Reimbursements (in Public Record)

Now that I have hopefully pleased the haters out there by consistently fining people for the slightest infraction, I will now begin to pay them all back with my own money. The money they lost unfortunately must go to 'Central Bank'. Since I don't have all of the money now I will have to pay each person as the money comes in. I'll start with A Bathing Ape since I put him in the negative. The people I owe are:

Grim Reaper - 25k
{cb1}smallpau1 - 25k
Haruka - 25k
Ranger - 25k
Renovatio - 25k
A Bathing Ape - 50k
Foolio - 50k

And just as a note, I'm learning to hate this game.

I can hear the world's smallest violin playing somewhere

Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 Grim Reaper (Bunker) $25000 -- Reimbursements 11:47 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 {cb1}smallpau1 (/\quaTeenHungerForce) $25000 -- Reimbursements 11:47 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 Hakai (Haruka) $25000 11:46 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 QBRanger (The Apocalypse Book) $25000 -- Reimbursements 11:40 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 Renovatio (Renovatio) $25000 -- Reimbursements 11:39 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 Foolio (The Angel of Despair) $50000 11:38 PM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 A Bathing Ape (Shoe Head)

I would like to thank Bast and Slayer for helping to make these reimbursements possible.

Vestax, you are probably learning to hate being a sub-admin, rather than the game itself. And there's an easy way to solve it.

I feel for you Vestax, somedays we're a bunch of nit-pickers and other days it slides off. The only thing I have to say is why exactly are you paying people back? That seems self-defeating towards enforcing the rules.
You are trying to do a job, and you're human, so you might not always catch everything, I just don't see why you should feel the need to pay people back, you didn't break the rules, you are only the enforcer.

Vestax, I haven't been paying too much attention to the argument over the fines that various players and yourself have been having. But I must say I commend you on paying back the people that have been criticizing you and your actions. It sounds like several people have been taking out their frustrations with CB2 out on you. I hope you don't become discouraged, you're a great player.

Everyone, can't we all just learn to get along?

Why are you paying people back? If you had to fine someone, that's not your fault. That's theirs...

100k sent to your biggest char. Stop caring about what other people say. Do your job, and ignore any flame you get. Just think about how much flame you would get if you didn't do your job.

I do think that if someone needs to be fined, they need to be fined. Regarless if they made a mistake or not. Isn't that fine afterall a warning?

Anyways yeah I'll stop trying to lecture.

yes lets all join hands and sing happy songs in a van down by the river. :D

Doom Lit Sky (Doom Lit Sky) 67.185.116.161 Vestax (Off Air) $225000 -- Don't let em get yah 1:23 AM EST


100k seemed a little shy of the numbers.

oh and just to clarify, I'm not jumping on any side of this "arguement" because I see both side's having a valid point of view. I've had to admin in other games, and I've been fined and thought it was wrong in other games. So DLS is not in this fight. :) Thanks.

This of course comes a little late, but late would be far better then never. I know my judgment has been questioned. I know the role and function of admins has been too. I think it important that people should know a bit how I think, so that they might decide for themselves if method truly exists behind such madness.

I would first like to apologize to DAWG. If you were told, or thought you were told, that you were fined because you used capital letters in your historic post, then that was a lie. To fine someone and say the reason was because they held down the shift key is a non sequitur. (The one does not follow from the other.) Why? Because the punishment is devoid of reason. The reason why we say all caps is bad is because it tends to, but doesn't always, achieve a level of annoyance with the community. If what you specifically do offends the general community or directly harms another player or takes from him/her what is rightfully theirs, then, and only then, do you have reason to deliver punishment. Therefore, a blanket rule that forbids all caps ought never to be established and followed strictly.

This brings me to another subject, which is why we have admins in the first place. We use human beings to enforce rules for two reasons. These two reasons are intelligence and judgment. (This has not been the first time I have said this either.) Creating a blanket rule that forbids all caps does not need to be handled by a human being. A bot could perform such a task. However, a bot is easily fooled. It would be all to simple to make a post title in all caps with exception to one letter or every other letter. Now let us suppose you make the bot smarter and have it deal punishment when half or more letters are in caps. The easy way around this is to make a post in all caps and then add a trailing line of lowercase 'c' to become legal. This produces an even more annoying result. The bot lacks the intelligence to punish those that should be. It also lacks the judgment to withhold punishment from those posting innocently or without doing any harm to the community. For example, it would be easy to imagine a new player wanting to introduce themselves to the community with a post titled "HI THERE". This post clearly breaks the all caps rule but does not fit the profile of a harmful or annoying post title once buried along longer thread titles. And this still doesn't even cover the use and abuse of special characters. This is just the tip of the iceberg and clearly shows why a strict adherence to the rules is flawed.

Now to give attention to the most recent circumstances. DAWG wanted someone punished for making a post with the title of "WTB BASE DAGGER". Did DAWG give an assessment as to why this person should be punished, aside from the fact that they broke a rule? If he did he gave no indication of it. His reason was nothing more then the letter-of-the-law, which was a lie told to him so I guess he can't be blamed. DAWG was fined for making a post titled "FIGHTING NO WORKING & LOST A BUNCH OF BA?". You will note that this title is 2 and a half times longer and includes a special character. Now it is hard to say what is and is not annoying but, from DAWG's own admittance, people paid more attention to the title of his thread then they did to the subject. I'm sure that said a lot to the person who delivered the fine. DAWG wanted a strict adherence to the rules as far as I could tell and nothing more. Judgment was suspended from his reasoning and in truth he did not want a human being, but instead he asked for a bot.

Now to discuss what I had done. It is known (or at least I believe it was) that making replies to a FS/WTB thread that does not pertain to the sale of the item(s) is subject to a fine. This rule has a reason. The reason is that these replies can be distracting from a sale or discourage buyers, thus wasting the original posters money. I could not perform as I was asked by both DAWG and Ranger and then conveniently ignore the two now off-topic and distracting posts that they had left behind. So I performed like a bot and followed the letter-of-the-law. Just as I had done when I fined aupStar for his title. In return it seems that the letter-of-the-law is not what people wanted, or that if I was going to follow the rules so strictly I should continue on a rampage in order to uphold consistency.

I fined many people to show that a consistent relentless bot, that does not discriminate or care about the reasons behind the rules, is not what the community wants. Some people wondered why I even paid them all back if I thought they broke the rules. Ultimately, people were fined because someone wanted to prove a point, which is a crummy reason to lose your money, and so they were all reimbursed. The end result is that I fined myself.

I can understand wanting consistency, but if you want rules written in black and white so that reason is devoid from them and allowing for circumvention, then I can not give you one reason why you need a human being for such a task. What people have asked for are not humans, but scripts of code that do nothing to solve the issues that matter. The issues we make rules for in the first place.

Finally I will make one last apology to the community at large. I myself suspended my judgment in order to give in to the demands of a few players. Players who had also suspended judgment and did not ask themselves why it was important that this particular person be punished. I defeated the purpose of using a human being to administer and withhold punishment. I am not without fault, and will not deny that. What follows from that may not be repairable, but surely we can never avoid this problem again unless everyone understands why we call upon volunteers. With that I make these final reimbursements.

Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 DAWG (Krang) $25000 -- Reimbursement 1:41 AM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 QBRanger (The Apocalypse Book) $25000 -- Reimbursement 1:40 AM EST
Vestax (Off Air) 72.227.5.7 {CB1ate}aupStar (Krynyte) $25000 -- Reimbursement 1:40 AM EST

At least you stepped up to the plate and did the right thing.

Well written Vestax.

"Players who had also suspended judgment and did not ask themselves why it was important that this particular person be punished."

Again, you fail to understand why I wanted the posts title fixed-consistency.

Not to be a bot, but to carry out the rules as told from the ivory tower to the admins to the "children".

Imagine if at work there was a rule saying we could not drink in front of the computer. And someone brings a large cup of joe. He would get fined, yes? The someone brings a soda can of Pepsi. Fined?Ok, lets go smaller, a paper cup of water, fined? and so on. The reason to make the rules absolute, especially in an online game. The reason- to stop exactly what has happened. Chaos, mad posting, stupid name calling, and bitter feelings.

Especially when you do you really know the person on the other side of the keyboard, it is important to follow the rules. Yes, I know this is strict, but when you have people with high intelligence (yes, most who can play cb well have a very high int.) they can get offended quite easily and things can spiral like they have now.

My judgement was not suspended at all. DAWG got fined for all caps in the past. After trying to PM an admin about the post in question, nothing was done for hours. I cannot say why or when DAWG posted but I did after a reasonable amount of time passed with nothing done.

I have never said my fine was not just. Heck, I'll pay it back double. However, the point of the posts that followed was to point out that the "rules" are not being applied evenly.

Also, people do not have a real understanding of what the freaking rules are. Then, to top the whole thing off, the great creator decides to call some of us a very nasty slur. If I ever called a friend, co-worker, family member that slur I would be on my back faster than Keanu can say "whoa". And you can be certain, I would apologize personally to that person pretty darn fast.

Now you can say I have a thin skin but I'll let you know, that after putting up with being called many things including a "jerk" for stating my opinion and trying to make cb2 a better place, I have had it with the abuse in this game. While this game is by far better than anything I have ever played, I would rather have pride than put up with more crap like that.

That is my peace, my point of view on the whole matter.