User:Daniel.Bryant/GraalOnline

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This is the mediation page for the GraalOnline Criticism incident.

In a recent development, both Graal unixmad & Stefan Knorr have been blocked for making threats off-wiki.

Contents 1 Times 2 Intention 3 Statements 3.1 Di4gram 3.2 Warcaptain 3.3 Bingolice 3.4 Graal unixmad 4 External Statements 4.1 Wknight94 4.2 Moon Goddess 4.3 Kevinazite 4.4 RogueShadow 4.5 Vipercat 4.6 Lance W. 4.7 Stefan Knorr 4.8 Merovingian 5 Conclusions 5.1 Di4gram and Warcaptain 5.2 Graal unixmad 5.3 Bingolice 6 Proposed solutions 7 Signatures

[edit] Times

My mediation statement has been delivered. Killfest2|Daniel.Bryant ^(Talk) 01:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intention

Could the four parties please acknowledge their intentions by signing their name using four tidles (~~~~) below.

Di4gram 03:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Warcaptain 03:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Graal unixmad 04:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Bingolice 10:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statements

Could the parties now give a brief (one-two paragraph) statement on what they believe occured. Please do not change other peoples' statements, even if you believe they are wrong. Also, please make a copy of your statement just before you submit it to prevent losing it because of edit conflicts.

[edit] Di4gram

I originally added a criticism section to the article, in order to tidy it up. I reviewed it (albeit outside of Wikipedia) with some other GraalOnline users, who confirmed that it would be a pretty good start, and posted it. At first, Bingolice completely blanked the page. This happened several times. We eventually reached an agreement point for a certain period of time until I found more people to back up my statements, because of possible weasel word conflicts (these people include Warcaptain, Kraphetta). Bingolice continued to revert, and then probably made another account: Graal_unixmad. If this is true, this is the owner of the game coming on Wikipedia and reverting criticisms of his game. It's my belief that he has no business editing criticisms for this article. He has already shown himself to not be able to objectively edit the article, as he blanked the page several times before even attempting to keep any criticism. He is the owner of the company, and unless he has criticisms to add, it is not his business to remove criticisms from the actual users. Di4gram 03:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Warcaptain

When I first came to this article, all mentions of the UGCC were in the criticism section already, as well as the statements calling Unixmad a 'harsh individual' (which he claims is a personal attack). Shortly after, Unixmad, under alias Bingolice, began vandalising the page to remove things that were negative to Graal. He also removed the statement calling him 'harsh' because he felt it was a personal attack. I have made every effort to let him know the difference between a negative opinion of someone and a personal attack. This negative opinion, when shared by a large majority (in this case a very very large majority) becomes criticism, and that is what the section is for.

After being warned not to vandalise the page, they persist and now are calling us vandals for returning the page to the way it was before they removed content they did not like. They have made many attacks against us, and Wikipedia (even going so far as to threaten to sue Wikipedia for letting us express our criticism. This game's article is not, by far, the only article where criticism is posted. Almost every other MMO article has a criticism section, heck.. that is where we got the idea to have one!

Note: I have several times told Unixmad that the UGCC was not create as a reply to anything. Upon request, I changed the logo (also noted that previously I had a notice at the bottom that the logo was not my property but Graal Onlines) The logo has been changed as soon as they brought this to our attention. Our forums have 200 some users in only a few weeks, the Graal Online forums do not have more than 50 active users. Regardless though, this is not the issue at hand.

Recently, Unixmad's reaction to these forums have been nothing but cruel and harsh. The section in Criticism that he talks about is not an advertisment, but a statement of recent events that demonstrate the statement that Unixmad is harsh and unreasonable. I made an effort, with the Communication Center section, to list several (including the official forums) and (before this incident happened) was working on revising that section to include a vast number of methods of communication, including IRC chats that have been utilized by Graalians.

I would really like to note that only those three support all the actions taken by Graal Online in this article. Bingolice/Unixmad has been warned several times not to continue with their actions, does ignoring warnings not to continue editing, and complaining when people repair what the vandal do really count as vandalism?

Unixmad has also broken rules about attacks off-wiki by banning users in-game who revert vandalism done by them on the wiki, ie: User:Quamsta and User:Di4gram.

Unixmad has just in the past hour created an request for comment, which I replied to immediately.

No one but Unixmad and the rest of the Graal Online administration support the actions he has taken on the article, and you can go through discussions to see. Moon Goddess, Stefan Knorr Bingolice (unixmad) and Unixmad are the only ones who have supported these actions, all others oppose.

[edit] Bingolice

When i first came to the GraalOnline article, the criticism section was just added with NN content and content against wikipedia rules:

* That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia and the proposed criticism section is not suitable for personal attack.

* Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable content

* Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy and restricts both freedom and openness where they interfere with the purpose of creating an encyclopedia

* Wikipedia is not a forum for unregulated free speech

* Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a vehicle for propaganda (If the Criticism proposed section is not propaganda for UGCC, what is propaganda? ...) ,

* An article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view. The proposed criticism section is not neutral !

* Wikipedia is not a battleground and the reason given by WarCaptain are war reasons

This is the main reasons that made me involved in the reverting. Bingolice 10:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Graal unixmad

Graal unixmad 04:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC) I am the creator and the manager of the game GraalOnline (since 8 years now). Me, the technical manager of the game (Stefan Knorr) and a few players have created the article about Graalonline. This article has not been modified since months but lastly this article have been the source of this war.

The origin of this war is the banning of a few player from our official forum for not respecting the rules. The banned player and a few friends decided to create a copy of the official forum named UGCC (same template, colors, name, logo) and advertised this forum on the official forum. Because this forum was using illegal graphics from GraalOnline as logo the administrator of the UGCC forum has been banned from GraalOnline also.

The war has been focused on modifying the GraalOnline article, mostly adding a section called Criticism. This Criticism section has been used to make personal attack against the managment of the game including me with text like:

"GraalOnline's manager, Stéphane Portha, is viewed by critics as a harsh individual who does not give consideration to criticisms and requests from the userbase. Recently, a set of unofficial forums known as the Unofficial Graal Communication Center (UGCC) were opened. The response from the moderation team was to eradicate any reference to the UGCC from the official forums. Stéphane Portha then posted a thread which criticized the forums as being created as an attack against GraalOnline, and that the forums were "anti-Graal". Additionally, the creator of UGCC was banned from the official forums, as well as many other forum-goers who spoke out against the forum's harsh managment. Recently, in an attempt to completley remove all mention of the fan forum, Cyberjoueurs has made many threats to third party websites that the owner will be banned in-game and/or shut down for having such a website up."

This section has been also used to advertise the UGCC forum (as seen above) when the UGCC forum is nothing in the GraalOnline history, it has been created a few weeks ago and have hardly one hundred people when GraalOnline has 50000 active players.

Lot of discusion has been made to known what should be allowed in the GraalOnline article or not and a large consensus think that all link not directly attached to GraalOnline should be in the external link section. But User:Warcaptain and his friends don't want to respect this rule, they are always modifying the graalonline article to advertise UGCC forum with this section:

"==Communication Centers==" - There are several popular forums (or communication centers) started by GraalOnline and its fans. + Graal Online and it's fans have started up communication centers, or message boards where users can communicate and talk about the game and other various topics. See the external link section for official and non official message boards. - - *Official Forums - .... - - *Unofficial Graal Communication Center - These forums were created by Warcaptain in order to give Graalians a more liberal alternative to the Official Forums. (See Criticism above) While several other fan forums exist, members of these forums have frequently been persecuted by GraalOnline staff. These forums do not restrict usage based on any sort of pay status. "

Me, the GraalOnline staff and most player that have contributed to this article have tryed to discuss with WarpCaptain and his friends but they don't give any arguments, they are just reverting again and again.

Lastly i have created a request for comment on the discussion page but they are not interested to follow wikipedia process and have even not given any argument.

Also User:Warcaptain have modified my Talk page with a 4 level warning when i have not edited anything since hours, this guy don't respect any wikipedia rule and have already been warned by some wikipedia administrator for vandalizing article.

I am now 40 year old and i will not spend my time and my night if it were not to protect the GraalOnline name from the stupidity of some people. This people have not contributed at all to this article you can verify and all contributors including Loriel the one that have created the article are supporting us on this issue.

I thought that one of the base rule of wikipedia is Notability of the content, if the creator of the game and most active players are not the main source of Notability then perhaps a group of kids banned from the game will be ?

I want to add that we have also watched all other article talking about MMO games and we have not found one article with personal attack against someone and advertising link in the middle of the article for "fan" site. The UGCC forum is enough to list all complain against the management of the game and GraalOnline, a link is available in the external link section so if someone want to read about it he just need to click on this link.

To finish i want to thank you daniel for dealing with this issue on your time.

Graal unixmad 04:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Statements

[edit] Wknight94

Just a quick note to log my displeasure with this criticism section. Harsh and disparaging criticism is fine - if there's a reliable source for it. Instead, there are no citations at all in the section. Instead, there are lots of weasel words:

• Many players have sharply criticized the actions of staff on Official Servers... How many? How sharply? Where is this reported?
• ...have been contested by a part of the community. Which part? No source.
• Stéphane Portha, is viewed by critics as a harsh individual... Says who? No source.
• Many have been critical of the lack of updates on the public level editor. Who has? How many? Who says? No source.

I have a hard time agreeing with this statement. It is not up to someone to provide a source to remove content. All content that is added to an article is supposed to have a reliable secondary source. This is one of the most basic, core policies and can be found at WP:V. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

BTW, labelling removal of such unsourced content as "vandalism" is inappropriate in my opinion. But discussing the issues and providing good edit summaries would certainly help remove the appearance of vandalism - and I don't see much of either in a cursory glance. —Wknight94 (talk) 05:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moon Goddess

The critisism section as of right now is not so bad. The singleing out of one person has been removed, and the advertising of the UGCC, while bashing the Graalonline forums has been removed also, and the links are still in the links section where they should be. This seems to be a better option to me. The basic critisism is still there. This dispute needs to come to an end for the good of Graal, and its members. This is not helping anyone. --Moon Goddess 05:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kevinazite

The UGCC does indeed belong in the article, if only as an external link. It frames a ongoing issue with the GraalOnline community. A fair comparison of the two can possibly be added, but removing it entirely is vandalism. Kevinazite 05:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RogueShadow

I have been watching and playing graal since before it was a paid game. In July of 2002 similar harsh treatment and silencing tactics have been used against one of the foundational players Kyle0654 who Stefan refered to as assisting him develop the game Talk:GraalOnline. Kyle and otheres were working on a project of Legendary status to graal called simply "New World" I am not sure how long in development, but over a year I believe, I can prabably find out if I look hard enough. Hints and threads on the forums indicated problems between New World and Unixmad. As it escalated I talked to kyle a bit. When I asked Kyle why his threads were being deleted, and if he got some help he said this: kyle0654 wrote on 07-14-2002 07:26 PM:

*shrugs* Cuz they don't want evidence that they ignore their own projects laying around? And cuz if they closed it it'd piss me off more.

Stefan PMed me and wants to have a meeting to discuss NW, but he hasn't responded to my request to set a date and time yet, and it's been quite a while.

My point is, Warcaptain and Di4gram are describing typical things, and the management has been prone to attempt erasure from history. Without actually fixing any problems. I have admired and looked up to Kyle0654 since I first learned of him, and it really upset me the way he was treated, most people thought I was involved with New World because of the passion I showed. Instead of answering my questions about New World, unixmad decided to globally ban me from all aspects of the game and forums for a month, a generously short sentence. I have never used wikis, so I hope I didn't screw things up, I wanted to show a documented case for some of the criticism's. To show it's not completely untrue. Since Stefan himself mentioned Kyle he should be credible. I miss him, but he quit after that, because of that.

• Stéphane Portha, is viewed by critics as a harsh individual... Says who? No source.

Kyle0654 says, His direct PM is the source. Nothing Personal Stéphane, but we just suggest you listen to your players better. Especially the great one's like Kyle... my hero. --RogueShadow 06:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Around 250000 people have played graal and we have an active base of 50000 player, so i will not be surprised if you can find more unhappy people. A manager is the one taking most hit even if decision are taken by the team. To come back speaking about this mediation, Wikipedia main GraalOnline article is not a place for listing unhappy comments but i am sure UGCC will be the good place for that. It has been the center of all negativity against the management of the game and GraalOnline. Speaking about New World will be completly out of the scope of this page but PM me on forums and we can talk on this. Graal unixmad 09:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

GraalOnline clearly does not have an active user base of 50,000 players, stop trying to use Wiki as a personal advertisement to artificially inflate your ego and game. And why is there criticisms and links to external sources in both the Lyndon Larouche and Scientology articles just to name a couple? I bet if you even look into the Christianity or other religious Wiki entries you will find criticisms and external sources even on Jesus. So are you trying to say you are better than Jesus, or L. Ron Hubbart or, Lyndon H Larouche Jr.? It is a fact of reality that nothing is perfect and everything has criticisms, you need to grow up and learn to deal with that, Mr. Portha... Vipercat 09:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vipercat

I have been dealing with GraalOnline and its staff since early 1999, and I would like to state that many of the criticisms I have observed are not only true, but actually softened down and light, and incomplete. Stephane Portha and the GraalOnline staff do ban many people that make fan sites or their own graal relate sites and servers, but not only that, they will go as far as to send threatening emails to them and their ISPs improperly citing the DMCA, and if that does not work they will send in teams of hackers to try to disassemble and destroy websites, forums, and Gservers, or do DDoS attacks, most notably with SG111's Soundoff, http://sg111.netfirms.com http://www.RealGamers.net and Mafukie, GraalDownloads, and http://www.anti-unixmad.net forums have all been targetted in such brutal ways, all of which I tried to be apart of and defend. Users of his forum and game service have to walk a very fine line or risk being banned despite paying money for services, sure reasonable rules are fine, but there is a certain point where it all goes overboard and crazy, this is what I have observed happening since 1999-2006 Vipercat 07:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lance W.

I'd made a remark on the talk page a few days ago regarding the weasel words that Wknight94 pointed out, but it seems to be gone now. The circumstances surrounding Di4gram's edits revealed in the discussion combined with the weasel words in the article throw most of Di4gram's "criticisms" into question in my mind. Let's nix the weasel words and find some sources, or remove those "criticisms" entirely. -Lawit 09:08, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stefan Knorr

I was editing the criticism section several times because unbiased crticism was removed from other editors and personal opinions or personal attacks were inserted without any reliable source supporting them. Before that I was also editing the technical section several times to clarify facts, just to see them being reverted without any explaination.

It is not true that Linux Cyberjoueurs wants to turn this article into "propaganda". The article before this edit war started was not just advertising, Loriel has expressed several facts he didn't like about the game, like the possiblitiy to purchase servers which was splitting the developer base onto more servers. There is not a problem to put criticism in the form of "The Graal forum rules are quite strict when it is about external links and discussing forum moderation." I am not sure however if individual bans should be discussed on the Wiki entry, since you would need to take arguments from both sides and find reliable sources, which would need to be done from a third party.

Stefan Knorr 10:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merovingian

Since I made a revert, I might as well put in my two cents.

I agree that there should be some criticism if it is appropriately presented (i.e., sourced), or if it could be worked to a compromise. However, I disagreed with Bingolice's total blanking of these sections. It's not the right way to carry out a dispute.

Please contact me if any party requires further input. --Merovingian - Talk 11:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusions

[edit] Di4gram and Warcaptain

I'll deal with you guys together, as you seemed to have the same ideals in mind and methods used.

Firstly, the fact that you added the Criticism section was quite warranted, and perfectly within Wiki rules. Considering the sorts of partial evidence I have seen, and considering my extensive knowledge in reference to what an online MMORPG community tends to like/dislike (I was one of the Customer Support and Feedback Admins at Runescape), I suspect that there would be some ill-feeling towards the GO management.

This being so, Wikipedia clearly states in it's Verifability & Notability policies that all material must be cited. I have noticed that you did that with the "censorship on the forums" bullet point (by sourcing the statement made by the GO Official Forum Admins).

Please watch your use of templates to warn people - make sure you brush up on it sometime soon at WP:VAND.

Also, regarding the way you handled the aftermath of the reversion war was an obvious lack of knowledge of the Wikipedia Vandalism policy, and can be excused for that. Admittedly, I am assuming good faith there, because if you actually did know the policy and deliberately violated it, that could be a whole other kettle of fish.

[edit] Graal unixmad

It is obvious that, as the owner of this highly-successful game, you were blinded by the protection of GO's reputation when removing the criticism section. You were quite right regarding policy - WikiPolicy states that material has to be verifiable and notable, and it wasn't. However, in this situation, WikiEttiquete leads us to the process of placing {{fact}} tags (which look like ^{[citation needed]} ) on the facts that have not been referenced, rather than deleting them. This is especially true for a high-activity article such as GO. Your next step of procedure would have been posting on the talk page "Please reference the points regarding...(list), or I will delete them in (time period)". Considering the high activity level of the article, you would have been more than within your rights to say 4-7 days before you deleted them. If they still hadn't been cited, delete the points that haven't been cited (not all of them), and be on your way. What you did was, although maybe a lack of experience on Wikipedia, a blatant violation of etiquette.

Also, regarding the specific incident of calling someone a "harsh individual", and you deeming it to be a personal attack - you should brush up on that policy. Considering how that point wasn't cited, you should have followed the procedure I mentioned above with it too. "Harsh", in my opinion, isn't really a personal attack, especially if backed up with substantiations (ie. sources which show this person being "harsh").

And finally, I'm only here to be judging this article and not your corporation, but I feel the amount of censorship on your forums is excessive. Unless you have the perfect game (which is impossible), criticism is what you need to enhance your game, and you are practically preventing that by closing and removing threads which mention GO and a negative connotation in the one sentence. I know it really isn't any of my business, but I'm not surprised that websites such as the UGCC have started up, even with the illegality you described. Although you say there is an email link to complain to, with my experiences as head of the Customer Support and Feedback Admins at RS, criticism is best levelled with a community discussion, so more points can be brought in.

[edit] Bingolice

I acknowledge the seven points you listed in your statement, but what I wrote above about procedure regarding non-noted material should be something you acquaint yourself with too. Also, please read the 3 revert rule.

Also, there has been a number of sockpuppetry allegations regarding you and Graal unixmad. I must say that your posting behaviour, especially around 12:00 on July 22 2006, makes me suspicious, even assuming good faith. Please see the proposed solutions section.

[edit] Proposed solutions

I firmly believe that the criticism should stay, providing notable material can be sourced. This is the core policy of Wikipedia, and it makes sense to follow it. I can not see one good reason why it should be omitted, excluding the above - it isn't defamatory to an individual, and it isn't a direct personal attack, and it isn't original research etc.

I will also wipe clean all the warnings issued to the four parties, as they were issued in violation of Wikipedia policy (a content dispute is not vandalism).

With regard to the notability of the article, I personally will make sure it is up to scratch with Wiki Guidelines. I ask that the people that want to initially re-submit the criticism section post it on the talk page/my talk page as well, so I can just double check that it isn't too POV-driven and is correctly cited. This will hopefully avoid another war like this.

Graal unixmad and Bingolice, I ask that you don't remove any material, criticism or not, from this article in the future. Even if it still isn't notable, and should still be deleted, I ask that you come to me, or another admin (and post the link to this page), and let them deal with it. This is to prevent further disruption to the community, and to prevent another reputation-driven war of words and reverts.

Finally, regarding the legality of Bingolice's account, I am referring you to an administrator noticeboard, so they can double-check that you are not a sockpuppet. Trust me, this is done in good faith, and is just to quell the suspicions of others involved in this case.

[edit] Signatures

By signing below, you agree to the future procedures illustrated above.

Di4gram: Di4gram 01:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Warcaptain: Warcaptain 01:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Graal unixmad: Graal unixmad 08:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Bingolice: (sign here)

The following message was left on the parties still yet to respond: You have 12 hours to sign/object to the mediation proposal. If you do not sign it by 05:00 Tues 25th July, your signature will be added in lieu.