[Nvdeth]

Posting this on behalf of deth, who is currently banned:

Hi all, most of you know me as deth from TA. With the SEA CL#2 coming up and in light of recent events and drama in the community, I need to get some things off my chest.


First of all, and this will be confirmed by everyone who knows me, all my clanmates from TA and basically everyone from lans, I am honest to the point of ridiculousness. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but I make no apologies for this. If I don't like someone, I don't pretend to like them and then talk shit behind their back, I tell them I have a problem with them to their face. Sometimes this leads to a resolution of conflict, other times it results in unresolved tension and ongoing bitterness.


I am also overly critical, a trait I openly admit to, which I feel is part of what makes me so successful in my studies and pursuits of Journalism at University. It is also the trait that has made me the player I am today, I cannot cope with mistakes or losing, and my critical nature allows me to examine, dissect and correct mistakes as I see fit.


If I am sorry for something I will apologise. If I am not sorry, I won't apologise. I won't compromise my integrity or be dishonest in order to decieve people into thinking an apology is sincere when I believe and vehemently feel the opposite. That's why I sincerely hope everyone can take this thread and the following comments as open, honest truth, and process my thoughts with an open mind.


The critical and honest aspects of my personality have led me to be banned from this site and from the upcoming SEA CL #2. In the past I have gotten in trouble from admins of this site for disagreeing with their actions, openly criticising their behaviour and arguing relentlessly.


If I have made personal attacks on anyone in this community, not just admins, I apologise. I get heated in the thick of the moment and spout my mouth off in ways I sometimes regret. On the whole, I believe the admins, nirvana inclusive, do a great job of making sure we have ongoing events in the community and provide a localised portal for discussion and activity, without which the scene would certainly not be what it is today. And for the others in the community which make everything happen, you are all awesome for the work you do. Even benji, as much as we have had disagreements in the past, one cannot deny the impressive amount of work he puts into the scene in terms of casting and creating content.


As TA were champions of the original SEACL, I believe I owe it to them to try and make amends. I believe as a community we owe it to the players and the fans to provide the most entertaining environment and quality matches as possible. I believe I have shown highly entertaining games in the past, especially my tvp's against light, tvz's against mafia, pig and glade, and specific tvt series against yyj, RA, rossi, iaguz and many others. I don't feel as though my actions on this site or in the community should result in being excluded from this community wide league. I do not mind taking an exclusion from posting/reputation rights on this site as consequence for my actions, but I feel as though there should be some seperation of punishment between the game itself and community conduct.


I haven't hacked. I haven't cheated. I haven't always been manner but in tournaments and even ladder now, I always gl,hf and gg, no matter what. I give advice to those who want it and ask for it online, even if I have never heard of them or spoken to them before. My conduct in the game I feel is solid. All I want is to be able to play with my team. If I am excluded from this league I feel as though it isn't validated. SEA CL was ran without exclusions, and TA rose to the top and were victorious. Now we have two of our top lineup excluded from the league (myself and pinder), and any results stemming from this league aren't going to be valid.. I think for the players as well, if I was in their shoes I would want everyone to be playing, so a victory felt earned, rather than hollow.


I hope we can come to some sort of agreement here. I believe there should be a seperation between forum privelages and tournaments. Ban people from leagues for hacking and cheating, not disagreeing with staff on completely unrelated matters or using the reputation system.


Again, I wish to iterate that I do believe that the admins of this site do our community a great service, most of the time. I am just blunt, honest and critical of pretty much every mistake; this cannot be easy to deal with and I apologise if you are offended by my actions or personality. I mean nothing personally. I just want esports in sea to take off, have solid events, and more than anything have people watch and support entertaining leagues and watch exciting games.

Quick Comments

	TACosmic:	An honest post from a superstar of the scene. Deth fighting!
	NvRossi:	blunt, frank, honest and to the point! Love it
	Maynarde:	I see honesty and compromise here, good post deth.
	Apth:	Sincerity should be rewarded.

[Dox]

For what it's worth, I agree with deth. Sure, temp-banning people for being out of line is fine, but when it has an impact on the performance of their clan in the SEA CL, it's going a bit far.

Quick Comments

TAScarecrow:

[ToRSpartaz]

I agree with those comments bro, aren't we all like that from time to time? (: Im with you brohan

Takes a real man to admit that ^^

[Peleus]

What's been the past precedent with 'minor' tournaments such as CO or masters cup for those banned from sc2sea?

Quick Comments

	Eldrid:	^
	nirvAnA:	Zan was banned from all sc2sea tournaments, so was a BSG smurf "boxer"

[nirvAnA]

To me to his whole post isn't even an apology it just feels like hes justifying his actions on how he was "right" to be honest and how he should not have been banned.

It was him alone who disappointed and let down his team by doing something out of anger that would put their teams chances at risk

i.e making a personal attack he has made several times before that he knew would surely result in a ban. At least accept the responsibility of your actions and do not try to push it on the MODs or the rules of the tournament. There was never any intention to disadvantage your team in any way, you brought it upon yourself and let your team and friends down.

I had a talk with Rossi and riichard yesterday and ill put some of the stuff i've said here.

I cant unban him because it would be just another "slap on the wrist" it has to be significant to have any meaning. Guess how many times deth has already been banned, and how many times i decided to give him yet another chance and lift it? Guess how many accounts he has on this site? He ended up taking those bans all as "slaps on thew wrists", too lightly and meaingless for him to correct his attitude. People can see for themselves i have been EXTREMELY lenient on this site. hell even zan was given about 8-9 chances. But i absoutely hate people who abuse mods because it sets a bad example and harms the whole site. When people don't respect mods it opens the doors to trolling, immaturity, and fills the forms up with negativity and people end up losing respect for the site. Why do you think i removed all the memes personally attacking benji? Sure you found it funny but did he? We are nowhere near the strictness of TL for instance, ban discussion is not even entertained there.

Next, its not like a year ban, its just a 2 month ban, which is actually very lenient and perhaps i should be looking to revise that. Many admins would have banned him for life for that without a second thought, especially since it was a repeated offence - he was given MANY chances.

To clarify, ive already unbanned deth 7 times. Every single time he would talk to me on msn (See? I even used to entertain Zan for hours to discuss the bans explaining in detail hoping it would lead to some positive change, how foolish am I?) and the last 2 times deth promised he would not make such ridiculous accusations again and apologized. But the next time he got mad (it was the SEACL format he wasn't happy with) he just blew up again.

I recognize the end result weakened TA's line up and I went out of my way to seek out Glock (the higher up SQLT manager who overturned infeza's decision who was 100% adamant on merging SQLT with xGking) and explained to him the whole situation from the beginning and told him why it was wrong for sqlt+xgking to merge (1. Out of the 60 teams there isn't any other team like that 2. this is a clan/team competition to determine the best team/clan and merging takes away the purpose of the competition).

And that resulted in TA getting two key players yang /sensei back. I mean i simply could have not cared especially after being the recipient of many personal attacks from several of their members who have made things difficult right from the beginning of SC2SEA. But I put that aside and went out of my way so they would still have a strong chance to win as I hold no grudges against TA, there are just several members whom I dislike, the rest of the clan are fine.

I have also been telling benji to make a "B team" for the last 2 weeks, and that he could recruit upcoming players like bielsko which he eventually did, which hurt my own teams chances, but that would mean Benji / xGking, TA and everyone else was happy.

In conclusion the ban has to be meaningful and will stick, I have already been VERY lenient and made alot of concessions, even going out of my way and at my own expense. To protect the integrity of this site mod abuse is not one of the bans i can lift or matters i can lenient about. Harden up, take responsibility for your actions and letting your team down. Don't abuse the mods again and we will all look forward to seeing you play next season.

Quick Comments

	ToR.Arnor:	Agreed 100%
	Eldrid:	removed my post after reading your justification. 7-8 bans, this says it all.
	asdfSchnitzel:
	TAScarecrow:	One neg rep doesn't warrant a tourney ban. "Harden up"
	Nemo:	Agreed
	TCPKiaSu:

[breadfan]

Personally, I think for abstract issues of bans not related to tournaments, what Deth says makes a lot of sense. Don't punish people with tournament bans for things not relating to tournaments.

However, in this case it was a thread dedicated to the tournament - so whether it happens on the forum or happens in in-game chat, this is still a tournament issue. So I have no problem with tournament repercussions in this instance.

In saying this, I have no records to go back and look over so I don't have an opinion if Deth should or should not be banned (I don't know him, nor do I remember what each person said), but I do think it's acceptable that he may be banned if judged necessary by admins, since it really wasn't a totally separate issue.

---

nirvAnA: Thread has been closed so i'm going to explain my rationale here, as you ask a very valid question.

Why make it a tournament ban instead of just a site ban?

1. The ban has to have significance or it will not be taken seriously. A site ban is close to meaningless especially in his case because when you're banned you can still see everything on the site. He isnt a very active forum poster so even if he is site banned it doesnt mean much as he never posted much in the first place. This is also evidenced by the fact he was banned and unbanned 7 times before and have been taking these bans lightly like "slaps on the wrist". All his bans have been progressive, with first warnings, then infractions, then site bans, then this.

Would a ban on him playing in SEAL hold significance? Yes, definitely. It will be something he will take seriously and remember and hes is very likely to not make such accusatory remarks on me or the mods in the future. At the same time it is reasonable because we are not life banning him like ALOT of communities would. In just two months he will be allowed to play in next season's SEAL. Should he behave the same way as before, the ban will probably be increased to 2 or more seasons.

2. I can't let him play because ill be letting some one who spat in our faces play in a tournament we are taking a huge amount of time and effort to run. It feels wrong in every way and I have to set a precedence on how mods and admins should be treated. I have to protect myself and my mod team who spend countless hours of their own time running the tournaments that we play in, it is a thankless job, we don't ask you to express appreciation but directly attacking us is unacceptable. How many tournaments has baka alone organized and how many did Pinder himself play in when he made that remark to Baka? How can we continue to let these players play after saying that. Insulting / personal attacks will not be tolerated.

3. This will be the precedent now set. It doesn't matter how good at starcraft you are or what clan you are from. Insulting / personal attacks directly on moderators / admins will not be taken lightly and will result in bans from any tournaments organized by sc2sea.

Quick Comments

TAScarecrow:

way to get the last word in and stop using "our", "we" and "us"

[ToRXypha]

you know its funny over the last year and half on being on the site i have seen this same thing over and over and over.

Quick Comments

	TAEdgE:	I don't get the point this post is trying to get across?
	TAScarecrow:	nirvana abusing mod powers for personal reasons?

[Apth]

Deth's post comes across as forthright and sincere. This is rare on the interwebs, and I applaud him for it.

In all seriousness, with all the 'stfu noob' shenaniganry spouted from the legions of twelve-year olds we've all had to deal with, that post was a pleasure to read.

That's all from me.

[Dox]

Disappointing to see the thread closed after 1 hour. Not only that, but deleting Rossi's post seems really out of line. I really feel like this was managed poorly.