Empire of the Iguanadons

Those of you who don't give a rat's rip about MUDs or MUD forums, you can stop reading now. You'll likely be better off for it.







































Ok? I warned you. Here we go.

Many of you may know that I founded a site called MudBytes. It's origins lie mainly out of spite for Kyndig and the methods by which he ran MudMagic.com back in the day. It was to be the community's answer to a problem administration that was ruining a once great site.

It began life as a simplistic forum, where file attachments to standard posts served as the means to submit code to the site. It used the Quicksilver Forums framework, and was later expanded to use the QSF Portal framework. The site served as the primary development site for the software. Much of the early feature set of the software was added by myself. I was not alone though. Davion, Kiasyn, and Asylumius co-founded the site. Together we built it up into something useful, something powerful. Something to be proud of. I wrote up an entire uploads module so that we could separate the code submissions from the forum postings entirely. That took off quickly once we secured an agreement with Thoric to seed the repository with the contents of ftp.game.org (now defunct). For awhile, things ran themselves fairly smoothly and there was no real trouble to speak of.

Then, one by one, as the site became more and more popular, membership from TMC began floating in to see what the hubub was all about. Since for the longest time the forum wasn't the primary focus of the site, it operated without a posted set of rules. But due to the nature of people who use TMC, that had to change, and a first set was drafted. Anyone who has had any experience with MUD communities can probably predict what came next. But if not, what followed was an explosion of trolling, abusive posting, and members who felt it was their obligation to test the limits of the rules to see how far the admins would go. It got ugly. Tempers flared. I should have known then that the project was a complete failure, but I chose to take a stand and began more aggressively enforcing the rules. This worked ok for awhile, but naturally any such system becomes untenable once you get one or more defiant anti-authority figures involved. Enter Cratylus.

For the last two years, he has made it his personal mission to rip into any decision made in the name of the site's authority. All the while, continuing to post inflammatory junk and be generally abusive to the membership as a whole. But especially so to the admins, and doubly so to myself. Apparently he saw me as his Goliath to slay. Every time a topic would be locked, a post edited, something trollish and inappropriate deleted, there he'd be questioning every last thing that was ever done despite it being clearly spelled out in the rules. Things hit the fan though in a serious way when Cratylus posted an innocuous link to one of his "cratpegs" or something. Very shortly after, the link he posted disappeared with no sign of why. Folks who have followed my blog closely enough know that the incident escalated into accusations of stealth editing and that I had deliberately edited the site's SQL tables to avoid detection. All of that resulted in me resigning my post in November of 2007. Apparently, that sent the message that I was dead serious when I denied having any involvement in the infamous "post edit incident" as it's now called. I kept it to myself then, but to this day, I beleive that Asylumius was behind the incident and was in on it with Cratylus to frame me. I did not then, nor do I now, have any proof that they conspired to do this, but as Asylumius was accessing the logs he had ample opportunity to forge entries in it that he tried to use to convince the others. Only after the evidence was proven insufficient to make it stick did they back down and I foolishly agreed to be reinstated. One will note here that many people fully acknowledged the source of the problem. This is important, so keep it in mind.

So following my reinstatement, we set out to try and clean things up a bit. With Cratylus out of the picture, the site was running pretty smoothly and there were few if any incidents to speak of. More work had been done to polish up the files module and the articles module. Somewhere in the middle of all this we deployed a better skin for the site. Most of this timeframe seemed pretty tame really. Then for whatever dumbass reason, Cratylus had his ban removed and was allowed to return to the site. It took very little time before he resumed his usual ways of posting inflammatory material, abusing other members, and making a general ass of himself. And as usual, the other admins were too scared of him to do anything about it. So like the stubborn old fool I am, I waded back into the fray and did my best to try and reign the guy in. Only this time it seemed as though he found some new friends who also took a delight in being abusive and antagonistic toward any administration action. Somewhere in here I resigned my admin post again as I came to the conclusion that nothing was going to change and I wasn't going to waste more time on it. That's when people stepped up to offer support and persuaded me to ask to be reinstated again. Which happened. Though I can't find posts or a blog entry on it here, so I don't remember the exact details. Unimportant now anyway. Also, again, keep in mind, plenty of people openly acknowledged Cratylus as the source of the problem. Both on the site and over the IMC chat network.

Fast forward to the end of July. Cratylus was up to his usual thing, after we had managed to go several months this year with no real problems to speak of other than an incident with a spammer who came to the site (more on that to come). So long about this time, a fellow by the name of dubstack shows up. He types up a post, filled to the brim with grammatical and spelling errors. You can see where this is going, right? Yep. Grammar Nazism. All the trolls lept upon him and began ripping him apart. Several times I asked them to cool it. Apparently they didn't get the message. So I locked the thread. Oh yeah, you can see it now, right? Iron fist! It flared for a bit, but died off quickly. We figured it was over and done with - complete with the warning that the subject of dubstack's issue not be discussed again.

As you can imagine, that only lasted a few days before David Haley piped up and took another cheap shot at the guy. I warned him and the other participant, Flumpy, that the subject was not appropriate. Both of them took it upon themselves to hurl more abuse, so I locked the thread, and because David chose to instigate things further, he got suspended. Enter Cratylus again. Raised holy hell that his forum trolling partner had been punished for rules violations. Some heated words exchanged, and some abusive comments made. Big surprise, right? The threads where the abusive comments were made got locked. Naturally the gut reaction of a large number of troll posters sought to have this painted as me being my usual iron fisted fascist self and that the threads were only being locked due to my disagreement with the participants. That was not true, the rules stated that the behavior was not welcome. Cratylus took it upon himself to violate a well known (but foolishly unwritten) policy that administrative actions such as locks, deleted, suspensions, bans, whatever were not open to public debate. A policy that is very common on thousands of internet forums. It's policy on every site I personally visit, and I've yet to meet anyone who's been to a site where it's not policy. This is however the MUD world, so yeah. All common decency is thrown out the window. Cratylus fails to heed several requests to go to PMs and ignored a direct action not to continue posting in public. So when he refused, he was suspended in accordance with policy.

The big mistake of course was that we had only bothered to document the policy in writing a few days before the suspension was issues and I had forgotten to make an announcement about it at the time. It blew up into what's now known as the "Rule 14" incident since it was the 14th rule we had added to the policies. One important facet to keep in mind here (August of 2009 now) is that most of the discussions regarding Rule 14 were conducted on the IMC network. Apparently done in order to avoid my seeing it because by that time I had long since been disconnected due to repeated abusiveness being hurled in my direction anytime I opened my mouth. It didn't matter what I said, they were simply intent on being dickheads, so I left the mess in Davion's hands. Heh. Poor Davion. Clueless about how the network even works at all. It's a wonder the thing stays online at all. Anyway, with two people suspended from the site, the drama llamas were out in force. It went on and on without end for the entire month of August. This despite an attempt to resolve the issues by instituting a change in how forum moderation was to be handled.

Inspired by the system in use at TES Nexus, we proposed to change moderation to a system where 3 new moderators would be hired to monitor the site. Along with this, whenever someone got moderated for some reason, a public notice of it would be posted on a special forum only the moderators were *SUPPOSED* to have access too. The new mods were hired, the new forum section was put in place. As an added gesture, a new set of rules was enacted that had more clarity to them - taken directly from what's worked on the smaugmuds.org site the whole time. The only problem apparently was that we were not going to abandon Rule 14. Or so I thought. Despite having agreed to enforce the rules we set, the mods more or less openly rejected Rule 14. This caused an uproar, and Davion cowered away from the pressure and removed one critical component from the new public notice system. The restriction on being able to discuss the decisions. This had the disastrous effect I fully expected it would and the first time a moderator action got posted there Cratylus immediately dug into it like a rabid dog. I truly feel sorry for Dean, he turned out to be the only one of the 3 who had the stones to do something about it and he got a massive pile of shit thrown on him for it. But he's a trooper, he took it in stride, called Cratylus an asshole, and moved on.

Things might have calmed down, but unfortunately Hades Kane couldn't help himself and posted an inflammatory link in an old thread (which should have been utterly deleted long ago) called "The God FAQ". I doubt I need to really explain why this is such a colossally bad type of post for a non-religious forum. As one might expect, in the course of the debate, it turned into a Darwinists vs Creationists fight. While this isn't terribly unexpected, the result was rather devastating. It went on for 30 more pages and Cratylus was right there in the middle of it all, flinging shit and posting abusive crap. I had long since given up on any hope that the mods would deal with it. So I figured what the hell, why not jump in too? Guess that wasn't such a grand idea, because my view on macro-evolution is best summed up by the word "pseudoscience". Probably should have known better in a forum full of liberal democrats who have no education outside of Darwinism. So when I began posting evidence in support of Intelligent Design, all hell broke loose. Because they all agreed that I must be a crackpot hillbilly with no education, it was open season to turn their guns of hatred and malice on me. Including all three of the moderators who were supposed to be enforcing the rules against that sort of thing. Yeah, probably should have backed out and locked the thread. Damage done.

So that brings us to late last night. Over the last two weeks, a poll was running on the site which asked if we should ban religious and/or political topics. Seemed harmless enough, and for awhile, the poll thread was quiet. Until the trolls realized their side was losing. Badly. A majority of those who cared enough to vote, voted to ban those topics outright. So you'd think that would be good enough, right? 29 people vote to ban the topic, 52% of those who bothered to do so, majority, right? Wrong. The amendment went into the rules, and the rule lawyering trolls like Cratylus came out of the woodwork. He decided to be an ass, and ask if Darwinism was still valid. Considering the inflammatory nature of the topic, we added a specifier for that as well and made it off limits too. We were even generous enough to give a 7 day grace in order for existing topics to wind down and die off. The trolls would have none of it.

So anyway, the end result? Cratylus, David, and a couple of others spent their evening savagely attacking Davion for - get this - my unilateral decision to alter the rules. Uh huh. After giving them 2 weeks to speak up and not hearing a peep, sorry, that doesn't fly. I even gave Davion, Kiasyn, and the 3 moderators nearly a full week to comment. Only Orrin bothered, and he pulled more rules lawyering stupid crap out of his ass. But he was the ONLY one who said anything substantive on the issue. The others were silent. It was in no way unilateral, their silence was an explicit agreement. Davion even publicly said as much over IMC when he told Cratylus that what he wanted was now taking place.

I'm sure by now you want to know what the backstabbing is. As of 12:44am, my tenure as administrator of the site was revoked. By force. I was called into an IRC session and there was Davion, Kiasyn, and Asylumius - important to remember he's *NOT* a site admin and hasn't been for some time now. The reason? My presence is destructive to the site. You can imagine that I am not particularly happy about it.

Now remember earlier where I said that people openly acknowledged Cratylus as the source of all the problems, right? Thing is, people are still doing that, and Davion even said Cratylus is going to get banned from the site now. Though he'll probably deny it and claim he never said it. So what I'm really steamed about is that they acknowledge the problem, Kiasyn publicly said he's 90% of the problem, but here we are. Me sacked, Cratylus still a fully privileged member of the site.

Remember the spammer thing I mentioned before? Some of you here probably know The Fury. Yes, that Fury. The one I booted from this blog due to some spam comments he posted here. Here's the thing. An incident took place shortly after what went on here where MudBytes and TMC were both attacked by a spammer. The spammer attacked our site via a proxy which led back to an ISP in Australia. It's damn weak. Asylumius supplied this information shortly before he resigned his post. Davion acted on the information and told everyone we had the evidence. I played along because of my petty disagreements with The Fury. It was wrong, but in my heart I felt it was for the greater good of the site at the time. There was nothing concrete linking him to anything that happened on MudBytes. I can't speak for TMC, and Icculus isn't talking, but I highly doubt that was him either. Since I no longer have any loyalties to the backstabbing corrupt admins running the site now, I need to get this off my chest. It's the right thing to do. My apologies to The Fury for contributing to the maligning of your reputation. You deserve to know the truth, and there it is.

Honestly, I see no real hope that the site is going to survive. Davion is a traffic whore. He cares only about getting visitors to the site. He's on more than one occasion said the forums should be scrapped in their entirety. Kiasyn is an immature spoiled brat who isn't qualified to administer a self enema, let alone an important resource site for MUDs. And Asylumius is a deceptive manipulator who's motives I really don't even begin to understand. To all those who hung with me near the end, well, I am sorry, but I did what I could. They'd have none of it, and would rather appease the small but vocal minority of troublemakers than do what's right for the site by cleaning it up. My sincere advice to all would be to just walk away. Ditch the place. Go hang out at TMS or Mudlab. MudBytes is now nothing more than another TMC. The remaining administration is spineless, corrupt, and unworthy of an ounce of respect.

The MUD community is damaged goods. At least at the level of a site like MudBytes. Do yourself a favor, follow some sage advice from The Fury: "You will find mud development more rewarding if you distance yourself from other developers." Truer words never spoken. Niche sites are the key. Go find one and contribute something meaningful. Stay clear of MudBytes.

A special apology goes out to Kyndig. It's taken me this long to realize you were doing what you felt was right. I don't know if you'll ever see this, but if you do, know that I now understand fully what you were trying to do and for my part in being an asshole to you, I'm sorry.
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

Pretty harsh considering all the times I defended you.

If you think you were cut because of those people you're wrong. There was -lots- of reasons why you were let go. First off, you were part of the problem. Deny that all you want, but it's true. When the mods and the admins all say so, some part of it have to be true. Not only that, but even Kayle wasn't defending you. Secondly, you did no active development on the software despite our desires and initiative to advance it. You were causing lots of problem and doing nothing to help. Seemed to me like you didn't want the job.

Your solution to the religious/political threads (both of which you were in the middle of the shit slinging... again) was lazy and poorly thought out. In a few hours Kiasyn had come up with a technical solution to the problem that keeps the entire community happy, not just one part. To me, that's a community. Building a place that we all enjoy.



Ya know, scrapping the forums would probably make traffic take a nose dive. The very fact I want this to happen proves I'm not the traffic whore you claim :S. But ya, thanks.

What a crock. I'm sorry to say you gave yourself enough rope and hung yourself there, nothing more...

Mudbytes needs a way for people to ignore non-mud related posts period. I don't want to hear David Haley and Cratylus battling back in forth quoting each other 3000 times over stupid shit like religion and stuff. I know most mud admin's would love to just be able to see the mud related stuff. Until there is a way to do this, mudbytes will not flourish.

Vladaar

I will agree with Davion when he responded with "Pretty harsh", and I can't say that I think nearly as badly of him as you've painted him, though his being part of the decision to fire you does diminish my view of him significantly. I've wavered on my opinion of Kiasyn for years now, as you of all people know. As for MB, I decided that it was essentially a lost cause quite awhile ago. Why it's posted here instead of on MB, I don't know, but Vladaar's got a good idea if Davion & Kiasyn want to salvage at least part of MB.

Just so everyone is aware, MB /has/ hidden the controversial thread away and it is currently working well.

If we had done as Samson suggested, a fair few would still be unhappy.

Samson's article is full of half truths and some out and out lies.. It has saddened me to see this posted here.

Well, as was typical, the solution was the only thing on the table at all, two weeks went by without a single peep from either of you about it. On the internet, two weeks is an eternity. Nothing was happening. Nothing EVER happened on the visible moderation front until I stepped up to do something about it. EVER. That's why I don't think the site stands a chance of survival. The two of you make me look like a workhorse, yet I'll freely admit to not wanting to expend a ton of effort to move things forward. Not with the way you've both been treating me now for 2 years.

And I should have realized this sooner. Way sooner. But since it happens in politics all the time, it should have bee blatantly obvious. You all sacked me simply because you didn't agree with my politics. It explains why you all spent so much time saying that things were being done to you because *I* disagreed with *YOU*. So I hope you're all happy and shit because you've got your little homogeneous society now with its one world opinion.



Yes. It was harsh. But I've sat on it all for far too long. Any objective observer of the site will know what I've said about their administration methods is entirely true. They will also know that I am right about Cratylus being the entire problem. It's plain as day. I can understand why you don't think of him as badly as I've painted him. You haven't had to endure working with him all this time. There's a certain liberating feeling in being able to speak the truth about both of them after all this time. Something I've held back on for the good of the site.

You mean if we had done as the majority of poll respondents had asked for. Who's shit is full of lies and half-truths now? Everything I posted was the truth, period. They may not like it, they'll likely even deny it outright, but it happened, just as I said it all did. If it saddens you to see this posted here, tough. I've been holding this shit back for far too long and have no further desire to keep doing so.



Statements like that only go on to prove it - note especially that last part about not expecting any changes. Speaks volumes about your new masters.

Dude chill out. You'll blow a gasket.

It's just a mud forum... sheesh

Then I blow a gasket. Apparently plenty of you would be happy to see me dead anyway.

But don't get your hopes up. What I said here needed to be said, whether you believe it or not. Can you honestly say that if you were so thoroughly betrayed by people who right up until the axe fell were telling you to your face that they supported your decisions that you wouldn't be at least a little bit mad about it?

I can at least take some comfort in knowing people did support me, and several have now expressed it via PMs along with their regrets at not having spoken up themselves. Good chance traffic is gonna drop now, so there ya go. Have fun in the cesspool.

It's a truth that is spinning like a fucking top. Of course you did nothing wrong. You never do anything wrong. It's all our fault *nodnod*. I'm not going to justify some of these crackpot claims. I'm just leaving it at that. But I can't believe you went and spewed shit about the fury lies. I honestly can't believe you'd do that. Anways guys, here's a quote from the admins board. First and probably only time it'll ever get quoted (There will be some censoring to protect MB security)





So if you have any questions on how I came to the conclusion that it was The Fury... there ya go. It wasn't Asylumius. It wasn't some loosely linked IP.

Right. Much like the logs Asylumius edited and then used to convince you I did the post edit. The authenticity of this information is entirely suspect. I'm hardly surprised you'd do this though, it's what you guys have been doing all along. You're just upset that I've come clean about it now. I wouldn't be surprised to find out you've gone so far as to doctor your database again with more of your well known SQL-fu to get things in line should someone ask to see the actual posts in question. A truly sad spectacle. Your hatred was obviously much stronger than I ever suspected it. Oh well.

Clearly the one thing I did right for myself was to divest from any financial responsibility for the site. So at least I'm not going to have bills to pay for your betrayals as well.

Something I missed earlier, your initiative? Surely you jest. I put forth plenty of ideas, and freely admitted I didn't know how to put them into practice. I was perfectly willing to help test, but nobody ever bothered to step up to do anything. You all kept expecting me to do it. So yeah, whatever, good luck. You'll need it.

Whoa whoa whoa! Are you actually saying that the posts I've quoted here are -not- you, and are fake and made up?

Well if you want it put bluntly, yes.

Not made up in the sense that you fabricated them from nothing. Made up in the sense that you're lying about who posted them. Or, at least the first one anyway. That bit from the arthmoor.com prompt is mine, but as I said before and apologized to Fury for, I was playing along. The link is too weak as that ISP plays host to plenty of other things besides his game and there's no way any of us could possibly know if they multi-home domains on the same IP.

As I also said to someone else, reasonable doubt. An equally strong case could have been made that Dean did it, being from .au himself. So yeah, it was a coverup, and I admit my participation in it. You guys can come up with whatever crock and bull story you want to weasel out of it, but I've made my amends to those I have wronged in the matter.

Ok. Just wanted to make sure that I was waisting my time with you. Now I'm sure. Keep spinnin that truth Samson. Become those politicians/people you hate to "better yourself".

The feeling is mutual. I feel like I've wasted a significant amount of time in the last 2 years on you, so I guess this makes us even now.

And before they sweep this under the rug. Pay attention to the parts where Cratylus says I'm evil and more or less implies it to be the only reason I should be removed. If that's not evidence of him being the entire problem, and doing all of this deliberately, and with malice, I don't know what else can be.

Actually Davion, all you have managed to do is show that you, yourself have lied about the data all along, with all your banging on about how YOU discovered it and how YOU used XFF rubbish to determine it was me. When in actuality you had nothing and you did nothing you just took whatever was presented to you.

The funnest thing about what you have shown is that i was already IP banned at the time that user was created, so it was impossible for me to be able to have created with without the use of a proxy, so the ip in the user page was inserted by someone else, and im not a dumb ass, i know how to use proxies that do not forward information, which is why i have been able to make a number of posts on MB without any detection, actually i have maybe 10 accounts there, so get looking, you only banned Cranabal so far, the others are many months older.

Out of all of this, atleast Samson has had the balls, albeit because he wants to get back at you, kia and asslimitless, to admit to his roll in the fabrication of the evidence used against me and maybe its time you fessed up with it to, i dont want back in to MB or anything, only an admission that my original banning was bullshit, all my further bannings for fucking with you can still stick, because i got plenty more of those up my sleeve, come end of semester.

Maybe Davion you should also fess up with how you have been back dooring Samson for months because you wanted to get rid of him and how often you have been poked and prodded by people to do just that, Or how about the wonderful Samson conversation you had with Crat, DH and others at the NY mud meet, how they were all gunning for you to get rid of Samson, but how you had to play it cool and not show what your really up to. Davion you\'re nothing but a spineless prick. Period. And the rest of the MB team is no better, bunch of lying cheating backstabbing fucks who will stop at no lengths to get what they want.

Oh and Samson, wanna remore the firewalling of my IP so i dont have to try 100 proxies to get a working one, i promise to not flood you with hate mail and will contain myself to this thread only.

The_Fury.

The guts of that above post and the point you missed Samson is just how much Cratylus was gunning for you and how getting you consumes him. His purpose in life was to make you look as stupid as he could at every available opportunity. That was one of many similar discussion about you on his mud.

The_Fury.

Oh and lastly i should mention, I DID NOT SPAM MUDBYTES, i arranged 4 friends of mine to do it while i was at work, none of them had access to my internet accounts, in fact they all bough disposable dialup accounts to use for it so that it could not be traced back to them. SO if you want to hate me and ban me, do it because of what i DID do, not because of a pack of lies.

That last quote looks like Sinistrad started that one, and carried it as much as Cratylus as well.

Either way, can we start referring to this as Mudbytes-Gate or perhaps just MudGate? Do we get a "Deep Throat" in all this to come forward with the extra info we need to finish persecuting someone? Is Samson or Davion/Kiasyn/Asylumius or Cratylus or Kyndig getting to play the role of Nixon? Sorry, I think I've lost track at this point... oh, and who gets the movie/book rights for this one?

Though that does remind me, I meant to add something else in my previous post: Samson, despite all the rest of this, I can't believe you're offering an apology to Kyndig over this. We all acknowledged at the very beginning of this that he may well have had good intentions overall, but he clearly went way overboard in his reaction. Banning folks because he felt they might conceivably be linkable to someone he was upset with and deleting their mud listings and any file submissions that may have been in any way related to Smaug or one of the offending parties (or someone remotely related to them, even if it just means they've conversed politely with that person, ever before...) Which part of that is understandable, even in retrospect?

Sorry, Samson, I'm behind you on most things, but I honestly can't see apologizing to Kyndig for our reactions to what he did. As for the harshness or your initial post, you're right that I have never worked closely with Davion on anything for an extended period, but he usually comes off a bit like Obama - as someone who tries really hard to take the middle ground and establish peace between the parties rather than actively doing anything. Kiasyn and I have had our share of blow-outs in the past and I've tried to forgive him each time and just blame his youth for everything while still giving credit to him for being damn good at coding in the languages that he likes to work with, particularly given his youth, even if he's not really such a youth anymore. I've never really known Asylumius, even though I've tried to watch him over at MB for several years now, he just doesn't really seem to say anything committal enough to peg where he stands on almost any issue.. As for Cratylus & David Haley, well, you already know my position with them. I have a great deal of respect for David's programming skills, but almost the opposite perspective on his personality, and Cratylus is pretty much a solid a troll though he does merit a certain due for his work with his codebase and Intermud. I don't know Orrin, I don't think, enough to begin to comment on him and I won't bother commenting on Hades Kane or The Fury beyond saying that I don't really dislike either of them personally but The Fury does tend to shoot off a bit with some very odd/foolish(?) remarks more often than he should while Hades has been known to post some real novels and dredge up things that could just as easily be left for dead already. ...did I miss anyone?

Wow, in the time it took me to type up my post, The Fury came along and posted three times on me.. as bad as this feels to say, what I got out of The Fury's posts just now was that I am glad I missed the NY mud meet. For what it's worth, I don't think The Fury is a liar despite whatever else he may be and I'm quite prepared to believe what he's posted. Especially the bit about Cratylus gunning for Samson.

Davion: Just for clarification, that does not say good things about you, in case you somehow missed it. I've never disliked you, and I've always appreciated that you'd defended Samson against Cratylus at TMC, but I've also never really known you very well or even noticed you taking a strong stance on anything before other than in saying that the admins (thus including yourself) at MB were not corrupt despite Cratylus' claims to the contrary. Perhaps oddly, given that, I always thought you were the right choice for handling the MUDCONs and I never questioned your selection for co-admin of MB, even when I seriously questioned Kiasyn's selection and Asylumius' selection as co-admins there (and Kayle's selection for the Smaug forums as well as IMC). I still can't say that I'd classify you as an enemy of mine nor even a spineless asshole as you're being depicted here, but you have definitely disappointed me in this thread and the decision that spawned it.

LOL Conner, what you see as odd and foolish, most often is just a lack of tack, care and often literary skills, there are some pretty clever people in mud circles who argue a position very well, in some ways forums like that come off more as sport than having any real merit of their own. I have been part of other forums where i have not encountered the kinds of bullshit that surround most mud forums, one forum i am a regular on i have 3K odd posts and have never once had a single flame war with anyone, nor have i responded to posts in the ways i am renown for within mud circles.

There are places out there where discussion is fun and where people do not eat their babies, and i find those places entertaining. However, mud forums are very cannibalistic, and im the type of person who will react predictably to certain stimuli, i do not take shit from dickheads and that about sums it up. I have little or no respect for most of the people who frequent mud forums, very few of them have no game, or may have had a game at one point and no longer care about it. It is hard to respect people who have no vested interest in mud.

And just look at the people who spend all their time posting, they spend bugger all time working on their games, promoting their games. I personally do not give a rats ass about yesterdays hero\'s, mostly this is what i think went wrong with Samson, he, like I, lost sight of what was important to him and that was his game, and instead of having his mud as important to him, he replaced it with seeking the approval or trying to be better than, a bunch of fucks who do not deserve the respect that others put on them, all the typical retards who make up what is perceived as the mud comminity.

The real mud community are people like you Conner, Vladaar and all the hard working people who spend their time caring about their games, and not playing shits with other people on mud forums. Those are the real mud community, and it took me a while to work this shit out for myself. When i realized these things in myself, i set forth in destroying my credibility and being the biggest fuck i could to the most people, getting banned from IMC2 was the beginning, all that was intentional, getting banned form TMC was also intentional, MB well that was a consequence of being banned from IMC2 and it was also wanted.

You see, i have no desire to return to playing game with fucks on mud forums, they do not assist me in making a better game, they actually hinder it by taking my time away from the one thing i care about, and thats my game, being on those forums arguing bullshit with dickheads ends up being a sudo mud, i dont care about the opinons of others, so why put myself there in the first place. But it can be adictive, which is why i made sure i was banned from them all, so there be less temptation.

In that regard, i hope Samson finds his passion for the things that are important to him and forgets about the things that cause him pain and distract him from enjoying his life and his hobby. Personally i hope Samson starts work on a new mud project in secret and gets back to doing something that he loves and forgets the politics of mud forums.

I know, since i have done that very thing, i have been much happier and am enjoying doing what i want when i want, and the dickheads can have their insestual fun on the forums, stiking poses and jostling for position and renown among themselves.

The_Fury.

Is Samson or Davion/Kiasyn/Asylumius or Cratylus or Kyndig getting to play the role of Nixon?


The truth of the matter is this, THEY ARE ALL TO BLAME. There is no innocent party in any of this, each had their roll to play, there were plenty of people working behind the scenes to fuck Samson over, and well Samson reacted to the threat as we all know how he will. But no one will ever admit to their part in all this, so what can you do.

You missed me Connor. Not that you know me anyway, but still, I take great offense at you missing me. I shall dispatch Pees-on-Leaf immediately to rectify the situation.

Conner, it's impossible for me to defend myself when someone I called my comrade and friend is not only lying about me, but lying to my face, knowning that I know he's BSing. He knows I very well can't prove him wrong without totally exposing MudBytes security measures and protection. If The Fury actually read my comment that shows his account is linked to a spam account, he'd probably retract his statements. But hey! Lets take Samsons words as irrefutable proof. Stop calling the CIA and SS on people Robert Powell of Brisbing (or where ever you're from). Keep in mind, despite Samson claiming we "backstabbed him" there has been no smear campaign. In fact, I have deleted posts that have outright attacked Samson. Deleting a post on MB is a big deal if you didn't know, but I'm still willing to do it in this case. Instead, Samson has started a smear campaign against MB. Sweet!

I am never going to attack Samsons credibility without a reason. I have stood by Samson (despite him accusing me of turn-coating) over 4 years. I have never called him a liar. I have never attack him. I told Samson, "Deal with these people with more tact because you're making us look bad or get out". Instead, he got worse.

Claiming he didn't have the know-how, or experience to implement a feature or further the software is the biggest cop out I've ever heard. Samson. You're a programmer. I've seen the work you've done on AFK. To claim you're incapable is bullshit (sorry if I expect you to be competent). Being an administrator on a website means you actively develop and further the website, and you be productive within the community. Samson did none of these. You can blame his firing on Cratylus, Koron, Shasherak, whoever all you want. The end results came down to -his- activities, not the other peoples.

Just for the record, ATM, MB is currently advancing it's templating engine, implementing MSSP, as well as developing an area archive. Along with minor site improvements and tweaks to the forums. Samson had absolutely no part in any of this. His activities with the forum for the last few years have been limited to tweaks, and plug-ins for Akismet. He did a great job handling server-side problems and all that, and was a large part of the force that -kept- us running.

So. I don't care if things look good on me. I don't care if you call me a liar (of course if you do, that means Samson is an incompetent extremely active developer of MudBytes and can't catch a spammer if his life depended on it) but you will come to your own conclusions regardless of what I say. The whole "apologizing to Kyndig" bull shit... wow. It really shows how much this has effected you and I'm sorry. Sure, Kyndig might have had some good points but his methods of action were ridiculous. If MB did something to the extreme Kyndig did, don't you think similar repercussions would have come to pass? Kinda like you. I agree with you a lot on many, many things. I believe you were vital in the creation of MB (not only from the initial inception but the guiding of the community). But your judgment calls have been... extreme. I'm not sayin I haven't made mistakes (Lets remember the whole Midboss/Runter fiasco) but to constantly make the same one with the -exact- -same- user!!! Yes I had a beer with Cratylus in NYC. I got to know him. How many posts on the moderators/admin forum did I have calling him out on rule violations? Hey! Look at the first thread/post on the Moderators Action forum! Go fig.

Samson, you have forgotten that MudBytes is all about freedom of expression; to the point where you thought stifling discussions is a good thing. Yes, I may not agree with these discussions, despise them, and out right loathe reading them, but I don't try to stop these people from expressing themselves. MudBytes is not perfect, and there are problems, but the solution to that is not becoming one of them. If I hold you to a higher standard then the users that you cannot live up to then, again, I appologize.