be in another country without such good access" argument. Again, irrelevant. We can't stop you doing this. We can't even get close. All we can do is tell you to stop doing it here. We're even making a point of giving you time to try and organize someplace else, because as morally questionable as some of this is, I've made my stances on it known well in advance of this shitstorm. Some of you are acting like we're removing your rights by doing this; we aren't. You seem to imply that now you can never ever watch TV or movies with audio description again; this is patently false, and essentially equates to a form of scaremongering. Get your sources elsewhere, where we don't have to see it. As one of the primary faces of the audio gaming community, we essentially do not want to be officially sanctioning piracy; it's really about that simple.
4. Griff and co: the snark really and truly has to stop. It's not productive and it's only going to stir things up again, just when they're beginning to calm down. I respect your right to vehemently disagree with this decision, but the overlord/dictator/lord and master-style comments are wholly useless, antagonistic and ill-aimed. This is not me controlling anything; as often is the case, I simply stepped into a role and am now taking most of the heat for it. One of the reasons I have stuck it out here on staff is because I have very thick skin. It takes a lot to really upset me; you have to know how to do it, or ultimately I'll just shake my head at you most of the time. Some of you are legitimately upset but are making excellent points and providing food for thought; this is awesome, and I am totally down with that. This is not an end-of-discussion brick wall. But many of you are saying and doing things that serve no purpose, things which might be construed as personal attacks under other circumstances. Referring to me as Hitler, for instance? That's absolutely uncalled for. This is not okay, and there will come a point when the bill comes due, so I advise a bit more courtesy, no matter how upset you might be. Put more bluntly: I am not violating your human rights, threatening your livelihood, impugning your humanity or otherwise ruining your life; get the heck over yourselves and put this whole situation back into perspective.
5. By remaining on this site, you are tacitly accepting its terms of service. One of you made the argument that you never really agreed to this rule, and stayed because you expected it to be ignored in perpetuity. Well, that's not happening anymore, so if you stay, you accept this; if you go, it means you no longer accept it. We'll be sad to see you leave, but your autonomy is important and we'd rather you be happy than feel constrained, if that's what it comes down to. Most of the problem here is precisely that this rule was ignored for so long; that's on us, as a staff team, and we apologize for that. We are not at fault for deciding it's high time to enforce a rule. We are not at fault that you are still here, and for the time being, still essentially agreeing to the rules. If you stay but continue to break rules/push the issue far and hard enough, there may need to be consequences. Civil discussion, btw, is not pushing, and won't be seen as a threat, so don't even go that way. In other words: stay or go, it's up to you, but if you stay, there were rules you agreed to, and now we're expecting you to honour that. At the end of the day, it is important to remember that, while the users absolutely do make up the community, and while we do want to listen to the users, that doesn't mean you're always right, and it doesn't mean you'll always get what you want. However, I'd say that by and large, this has happened. You wanted more transparency; you got it. You wanted better accountability; you got that too. Clarified rules? Done. Public record of punishments? It's not perfect, but it's there. Open dialogue? Again, it's there, even if you don't always like the result. Cracking down on unauthorized code forks? We're on it. Staying on top of restricted users to make sure people don't wait too long? We're trying, and now that there are more admins, this will get exponentially easier. Official punishment system instead of just relying on the whims of a few people and lack of precedent? Got it covered. You may not always like the way I present myself - totally legit concern - and you may not always like what we decide - same deal - but I think if you step back and look at it, a lot of things have actually been done right. We made a lot of promises back in November when the whole Lori/Walter/Dark fiasco exploded; in essence, we vowed to be better, and on pretty much every count, we've succeeded to one degree or another. I'm not patting the team on the back; I'm asking you to bear in mind that despite the things you don't like, we've actually been doing a lot of the things you said you wanted, a lot of the things that will actually improve the forum and make it a more cohesive and welcoming community going forward. Some of that change, though, means that certain areas which have been historically played loose are now a bit more official and tight. In the grand scheme, I'd hoped that you could see this as a necessary part of the process, and fairly small potatoes next to the good that's been done. But I feel as if many of you have come to expect an extremely loose, informal style of moderation, and now that you're not getting it, you're jumping all over it and freaking out. This is an unwinnable scenario though, I hope you know that; if we sit back and do what used to be done, everybody howls because nothing gets done and virtually no one gets punished, and people are insulted, run off and generally mistreated by folks who really ought to learn the meaning of respect and tact. So if that happens, we fail as a team, and people scream because we're not protecting them/not supporting them. But then, if we step in and play a more hands-on role, everyone gets up in arms about that too; suddenly there's too much moderation, too many warnings, too much intervention. I think the reality is simple: many of you, in lots of cases due to intersectionality, mistrust power by default, and when you see it wielded firmly, it makes you nervous. So when that happens, I just want you to go back and look at the big picture, instead of magnifying one gripe in one situation to gargantuan proportions.
Okay, rant over.
Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1