Thanks for kicking me out

[Zappler]

I don't know any reason, I was not informed - nothing.
But I found myself in Armfeld.
Thank you, ET. What a marvellous town you are. Great way of caring for your citizens.

Zap

[TheBoomer]

Zap:

If you had read the forum, or logged on, and read any of the messages, you would have seen, that we now have a requirement that all citizens be housed.

We also have posted information on the ET website about this.

This information has been out there for almost 2 months now.

We recently removed 23 people that were homeless and inactive for several months.

Your profile doesn't include your email address, so we couldn't contact you that way if we wanted.

Boomer

[Zappler]

Cool statement. Nicely formulated. Not too momentous, though.

I could read about the changes coming on 1st of may - yes indeed. Sorry that I could not read anything telling me that I will be kicked out weeks before that date. My fault? Of course it does not really matter if you did not even try to contact me .
It does not matter, Sir. As a forum reader - not writer - I can tell that it's just business as usual. During the last weeks, your words were not very clear and unisono. How could I expect them to be now? Of course you would never admit a mistake. I do. But you egalised it now

Enjoy yourself, mister town mayor.

Zap

[mueckchen]

...So, if you're homeless after May 1st, you might be told move in somewhere or you'll be removed. It isn't going to be an absolute rule, we'll look at people on a case by case basis.

Boomer, a few days ago I asked you to avoid irritation. You did not succeed. By your statment above everybody in ET could feel safe until 1st of may. And you said you will tell people to move somewhere else. But you removed them.

This thing here should have never happened. I'm very disappointed.

mueckchen

[daveb02]

Given the information that is out there, we should have waited.  That is our mistake.  However, it is easy enough to rectify.  We did not remove anyone that had a house and of those people that were removed, no one had to pay the ARMfeld tax.  Anyone who wants back in to ET, all you have to do is ask TheBoomer or marialmb and you can get back in.  We have people in ET right now who we removed for not being around for months that did have houses and they are back in.  We want to be mindful about ensuring we do not have homeless people in ET.  There are a lot of people to track and we jumped the gun some what.  The intent was not to make anyone feel alienated.  Sorry if we did.  Many people below the level of W8 that are not present for two or more months are often gone for good or sporadic users.  We have in the past allowed people to stay around longer than the guidelines but now we have to be more conscientous regarding the housing situation.  Once again, we acted too soon, but we only removed the people that have not been around for some time, not every one without a house.  Sorry to disappoint anyone.  We will try to do better in the future.

[mueckchen]

As the GM of the Ligretto guild I know that Zappler (who was a member of the guild until he was pushed to Armfeld) does not belong to those users who have not been around for months. I mention this just in case that someone sees such a context after your post.
By the way - I do not expect too many people to ask if they are allowed to come back after they have been thrown out like this. Neither would I.

mueckchen

[TheBoomer]

The recent purge was supposed to be only inactive people.  If zappler made that list by mistake, I appologize.

Now, I'll give me thoughts on this entire matter.

Running a town on BSW requires work, it requires volunteers.
Those volunteers don't get paid, they don't get any real benefit, they just get work.  They are also human and they do make mistakes.

With over 300 people in EnglishTown, it can be a fair amount of work.  And because only a very few people step forward and volunteer to help, that work falls on very few people.  These people have lives, they have families, they have other things besides BSW to occupy their time.

Now since Zappler has never done anything in the way of work for EnglishTown, He'll probably be right at home in ARMfeld, they don't ask anything(expect 20 talers) a month.

[mueckchen]

Boomer, you are making things worse, believe me. Two wrongs don't make one right.
If I do someone wrong, he has to take it because he did not work for the general public? How should 98 % of ET's citizens  feel protected against something like what happened to Zappler - when they read what you're posting?
I recognize a very strange point of view in your words.  
I know all of the details of having a family, job, etc. I also have two "jobs" here. But I don't think that other citizens should be at your mercy just because they do not work for the public as much as you do. This is how you figure it, and this is terribly wrong.
Trying to make someone feel bad after doing him wrong is worse than laughing at him. I don't think you can afford such an attitude on the long run. But I will not lead a discussion about personal deficiencies. I'm really horrified, but I'm afraid the farce would get worse. So you will agree that things will be easier here for you when I also leave ET. Just let me arrange a few things beforehand. And I warn you - let me go by myself *g

mueckchen

[TheBoomer]

mueckchen:

I said, that the recent purge was only supposed to be imactive players.  I appologized to zappler if he was removed in error. daveb02 also appologized.

Mistakes happen when human beings are involved.

As for the issue of "working" for the town.  I just pointed out that Zappler hasn't.  That's a fact.

The meta-game changes have added more work to the running of the town.  For the most part, the people in Englishtown have been very nice regarding this.  We've been able to reduce our homeless count from about 190 to about 35.  This took a lot of work on the part of several people.

We have however, had a handful of people that haven't cooperated.  It seems to these people 30 seconds of their time to type a /movein command is too much to ask.

They'd rather make more work for the the people running the town, then take 30 seconds of their time to do a /movein.  After all it's only 14 keystrokes.

We've had people that have been rude and nasty to town officals, when all these people were doing is running the town.

By refusing to be housed, these people make more work for the people volunteering to run the town.
Where I come from, thats called selfish.

Do I think the homeless tax is silly?  Sure, but I don't make the meta-game rules.  I just deal with them.

Surely, the benefits of being in ET, are worth a one time investment of 30 seconds on someone's part, however it seems
that Zappler didn't think that ET was worth the effort of 14 keystrokes.

Boomer

[mueckchen]

Boomer,
you should not blame people not to be able to do 14 keystrokes when you are not capable of making the right statements before. Everyone here can find the 1st of may in his calendar when he knows he has to.
Of course dave apologized. And of course you will go on talking about the incompatible citizens. You are far from what it's all about, Boomer. So let's give it up. It's of no use anymore (actually it has never been).

mueckchen

[NaokiAiba]

Time for me to jump in. Before everything, I would like to thank TheBoomer's efficient governance which brought us a Castle and a Cathedral. He has withstood many pressures and objections for using huge amount of resources of the town. However, landmarks are brought to ET by this and I am proud of being a citizen of ET having these landmarks. These landmarks should be the proud of all ET citizens and especially the ET town council.

Back to this incident now:
What I view this incident is that at first town official drafted town policies towards the Meta-game reform and then posted. Though informations in different threads are contradictive, everybody knows the policies in advance and free to raise out supports/objections. Town officials have also carried out and are carrying out very well the housing the homeless operations. With everybody consulted, with everybody possessing the almost perfect information, this is the merit of ET town council. Nobody will deny this.

Thing went worst when the kicking (due to non-compliance to the housing policy) happened before the deadline announced else where. With no interests in repeating mueckchen's points, I would like to raise out that every actions taken against somebody due to a policy-change should not be carried not before the town councils has exhausted their means to contact such person. Clearly, kicking before the deadline announced in advance without publicly announcing a deadline change violates this expectation. At least, before Zappler's post, I did not see any announcement on deadline change.

Speaking of rights and responsibilities, I agree that citizens has the responsibilities to compile with the policies of the town, including bringing the town not much burdens by getting housed and generating sufficient MU points, more and more. However, we have the rights to get informed for all these policies, especially those able to result in kicking out of town. (closure of games and danger to starvation/build-stop inclusive) You may call those refuse to house until the last minute selfish; you may call those just generate sufficient MU points stated in the policies selfish; you may call those who refuse to play most of their games in ET selfish. However, it does not mean that you can take actions against them without announcing the change of policies which battle these "selfish" actions or getting all influenced parties informed, giving them the chance to compile. (rights to debate the new policies is out of track currently......) Governance Transparency, at least in the laws of towns, is taken for granted as a welfare of citizens in every town.

Remembered that after we built the Cathedral, most of the town resources had disappeared and it caused shock to citizens. Thanks to Boomer/Lepidus for their warm explanations that the resources are deposited in the manager. However, more appreciations would there be if the had announced such action before they carry out.

Upset to say that "the ET town councils' job is voluntary", "less volunteer", "not much harm did to victum and they enjoyed benefits" are not defence against the critics of lack of transparency. The first question to refute these defence is " Did you explicitly ask for help?"

To this incident, things could be remedied. However, another issue which could attract rage is coming. With the maintainence of games to be introduced, closure of gamerooms (especially PR and Settlers) is to be put on the agenda. Though not happy when using this wording, discussion with all stakeholders on this issue is demanded. At least, transparency on this issue should be attained.

NaokiAiba

[TheBoomer]

Let me try and clarify what happened in this case, then make a few related points.

Zappler was removed because he was on the inactivity list, not simply because he was homeless.

Now, Naoki, raised the point about exhausting all means of contact.

First, we don't have e-mail addresses for many people in ET, for others we don't have the correct email addresses.  So, we don't have that means to contact people.

We also have over 300 people, emailing 300 people takes a good deal of time.  Even just compiling an e-mail list would require time, plus such a list would need to maintained.  In addition to having 309 people, in a normal month we add about 25 people and remove about 20 people.

I don't have the time to spend on that, and I don't recall anyone stepping forward to volunteer to compile and maintain such a list.

So, we took the route of posting here in the forum, announcements via Archie in the citychat, the MOTD in C10 and the news section of the EnglishTown webpage.  
Could we have done more?  Of course we could have, given unlimited amount of time on the part of the ET council.
This way, any active person would have seen the information.

Right now we have 6 people active on the town council.  So the entire work load falls to the those 6 people.  Several of which already put a great deal of time into running the town.  If people want more then more people need to step forward and do some work.

It's easy to sit back do nothing and complain that not enough was done. The seems to be the ET way.

Since I get far more complaints then positive comments(complaints generally run about 8 to 1 over positive comments), I can only assume that the majority of people either don't really care or don't like that ways things are going.  That's fine with me, BSW and ET isn't my job its a hobby.  I understand that complains go with the job of being an Admin and being mayor of ET.  

But next time anyone has a complaint, maybe they should ask themselves a few questions, such as:

How much do you pay for BSW?
How much work have you done as a volunteer on BSW?


We've always had a great number of things that needed to be done to make BSW a better place for the English community(and we still have many)and almost nobody that wanted to work to get them done.
This seems to be the one constant, people love to complain but don't want to spend any time to improve things.

I won't bore people with the list of projects needing work, since they've been posted many times before.

Boomer

[mueckchen]

Zappler was removed because he was on the inactivity list, not simply because he was homeless.

It's like dust in the mouth, but again: this is simply not true. I will not shut up as long as untruth is repeated endlessly to make it look like truth. Kicking people before the deadline was reached was a mistake and can not be  denied, so now the second "argument" has to stand the racket. And this again fails. Zappler was online a week before you kicked him out. If you have a list of people to throw out because of being inactive for 5 days or more, go ahead and use it. ET will be easy to survey afterwards.

So, we took the route of posting here in the forum, announcements via Archie in the citychat, the MOTD in C10 and the news section of the EnglishTown webpage.  
Could we have done more?

Sure. You could have done the right thing. Not kickin people before the deadline was reached. Not telling them they are safe until 1st of may but throw them out weeks before. It's nothing else I have been talking about.

It's easy to sit back do nothing and complain that not enough was done. The seems to be the ET way.

Perhaps. But not mine. All I'm  saying is - nobody is complaining that not enough was done. This is a discussion about wrong information and its  results.

We seem to have a lot of accessories here. I will help to always come back to the topic.

mueckchen

[TheBoomer]

mueckchen:

In my earlier post, I stated that the purge was supposed to be for inactive people.  I appologized if zappler was on that list in error.  daveb02 also appologized.

We aren't prefect, mistakes happen.

[Soledad]

Please count me in the "support" column. If you hear 8x more complaints than praise, it's because complainers simply have more motivation to actually write.

I find the Meta-Game changes very disappointing. I don't see any attempt in actually creating some type of meaningful system - it's just a bunch of fancy new hoops to jump through, and I bet that if someone finds some clever way of doing it, it's even odds that they'll either be admired or dragged in front of the mediators and punished for it. I really don't get it. It would have been so easy to find some kind of market driven or usage driven feedback loop, instead the rules read more like a tax code than a game, complete with payment schedules and fees. It's totally arbitrary and utterly meaningless, to me at least.

I find it admirable that TheBoomer and his team is going through the trouble of adjusting to this -thing-, and they should be given some - no - lots of slack, especially if you can't find time to actually help yourself.