End of Yekaterina's lying (title was "End of Yekaterina")

[tuxayo]

Just coming around to says that it's a very pleasant surprise to see restorative justice advocated. Thanks @Norse_Harold and @leopard for pushing for it. That's a thing pretty much all online (and IRL) communities would benefit for handling conflicts no matter who says or leaves in the end.

edit: no matter who *stays*

Edited June 4, 2023 by tuxayo
typo

[tuxayo]

@Yekaterina Thanks for all the positive stuff over the years, the advice when I was learning to play while testing a25, the learning resources on the forum or videos you made. (I'm still finding them now that I'm rusted and am searching to revise usual build orders)

[Yekaterina]

Hi  @Stan` please don't delete this account I think it will be a good archive for future 0ad users. Just emphasizing.

@Norse_Harold

Edited June 20, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[nz.]

On 20/05/2023 at 1:01 PM, Yekaterina said:

GG

Firstly I would like to thank Stan and all developers who put their time and effort into building a game that I was able to enjoy for 3 years, spanning across 3 alphas. It has been a major part of my life in these years and has changed me significantly. I learnt much and invested much into 0ad, at the same time enjoyed all the battles and booms.

Due to many reasons, I have concluded that it's in the best interest of everyone for me to quit 0ad completely. I have been a flagrant violator of Lobby TOS and a top smurfer, so I do deserve a ban at least. Inside the lobby, nz. has listed me alongside JC, basiliskos and sanafur as the 4 most hated players of 0ad.

In addition, there is the spreading false rumour that I am Shyft. Many people actually buy into that and harass me in TGs to retaliate on Shyft. Sadly they have been attacking the wrong person all the time. If you think I am as horrible as Shyft ...I should just disappear from your lives to stop agonizing you...

On forums, I have been proposing the same 4 points for 2 years and in the end my ideas were remarked as "strange " and "exaggerated". My proposals to game mechanics changes such as disable unit pushing, instant turn +acceleration and light speed projectile projectile to eliminate dancing were met with heavy resistance. My attempt to contribute to lag reduction was abstractGUI, but that is mocked everywhere for its too abstract appearance. Few use it. Since I am not welcome anywhere in the community, it's time for me to disappear...

I will apologize for any unfinished mods and patches. @leopard I'm afraid A27 abstractGUI mod wont exist, but I'm sure you will find other ways of reducing lag like disable eye candy.

Finally, a big thank you to all the friends who have taught me gameplay skills and spent your valuable time with me. I wish you all the best and farewell. It's time for all of us to move on. Please forget me then live long and prosper!

Vergisst mich!

@Stan`you can delete me now, if it pleases you

 

Kate/ Yekaterina

 

What???  I just saw this and I am perplexed. I like 0ad but do not take it so seriously that I need to hate someone. I don't hate anyone. Please drop the misunderstanding.

[Trinketos]

¿Maño?

[roscany]

Why is Norse editing the comments of others? This seems like a misuse of mod powers. 

[Norse_Harold]

I edited the first post in order to change the title. The title "End of Yekaterina" resembles virtual suicide, a type of violence. Abusive material, such as a threat or encouragement of violence, is not allowed by the draft code of conduct for the forum. Also, the new title, "End of Yekaterina's lying" is more apropriate for the topic, as Yeka decided not to end the account and will instead (hopefully) end the lying.

I edited Yekaterina's post on July 20th, 2023, at Yekaterina's request via private communication.  Yeka said (s)he couldn't delete an incorrect @-mention, I explained how (backspace over it), offered to do it for Yeka, Yeka agreed and thanked me when it was completed.
 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[Yekaterina]

@Norse_Harold

6 hours ago, roscany said:

Why is Norse editing the comments of others? This seems like a misuse of mod powers. 

He does this. He griefed people's accounts before and gives random warning.

@Norse_Harold can you explain to me what are you doing? What do you want? 

Last night at around 1am UK time he was sending me random accusations like you often do. Then in the meantime MarcAurel was spamming me on Instagram asking me if I made new smurfs. To my understanding, Norse believes a player called inzhu is my smurf, so he took action immediately without evidence. Why am I sure that he has no evidence? Because I was away from the game for a very long time. I know what I have been up to these weeks and it's not anywhere near 0ad. 

I almost forgot about this hellhole until they harassed me at late night last night. The two of them ruined my sleep as this kind of nonsense gives me stress and forced me to remember the painful past. 

I have received countless ecomplaints about Norse Harold inappropriately banning and muting users. I didn't want to care but last night's harassment lasted for a long time through multiple channels. Norse accused me of random things (that are not related to me)  via Element, whenever something goes wrong. He hopes that he can bait me into admitting something or exposing a friend of mine. But sadly I am more clueless than him as he has moderator rights to see more than me and I haven't been near wfg service often, especially not the lobby.

To censor me, Norse Harold imposed a rule on my forum usage: I have to send text to him via Element indicating when I visited, why I visited and log out time. He also imposed that forum can only be used for restorative justice work. I want to ask @Stan` and @Itms is this your verdict, and is it justice? If you don't want me to use the forum why not just ban me or impose some technical limit? Or is this Norse Harold overriding you? @Player of 0AD this is why I couldn't reply to you, sorry.

 

To mute his random accusations I deleted Element. On that platform, he called me a "bad influence" and coerced me into contacting random dodgy people on the internet to take down YouTube videos. All of these should be his job. But he coerces me to do it with the threat of increasing the amount of restorative justice work. @Stan` @Itms @Dunedan I ask you all again if you agreed to punish me this way. I feel enslaved by this so called restorative justice. I have decided to not waste any more time on this. It is his job to moderate the lobby and other WFG services, not mine. I will not become his slave. I do not have the responsibility to give him any information, not to mention that I don't know most of the people who he is asking about. 

 

However, what I am sure of is he is manipulating people to speculate each others' possible smurf account and report it. He also mutes any kind of complaints. And now you see people being banned just based on suspicion. How is this any different from a totalitarian regime? These methods were the ones used in USSR and North Korea. 

 

I suggest we set up a proper legal system where we can have a court or a hearing of some kind before sentencing anyone to anything. Seems like 0ad is becoming Norse Korea with just one dictator. There is no justice system. 

Many rules are hidden to the public in some draft code of conduct. Norse holds people responsible to that but it's not shown to new users when registering. The drafts are DRAFTS, not implemented ! They are also not in visible places of the forum or any other WFG services. So it's easy for anyone break one of those rules unknowingly. If the draft is approved, at least put it somewhere visible! But @Itms if you have not enacted  the draft as new regulations, people must not be held responsible for it. There is no clause in the current forum code of conduct to register more than 1 forum account. Yet at least 2 people have been sanctioned just because Norse suspects they are my alts, without evidence! 

 

0ad will just keep losing players with this kind of dictator in place. Seems like I should cut all communications with all players as well to keep my own sanity. 

 

 

 

[Silier]

On 20/05/2023 at 6:36 AM, Norse_Harold said:

New duplicate accounts will just be merged with Yekaterina again. So yes, you're here forever

There is no terms of service on this forum enforcing the rule of one account for person. So anyone can make as many accounts as they want without breaking the rules of the forum.

[Yekaterina]

3 hours ago, Silier said:

here is no terms of service on this forum enforcing the rule of one account for person. So anyone can make as many accounts as they want without breaking the rules of the forum.

Exactly. So Norse_Harold  is enforcing rules that do not exist, hence an abuse of moderation powers. Two innocent people have been harmed by this abuse:

I have evidence of him griefing people's forum accounts. You can also prove that these users were not me by checking IP access history. 

1. NitroVicky

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/profile/39571-nitrovicky/?tab=field_core_pfield_17

This user was attempting to make improvements to the AI and Norse banned them half way, just after they published some kind of improved bot. We lost a potentially better AI due to mere suspicion. 

2. inzhu

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/profile/40829-inzhu/

look at all of their signatures. Since when is discord outlawed by WFG?

In addition I saw this inside a 0ad discord server:

 

at least 2 new players are being persecuted just because Norse suspects they are me. as far as i know there was no trial or hearing of any kind. Norse always claims to have evidence to me on Element but never presents anything. I am 100% certain that he is lying about the evidence because these 2 accounts are fundamentally not mine. 

I would urge other moderators @Silier @Itms @Dunedan @maroder  to step in and review the cases. If these people (and more that I wasn't aware of) are indeed guilty of something then sure, do what is necessary. However, committing libel on people and disrupting their accounts without any solid proof or virtual court is the act of dictators in authoritarian regimes, which is not what we want in 0ad. It's even worse to hold back evidence. Due to the absence of any other moderators, Norse Harold has unchecked absolute power, and there is no way to for any of these innocent people to appeal. 

These players were likely contributing something useful and Norse just turns them away simply out of his own suspicions. We are losing the already small player base and staff base. This kind of authoritarian, paranoid moderation is much more destructive to the game development and its future than a few smurfs popping up (not even certain if they are smurfs, maybe some AoE players learn quickly) . 

[Norse_Harold]

5 hours ago, Silier said:

There is no terms of service on this forum enforcing the rule of one account for person. So anyone can make as many accounts as they want without breaking the rules of the forum.

Incorrect. With no ratified rules then admins can enforce any rules they choose. Therefore choosing to enforce the draft code of conduct is a voluntary restriction on power.

We need to prevent duplicate accounts in order to prevent ban bypassing. In the case of Yekaterina it's especially important. Yekaterina is very skilled at creating duplicate accounts. Yekaterina admitted to creating elaborate identities for several of his/her accounts in the past, including personal details, interests, personality, location, family and friends. Yekaterina wrote the information down and followed the script whenever playing as one of Yeka's characters. NitroVicky and inzhu have been confirmed by WFG staff, not just me, to be highly likely to be duplicate accounts of Yekaterina. This is ban bypassing.

Please encourage Yekaterina to fulfill the requirements in order to get the ban lifted and Yeka's reputation restored. It's best for the community as well as Yekaterina. Yekaterina has complained many times to me privately about not being trusted in the community. That's karma for how much Yekaterina has lied. Restorative Justice would help to restore Yekaterina's reputation and resolve a lot of stress that Yekaterina has expressed (s)he has experienced about accusations of being Shyft_Sierra, others sharing Yeka's personal information against the rules, etc.

Let's please act like a community that cares about not getting the lobby spammed with 500+ messages in a 20 second time period, every half hour, for 10 to 24 hours, every few months. Let's please act like a community that cares about growing the player base and supporting the WFG developers that have donated their time, money and parts of their lives to make a fun game for us. Let's please act like a community that cares about the well-being of Yekaterina and doesn't support ban bypassing, which increases the expected restitution time for being unbanned.

Yekaterina's expected restitution time has been increased by 4 hours due to the recent ban bypass attempts. The total expected time is 52 hours. Yeka has completed a certain significant  percentage of that time,.Please encourage Yekaterina to do the right thing, get back in compliance with the rules, and then live happily ever after.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[Silier]

17 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Incorrect. With no ratified rules then admins can enforce any rules they choose. Therefore choosing to enforce the draft code of conduct is a voluntary restriction on power

Thats bullcrap.

Here are current "Terms of use" everyone agreed on:

Registration Terms

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[Silier]

35 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

highly likely to be duplicate accounts of Yekaterina. This is ban bypassing.

Highly likely is not the same as being confirmed to be the duplicates.

Even if it would be relevant when there is ban on main account.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Silier

[Silier]

24 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Let's please act like a community that cares about not getting the lobby spammed with 500+ messages in a 20 second time period, every half hour, for 10 to 24 hours, every few months

This is not the lobby.

[Norse_Harold]

16 minutes ago, Silier said:

Highly likely is not the same as being confirmed to be the duplicates.

It's confirmed to the best of our ability. You must not be familiar with how sophisticated Yekaterina is at hiding his/her duplicate accounts.

Silier, you are approaching this issue without complete information. Please stay out of it unless you want to un-retire and get brought up to speed about it.

Also, appeal of moderator action must be done privately, not publicly.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[halep]

2 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

It's confirmed to the best of our ability. You must not be familiar with how sophisticated Yekaterina is at hiding his/her duplicate accounts.

Show us some evidence

 

You are so confident, muting people and deleting posts everywhere. Am I Yekaterina?

[Norse_Harold]

Just now, halep said:

Show us some evidence

The evidence is sealed. It has been shown to WFG staff and they have ruled that the accounts are sufficiently likely to be Yekaterina's duplicate accounts as to be banned.

[halep]

1 minute ago, Norse_Harold said:

sufficiently likely

How likely?

Likely ≠ is correctly

Punishing people based on probability...

How many more must be banned? Using your logic, anyone who has some resemblance to yekaterina must be banned immediately... That's a lot of people

1 minute ago, Norse_Harold said:

shown to WFG staff

Who? How many? Why such intransparency in an open source game? Why can't the public see your deciding process?

You can make an announcement thread and lock it immediately if you don't want chaos.

As an user of WFG services I demand some kind of transparency. I am worried that some moderator will label me as Yekaterina and ban me at any time.

[Silier]

16 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

It's confirmed to the best of our ability. You must not be familiar with how sophisticated Yekaterina is at hiding his/her duplicate accounts.

Silier, you are approaching this issue without complete information. Please stay out of it unless you want to un-retire and get brought up to speed about it.

Also, appeal of moderator action must be done privately, not publicly.

I don't care what they are doing or how many accounts they have or how have you confirmed they are were created to bypass ban. I am reacting to the information you are sharing with the public and so far I got from the responses is "we have power we can enforce anything we want"

[rossenburg]

2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Exactly. So Norse_Harold  is enforcing rules that do not exist, hence an abuse of moderation powers. Two innocent people have been harmed by this abuse:

I have evidence of him griefing people's forum accounts. You can also prove that these users were not me by checking IP access history. 

1. NitroVicky

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/profile/39571-nitrovicky/?tab=field_core_pfield_17

This user was attempting to make improvements to the AI and Norse banned them half way, just after they published some kind of improved bot. We lost a potentially better AI due to mere suspicion. 

2. inzhu

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/profile/40829-inzhu/

look at all of their signatures. Since when is discord outlawed by WFG?

In addition I saw this inside a 0ad discord server:

 

at least 2 new players are being persecuted just because Norse suspects they are me. as far as i know there was no trial or hearing of any kind. Norse always claims to have evidence to me on Element but never presents anything. I am 100% certain that he is lying about the evidence because these 2 accounts are fundamentally not mine. 

I would urge other moderators @Silier @Itms @Dunedan @maroder  to step in and review the cases. If these people (and more that I wasn't aware of) are indeed guilty of something then sure, do what is necessary. However, committing libel on people and disrupting their accounts without any solid proof or virtual court is the act of dictators in authoritarian regimes, which is not what we want in 0ad. It's even worse to hold back evidence. Due to the absence of any other moderators, Norse Harold has unchecked absolute power, and there is no way to for any of these innocent people to appeal. 

These players were likely contributing something useful and Norse just turns them away simply out of his own suspicions. We are losing the already small player base and staff base. This kind of authoritarian, paranoid moderation is much more destructive to the game development and its future than a few smurfs popping up (not even certain if they are smurfs, maybe some AoE players learn quickly) . 

Hey, apologies for the inconvenience. It seems the two listed accounts are experiencing difficulty accessing the forums. Are they banned or facing content moderation restrictions? If you could provide more details on the specific issues they're encountering, I'd appreciate it. Perhaps you can try reaching out to them for further insight. It's essential to ensure everyone's voice is heard, and we shouldn't suppress opinions merely due to moderation permissions. Per what i know, having multiple accounts on the forums is allowed as long as the person doesn't intend to use them to gain an advantage or mislead others. ( referencing the current forums registration terms ). @Norse_Harold may have a strong reason for taking such actions so the other best way around this is contact him or any moderator

[uitgezonderd]

3 hours ago, bestplayer23 said:

Using this account, logging out, reloading page. BLOCKED. yep, shadow banned by cowards pretending to debate me.

With fresh account & 0 forum posts

he traces your ip. you tried to log in from the same ip so he assumes it's you. doesn't matter to him if it's your innocent neighbour or brother. he would rather wrongly punish 100 other people than to let you pass.

idk if regularly tracing players' ip is appropriate method of moderators. but that is what's happening so deal with it.

3 hours ago, bestplayer23 said:

I PM'd several DEVs, complained about Norse, encouraged them to silently observe.
2 weeks later...
Learned they shared my email (complaint) directly with Norse_Harold, didn't look into him at all,only sided. Top DEVs ignored me, informed him.

they are too busy to care.

3 hours ago, bestplayer23 said:

I joined the forum to complain about Norse_Harlord ( BLOCKED lobby incident)
I was BLOCKED from this forum (no explanation)
When making a new account I discovered that my email service is BLOCKED (still no  explanation)

he doesn't need explanation nor evidence to block you. he just does if he suspects you of breaking those hidden rules. nobody can stop him. he's too op!

Edited July 23, 2023 by uitgezonderd

[1984]

 Please add @1984 in the list which I ask to close right now

Just to make it clear, even if we face more or less the same harassment, @1984 doesn't belong to @Yekaterina  

I'm fully convinced that a game moderated as such is like running into a wall.

Have fun. I don't have any under treats and random dictatorial power

[1984]

...

Edited July 24, 2023 by 1984

[Itms]

Good morning.

We develop for fun the game 0 A.D., which is a strategy game in which multiplayer is an essential component. However, the childish and toxic behavior of a minority of lobby players has always been an issue and a cause of distress for developers. I see with disgust that this continues to be the case. I suppose it cannot be avoided, since professional game developers also face a lot of verbal abuse from their players, but unlike them, we do not receive compensation for our work. Thus, it should be expected that most WFG developers, especially me, are not aware of the daily developments in the MP community, and are not interested in knowing more about them.

Since a few days, I have been receiving complaints from several accounts, who harassed me and other devs in order to get Norse_Harold removed from his position. I have also been added to a conversation about one specific offender, in which Norse_Harold has provided convincing data backing his decision. There are probably other discussions I am not aware of, I am merely giving the context in which I write this post.

The only complaint I agree with is the need for transparency around the rules (currently materialized as a draft Code of Conduct, which is not yet published). This is the team's fault for not publishing this CoC in a timely manner. For the record, Norse_Harold has been the one pushing the team for a publication, he does not withhold the CoC on purpose, quite the contrary. Sadly, we in the development team are notoriously inefficient at publishing rules, terms, or legal stuff. It is our fault that rules applied to the community are not clearly communicated and make moderation appear arbitrary.

However, this does not justify the current situation. The method used by players to denounce the alleged abuse (spamming devs with copies of the same message, childish comparisons between totalitarian regimes and a silly video game) are jerk methods (not to say extremely cringe-worthy) which are just pushing me into backing the moderators. By the way, there are several moderators with identical powers. I heard no complaints of Norse_Harold alleged power trip from his fellow moderators. I just see the current wave of copy-pasted criticism as a concerted attack towards the most active and efficient moderator.

I must say I am concerned about the variety of back channels used to harass people (including me during a weekend I wanted to take for myself...) If you are temporarily blocked on the lobby or the forums, just close your computer and go touch some grass. Or fire up a different game if you have no outside life, which is OK. Opening Insta or Discord to harass, complain, and start a concerted attack is gross misbehavior. In my opinion, this extends to what I read about the use of Element: while I find the idea of restorative justice extremely interesting in principle, I find it unhealthy to actively reach out to offenders, using different platforms, to burden them with injunctions. I would prefer to push people into disengaging from the community for a while and, I insist, going to touch some grass.

This is the last input I deign to give in this thread, as I have more important work to do on 0 A.D., including helping to publish the CoC.

[G.O.A.T]

if @Norse_Harold doing his job bad, I would volunteer to replace him. Anyway I'm not sure if situation would be even better for "these toxic minority players"... 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by G.O.A.T