The more I think about it, it seems like Mehul did the right thing. It's very easy to criticize someone like that, but you can't really understand without attempting to admin a game like this. The bottom line is, as long as you post anywhere and make yourself available to the community, you will inevitably get dragged into politics or something worse.

Let's take the most basic admin role: implementing and posting gameplay changes. Lots of people have gameplay ideas. Some are horrible ideas. Some are unrealistic. Some are incompatible with the others. Yet somehow we are expected to respond to anyone. Ignoring the fact that there probably aren't enough hours in the day to do that, as soon as you disagree with someone or say that you won't be implementing their ideas, it turns into a big problem because everyone takes it personally.

"You aren't implementing my ideas because I'm new."

"You aren't implementing my ideas because the admins hate warring".

"You aren't implementing my ideas because X is your favorite strat."


Want a more concrete example? FFA demanded to know why we allowed "self farming". The demands were similar to those find in the most recent Announcements thread I made. Well what could go wrong with explaining things to players, right? So I spent several hours of my free time giving a thorough, honest explanation to those who wanted it. Unfortunately, there were two sides to this issue. No matter what I said, someone was going to be disappointed. And of course, those who were me attacked me personally, doubted my integrity and even threatened the game.

I can think of examples of spawn playing on this server and getting attacked for it because he is a moderator on another server. People took something simple (a mod playing on another server) and attacked him personally for it and made it into a political issue.

There are a group of trolls in this community who made ridiculous accusations and attack the admins and mods personally, then cry foul if we defend ourselves. If we defend ourselves, then we are "getting involved". Are we not allowed to defend ourselves and have opinions? Apparently not.

A lot of people have asked for more professionalism. I don't think that means what you think it means. Let's try a real life example: imagine someone entering a restaurant, jumping on top of a table, and then screaming at the top of his lungs that the cooks spit in the food. Nevermind the fact that he's wrong, has been proven wrong before, and is negatively impacting the experience of the actual customers in the restaurant. Obviously it would be wrong for the owners to throw him out. The EE community asks us not to throw these people out.

As it stands there isn't a single physical person banned (temporary or permanently) from posting on the ee forums. There isn't a single person banned from playing. There isn't a single person banned from the irc server. Yet from listening to the people who do stupid things and who do get occasionally banned, we're a bunch of horrible dictators. Yes, a bunch of horrible dictators with empty prisons and empty morgues. I guess it's more alluring to talk fluff behind people's backs, think up wild conspiracy theories, and make trolling posts on the boards.

So I'm going to be honest, which is apparently a big problem. But that's too bad, as we allow the rest of you to be honest. I don't care enough to look at your fluffty countries or your boring conversations on irc.

If you're one of those people who demands access to the admins on the boards, but then tries to drag them into politics or insults them personally over gameplay changes (there are several in this thread), fluff you. And fluff anyone else who has a problem with the admins exercising the same freedom of speech that we give everyone else on our servers and our forums.