Alyeska: Fired or resigned as SB.com moderator?

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:20 am

Alyeska wrote:When you take into account the fact that distances in the asteroid field are actually going to be fairly difficult to account for, with possible errors taken into account 9 GT is well within that range.
Do you know where we may find the calculation?
From my readings, ICS and other Technical Manuals directly tied to the movies have a higher rank within the EU then most other EU content. This would put ICS above any pattern displayed in the majority of the EU regardless of what that pattern may denote.
This strikes me as an awful double standard, the one that always baffled me when reading stuf at SB.com. I heard the same thing from people saying that Chee's words proved that the EU was canon, yet, those same words explicitely stated that any of those EU sources has equal canonicity. Guides, novels, narratives in video games, etc... all at the exact same level, with no distinction.

Then, there was that amalgam, and people were quick to jump to false conclusions; Somehow, having lots of bits borrowed from the the films, and then mixed to stuff solely invented by the EU's authors (guides and novels) made the whole source (as a book for most of the cases) more canon, and as a consequence, in a case of contradiction between two EU sources, that so called higher one would enfore its non-film (excuse the rough term) material and facts upon the other's.
It's another double standard, because I've also been largely battered by the same horde of people stipulating that one cannot ditch the whole ICS because there's one contradiction, yet they're quick to say that all of the ICS material is of a greater canon level, albeit within the C zone, because a portion of it directly came from the film.
A hasty association, quickly forgetting that the extra material, anything freshly introduced in the EU source by an EU author, is nothing more than EU, with no special higher status.

An example would be a typical disagreement on firepower about a ship. Say a frigate. Because the ICS provides a miles long list of details and technicalities about said frigate, and because some of the stuff referenced in the ICS directly comes from the film (or the novelisation), then the firepower, which in that case would be a pure addition from the EU's author, would hold more weight than the figure found in the novel, from another EU's author.

Nevermind if, above all, Star Wars is above all a matter of stories, and that the guides should support the stories, not contradict them.
On a personal note I do believe that ICS violates what Star Wars was shown to be using excess in many areas. However, as Lucas is the ultimate arbiter on what makes Star Wars and he has laid the grounds for doing just that, my perceptions of what Star Wars is is ultimately irrelevant as Lucas has the final say.
However, it would seem that the contradictions apparently flourishing in the films themselves differ by orders of magnitude which are almost negligible compared to the far fetched numbers found in the ICS, and even more when compared to the low ends found in other segments of the EU.

If, again, the goal is to reach a balance, settling on the crazy high ends is not honest, nor wise, especially when in one hand, we're dealing with kilotons, and in the other, with, what was it again? teratons? *
Unfortunately, it seems to be what a wide range of pro-SW vs debaters seem to do, and not only against Trek, but for anything that's pitted against SW.

* Funnily, the balance would bring us back close to what was considered the high end of Wars' firepower calcs, IIRC.

Nonamer
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Post by Nonamer » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:26 am

Alyeska wrote:
Nonamer wrote:What is this new direction? Why would they need a new mod just to do this? This makes zero sense.

They are still your rules to enforce, which means your claim that you were only following rules are basically wrong.
Less strict enforcement of the rules should be the obvious answer. I enforced the rules strictly where Skyzeta does not. With less strict rule enforcement and my being inclined to enforce them strictly for an extended period of time made Skyzeta the proper choice.
You can call it "strict rule enforcement" if you want. But I think it went more like the complaints in here:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=100074

And I also think your behavior in this thread:
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=99126

is far more telling. (Go to about page 5 to see it go dramatically downhill).
Very few Warsies made the same blundering mistakes some of the Trekkies made. Simple logical fallacies such as burden of proof or the likes of no limits fallacy. Speaking of, what other rules would I apply gently on the Warsies but not on the Trekkies? The Warsies had no problem with the Paramount canon rules and never complained about that. They didn't snipe about things they didn't like in another franchise to derail a debate. Those that I caught doing such things were dealt with. I had an open policy asking people to report such cases. That Trekkies got reported more frequently then Warsies is a matter of fact.
They didn't have a problem with them because they didn't wank the figures out, whereas ICS does. Hence the canon wars that occurred over and over again. You crackdowned harshly on all such behavior, but gave Warsies free reign to troll any pro-Trek thread. Not to mention your own behavior.
Thanatos names you specifically. I can't imagine he meant anything else other than that he disagrees with your treatment of SW.
Circumstances?
I have a PM from him, but I think if you look thread some of my links, he didn't exactly agree with you.

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Post by Alyeska » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:53 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Do you know where we may find the calculation?
No.
This strikes me as an awful double standard, the one that always baffled me when reading stuf at SB.com. I heard the same thing from people saying that Chee's words proved that the EU was canon, yet, those same words explicitely stated that any of those EU sources has equal canonicity. Guides, novels, narratives in video games, etc... all at the exact same level, with no distinction.
I read a quote years ago, some time in 2002 that clearly defined that certain elements of the EU were above others. From a source as equally reliable as Chee.
Then, there was that amalgam, and people were quick to jump to false conclusions; Somehow, having lots of bits borrowed from the the films, and then mixed to stuff solely invented by the EU's authors (guides and novels) made the whole source (as a book for most of the cases) more canon, and as a consequence, in a case of contradiction between two EU sources, that so called higher one would enfore its non-film (excuse the rough term) material and facts upon the other's.
It's another double standard, because I've also been largely battered by the same horde of people stipulating that one cannot ditch the whole ICS because there's one contradiction, yet they're quick to say that all of the ICS material is of a greater canon level, albeit within the C zone, because a portion of it directly came from the film.
A hasty association, quickly forgetting that the extra material, anything freshly introduced in the EU source by an EU author, is nothing more than EU, with no special higher status.
Prior to the introduction of the ICS I was under the belief that on a one-to-one comparison of a Galaxy class to an ISD that the Galaxy would defeat the ISD within a fair margin, but given the total forces arrayed against the Federation that through sheer numbers and Hyperdrive speed that the Empire would be victorious. Oddly enough a great many Warsies didn't even care about one-on-one engagements and this created a situation where some people agreed and still argued because they were under the impression something different was being argued.

Anyway, eventually I came to the conclusion that with my limited knowledge on the expanse of the EU that I just couldn't make a proper estimate of SW firepower, though it was likely no better then parity to Trek. ICS shattered all that. I tried my best to stay out of that very mess you describe.
An example would be a typical disagreement on firepower about a ship. Say a frigate. Because the ICS provides a miles long list of details and technicalities about said frigate, and because some of the stuff referenced in the ICS directly comes from the film (or the novelisation), then the firepower, which in that case would be a pure addition from the EU's author, would hold more weight than the figure found in the novel, from another EU's author.
Under the presumption that TMs and other material derived directly from the movies hold more weight then the rest of the EU, yes. Though a contradiction between ICS and a Novelization where the movie itself doesn't give insight cannot be claimed victory by one side. Under said presumption, novelizations and ICS have equal weight. Even without that presumption they still have equal weight. That said, TMs offer one potential. Consistent answers. Even if TMs are equal to the rest of the EU, they are potentially consistent throughout. This gives greater credibility.
Nevermind if, above all, Star Wars is above all a matter of stories, and that the guides should support the stories, not contradict them.
When the stories start to contradict each other, guides designed to prevent future contradictions will invariably contradict existing works.
However, it would seem that the contradictions apparently flourishing in the films themselves differ by orders of magnitude which are almost negligible compared to the far fetched numbers found in the ICS, and even more when compared to the low ends found in other segments of the EU.
Slave-1s seismic charges strongly support ICS and the firepower of the LAAT missiles also agree with ICS. Even still, when the contradictions exist within an order of magnitude below, your let with two choices. Average the results (which is likely to make everyone unhappy) or take from another source that might have fewer contradictions.
If, again, the goal is to reach a balance, settling on the crazy high ends is not honest, nor wise, especially when in one hand, we're dealing with kilotons, and in the other, with, what was it again? teratons? *
Unfortunately, it seems to be what a wide range of pro-SW vs debaters seem to do, and not only against Trek, but for anything that's pitted against SW.
ICS isn't crazy high end. You should be well aware that there are calculations that go far in excess of what ICS has spawned.

Anyway, some of my discussions with a few Warsies has created a potential new line of thought that doesn't expressly lower ICS values but does decrease the overall capability significantly.

Apparently Saxton wrote an escape clause of sorts into one of his recent works. The generic power generation statement for the Executor class SSDs indicates that is peak power potential and peak power potential can be maintained only for a limited amount of time. Taken into consideration with firepower and shield statements from ICS we learn these are maximum capability and that use of maximum capability actually decreases overall capability of the ship.

An example. The Executor in ROTJ was the victim of extremely bad circumstance on top of incompetence by the Emperor. But the circumstance is more varied then you might think. The Executor wanted maximum shield power to protect itself as they were not ordered to kill the Rebels, merely hold them. The Executor also had to block the Rebel escape. The Rebels can start to head into a direction and the Executor has to use significantly greater acceleration to attempt to block the exit vector. If the Rebels make a few such tactical maneuvers they have forced the Executor to make maximum acceleration maneuvers multiple times while powering shields to their fullest extent. Suddenly the Executor is drained in energy reserves and is far more vulnerable. ICS becomes more of a paper tiger, not so much a real one. Combine this with known weaknesses in SW shields and suddenly you have new ammo in the VS debates.

Alyeska
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Post by Alyeska » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:59 am

Nonamer wrote:You can call it "strict rule enforcement" if you want. But I think it went more like the complaints in here:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=100074
Which has someone complaining that I am not strict enough.
And I also think your behavior in this thread:
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=99126

is far more telling. (Go to about page 5 to see it go dramatically downhill).
I made mistakes in that thread. I hadn't seen some of the things for the Clone Troopers. Although most evidence came from AOTC while the evidence in favor came from ROTS.
They didn't have a problem with them because they didn't wank the figures out, whereas ICS does. Hence the canon wars that occurred over and over again. You crackdowned harshly on all such behavior, but gave Warsies free reign to troll any pro-Trek thread. Not to mention your own behavior.
This excuses the logical fallacies committed by the Trekkies how? And since when did I give Warsies free reign over Trek threads?

Nonamer
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Post by Nonamer » Thu Mar 01, 2007 3:11 am

Alyeska wrote:
Nonamer wrote:You can call it "strict rule enforcement" if you want. But I think it went more like the complaints in here:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=100074
Which has someone complaining that I am not strict enough.
I think that was a joke. The complaints are much louder than the supporters anyways.
And I also think your behavior in this thread:
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=99126

is far more telling. (Go to about page 5 to see it go dramatically downhill).
I made mistakes in that thread. I hadn't seen some of the things for the Clone Troopers. Although most evidence came from AOTC while the evidence in favor came from ROTS.
It was more than that. You banned the other guy, even though you were the one not following the rules. That behavior was unacceptable for a mod.
They didn't have a problem with them because they didn't wank the figures out, whereas ICS does. Hence the canon wars that occurred over and over again. You crackdowned harshly on all such behavior, but gave Warsies free reign to troll any pro-Trek thread. Not to mention your own behavior.
This excuses the logical fallacies committed by the Trekkies how? And since when did I give Warsies free reign over Trek threads?
Since when the logical fallacies excuse the behavior of the Warsies?

And while you did crackdown on Warsies when it really got out of hand, in general you were not fair. Trekkie crackdowns were common and expected, whereas Warsie crackdowns were not.

Some quick examples:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=96560
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=83763
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=104033

Alyeska
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Post by Alyeska » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:16 am

Nonamer wrote:Since when the logical fallacies excuse the behavior of the Warsies?
Stop making excuses. Those Trekkies got punished for a very specific reason. Those were considered the most prominent problems on the forum and they were the ones dealt with. And it just so happened they were largely Trekkies. That said, this rule was also enforced on other fans. There were some particularly idiotic B5 fans that committed a variety of infractions and even forced the creation of new rules to deal with their particular brand of stupidity.
And while you did crackdown on Warsies when it really got out of hand, in general you were not fair. Trekkie crackdowns were common and expected, whereas Warsie crackdowns were not.

Some quick examples:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=96560
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=83763
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=104033
Find me examples of gross violations of the rules. Find me Warsies making logical fallacies. Find me Warsies violating the canon policies. Find me warsies outright refusing to debate alternate issues. That I cracked down on Warsies less frequently is a consequence of the fact that they were less likely to break the rules for reasons unknown. I could care less who broke the rules, I cracked down on the rule breakers.

And nice going citing one of the most idiotic arguments I have ever seen. Adarx claiming that scientific definitions don't actually mean what they say.

*Edit
Ah, that thread. Three people got my attention. Adarx for gross violation of scientific principles and commonalities of debate. You try and destroy the commonalities and the debate is impossible. Truthteller who just wanted to complain and try to make snide comments without backing them up. And how about that, you were making a bit of a fool of yourself for a time when you expected the opposition to make your argument. Though you did start actually debating with them and posting evidence. Strange, I had no bad things to say about you after you started debating the topic. I didn't even close the thread. I didn't see any violations by anyone else, and you've not actually posted examples, just threads.

Oh, I'm loving this. One of the threads I never saw (mods don't read everything posted and when violations occur that we miss, well that happens). The other thread actually has me attacking Warsies over their pretensions, not to mention I wasn't actually a moderator at the time.

Nonamer
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Post by Nonamer » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:01 am

Alyeska wrote:
Nonamer wrote:Since when the logical fallacies excuse the behavior of the Warsies?
Stop making excuses. Those Trekkies got punished for a very specific reason. Those were considered the most prominent problems on the forum and they were the ones dealt with. And it just so happened they were largely Trekkies. That said, this rule was also enforced on other fans. There were some particularly idiotic B5 fans that committed a variety of infractions and even forced the creation of new rules to deal with their particular brand of stupidity.
And it still doesn't excuse the Warsies. I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies, but the Warsies got away with a lot.
And while you did crackdown on Warsies when it really got out of hand, in general you were not fair. Trekkie crackdowns were common and expected, whereas Warsie crackdowns were not.

Some quick examples:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=96560
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=83763
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=104033
Find me examples of gross violations of the rules. Find me Warsies making logical fallacies.
Oh, these aren't examples of trolling, sniping, etc.? http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=202
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=232
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... ostcount=2

A Warsie can flame any Trekkie to death during your reign. Any time a Trekkie tries to say something, he must provide great evidence or get banned. That was ridiculous and incredibly unfair.
Find me Warsies violating the canon policies.
You wrote the canon policy on SB.com! They can't break that rule because it helps them so much!
Find me warsies outright refusing to debate alternate issues. That I cracked down on Warsies less frequently is a consequence of the fact that they were less likely to break the rules for reasons unknown. I could care less who broke the rules, I cracked down on the rule breakers.
YOU WROTE THE RULES YOURSELF.

The rules seem to have no clause for simple trolling or excessive language. No does it seem to have anything to stop bashing of evidence or personal attacks. You seem to run the place like SDN, where the canon rules gives a de facto win for the Warsies. Then any time there's any disagreement, the Warsies come and flame the opposition to death. As of today, it's a running joke that any pro-Trek thread will get overran by rabid Warsies as seen in the latest ST thread in the tech board.
And nice going citing one of the most idiotic arguments I have ever seen. Adarx claiming that scientific definitions don't actually mean what they say.
Again, I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies (or B5ers or whatever), but the Warsies got away with stuff. But if you read through the debate, you'll see the Warsie trolling.

And this is just reviving bad memory now. Let me put it bluntly: You were pathetic as a mod. Even the new mod of the vs. board seems to agree with me. The whole time during your reign was completely imbalanced and at it's worse was on par with the worse the SDN had shown and is on par with some of the worse political flamewars I've seen. This is not to say that I am now stirred on by hate, but to point out how bad it was and how emotional things got.

This, combined with your own behavior, compared to what we have here now, just puts things in stark contrast to how poorly ran things were. There was little excuse for this and you deserved to lose whatever respect you lost.
Ah, that thread. Three people got my attention. Adarx for gross violation of scientific principles and commonalities of debate. You try and destroy the commonalities and the debate is impossible. Truthteller who just wanted to complain and try to make snide comments without backing them up. And how about that, you were making a bit of a fool of yourself for a time when you expected the opposition to make your argument. Though you did start actually debating with them and posting evidence. Strange, I had no bad things to say about you after you started debating the topic. I didn't even close the thread. I didn't see any violations by anyone else, and you've not actually posted examples, just threads.

Oh, I'm loving this. One of the threads I never saw (mods don't read everything posted and when violations occur that we miss, well that happens). The other thread actually has me attacking Warsies over their pretensions, not to mention I wasn't actually a moderator at the time.
Fine, make excuses. I'll even give you the one time you weren't mod as you claim (these were quickly plucked examples). However, you should have read or glanced through every "hot" thread, otherwise whats the point of you being there? And you seem deadly focused on the Trekkie offenses and nothing on the Warsie offense. This is very obviously an imbalanced moderation style. Not to mention your own trollish behavior in the Marines vs. Stormtrooper thread. Simply put, you did not do a good job at all.

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Post by Alyeska » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:29 am

Nonamer wrote:And it still doesn't excuse the Warsies. I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies, but the Warsies got away with a lot.
Examples? And what did they get away with?
Oh, these aren't examples of trolling, sniping, etc.? http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=202
What exactly did he get away with that I cracked down on Trekkies for?
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=232[/quot]

Vert's a Trekkie.
What rule did he violate? Tech Forum didn't have established rules at that point and I wasn't a moderator yet.

Your examples are meaningless.
A Warsie can flame any Trekkie to death during your reign. Any time a Trekkie tries to say something, he must provide great evidence or get banned. That was ridiculous and incredibly unfair.
Do you realize what you just said? What does a flame have to do with evidence? A Trekkie can flame a Warsie if they so desire. Both have equal requirements of evidence. That you are incapable of seeing the difference between a insult and evidence is rather odd to say the least.
You wrote the canon policy on SB.com! They can't break that rule because it helps them so much!
I wrote the policy with the input of other moderators. This included two other Trekkies. The rules were designed to deal with the precieved trouble makers. BTW, there is only one rule expressly related to canon policy. More then 10 rules and only one to do with Canon policy. Most of my decisions did not come down on this rule.
YOU WROTE THE RULES YOURSELF.

The rules seem to have no clause for simple trolling or excessive language. No does it seem to have anything to stop bashing of evidence or personal attacks. You seem to run the place like SDN, where the canon rules gives a de facto win for the Warsies. Then any time there's any disagreement, the Warsies come and flame the opposition to death. As of today, it's a running joke that any pro-Trek thread will get overran by considerate fellow fans of Star Wars as seen in the latest ST thread in the tech board.
So because there were no rules preventing people from being insulting and using swear words I was somehow supportive of Wars? What does swearing and insulting have to do with evidence? The Trekkies were free to be just as insulting in return. Nothing prevented them. And as previously mentioned I made a single rule on canon and it was not the most frequently enforced rule. More commonly I had to enforce the burden of proof rule, no sniping rule, and rule related to logical fallacies. That had nothing to do with canon and everything to do with people using proper debating and logic.

FYI, I had to stop more then one thread that was nothing more then Warsies ganging up on other people.
Again, I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies (or B5ers or whatever), but the Warsies got away with stuff. But if you read through the debate, you'll see the Warsie trolling.
Got away with what again? Oh, thats right, I let them get away with swearing and insulting people when the Trekkies were free to do so in return. All I cared about was that people made proper arguments in return. FYI, in the tech forum I did enforce civility and went so far as to ban several Warsies multiple times.
And this is just reviving bad memory now. Let me put it bluntly: You were pathetic as a mod. Even the new mod of the vs. board seems to agree with me. The whole time during your reign was completely imbalanced and at it's worse was on par with the worse the SDN had shown and is on par with some of the worse political flamewars I've seen. This is not to say that I am now stirred on by hate, but to point out how bad it was and how emotional things got.
And now your complaining about issues entirely irrelevant to debate or discussion. The warsies "got away with" being rude and offensive. Not that they made fundamental flaws in their reasoning or argumentation. On the other hand certain Trekkies were making absurd leaps in logic and expecting the opposition to do the job for them.
This, combined with your own behavior, compared to what we have here now, just puts things in stark contrast to how poorly ran things were. There was little excuse for this and you deserved to lose whatever respect you lost.
How dare I expect people to debate the issue scientifically. What a bad person I was for enforcing rational and logical debate practices on others. Your committing the classic style over substance fallacy. You can't attack their argument, so you attack the language they make the argument with.
Fine, make excuses. I'll even give you the one time you weren't mod as you claim (these were quickly plucked examples).
I'm making excuses by pointing out that I couldn't possibly have been making biased moderating choices when you linked to a thread that occured before i was a moderator? I'm making excuses when I point out that I was infact insulting Warsies and even accusing them of lying?
However, you should have read or glanced through every "hot" thread, otherwise whats the point of you being there? And you seem deadly focused on the Trekkie offenses and nothing on the Warsie offense. This is very obviously an imbalanced moderation style. Not to mention your own trollish behavior in the Marines vs. Stormtrooper thread. Simply put, you did not do a good job at all.
I keep asking for proof. All you do is point out that "The evil warsies were mean!". You didn't actually point out where they did anything fundamentally wrong. The strongest argument you've made is that I designed the canon rules to support Wars, and this ignores the fact that people on this forum aren't even on agreement on ICS making your unilateral declaration on the issue all the more questionable.

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Post by Alyeska » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:38 am

FYI, I have never read that thread until today. I don't read every thread in every forum. Moderators aren't expected to be everywhere and read everything. That is a rule violation and I would have dealt with Overman had I seen that. That post violates the Tech Forum rule on civility. You posted that as proof I let Warsies get away with things. What you didn't post is that I've banned Warsies from the Tech Forum for not being civil. One of the worst offenders is a Warsie and he was banned from the forum multiple times. Trekkies were less likely to break that rule.

As a matter of fact I designed the Civility rule in the Tech forum for the expressed purpose of targeting offensive Warsies.

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Post by Nonamer » Thu Mar 01, 2007 7:06 am

Alyeska wrote:
Nonamer wrote:And it still doesn't excuse the Warsies. I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies, but the Warsies got away with a lot.
Examples? And what did they get away with?
Oh, these aren't examples of trolling, sniping, etc.? http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=202
What exactly did he get away with that I cracked down on Trekkies for?
Other than being a flagrant ad hominem and strawman?
Like your a trekkie in that context. Doesn't matter, you let him off the hook.
What rule did he violate? Tech Forum didn't have established rules at that point and I wasn't a moderator yet.

Your examples are meaningless.
You were definitely a mod at that time.
A Warsie can flame any Trekkie to death during your reign. Any time a Trekkie tries to say something, he must provide great evidence or get banned. That was ridiculous and incredibly unfair.
Do you realize what you just said? What does a flame have to do with evidence? A Trekkie can flame a Warsie if they so desire. Both have equal requirements of evidence. That you are incapable of seeing the difference between a insult and evidence is rather odd to say the least.
SB.com is not SDN! It says flames are not allowed in the board-wide rules. Like I said, you run the Vs. Board like you run a board in SDN.
You wrote the canon policy on SB.com! They can't break that rule because it helps them so much!
I wrote the policy with the input of other moderators. This included two other Trekkies. The rules were designed to deal with the precieved trouble makers. BTW, there is only one rule expressly related to canon policy. More then 10 rules and only one to do with Canon policy. Most of my decisions did not come down on this rule.
All the especially problematic ones seem to fall on that one though. That rule might as well say "SW wins so STFU."
YOU WROTE THE RULES YOURSELF.

The rules seem to have no clause for simple trolling or excessive language. No does it seem to have anything to stop bashing of evidence or personal attacks. You seem to run the place like SDN, where the canon rules gives a de facto win for the Warsies. Then any time there's any disagreement, the Warsies come and flame the opposition to death. As of today, it's a running joke that any pro-Trek thread will get overran by considerate fellow fans of Star Wars as seen in the latest ST thread in the tech board.
So because there were no rules preventing people from being insulting and using swear words I was somehow supportive of Wars? What does swearing and insulting have to do with evidence? The Trekkies were free to be just as insulting in return. Nothing prevented them. And as previously mentioned I made a single rule on canon and it was not the most frequently enforced rule. More commonly I had to enforce the burden of proof rule, no sniping rule, and rule related to logical fallacies. That had nothing to do with canon and everything to do with people using proper debating and logic.
That's bullshit and you know it. Only the Warsies were given full reign to act like that.

Like this brilliant event:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=207

Took you all of 1 minute to react to a minor quip. Strange that multiple Warsie heavy handed troll posts in that thread elicited nothing.
FYI, I had to stop more then one thread that was nothing more then Warsies ganging up on other people.
It's because you let things get that bad that you had to do this. The fact that you wait till pile-on flamewars before you respond just shows how biased you were.
Again, I didn't say there weren't bad Trekkies (or B5ers or whatever), but the Warsies got away with stuff. But if you read through the debate, you'll see the Warsie trolling.
Got away with what again? Oh, thats right, I let them get away with swearing and insulting people when the Trekkies were free to do so in return. All I cared about was that people made proper arguments in return. FYI, in the tech forum I did enforce civility and went so far as to ban several Warsies multiple times.
You banned like a dozen trekkies for way smaller offenses multiple times. Shrike, your worst example, was banned because you wouldn't listen and you broke the rules.
And this is just reviving bad memory now. Let me put it bluntly: You were pathetic as a mod. Even the new mod of the vs. board seems to agree with me. The whole time during your reign was completely imbalanced and at it's worse was on par with the worse the SDN had shown and is on par with some of the worse political flamewars I've seen. This is not to say that I am now stirred on by hate, but to point out how bad it was and how emotional things got.
And now your complaining about issues entirely irrelevant to debate or discussion. The warsies "got away with" being rude and offensive. Not that they made fundamental flaws in their reasoning or argumentation. On the other hand certain Trekkies were making absurd leaps in logic and expecting the opposition to do the job for them.
No, that is the conclusion of the evidence. Sure, some trekkies were bad. But the Warsies were way worse. You slammed the Trekkies and did nothing to Warsies. The outcome was clear and obvious: the place turned into SDN-lite with Warsies flaming everybody. The higher-ups finally wised up and got rid of you I think.
This, combined with your own behavior, compared to what we have here now, just puts things in stark contrast to how poorly ran things were. There was little excuse for this and you deserved to lose whatever respect you lost.
How dare I expect people to debate the issue scientifically. What a bad person I was for enforcing rational and logical debate practices on others. Your committing the classic style over substance fallacy. You can't attack their argument, so you attack the language they make the argument with.
Are you joking? There were plenty of logical, scientific claims made during that time. Some made by me and others. You blatantly ignored them in favor of Warsie flame posts. How the heck do you think your ban was overruled that time? It wasn't because the opposition failed to post evidence.
Fine, make excuses. I'll even give you the one time you weren't mod as you claim (these were quickly plucked examples).
I'm making excuses by pointing out that I couldn't possibly have been making biased moderating choices when you linked to a thread that occured before i was a moderator? I'm making excuses when I point out that I was infact insulting Warsies and even accusing them of lying?
That was once. The others, you have nothing but excuses.
However, you should have read or glanced through every "hot" thread, otherwise whats the point of you being there? And you seem deadly focused on the Trekkie offenses and nothing on the Warsie offense. This is very obviously an imbalanced moderation style. Not to mention your own trollish behavior in the Marines vs. Stormtrooper thread. Simply put, you did not do a good job at all.
I keep asking for proof. All you do is point out that "The evil warsies were mean!". You didn't actually point out where they did anything fundamentally wrong.
They did a shitload wrong, and you've simply ignored them all. In particularly, they usually posted nothing of meaning with lots of flames. Anything remotely resemble a counterargument was left a harsh and switch response. I believe I've show enough evidence for others to make this determination. Like I've said before, SB.com is not SDN. Your moderating behavior may be acceptable there, but not where you were. You did a great job of enforcing your own rules, but you failed at enforcing board-wide rules.
The strongest argument you've made is that I designed the canon rules to support Wars, and this ignores the fact that people on this forum aren't even on agreement on ICS making your unilateral declaration on the issue all the more questionable.
That begs the question: Why the hell did you make the ICS law? Was it because there was overwhelming agreement at SB.com? I think not.
FYI, I have never read that thread until today. I don't read every thread in every forum. Moderators aren't expected to be everywhere and read everything. That is a rule violation and I would have dealt with Overman had I seen that. That post violates the Tech Forum rule on civility. You posted that as proof I let Warsies get away with things. What you didn't post is that I've banned Warsies from the Tech Forum for not being civil. One of the worst offenders is a Warsie and he was banned from the forum multiple times. Trekkies were less likely to break that rule.
That's one weak excuse. That was the first damn reply! If you didn't see that one, you didn't see the thread at all. There also should have been reports of bad behavior. Of course, my experiences with that route has lead to nowhere.
As a matter of fact I designed the Civility rule in the Tech forum for the expressed purpose of targeting offensive Warsies.
That's in part because they were out of control in the regular vs. board.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:35 pm

Alyeska wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Do you know where we may find the calculation?
No.
This strikes me as an awful double standard, the one that always baffled me when reading stuf at SB.com. I heard the same thing from people saying that Chee's words proved that the EU was canon, yet, those same words explicitely stated that any of those EU sources has equal canonicity. Guides, novels, narratives in video games, etc... all at the exact same level, with no distinction.
I read a quote years ago, some time in 2002 that clearly defined that certain elements of the EU were above others. From a source as equally reliable as Chee.
Then, there was that amalgam, and people were quick to jump to false conclusions; Somehow, having lots of bits borrowed from the the films, and then mixed to stuff solely invented by the EU's authors (guides and novels) made the whole source (as a book for most of the cases) more canon, and as a consequence, in a case of contradiction between two EU sources, that so called higher one would enfore its non-film (excuse the rough term) material and facts upon the other's.
It's another double standard, because I've also been largely battered by the same horde of people stipulating that one cannot ditch the whole ICS because there's one contradiction, yet they're quick to say that all of the ICS material is of a greater canon level, albeit within the C zone, because a portion of it directly came from the film.
A hasty association, quickly forgetting that the extra material, anything freshly introduced in the EU source by an EU author, is nothing more than EU, with no special higher status.
Prior to the introduction of the ICS I was under the belief that on a one-to-one comparison of a Galaxy class to an ISD that the Galaxy would defeat the ISD within a fair margin, but given the total forces arrayed against the Federation that through sheer numbers and Hyperdrive speed that the Empire would be victorious. Oddly enough a great many Warsies didn't even care about one-on-one engagements and this created a situation where some people agreed and still argued because they were under the impression something different was being argued.

Anyway, eventually I came to the conclusion that with my limited knowledge on the expanse of the EU that I just couldn't make a proper estimate of SW firepower, though it was likely no better then parity to Trek. ICS shattered all that. I tried my best to stay out of that very mess you describe.
An example would be a typical disagreement on firepower about a ship. Say a frigate. Because the ICS provides a miles long list of details and technicalities about said frigate, and because some of the stuff referenced in the ICS directly comes from the film (or the novelisation), then the firepower, which in that case would be a pure addition from the EU's author, would hold more weight than the figure found in the novel, from another EU's author.
Under the presumption that TMs and other material derived directly from the movies hold more weight then the rest of the EU, yes. Though a contradiction between ICS and a Novelization where the movie itself doesn't give insight cannot be claimed victory by one side. Under said presumption, novelizations and ICS have equal weight. Even without that presumption they still have equal weight. That said, TMs offer one potential. Consistent answers. Even if TMs are equal to the rest of the EU, they are potentially consistent throughout. This gives greater credibility.
Nevermind if, above all, Star Wars is above all a matter of stories, and that the guides should support the stories, not contradict them.
When the stories start to contradict each other, guides designed to prevent future contradictions will invariably contradict existing works.
However, it would seem that the contradictions apparently flourishing in the films themselves differ by orders of magnitude which are almost negligible compared to the far fetched numbers found in the ICS, and even more when compared to the low ends found in other segments of the EU.
Slave-1s seismic charges strongly support ICS and the firepower of the LAAT missiles also agree with ICS. Even still, when the contradictions exist within an order of magnitude below, your let with two choices. Average the results (which is likely to make everyone unhappy) or take from another source that might have fewer contradictions.
If, again, the goal is to reach a balance, settling on the crazy high ends is not honest, nor wise, especially when in one hand, we're dealing with kilotons, and in the other, with, what was it again? teratons? *
Unfortunately, it seems to be what a wide range of pro-SW vs debaters seem to do, and not only against Trek, but for anything that's pitted against SW.
ICS isn't crazy high end. You should be well aware that there are calculations that go far in excess of what ICS has spawned.

Anyway, some of my discussions with a few Warsies has created a potential new line of thought that doesn't expressly lower ICS values but does decrease the overall capability significantly.

Apparently Saxton wrote an escape clause of sorts into one of his recent works. The generic power generation statement for the Executor class SSDs indicates that is peak power potential and peak power potential can be maintained only for a limited amount of time. Taken into consideration with firepower and shield statements from ICS we learn these are maximum capability and that use of maximum capability actually decreases overall capability of the ship.

An example. The Executor in ROTJ was the victim of extremely bad circumstance on top of incompetence by the Emperor. But the circumstance is more varied then you might think. The Executor wanted maximum shield power to protect itself as they were not ordered to kill the Rebels, merely hold them. The Executor also had to block the Rebel escape. The Rebels can start to head into a direction and the Executor has to use significantly greater acceleration to attempt to block the exit vector. If the Rebels make a few such tactical maneuvers they have forced the Executor to make maximum acceleration maneuvers multiple times while powering shields to their fullest extent. Suddenly the Executor is drained in energy reserves and is far more vulnerable. ICS becomes more of a paper tiger, not so much a real one. Combine this with known weaknesses in SW shields and suddenly you have new ammo in the VS debates.
I continue this here.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:47 pm

Praeothmin wrote:If those are the ESB asteroids, I believe their were scaled with a 40m long falcon, when most of the shots of the Falcon next to humans and aliens place it at a length of around 26-30 meters.
And weren't those results in the KT range, albeit the high KT range?
Alyeska wrote:
I was going off memory there. I don't know the specifics behind that calc, but I do remember the basics.
Agreed, except that, again, if memory serves correctly, the firepower is based off of an asteroid scaled at 100m, based on an 8m long Jedi starfighter, that did seem more lik 6 meters to me.
I do believe this board does also think that the ICS mustn't be thrown out the window, but that we must carefully observe and judge what may and may not be accepted.
When you take into account the fact that distances in the asteroid field are actually going to be fairly difficult to account for, with possible errors taken into account 9 GT is well within that range.

You might want to peruse through the Trek/Wars section, there was a reiteration of some of the criticisms of Brian Young's old Turbolaser Commentaries pages from a thread on the old Strek-v-Swars.Net forum as well as on Matt Carpenter's ST-V-SW.NET forum. In short, the TL bolt widths are used, not their lengths. At least one of the bolts can be traced practically right back to where the gun that fired it is positioned in the side trench, which in turn allows it to be scaled to the ISD, and produces a TL bolt of 1.5 to a little over 2 meters thick, assuming a 1,600 m ISD and a roughly 25 meter tall trench. The results were the asteroids are not likely more than 8 meters wide on the long axis. No were near the 40-100 meter sizes being tossed out by certain pro-Wars folks.

Also the AoTC asteroid shattering is just that; the three asteroids get various degrees of being shattered, not vaporized. You can clearly see in this set of images that Obi-Wan's starfighter passes fairly close to one of them:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWasterosmack.html


In addition, the size of the bolts, if not the starfighter itself, restrains the size of the asteroid being hit there to less than 20 meters wide on the long axis. However, only a modest fraction of the asteroid is actually shattered here, further reducing Slave-I's firepower.
-Mike

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Post by Praeothmin » Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:45 pm

In addition, the size of the bolts, if not the starfighter itself, restrains the size of the asteroid being hit there to less than 20 meters wide on the long axis. However, only a modest fraction of the asteroid is actually shattered here, further reducing Slave-I's firepower.
I believe both Alyska and I were referring to the big asteroid destroyed by the "seismic" charge...

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:04 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:
Praeothmin wrote:If those are the ESB asteroids, I believe their were scaled with a 40m long falcon, when most of the shots of the Falcon next to humans and aliens place it at a length of around 26-30 meters.
And weren't those results in the KT range, albeit the high KT range?
Alyeska wrote:
I was going off memory there. I don't know the specifics behind that calc, but I do remember the basics.
Agreed, except that, again, if memory serves correctly, the firepower is based off of an asteroid scaled at 100m, based on an 8m long Jedi starfighter, that did seem more lik 6 meters to me.
I do believe this board does also think that the ICS mustn't be thrown out the window, but that we must carefully observe and judge what may and may not be accepted.
When you take into account the fact that distances in the asteroid field are actually going to be fairly difficult to account for, with possible errors taken into account 9 GT is well within that range.

You might want to peruse through the Trek/Wars section, there was a reiteration of some of the criticisms of Brian Young's old Turbolaser Commentaries pages from a thread on the old Strek-v-Swars.Net forum as well as on Matt Carpenter's ST-V-SW.NET forum. In short, the TL bolt widths are used, not their lengths. At least one of the bolts can be traced practically right back to where the gun that fired it is positioned in the side trench, which in turn allows it to be scaled to the ISD, and produces a TL bolt of 1.5 to a little over 2 meters thick, assuming a 1,600 m ISD and a roughly 25 meter tall trench. The results were the asteroids are not likely more than 8 meters wide on the long axis. No were near the 40-100 meter sizes being tossed out by certain pro-Wars folks.

Also the AoTC asteroid shattering is just that; the three asteroids get various degrees of being shattered, not vaporized. You can clearly see in this set of images that Obi-Wan's starfighter passes fairly close to one of them:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWasterosmack.html


In addition, the size of the bolts, if not the starfighter itself, restrains the size of the asteroid being hit there to less than 20 meters wide on the long axis. However, only a modest fraction of the asteroid is actually shattered here, further reducing Slave-I's firepower.
-Mike
And of course, on Poe's WMD page, in that chapter about asteroids and A-holes (please notice the irony),Mr. Poe, just like his cousin Young did years ago, literally invents asteroids.
The method?
Point at a glowing burst of flak and shout vaporized asteroid!
Sure. How obvious! Maybe the asteroids were cloaked before getting hit I suppose. Natural cloaking tech found in asteroid fields. Someone must harvest that! Quick!

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Post by Alyeska » Fri Mar 02, 2007 1:11 am

Nonamer wrote:Other than being a flagrant ad hominem and strawman?
And, so, therefor? This has what to do with the actual debate in question? It has absolutely nothing to do with the actual debate.
Like your a trekkie in that context. Doesn't matter, you let him off the hook.
Show me the rules he violated.
You were definitely a mod at that time.
The thread occurred in mid July. I was modded in late July. Either way, its irrelevant. The rules regarding civility in the Tech forum weren't created until Jan of the next year.
SB.com is not SDN! It says flames are not allowed in the board-wide rules. Like I said, you run the Vs. Board like you run a board in SDN.
Flame and insult are usually used interchangeably. The forum has a rule against flaming, though its enforced in the case of excessive flaming. I guess you've missed the significant insults thrown about the the NSF and Gaming forums that have been ignored.
All the especially problematic ones seem to fall on that one though. That rule might as well say "SW wins so STFU."
The rule was designed for the expressed purpose of making the people debate the facts as presented by the franchise owners. That some universes are more powerful then others is a matter of fact.
That's reasonable and you know it. Only the Warsies were given full reign to act like that.
You have repeatedly stated that the Warsies were allowed to get away with excessive insults. I've asked you multiple times to present an example of Trekkies getting punished for being insulting. You have yet to post this.
Like this brilliant event:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... tcount=207

Took you all of 1 minute to react to a minor quip. Strange that multiple Warsie heavy handed troll posts in that thread elicited nothing.
You weren't making an argument. You were essentially sniping at ICS with that statement while also attacking the opposition. No argument, sniping, and insulting at the same time. And the only thing I told you to do was drop the attitude. The moment you started talking to them on point you were left alone.
It's because you let things get that bad that you had to do this. The fact that you wait till pile-on flamewars before you respond just shows how biased you were.
I stopped threads that weren't even flame wars simply because a pile on occurred or was on the verge of occurring. I also have IMed certain SW members to stay out of certain threads to avoid an IM. But Proactive decisions such as that aren't visible on the board as nothing happened.
You banned like a dozen trekkies for way smaller offenses multiple times. Shrike, your worst example, was banned because you wouldn't listen and you broke the rules.
Smaller offenses? What the hell are you talking about? In the VS forum there were not rules on civility or swearing and as such one did not get banned for that. People got banned for making logical errors and the sort.
No, that is the conclusion of the evidence. Sure, some trekkies were bad. But the Warsies were way worse. You slammed the Trekkies and did nothing to Warsies. The outcome was clear and obvious: the place turned into SDN-lite with Warsies flaming everybody. The higher-ups finally wised up and got rid of you I think.
Your sole complaint has been that Warsies were rude. That has absolutely nothing to do with the argument being presented. People were judged based on the argument being presented and the rules reflected this. But do go on and continue to ignore this fact.
Are you joking? There were plenty of logical, scientific claims made during that time. Some made by me and others. You blatantly ignored them in favor of Warsie flame posts. How the heck do you think your ban was overruled that time? It wasn't because the opposition failed to post evidence.
What exactly are you saying? Your claiming I ignored Trekkies making good arguments. Hello, if they were making good arguments why would I punish them?
That was once. The others, you have nothing but excuses.
Earlier in this thread you said "You were definitely a mod at that time. " about this very same thread. You can't even keep your story straight in a single post.
They did a shitload wrong, and you've simply ignored them all. In particularly, they usually posted nothing of meaning with lots of flames. Anything remotely resemble a counterargument was left a harsh and switch response. I believe I've show enough evidence for others to make this determination. Like I've said before, SB.com is not SDN. Your moderating behavior may be acceptable there, but not where you were. You did a great job of enforcing your own rules, but you failed at enforcing board-wide rules.
Do show me where Warsies violated the rules. And do remember that only one rule has to do with ICS.
That begs the question: Why the hell did you make the ICS law? Was it because there was overwhelming agreement at SB.com? I think not.
I didn't make ICS law. I made a law that people must abide by the franchise owners decisions.
That's in part because they were out of control in the regular vs. board.
No. I created the rule because I wanted to create an atmosphere that encouraged discussion of technical issues that don't include the VS environment. I knew that certain Warsies were likely to be an issue on such an issue and took them into consideration. The VS debates are by their very nature adversarial. Technical discussions need not be and the rules reflected this.
That's one weak excuse. That was the first damn reply! If you didn't see that one, you didn't see the thread at all. There also should have been reports of bad behavior. Of course, my experiences with that route has lead to nowhere.
Hello, I already said that. I have never read that thread until yesterday. I do not read every thread, no moderator does. Had someone reported the post I would have dealt with the situation. I have banned people from the Tech forum for lesser insults (this includes warsies). And you call that a weak excuse? Nice to know you have a poor opinion of moderators as a whole.

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