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Valar demotion

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q220

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As people have been asking a lot of questions about this, I feel that I will just have to make a further explanation on the how and why I demoted meggawatts, a Valar that has been around since the beginning of time.

This article is about my perception, my experience with him as a person, and what lead me to taking this decision.

In order to have this project go into a direction I want it to go, it is important that my administrators have the same vision and collaborate, constructive nature to continue the project. As a Valar, 'playing' Minecraft actually becomes work, instead of play. In the early days when the community wasn't really big, and consisted of a handful of people, decisions were made by a single entity/person that hold absolute authority and decision making power. As the project grew, responsibilities came to life, and workload increased. Thus the need arised to have administrators that focused especially on an aspect of the server: the Valar.

I put Meggawatts in charge of managing and maintaining a server box called Thesia. Thesia was responsible for running Freebuild and Teamspeak. Overtime, new services and extra's were added to it, and plugins/code/server functioning 'behind the screens' changed dramatically. Despite me sometimes saying that I didn't want certain things to be run that way, for example how permissions were being handled, the introduction of new ranks, a self-declared terms of service for freebuild that conflicted with the 'official terms of service', ... this caused great frustration on my end, as I feel that he disregarded what I said most of the time, with what to me feels as an 'bugger off'-attitude. If you would ask people who have been around for a quite long time, they would know me as someone who doesn't make demands often, but when I do, I expect them to be done.

As time went on, Meggawatts had something that other Valar didn't had: a sense of freedom, and the possibility to be free. He claimed a domain called mcme.co, hosted it on the server I allowed him to use, though the original intent was merely Freebuild and Teamspeak. At first I had mixed feelings about this, because it felt as if it would split up informational sources and services, but I decided to wait it out anyway. After a while though, mcme.co became a very extensible website with running processes not visible to the user (our own whitelist processing program, api calls, mail services, url shortening, wiki ...). Those things are what Meggawatts excels in, and he did a great job doing those. But I didnt want two websites to co-excist, I wanted it under one common banner, since that allows me to enforce the policies (Terms of Service and Rules, and the direction of where the community goes) that fall upon everyone in this community. I can't enforce a policy over things I can't influence or control directly, and that's when the problem began.

I sent a request to Meggawatts with my expectations of what I wanted to do and see, basically it was moving over the functionality of mcme.co to mcmiddleearth.com, more specifically:

- The integration of whitelisting on mcmiddleearth.com, so we could look into hooking it up with forum registrations.
- Featuring the Resourcepacks and changelogs on mcmiddleearth.com and promoting the use of these packs to enhance the community collaboration so we can get better and faster texture updates and improvements.
- Have the Bounder Pages (Oathbreaker list and Bounder page) available on mcmiddleearth.com for quicker access.
- Closing registration and edits on mcme.co's wiki, so we would have the time to move over the articles to the wiki on mcmiddleearth.com, so that we could focus on only editing one wiki with credential information.

Instead of collaborating, he replied to me with: 'I don't want code that I've written to run on a domain that I don't own.'

That really ticked me off, especially since all bukkit code is GPL, and the Terms of Service states that everything that is saved on the machines, is property of Minecraft Middle-Earth. There is no I or mine.
This final act made me had enough of his behaviour, and I demoted him because of the direct breach of the Terms of Service. I logged into the machine and took archives of what was available there. In a retaliation attempt, Meggawatts shut me off completely of my own server (which I pay for) that I allowed him to use for Freebuild and Teamspeak. He changed all the passwords, including the root password, and made the server lock me out completely. To me, this is an act of sabotage. Nobody gets to impose demands in project they voluntarily chose to participate in, and especially not using data as a leverage to get what you want and contest my decision. This is when I realized that we no longer trusted each other.

As safety measure, I disabled the power supply remotely so no harm could come to Thesia. Meggawatts proved unwilling to hand over the passwords, I do however were able to recover everything through Linux Single User Mode, and reassessed control over Thesia.

I had a long discussion with Meggawatts, that didn't really help us anywhere, I offered him to stay as the main developer, which he didn't respond to. Even though his code is not copyrighted or owned by him, I chose to not use his code as a courtesy. I asked him if he wanted me to submit the code that he wrote to him, to which he didn't respond as well.

This is is the reasonwhy some services are or were unavailable: Teamspeak and Freebuild, which ran on Thesia. mcme.co which was hosted on Thesia, various 'behind-the-screens' functionality that ceased to work such as automatic server texture pack downloading, automatic whitelist processing, email services, url shortening, ...

As of this moment I have found a few new developers to restore the functionality, without making use of the old code.

I found it pretty sad that it had lead to this, but I felt it was necessary to do.
 
  • Automated white-listing
  • Cross-server white/ban-list syncing
  • Bounder pages
  • Pvp stats (of old)
  • Community wiki
  • MCMEModpack/MAtmosMCME Hosting
  • Github-itised resourcepacks (made it possible for community contributions)
  • Automated resourcepack building
  • Automated plugin building
Plugin Stuff:
  • Commoner flight (this was a big deal back in the day!)
  • Magic flint
  • Colour-able signs
  • Meggachat
  • 'Jobs plugin' (ie made it possible for folk to help anywhere on the map!)
  • MCMEPVP_Rebirth
  • SurvivalMiddleEarth
  • ThemedBuilds
  • RainbowChat
  • SuperFish
  • Barry!
...and by extenstion:
  • MCMEPVP_Core
  • MCMETours
  • MCMETextures
  • MCMEPerks
  • BuildFixes
Servers:
  • Freebuild Server
  • PVP Server
  • Survival Servers
  • Anniversary Servers
  • Adventure Map Servers
And tonnes more...

Thanks megga, the stuff you did with your time here, made my time here awesome. Same for many other people too, even if they never knew it.



A sad state of affairs.
Appreciate you being upfront about it q.
 
It's always sad to see someone depart from the staff in such a way, especially someone who's been there pretty much from the start. It was awesome getting to know you Megga, and I wish all the luck in your future endeavors. The time and talent you dedicated to this server and this community shaped it to become what it is today, so thank you! I hope this turn of events won't mean your complete departure from MCME!

Q, Thanks for taking the time to clear this up. I hope you get everything worked out, thanks for letting this community thrive for free.
 
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Despite the fact that I am not very well known on the server, I am quite upset that Megga has demoted. I had heard about all he had done for the server. I never knew you, Megga, but I wish you luck in your future life.
 
Q, you've been up-front - thank you - and I'll be equally up-front.

As Megga was well aware, everything that he worked on - every line of code he wrote in Thesia - belongs to MCME. It is community property, used on a website that has absolutely zero commercial value. The fact that he acted so selfishly and subversively only shows that he neither respected this project nor this community.

It's a slap in the face to every one of us who have invested time and energy into this place, and the fact that he would try to withhold the things he contributed is even more dishonoring.

I'm a professional graphic and web designer - I have a wife and two kids - I work a full-time job - I freelance - my time is very valuable. My work is very valuable. But I know that I can claim no ownership over anything that I create for MCME, and I'm happy it's that way - I am volunteering my time for the community, and the things that I create belong to this community. Megga also was volunteering his time for this community, and likewise the things that he has created belong to MCME.

Megga's contributions should continue to be a part of who we are. Megga himself has been a big part of who we are. As others have said, I'm grateful for the incredible things Megga has done and I'm saddened at this turn of events.

But the community shouldn't suffer for his selfishness. The code he wrote - the community's code - should continue being used. In this way, Megga and his legacy can live on, and we can at least honor him for the time that he gave us.
 
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I am currently working on The Gaffer, is there any way I can get in touch with the new developer so that I may continue to code for my favorite server. I know Megga wrote most of this plugin, and I am happy to help with it (or another plugin like it) in every way that I can. Thanks for everything Q.
 
If you want to help with the plugins, you're best contacting q privately on the forums.
 
Servers are back, but on a different domain. They are as follows:

Build: build.mcmiddleearth.com
Freebuild: freebuild.mcmiddleearth.com
PVP: pvp.mcmiddleearth.com
Teamspeak: teamspeak.mcmiddleearth.com
 
Although it is indeed true that ultimately megga was unfit to perform the duties and uphold the responsibilities of an administrator, he has still contributed massively to this project. And despite his shortcomings being severe enough to lose him his position as valar, they are understandable. The only 'bad thing' he did was in the heat of the moment when it became clear he would no longer be an admin.

Please keep this in mind when you are writing a response on this thread and, if not any respect or thanks, at least refrain from making snide comments. I, many others in our community and definitely meggawatts himself would appreciate that.
 
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When you do as much work as he did on (all that coding ect. that I don't understand) the server. I'd imagine it gets pretty hard to not see it as kind of your own work. I understand the TOS and that anything done for the server is voluntary and becomes part of the community, but I can see things from the other side too. It's a tough spot. That being said, it's a shame to see this happen and as far as I know he isn't "gone" right? Just demoted, so he can still come online.... right?

Maybe we'll see that old turtle again with a blue name somewhere down the road. ..... I sure hope so.

Thanks @meggawatts for all the time you've given to this project. I hope that everyone overcomes this stuff and you're able to contribute again. I know everyone would appreciate it.

Also, survival cobble high-rise anyone?
 
First off... megga isn't banned just demoted to Commoner (hence the post title) Secondly there is no doubt about the amount of time and effort meggawatts put into MCME and all the associated plugins etc.
An old adage comes to mind for all the disgruntled players with nothing better to do with their time.
"If you can't say something nice best not say anything at all."
 
Thanks dad....

JK. Loveya
 
This thread served it's purpose: explaining what happened. It is now locked in order to prevent this from turning into a thread where it's about how you like or not liked the demotion, it's beside the threads point anyway. If you have something useful to say, or want to say your thanks, please do so on megawatts public profile wall or send him a message.
 
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