The Maybe Final Case

[gerrit70 (OP)]

Introduction

Alright, I will preface this post by saying that I do not mean any ill will towards Octo, I do think he's a pretty chill guy. People have continued to press me on that statement, so even though I have elaborated several times before I will do it definitively now. Octo is a cool dude, I think that his base personality is pretty dope. However, at most times, his online persona seems to be different from that personality, and his actions and behavior as staff certainly are. The main issue that I have is that the image he puts out to other people on the server and in the community built around it is not a good one. This does not mean that I dislike Octo's legitimate personality, it means that I do not like his actions, behavior, and general presence on the server. Many people have said that I have only made these threads to blow off steam or to just hate on Octo, this is also not true. I care deeply about this community, and my only purpose with these threads is to try to make it a better one, not to ‘blow off steam’ or be mean to Octo.

Another clarification/explanation that I think should be brought up is the toxicity of the original post and the subsequent thread. It was not necessarily the correct or nicest way to go about something like this, but it was the only way to make any sort of actual change. I have tried to bring the issue up before in a less brash manner, but it was swiftly ignored. By doing this, I garnered a lot of attention and which actually necessitated discussion; had I done it any other way, I doubt that there would be change- and change is sorely needed.

For the rest of this post, I will outline the 'Case' for why Octo should be demoted or removed from staff entirely. There will be several different parts addressing his behavior as a staff member, and why it is not deserving of the role. If I have not previously replied to your post in the previous thread, I apologize, but you will find most answers to your questions or counter points here.

Part One: Octo's General Attitude

This is a very hard thing to quantify or to lay out in a manner that people who have not experienced it will understand, but given that it is one of the main reasons why I feel Octo should be removed, I will try either way. Essentially, Octo is a fundamentally difficult person to work with. He, at times, is very adversarial, aggressive, and does not make an effort to understand what is going on before leaping into accusations or action. This is hard to explian, but for an example of this demeanor, check out the logs below.

OctoGamer joined the server
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » wb octo
[A] ~Orgasmatron » whos moving spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thanks
[D] ~papa » wb octogamer
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » wb octo
[D] ~papa » aka orgasmatron
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thx thx
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » im setting up stuff for the new spawn thats been discussed for weeks?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » not moving it rn
~poobs » octo we have a new addition to fard farms
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » its still in qualia just in a different part
[A] ~Orgasmatron » can i get a link to the vote on a new spawn
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » havent voted on it yet
[A] ~Orgasmatron » oh
IEATMYTOES » i cant break stuff
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » there is a link somewhere
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » i dont have it though
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » look for it
[D] ~papa » go in ur house
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why are we doing a new spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » without a vote first
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » what part of "not moving it rn" was difficult for you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i don't see why work needs to start before a vote
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » ako wanted us to set up the infrastructure first
[A] ~Orgasmatron » so the votes gonna pass?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » idk
~poobs » do you want to lock your house?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » probably lol
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » most people hate spawn
IEATMYTOES » yes
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » also this has been discussed for weeks, and you're only raising issue now?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » because works being done without a vote I was just made aware
[D] ~papa » ./region addmember
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » you like how it looks so far octo?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » yea it looks pretty nice but
[A] ~Orgasmatron » would have liked a vote to move spawn before work starts
~poobs » you should be added as a memeber now
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why would you start something before a vote takes plaec
[A] ~Orgasmatron » kinda odd
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i get infastructure
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » so that people know what they're voting on?
IEATMYTOES » awesome thanks!
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that looked like a complete spawn to me
[A] ~Orgasmatron » more than infastructure

Orgasmatron is Octo for reference. What is going on in this excerpt is that Yvette and Theodore Greene are working on a potential new spawn to be voted on sometime soon in parliament. Octo has just learned of this, and hops on, presumably to glean more information or to stop the new spawn from being worked on. As you can see, Octo is pretty aggressive, and doesn't even read what Yvette is trying to explain. He continues to argue until he eventually clams down a bit and moves on to other things. Next, he goes and deletes a mechanism which would help players buy and sell gold for literally no reason. Someone had worked hard to implement it, and just because he felt like it, it was removed. The logs for that incident are below.

[A] ~Orgasmatron » who made this
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » not me
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » why?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think something like that is a good idea
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that is not needed
[A] ~Orgasmatron » for the 3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think its good adding another way of selling huge amounts of stuff
[A] ~Orgasmatron » theres 3 people on the server who would use that
[A] ~Orgasmatron » and one is banned now
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » who else?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » frog
[A] ~Orgasmatron » scott
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » yv I think
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » dont worry about it brutal
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » theres a new way to sell gold?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » was
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » for like 2 seconds
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » then octo got rid of it
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » ohhh i was curioys
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok lol
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » it was a buy/sell for shulkers of gold
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh cool

This is all only from one day, mostly due to the difficulty of finding relevant logs as evidence. But, as you can see above, Octo removes a mechanism that would help players buy and sell gold easier. Why did he do this? Who knows. Apparently because it would only help the "3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks". That is not anywhere near a good reason to just remove things that people had worked to implement on a whim.

Please keep in mind that this all occurred within a single day, I cannot imagine how many other instances like this have happened over time. These logs in general just show Octo’s poor disposition. There was no reason for him to remove that helpful tool, and yet he did anyway. I cannot stress how stupid that is, he just felt like making life harder for players that day I guess. In addition, his tendency towards just hopping on and losing his shit over something incredibly small is not really that good of a quality to have in a staff member. As demonstrated by this evidence, Octo is temperamental, emotional, and appears to have no desire to actually help the server or people who play on it. To reiterate, these are not the qualities that anybody in a leadership position should have. People should be able to look up to staff and trust that they actually care about the people who they are supposed to be helping, this is unfortunately not the reality with Octo.

Another part of Octo’s online personality which is unbecoming of his position is his unnecessary combativeness. Even during a time where he is desperately trying to appear like not an asshole to cover his ass (I’ll get to this later), he still manages to find time to pick fights with literally anyone for any reason. Take a look at the logs below.

https://imgur.com/a/7VA7ZOf

To provide a little more context that might not be filled in by the logs, Octo just straight up insults Chef for goofs and gags I guess (Not really model behavior but whatever), Octo and Chef are now kinda arguing, then Octo just out of the blue accuses Legend of staff abuse because chef occasionally has fly (Most of the time it wasn't given by Legend). Now this is very clearly bullshit, Octo has given people fly and creative untold amounts of times, and to suggest that such an action counts as staff abuse is so unfathomably idiotic that i really cant even wrap my head around it. Keep in mind that this assault was totally unprompted, Octo apparently just felt like being a dick. Why is this behavior that we are encouraging? Is this what we want the face of our community to be? Personally, I would not want it to be.

In conclusion, Octo’s general demeanor is unbecoming of his position. Plain and simple, a lot of the time he acts like an asshole. If anyone is in doubt of this, simply scroll up; the evidence is abundant. For a moment, try to envision the characteristics of an ideal staff member. What I came up with was helpful, kind, and reasonable. Octo is the literal Antithesis of these things, where he should be helpful, he removes a tool that would help players for no reason. Where he should be reasonable, he is angry and hard to communicate with. Where he should be kind, he picks fights with others for literally no reason. It is hard then to understand why Octo is a staff member. I understand that Octo used to be a pretty good embodiment of the qualities of an ideal staff member, but that is very obviously no longer the case. My logic here is quite simple, and I think quite reasonable as well; Because Octo does not act like a staff member, he should not be one.

Part Two: Octo’s Apathy

I’ll make this very clear: if you aren't one of Octo’s close friends, he doesn't give a shit about your player experience. This is an unfortunate fact, but a fact nonetheless. It also presents a very obvious problem, staff members should actually care about the players on the server, because that is their job. If you are staff, and you don't care about the players or their experience, then you shouldn't be staff.

The evidence of this apathy towards everyone else’s playing experience is pretty obvious if you're looking for it, or have experienced it. Most of the people active in the spring experienced head on during the whole farm fiasco. There's a couple of funny threads of him mildly losing his shit over that if you all want to check it out, but I’ll summarize here. Essentially, last spring when the server was still on an older version, farms were causing huge amounts of lag which was, at times, making the server essentially unplayable. All of the players who didn't spend all their time on the server AFKing at their laggy farms in a vain attempt to get baltop 1 were pretty pissed that Octo and some others kept making the server unplayable whenever they were on by using those farms. This culminated in regulation of those farms until the server updated to a less laggy version, however, the language that Octo used during those debates is very telling about what he really thinks about the rest of the players on the server. See below.

still waiting for proof that they cause lag because as i've stated I don't experience this lag

This is a lie. The logs below prove it.

"[Tue Apr 07 09:21:50 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i think its pumpkin farms that cause lag
[Tue Apr 07 09:21:56 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i just turned mine off at the temple
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:00 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and it went from 16 to 20
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:03 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and mine dont even run bro"

Octo knows that his farms cause lag, and yet he decided to lie to our faces during that entire debate. Why would he do that? Is that behavior that staff should be engaging in? Personally I don't think so.

Octo’s entire demeanor during that debate was that of not really caring about what other people had experienced, and acting out of pure self interest. It was abundantly clear that the majority of players had experienced lag, and that his farms were part of the lag. Throughout those threads he continually was aggressive, mischaracterized or ignored player opinions, and just didn't really care about what everyone else was trying to say. That is not what I would like to see in the staff of the server, as a player anyway. For further reading on this unnecessary aggressiveness and other fun stuff like it, check out: http://www.villagecraft-server.com/forum/index.php?topic=5073.msg46988#msg46988

Furthermore, because I was on the point of Octo lying to both me and the entire playerbase, I figured I’d pull a few more examples from the last thread. Here he is lying again. Also, if you want to see some more points that I brought up, you can just check that thread out in general, there are too many to incorporate into this post.

I don't really think your opinion of me "not wanting to help players" Is true at all, Gerrit. Especially being based off one instance where I offered to protect someone's region and they said No they would wait for someone else, who ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the end. Redrawing and redefining, I just used the words "delete and remake" or whatever - Same thing.
There's a lot of backend and background stuff to staff you don't see Gerrit. This entire thread is hugely untasteful and I personally don't believe you have a single clue how staff is ran, what could be considered "basic" and what is "advanced" considering you've never been staff - Also, on a side note - No "admins" or "system people" in the real world ever remember stuff, we have google for that reason, That's coming from 2 professors I've had from System admin classes, both Linux and Windows. On VC we have staff supplementary info, which again, you wouldn't know about because you aren't staff. and None of the staff have EVER been expected to remember how to do things.

...

As far as the first thing that I mentioned, you appear to be both unable, and unwilling to help that player redefine a region. You lied here, you said that you would redraw and redefine it, this is a lie, as very clearly shown in the logs above. Why would Naomi need to screenshot the member list to add them all back if you were simply going to redraw the region? Your intent was clearly to delete and make a new region. Those are not the same thing, and you clearly did not know that there was another way to carry out that action. Furthermore, you admitted that you didn't know how to do that later in your post with your system admins stuff. This is just another reason why you need to be removed or change your behavior? Why are you deceiving players and staff by lying about your actions? Pretty fucking disgraceful if you ask me.

Staff are supposed to help players, not lie to them. Even though this was a very obvious lie to my face, it is also a lie to everyone who plays on this server. As I said before, pretty fucking disgraceful.

In conclusion, Octo pretty clearly doesn't give a shit about your player experience or mine. Why then is he staff? It just makes no sense to me. In addition, he lied many times both about the farm thing and in the last thread. None of that is staff behavior in the slightest, and seeing as he continues to act that way he should no longer be staff.

Conclusion

There is so so so much more that I could've written about this topic, because there's just so much that demonstrates Octo’s terrible behavior. To be honest, I dont have the time and energy to do all of that, so this will have to do. I think that the stuff that I layed out above makes a very good case for Octo being demoted or removed. If anyone else wants more just let me know and I can work on it. The final case for Octo being removed or demoted from staff is below.

OctoGamer is fundamentally not a good staff member. He is temperamental, aggressive, and difficult to work with. These are all qualities that one would not wish to see in a staff member on this server. There is abundant evidence to prove that he has all of those traits, which is outlined above. In addition, most players on the server don't like OctoGamer, probably because he doesn't give a shit about our thoughts and opinions. If a person does not fit the mold of staff, actively hurts the server by representing it, and has made most of the people they are supposed to be helping have a negative opinion of them; then why are they staff?

Thank you all for reading this far, I really do appreciate your time. As a reminder, this is partially my own personal opinion, and partially the opinions of people who are too scared to speak up themselves. When you look at the impressive amount of vitriol directed at me and others because of this thread, it is easy to see why those players are scared to say anything. It also begs the question, if someone is very clearly and actively fostering such an aggressive and toxic environment, why are they still in a position of leadership?

[Yvette]

I was the only admin that didn't make a statement of any kind on the last thread, so I'm going to summarise my thoughts on everything that's been discussed - on this thread and the last- in this post.

For the sake of public clarity, the logs did originally originate from me when I gave them to a Senator for a Senate investigation; as permitted here

iii. The Senate can also investigate Staff Members of wrongdoing if there is reasonable suspicion a rule was broken, and without needing a Parliament Vote. The Staff must comply with the investigation. Senators may not participate in Senate Votes that involve investigations into themselves.

I provided them to TheLegend12369, in his capacity as Speaker of the Senate. I presume it was also available to other Senators, which, at the time, would have included Naomi, Allison, TheoGreen, Legend, and Shensley; as far as I know, it was also made available to Cyphur. Where it went from there, I'm not sure. Whether staff wants to initiate an investigation into these senators for inappropriately providing these logs to players is up to them, but I would be for it, honestly.

Introduction

Part One: Octo's General Attitude

This is a very hard thing to quantify or to lay out in a manner that people who have not experienced it will understand, but given that it is one of the main reasons why I feel Octo should be removed, I will try either way. Essentially, Octo is a fundamentally difficult person to work with. He, at times, is very adversarial, aggressive, and does not make an effort to understand what is going on before leaping into accusations or action. This is hard to explian, but for an example of this demeanor, check out the logs below.

OctoGamer joined the server
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » wb octo
[A] ~Orgasmatron » whos moving spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thanks
[D] ~papa » wb octogamer
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » wb octo
[D] ~papa » aka orgasmatron
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thx thx
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » im setting up stuff for the new spawn thats been discussed for weeks?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » not moving it rn
~poobs » octo we have a new addition to fard farms
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » its still in qualia just in a different part
[A] ~Orgasmatron » can i get a link to the vote on a new spawn
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » havent voted on it yet
[A] ~Orgasmatron » oh
IEATMYTOES » i cant break stuff
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » there is a link somewhere
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » i dont have it though
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » look for it
[D] ~papa » go in ur house
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why are we doing a new spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » without a vote first
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » what part of "not moving it rn" was difficult for you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i don't see why work needs to start before a vote
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » ako wanted us to set up the infrastructure first
[A] ~Orgasmatron » so the votes gonna pass?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » idk
~poobs » do you want to lock your house?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » probably lol
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » most people hate spawn
IEATMYTOES » yes
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » also this has been discussed for weeks, and you're only raising issue now?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » because works being done without a vote I was just made aware
[D] ~papa » ./region addmember
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » you like how it looks so far octo?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » yea it looks pretty nice but
[A] ~Orgasmatron » would have liked a vote to move spawn before work starts
~poobs » you should be added as a memeber now
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why would you start something before a vote takes plaec
[A] ~Orgasmatron » kinda odd
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i get infastructure
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » so that people know what they're voting on?
IEATMYTOES » awesome thanks!
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that looked like a complete spawn to me
[A] ~Orgasmatron » more than infastructure

Orgasmatron is Octo for reference. What is going on in this excerpt is that Yvette and Theodore Greene are working on a potential new spawn to be voted on sometime soon in parliament. Octo has just learned of this, and hops on, presumably to glean more information or to stop the new spawn from being worked on. As you can see, Octo is pretty aggressive, and doesn't even read what Yvette is trying to explain. He continues to argue until he eventually clams down a bit and moves on to other things. Next, he goes and deletes a mechanism which would help players buy and sell gold for literally no reason. Someone had worked hard to implement it, and just because he felt like it, it was removed. The logs for that incident are below.

[A] ~Orgasmatron » who made this
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » not me
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » why?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think something like that is a good idea
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that is not needed
[A] ~Orgasmatron » for the 3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think its good adding another way of selling huge amounts of stuff
[A] ~Orgasmatron » theres 3 people on the server who would use that
[A] ~Orgasmatron » and one is banned now
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » who else?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » frog
[A] ~Orgasmatron » scott
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » yv I think
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » dont worry about it brutal
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » theres a new way to sell gold?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » was
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » for like 2 seconds
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » then octo got rid of it
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » ohhh i was curioys
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok lol
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » it was a buy/sell for shulkers of gold
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh cool

This is all only from one day, mostly due to the difficulty of finding relevant logs as evidence. But, as you can see above, Octo removes a mechanism that would help players buy and sell gold easier. Why did he do this? Who knows. Apparently because it would only help the "3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks". That is not anywhere near a good reason to just remove things that people had worked to implement on a whim.

Please keep in mind that this all occurred within a single day, I cannot imagine how many other instances like this have happened over time. These logs in general just show Octo’s poor disposition. There was no reason for him to remove that helpful tool, and yet he did anyway. I cannot stress how stupid that is, he just felt like making life harder for players that day I guess. In addition, his tendency towards just hopping on and losing his shit over something incredibly small is not really that good of a quality to have in a staff member. As demonstrated by this evidence, Octo is temperamental, emotional, and appears to have no desire to actually help the server or people who play on it. To reiterate, these are not the qualities that anybody in a leadership position should have. People should be able to look up to staff and trust that they actually care about the people who they are supposed to be helping, this is unfortunately not the reality with Octo.

These incidences, while pretty annoying as I can personally attest, occurred at a time when I know for a fact Octo was dealing with very intense real-world problems. This applies to pretty much everything that occurred around April of last year, and while I definitely think that behaviour was uncool, Octo has recognised this, and I do not believe it is a consistent trait of his personality. He has long since apologised to me for his behavior during this time, which I accepted.
I also don't believe, when all but one of your incidences cited, are from within a one week frame, that this is a long-standing issue; nor are any of them exceptionally out of line. In fact, I can recall worse incidences from this timeframe that I'm surprised you didn't cite; these are much weaker tbqh.
Octo has been a member of this server for 8 years and a member of the staff team for 6, so the idea that one day of him being a bit of a prick means that he "has no desire to actually help the server or people who play on it" is laughable. Octo has done immeasurable work creating and editing player regions, assisting players with inactive chests, he did an ENORMOUS amount of work on VillageCraft Games in setting up the necessary infrastructure for it to function, the only thing he doesn't do as a staff member is WorldEdit for players out of principle (which i can respect and understand, but he isn't hostile about it in my experience)

Another part of Octo’s online personality which is unbecoming of his position is his unnecessary combativeness. Even during a time where he is desperately trying to appear like not an asshole to cover his ass (I’ll get to this later), he still manages to find time to pick fights with literally anyone for any reason. Take a look at the logs below.

https://imgur.com/a/7VA7ZOf

To provide a little more context that might not be filled in by the logs, Octo just straight up insults Chef for goofs and gags I guess (Not really model behavior but whatever), Octo and Chef are now kinda arguing, then Octo just out of the blue accuses Legend of staff abuse because chef occasionally has fly (Most of the time it wasn't given by Legend). Now this is very clearly bullshit, Octo has given people fly and creative untold amounts of times, and to suggest that such an action counts as staff abuse is so unfathomably idiotic that i really cant even wrap my head around it. Keep in mind that this assault was totally unprompted, Octo apparently just felt like being a dick. Why is this behavior that we are encouraging? Is this what we want the face of our community to be? Personally, I would not want it to be.

In conclusion, Octo’s general demeanor is unbecoming of his position. Plain and simple, a lot of the time he acts like an asshole. If anyone is in doubt of this, simply scroll up; the evidence is abundant. For a moment, try to envision the characteristics of an ideal staff member. What I came up with was helpful, kind, and reasonable. Octo is the literal Antithesis of these things, where he should be helpful, he removes a tool that would help players for no reason. Where he should be reasonable, he is angry and hard to communicate with. Where he should be kind, he picks fights with others for literally no reason. It is hard then to understand why Octo is a staff member. I understand that Octo used to be a pretty good embodiment of the qualities of an ideal staff member, but that is very obviously no longer the case. My logic here is quite simple, and I think quite reasonable as well; Because Octo does not act like a staff member, he should not be one.

Yeah, I've gotta say this is a very mild argument by VC standards, and Chef was being pretty sarcastic to him, so not really "for goofs and laughs". As far as Octo's claims -- regardless of which staff member's are giving Chef fly at virtually all times -- I agree that it's becoming quite inappropriate. And honestly -- this is your only new point from your last thread, as far as I can tell, and for me personally it doesn't sway me at all.

Part Two: Octo’s Apathy

I’ll make this very clear: if you aren't one of Octo’s close friends, he doesn't give a shit about your player experience. This is an unfortunate fact, but a fact nonetheless. It also presents a very obvious problem, staff members should actually care about the players on the server, because that is their job. If you are staff, and you don't care about the players or their experience, then you shouldn't be staff.

This is just wholly untrue. Octo has worked on countless aspects of VillageCraft that are essential to player's experience in his capacity as both an Admin and SuperMod  - I'm not sure I could begin to name his contributions to the serverwide experience. His disagreements or arguments with players don't reflect his work that benefits everyone, and I'm having a great deal of trouble finding evidence of him refusing to give staff help to players who he has disagreed with.

The evidence of this apathy towards everyone else’s playing experience is pretty obvious if you're looking for it, or have experienced it. Most of the people active in the spring experienced head on during the whole farm fiasco. There's a couple of funny threads of him mildly losing his shit over that if you all want to check it out, but I’ll summarize here. Essentially, last spring when the server was still on an older version, farms were causing huge amounts of lag which was, at times, making the server essentially unplayable. All of the players who didn't spend all their time on the server AFKing at their laggy farms in a vain attempt to get baltop 1 were pretty pissed that Octo and some others kept making the server unplayable whenever they were on by using those farms. This culminated in regulation of those farms until the server updated to a less laggy version, however, the language that Octo used during those debates is very telling about what he really thinks about the rest of the players on the server. See below.

still waiting for proof that they cause lag because as i've stated I don't experience this lag

This is a lie. The logs below prove it.

"[Tue Apr 07 09:21:50 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i think its pumpkin farms that cause lag
[Tue Apr 07 09:21:56 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i just turned mine off at the temple
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:00 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and it went from 16 to 20
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:03 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and mine dont even run bro"

Octo knows that his farms cause lag, and yet he decided to lie to our faces during that entire debate. Why would he do that? Is that behavior that staff should be engaging in? Personally I don't think so. He also expressed to me personally that this was sarcasm, but irregardless, my point stands.

Octo’s entire demeanor during that debate was that of not really caring about what other people had experienced, and acting out of pure self interest. It was abundantly clear that the majority of players had experienced lag, and that his farms were part of the lag. Throughout those threads he continually was aggressive, mischaracterized or ignored player opinions, and just didn't really care about what everyone else was trying to say. That is not what I would like to see in the staff of the server, as a player anyway. For further reading on this unnecessary aggressiveness and other fun stuff like it, check out: http://www.villagecraft-server.com/forum/index.php?topic=5073.msg46988#msg46988

Having your opinion changed by data is not "lying". Luis presented a plethora of data casting doubt on whether Farms were responsible for the lag. Now, while I personally believe farms do cause lag, and was one of the major proponents of farm regulations, I do not believe Octo "lied" by expressing different viewpoints at different points in time.

[Yvette]

Furthermore, because I was on the point of Octo lying to both me and the entire playerbase, I figured I’d pull a few more examples from the last thread. Here he is lying again. Also, if you want to see some more points that I brought up, you can just check that thread out in general, there are too many to incorporate into this post.

I don't really think your opinion of me "not wanting to help players" Is true at all, Gerrit. Especially being based off one instance where I offered to protect someone's region and they said No they would wait for someone else, who ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the end. Redrawing and redefining, I just used the words "delete and remake" or whatever - Same thing.
There's a lot of backend and background stuff to staff you don't see Gerrit. This entire thread is hugely untasteful and I personally don't believe you have a single clue how staff is ran, what could be considered "basic" and what is "advanced" considering you've never been staff - Also, on a side note - No "admins" or "system people" in the real world ever remember stuff, we have google for that reason, That's coming from 2 professors I've had from System admin classes, both Linux and Windows. On VC we have staff supplementary info, which again, you wouldn't know about because you aren't staff. and None of the staff have EVER been expected to remember how to do things.

...

As far as the first thing that I mentioned, you appear to be both unable, and unwilling to help that player redefine a region. You lied here, you said that you would redraw and redefine it, this is a lie, as very clearly shown in the logs above. Why would Naomi need to screenshot the member list to add them all back if you were simply going to redraw the region? Your intent was clearly to delete and make a new region. Those are not the same thing, and you clearly did not know that there was another way to carry out that action. Furthermore, you admitted that you didn't know how to do that later in your post with your system admins stuff. This is just another reason why you need to be removed or change your behavior? Why are you deceiving players and staff by lying about your actions? Pretty fucking disgraceful if you ask me.

Staff are supposed to help players, not lie to them. Even though this was a very obvious lie to my face, it is also a lie to everyone who plays on this server. As I said before, pretty fucking disgraceful.

In conclusion, Octo pretty clearly doesn't give a shit about your player experience or mine. Why then is he staff? It just makes no sense to me. In addition, he lied many times both about the farm thing and in the last thread. None of that is staff behavior in the slightest, and seeing as he continues to act that way he should no longer be staff.

Yeah I gotta say this is a really weird hill to die on. As addressed by Luis -- redefining polygons is incredibly tedious, and many staff members either don't know how to do it or refuse to, this is hardly unique to Octo. Really just feels like grasping for straws at this point - I know in the past I've done the same sort of thing for a Polygon region before learning how to do it properly. And how can you possibly extrapolate "ruining player experiences on villagecraft" from a misspeak of redefining vs deleting and remaking?

Conclusion

There is so so so much more that I could've written about this topic, because there's just so much that demonstrates Octo’s terrible behavior. To be honest, I dont have the time and energy to do all of that, so this will have to do. I think that the stuff that I layed out above makes a very good case for Octo being demoted or removed. If anyone else wants more just let me know and I can work on it. The final case for Octo being removed or demoted from staff is below.

OctoGamer is fundamentally not a good staff member. He is temperamental, aggressive, and difficult to work with. These are all qualities that one would not wish to see in a staff member on this server. There is abundant evidence to prove that he has all of those traits, which is outlined above. In addition, most players on the server don't like OctoGamer, probably because he doesn't give a shit about our thoughts and opinions. If a person does not fit the mold of staff, actively hurts the server by representing it, and has made most of the people they are supposed to be helping have a negative opinion of them; then why are they staff?

Thank you all for reading this far, I really do appreciate your time. As a reminder, this is partially my own personal opinion, and partially the opinions of people who are too scared to speak up themselves. When you look at the impressive amount of vitriol directed at me and others because of this thread, it is easy to see why those players are scared to say anything. It also begs the question, if someone is very clearly and actively fostering such an aggressive and toxic environment, why are they still in a position of leadership?

This is all but a re-post with a slightly friendlier tone, the only new piece of "evidence" being a mild argument between Octo and Chef/Legend. Maybe if this post came a year ago in the midst of Octo actively being much more hostile than he is now, I may have given this more consideration, but I'm not in the business of cancelling people for actions that are long past. Octo has only recently begun being active again, after months of not being on very frequently, so this whole cancellation or whatever feels very unnecessary.

In my personal experience, the majority of players don't have an issue with Octo, and it seems much of his problems are with a specific friend group in particular; I've yet to hear any dissatisfaction from players outside that group, which suggests to me that it may be a vocal minority raising issues with Octo.

[SIR_ROBOT_22]

this friend group is a friend group im part of and i have nothing wrong with octo specifically but i do take offense to people insulting and or being plain rude to others so don't just say everyone in this friend group just for being in that friend group instantly hate octo

[Daypath]

this friend group is a friend group im part of and i have nothing wrong with octo specifically but i do take offense to people insulting and or being plain rude to others so don't just say everyone in this friend group just for being in that friend group instantly hate octo

I would say its a mini-posse inside of your friend group, they're pretty obscure but I'm fairly sure that they do all hate Octo.

[Akomine]

I'll just say that I don't know what the bounds of that friend group are. I don't know who is included or excluded, but I can say complaints about octo have been given to me from outside of what I'd generally consider that friend group. They generally request anonymity, fortunately or unfortunately, so I can't really say anything further than that, you'll just have to take my word for it. This is totally regardless of the arguments and opinions expressed in this post, I'm just adding information.

Regarding the sentiment of the arguments and opinions expressed: I have seen hostile, aggressive, difficult, temperamental, unhelpful, and hateful behaviours from Octo plenty of times. Anyone who has played enough in the last 2 years or so is likely aware of it; Octo himself was of course quite aware of it when it got to its worst level and took a leave. I know that multiple players severely reduced playtime or left the server to avoid him, some of them dealing with their own mental health problems that they felt were being exacerbated by his conduct, and some of them just wanting to avoid a staff member who they felt was looking to pick a fight.

With that said, VillageCraft has always been a server that has tried to show empathy to people and recognize their abilities to grow and improve. I think and hope Octo can be one of those people. Lately it seems he's been pretty cool and chill online (correct me if I'm wrong?), so that's hopeful. I've found myself wondering how to balance the line between Octo going thru a hard time, taking it out on players, and having a pretty negative impact on the server, and; Octo's many years here, all his help, and of course his ability to improve and be the good human that I know he's capable of being. He's a friend who I care about and I would much rather see him given the chance to improve, but I've admittedly been incredibly torn on whether he should be doing that as a Staff member given how aware I am of how hostile he has been with people, and how they've taken it, and whether or not being Staff on VC was helpful or harmful to him as a whole (I don't know).

I don't know if many of the arguments here, in a second thread about this, were particularly convincing, but I understand the sentiment. I hope we can all improve together. At the end of the day, we're here playing games, building, and chatting. I'm pretty sure we can all collectively keep VC a good place to do that. I hope we can all get along better. We'll see, eh?

[dunnandonly]

an outside perspective:

i have been struggling to communicate online with an organization i am an officer in because octo and i have a very similar communication style: we are blunt and like to get shit done.

reviewing the logs from an unbiased point of view, my take is that octo was trying to be productive, not trying to be deliberately hateful. he was concerned about the lack of communication regarding the new spawn, so he expressed his opinions. though he didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, he might have, but that is because text is SO easily misconstrued. i dont see any evidence of him being intentionally vicious.

one thing that has worked for my group's communication is having online meetings at a designated time, not through text but through voice. a lot of the problems here too are problems with miscommunication. maybe implementing a biweekly/monthly staff meeting would be helpful?

side note: i was an active player many many years ago before I took a 5 year hiatus. i could be considered a "new player" because i am reforming relationships with admin and other players alike. octo has been nothing but helpful and kind to me, even having conversations outside of pure staff business with me in local. i like octo and think he's just misunderstood over text sometimes, like we all are.

[gerrit70 (OP)]

I was the only admin that didn't make a statement of any kind on the last thread, so I'm going to summarise my thoughts on everything that's been discussed - on this thread and the last- in this post.

For the sake of public clarity, the logs did originally originate from me when I gave them to a Senator for a Senate investigation; as permitted here

iii. The Senate can also investigate Staff Members of wrongdoing if there is reasonable suspicion a rule was broken, and without needing a Parliament Vote. The Staff must comply with the investigation. Senators may not participate in Senate Votes that involve investigations into themselves.

I provided them to TheLegend12369, in his capacity as Speaker of the Senate. I presume it was also available to other Senators, which, at the time, would have included Naomi, Allison, TheoGreen, Legend, and Shensley; as far as I know, it was also made available to Cyphur. Where it went from there, I'm not sure. Whether staff wants to initiate an investigation into these senators for inappropriately providing these logs to players is up to them, but I would be for it, honestly.

Introduction

Part One: Octo's General Attitude

This is a very hard thing to quantify or to lay out in a manner that people who have not experienced it will understand, but given that it is one of the main reasons why I feel Octo should be removed, I will try either way. Essentially, Octo is a fundamentally difficult person to work with. He, at times, is very adversarial, aggressive, and does not make an effort to understand what is going on before leaping into accusations or action. This is hard to explian, but for an example of this demeanor, check out the logs below.

OctoGamer joined the server
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » wb octo
[A] ~Orgasmatron » whos moving spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thanks
[D] ~papa » wb octogamer
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » wb octo
[D] ~papa » aka orgasmatron
[A] ~Orgasmatron » thx thx
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » im setting up stuff for the new spawn thats been discussed for weeks?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » not moving it rn
~poobs » octo we have a new addition to fard farms
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » its still in qualia just in a different part
[A] ~Orgasmatron » can i get a link to the vote on a new spawn
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » havent voted on it yet
[A] ~Orgasmatron » oh
IEATMYTOES » i cant break stuff
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » there is a link somewhere
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » i dont have it though
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » look for it
[D] ~papa » go in ur house
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why are we doing a new spawn
[A] ~Orgasmatron » without a vote first
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » what part of "not moving it rn" was difficult for you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i don't see why work needs to start before a vote
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » ako wanted us to set up the infrastructure first
[A] ~Orgasmatron » so the votes gonna pass?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » idk
~poobs » do you want to lock your house?
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » probably lol
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » most people hate spawn
IEATMYTOES » yes
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » also this has been discussed for weeks, and you're only raising issue now?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » because works being done without a vote I was just made aware
[D] ~papa » ./region addmember
[Green ~TheodoreGreen » you like how it looks so far octo?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » yea it looks pretty nice but
[A] ~Orgasmatron » would have liked a vote to move spawn before work starts
~poobs » you should be added as a memeber now
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why would you start something before a vote takes plaec
[A] ~Orgasmatron » kinda odd
[A] ~Orgasmatron » i get infastructure
[A][SFR] ~Yvette » so that people know what they're voting on?
IEATMYTOES » awesome thanks!
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that looked like a complete spawn to me
[A] ~Orgasmatron » more than infastructure

Orgasmatron is Octo for reference. What is going on in this excerpt is that Yvette and Theodore Greene are working on a potential new spawn to be voted on sometime soon in parliament. Octo has just learned of this, and hops on, presumably to glean more information or to stop the new spawn from being worked on. As you can see, Octo is pretty aggressive, and doesn't even read what Yvette is trying to explain. He continues to argue until he eventually clams down a bit and moves on to other things. Next, he goes and deletes a mechanism which would help players buy and sell gold for literally no reason. Someone had worked hard to implement it, and just because he felt like it, it was removed. The logs for that incident are below.

[A] ~Orgasmatron » who made this
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » not me
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » why?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think something like that is a good idea
[A] ~Orgasmatron » why
[A] ~Orgasmatron » that is not needed
[A] ~Orgasmatron » for the 3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » I think its good adding another way of selling huge amounts of stuff
[A] ~Orgasmatron » theres 3 people on the server who would use that
[A] ~Orgasmatron » and one is banned now
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » who else?
[A] ~Orgasmatron » you
[A] ~Orgasmatron » frog
[A] ~Orgasmatron » scott
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » yv I think
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » dont worry about it brutal
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » theres a new way to sell gold?
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » was
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » for like 2 seconds
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » then octo got rid of it
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » ohhh i was curioys
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh ok lol
[M][Fox] ~Cyphur » it was a buy/sell for shulkers of gold
[KB][VIP] ~Brutalfive » oh cool

This is all only from one day, mostly due to the difficulty of finding relevant logs as evidence. But, as you can see above, Octo removes a mechanism that would help players buy and sell gold easier. Why did he do this? Who knows. Apparently because it would only help the "3 people who have shulkers of gold blocks". That is not anywhere near a good reason to just remove things that people had worked to implement on a whim.

Please keep in mind that this all occurred within a single day, I cannot imagine how many other instances like this have happened over time. These logs in general just show Octo’s poor disposition. There was no reason for him to remove that helpful tool, and yet he did anyway. I cannot stress how stupid that is, he just felt like making life harder for players that day I guess. In addition, his tendency towards just hopping on and losing his shit over something incredibly small is not really that good of a quality to have in a staff member. As demonstrated by this evidence, Octo is temperamental, emotional, and appears to have no desire to actually help the server or people who play on it. To reiterate, these are not the qualities that anybody in a leadership position should have. People should be able to look up to staff and trust that they actually care about the people who they are supposed to be helping, this is unfortunately not the reality with Octo.

These incidences, while pretty annoying as I can personally attest, occurred at a time when I know for a fact Octo was dealing with very intense real-world problems. This applies to pretty much everything that occurred around April of last year, and while I definitely think that behaviour was uncool, Octo has recognised this, and I do not believe it is a consistent trait of his personality. He has long since apologised to me for his behavior during this time, which I accepted.
I also don't believe, when all but one of your incidences cited, are from within a one week frame, that this is a long-standing issue; nor are any of them exceptionally out of line. In fact, I can recall worse incidences from this timeframe that I'm surprised you didn't cite; these are much weaker tbqh.
Octo has been a member of this server for 8 years and a member of the staff team for 6, so the idea that one day of him being a bit of a prick means that he "has no desire to actually help the server or people who play on it" is laughable. Octo has done immeasurable work creating and editing player regions, assisting players with inactive chests, he did an ENORMOUS amount of work on VillageCraft Games in setting up the necessary infrastructure for it to function, the only thing he doesn't do as a staff member is WorldEdit for players out of principle (which i can respect and understand, but he isn't hostile about it in my experience)

We all go through shit, it is an unfortunate facet of life, but generally one that we all have to do deal with. That does not however, give someone a free pass to act like Octo did during that timeframe. Stuff happens to me, that doesnt mean that I go to practice and act like a jerk the entire time. When you hold a leadership position you should act like a leader, no matter what is going on with your personal life. Thats not to say that I dont have any sympathy for Octo, whatever happened during that time sounds like it sucked, and I'm sorry you had to go through it. But that doesnt give anyone a free pass to act in a manner unbecoming of their position.

The reason why most of my evidence is from that time period is because that is what happened to pop up when I was searching for evidence, I suppose that could have been an extreme end of his behavior, but that doesnt excuse it. The fact is that behavior like that, although probably less intense, has been sustained during the past year or so, which is unacceptable.

Octo has indeed done a lot of work for the players and the server, but it was very much concentrated in his early years of being staff. In the past year, there has been a paradigm shift in Octo's personality and work on the server, he has done very little during this time period, and is not at all the exceptional staff member that he used to be. Working really hard at a job for a while, then slacking will not prevent you from being fired.

Another part of Octo’s online personality which is unbecoming of his position is his unnecessary combativeness. Even during a time where he is desperately trying to appear like not an asshole to cover his ass (I’ll get to this later), he still manages to find time to pick fights with literally anyone for any reason. Take a look at the logs below.

https://imgur.com/a/7VA7ZOf

To provide a little more context that might not be filled in by the logs, Octo just straight up insults Chef for goofs and gags I guess (Not really model behavior but whatever), Octo and Chef are now kinda arguing, then Octo just out of the blue accuses Legend of staff abuse because chef occasionally has fly (Most of the time it wasn't given by Legend). Now this is very clearly bullshit, Octo has given people fly and creative untold amounts of times, and to suggest that such an action counts as staff abuse is so unfathomably idiotic that i really cant even wrap my head around it. Keep in mind that this assault was totally unprompted, Octo apparently just felt like being a dick. Why is this behavior that we are encouraging? Is this what we want the face of our community to be? Personally, I would not want it to be.

In conclusion, Octo’s general demeanor is unbecoming of his position. Plain and simple, a lot of the time he acts like an asshole. If anyone is in doubt of this, simply scroll up; the evidence is abundant. For a moment, try to envision the characteristics of an ideal staff member. What I came up with was helpful, kind, and reasonable. Octo is the literal Antithesis of these things, where he should be helpful, he removes a tool that would help players for no reason. Where he should be reasonable, he is angry and hard to communicate with. Where he should be kind, he picks fights with others for literally no reason. It is hard then to understand why Octo is a staff member. I understand that Octo used to be a pretty good embodiment of the qualities of an ideal staff member, but that is very obviously no longer the case. My logic here is quite simple, and I think quite reasonable as well; Because Octo does not act like a staff member, he should not be one.

Yeah, I've gotta say this is a very mild argument by VC standards, and Chef was being pretty sarcastic to him, so not really "for goofs and laughs". As far as Octo's claims -- regardless of which staff member's are giving Chef fly at virtually all times -- I agree that it's becoming quite inappropriate. And honestly -- this is your only new point from your last thread, as far as I can tell, and for me personally it doesn't sway me at all.

My problem with that incident is that A: It happened recently, I thought Octo was becoming a little more aware of his actions and how he is perceived through them, but that incident kind of calls that into doubt. B: That Octo straight up accuses someone of staff abuse in the server chat, and on a whim. Hugely rude and unprofessional- not at all how staff should operate. If Octo had a legitimate concern, I believe there are other channels to go through other than public server chat. C. That accusation was used as an attack, it wasnt a constructive suggestion for legend to maybe consider what an outsider or player look on that might be, which would be really helpful. Rather it was used a weapon to create conflict and fuck with people.

Part Two: Octo’s Apathy

I’ll make this very clear: if you aren't one of Octo’s close friends, he doesn't give a shit about your player experience. This is an unfortunate fact, but a fact nonetheless. It also presents a very obvious problem, staff members should actually care about the players on the server, because that is their job. If you are staff, and you don't care about the players or their experience, then you shouldn't be staff.

This is just wholly untrue. Octo has worked on countless aspects of VillageCraft that are essential to player's experience in his capacity as both an Admin and SuperMod  - I'm not sure I could begin to name his contributions to the serverwide experience. His disagreements or arguments with players don't reflect his work that benefits everyone, and I'm having a great deal of trouble finding evidence of him refusing to give staff help to players who he has disagreed with.

I answered this above. Octo has done stuff in the past that benefits everyone, but over the past year he seems all too eager to do the opposite. i.e removing that helpful tool for selling gold for absolutely no reason.

I have heard anecdotal evidence of him refusing to help players, but its only anecdotal so I wouldn't count it towards anything. My main point with that- I think you forgot to include the evidence and reasoning or whatever in your quote but its all good- was that Octo during the farm debate saw all of the player testimony that his farms were causing lag, and that he was making the server unenjoyable for other people by lagging it. He did not care in the slightest. Even though Octo has done a lot of work in the past, it does not excuse his behavior in the present.

The evidence of this apathy towards everyone else’s playing experience is pretty obvious if you're looking for it, or have experienced it. Most of the people active in the spring experienced head on during the whole farm fiasco. There's a couple of funny threads of him mildly losing his shit over that if you all want to check it out, but I’ll summarize here. Essentially, last spring when the server was still on an older version, farms were causing huge amounts of lag which was, at times, making the server essentially unplayable. All of the players who didn't spend all their time on the server AFKing at their laggy farms in a vain attempt to get baltop 1 were pretty pissed that Octo and some others kept making the server unplayable whenever they were on by using those farms. This culminated in regulation of those farms until the server updated to a less laggy version, however, the language that Octo used during those debates is very telling about what he really thinks about the rest of the players on the server. See below.

still waiting for proof that they cause lag because as i've stated I don't experience this lag

This is a lie. The logs below prove it.

"[Tue Apr 07 09:21:50 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i think its pumpkin farms that cause lag
[Tue Apr 07 09:21:56 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i just turned mine off at the temple
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:00 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and it went from 16 to 20
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:03 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and mine dont even run bro"

Octo knows that his farms cause lag, and yet he decided to lie to our faces during that entire debate. Why would he do that? Is that behavior that staff should be engaging in? Personally I don't think so. He also expressed to me personally that this was sarcasm, but irregardless, my point stands.

Octo’s entire demeanor during that debate was that of not really caring about what other people had experienced, and acting out of pure self interest. It was abundantly clear that the majority of players had experienced lag, and that his farms were part of the lag. Throughout those threads he continually was aggressive, mischaracterized or ignored player opinions, and just didn't really care about what everyone else was trying to say. That is not what I would like to see in the staff of the server, as a player anyway. For further reading on this unnecessary aggressiveness and other fun stuff like it, check out: http://www.villagecraft-server.com/forum/index.php?topic=5073.msg46988#msg46988

Having your opinion changed by data is not "lying". Luis presented a plethora of data casting doubt on whether Farms were responsible for the lag. Now, while I personally believe farms do cause lag, and was one of the major proponents of farm regulations, I do not believe Octo "lied" by expressing different viewpoints at different points in time.

You may have misread what I had posted. On April 7th, Octo said in the logs posted, that he was aware of his farm causing lag. Later, on April 18th, Octo said that he hadn't experienced lag from his farms. How is that not a lie? We know he had experienced that lag, and he told us that he hadn't.

[gerrit70 (OP)]

The evidence of this apathy towards everyone else’s playing experience is pretty obvious if you're looking for it, or have experienced it. Most of the people active in the spring experienced head on during the whole farm fiasco. There's a couple of funny threads of him mildly losing his shit over that if you all want to check it out, but I’ll summarize here. Essentially, last spring when the server was still on an older version, farms were causing huge amounts of lag which was, at times, making the server essentially unplayable. All of the players who didn't spend all their time on the server AFKing at their laggy farms in a vain attempt to get baltop 1 were pretty pissed that Octo and some others kept making the server unplayable whenever they were on by using those farms. This culminated in regulation of those farms until the server updated to a less laggy version, however, the language that Octo used during those debates is very telling about what he really thinks about the rest of the players on the server. See below.

still waiting for proof that they cause lag because as i've stated I don't experience this lag

This is a lie. The logs below prove it.

"[Tue Apr 07 09:21:50 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i think its pumpkin farms that cause lag
[Tue Apr 07 09:21:56 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss i just turned mine off at the temple
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:00 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and it went from 16 to 20
[Tue Apr 07 09:22:03 EST 2020 (VillageCraft: 52417,11,51619)] OctoGamer: /ss and mine dont even run bro"

Octo knows that his farms cause lag, and yet he decided to lie to our faces during that entire debate. Why would he do that? Is that behavior that staff should be engaging in? Personally I don't think so. He also expressed to me personally that this was sarcasm, but irregardless, my point stands.

Octo’s entire demeanor during that debate was that of not really caring about what other people had experienced, and acting out of pure self interest. It was abundantly clear that the majority of players had experienced lag, and that his farms were part of the lag. Throughout those threads he continually was aggressive, mischaracterized or ignored player opinions, and just didn't really care about what everyone else was trying to say. That is not what I would like to see in the staff of the server, as a player anyway. For further reading on this unnecessary aggressiveness and other fun stuff like it, check out: http://www.villagecraft-server.com/forum/index.php?topic=5073.msg46988#msg46988

Having your opinion changed by data is not "lying". Luis presented a plethora of data casting doubt on whether Farms were responsible for the lag. Now, while I personally believe farms do cause lag, and was one of the major proponents of farm regulations, I do not believe Octo "lied" by expressing different viewpoints at different points in time.

Furthermore, because I was on the point of Octo lying to both me and the entire playerbase, I figured I’d pull a few more examples from the last thread. Here he is lying again. Also, if you want to see some more points that I brought up, you can just check that thread out in general, there are too many to incorporate into this post.

I don't really think your opinion of me "not wanting to help players" Is true at all, Gerrit. Especially being based off one instance where I offered to protect someone's region and they said No they would wait for someone else, who ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the end. Redrawing and redefining, I just used the words "delete and remake" or whatever - Same thing.
There's a lot of backend and background stuff to staff you don't see Gerrit. This entire thread is hugely untasteful and I personally don't believe you have a single clue how staff is ran, what could be considered "basic" and what is "advanced" considering you've never been staff - Also, on a side note - No "admins" or "system people" in the real world ever remember stuff, we have google for that reason, That's coming from 2 professors I've had from System admin classes, both Linux and Windows. On VC we have staff supplementary info, which again, you wouldn't know about because you aren't staff. and None of the staff have EVER been expected to remember how to do things.

...

As far as the first thing that I mentioned, you appear to be both unable, and unwilling to help that player redefine a region. You lied here, you said that you would redraw and redefine it, this is a lie, as very clearly shown in the logs above. Why would Naomi need to screenshot the member list to add them all back if you were simply going to redraw the region? Your intent was clearly to delete and make a new region. Those are not the same thing, and you clearly did not know that there was another way to carry out that action. Furthermore, you admitted that you didn't know how to do that later in your post with your system admins stuff. This is just another reason why you need to be removed or change your behavior? Why are you deceiving players and staff by lying about your actions? Pretty fucking disgraceful if you ask me.

Staff are supposed to help players, not lie to them. Even though this was a very obvious lie to my face, it is also a lie to everyone who plays on this server. As I said before, pretty fucking disgraceful.

In conclusion, Octo pretty clearly doesn't give a shit about your player experience or mine. Why then is he staff? It just makes no sense to me. In addition, he lied many times both about the farm thing and in the last thread. None of that is staff behavior in the slightest, and seeing as he continues to act that way he should no longer be staff.

Yeah I gotta say this is a really weird hill to die on. As addressed by Luis -- redefining polygons is incredibly tedious, and many staff members either don't know how to do it or refuse to, this is hardly unique to Octo. Really just feels like grasping for straws at this point - I know in the past I've done the same sort of thing for a Polygon region before learning how to do it properly. And how can you possibly extrapolate "ruining player experiences on villagecraft" from a misspeak of redefining vs deleting and remaking?

I dont think I explained my point enough in this post, so sorry about that, but I'll elaborate now. Essentially, in the original thread, i brought this issue up of Octo not knowing how top do this command. I guess that not knowing that is understandable, perhaps slightly irresponsible, but beyond that I totally get it. My main problem was that he lied to me about it. Octo initially said that he didn't remember how to do it, which is again, reasonable. But later in that post he said that the staff utilities had the commands in there. So why didn't he check the utilities to remember get the commands? The answer is that he didn't know how to do it, but then to save face say that he did. I don't really care all that much that he didn't know how to undertake that action, but his lying isn't great.

Conclusion

There is so so so much more that I could've written about this topic, because there's just so much that demonstrates Octo’s terrible behavior. To be honest, I dont have the time and energy to do all of that, so this will have to do. I think that the stuff that I layed out above makes a very good case for Octo being demoted or removed. If anyone else wants more just let me know and I can work on it. The final case for Octo being removed or demoted from staff is below.

OctoGamer is fundamentally not a good staff member. He is temperamental, aggressive, and difficult to work with. These are all qualities that one would not wish to see in a staff member on this server. There is abundant evidence to prove that he has all of those traits, which is outlined above. In addition, most players on the server don't like OctoGamer, probably because he doesn't give a shit about our thoughts and opinions. If a person does not fit the mold of staff, actively hurts the server by representing it, and has made most of the people they are supposed to be helping have a negative opinion of them; then why are they staff?

Thank you all for reading this far, I really do appreciate your time. As a reminder, this is partially my own personal opinion, and partially the opinions of people who are too scared to speak up themselves. When you look at the impressive amount of vitriol directed at me and others because of this thread, it is easy to see why those players are scared to say anything. It also begs the question, if someone is very clearly and actively fostering such an aggressive and toxic environment, why are they still in a position of leadership?

This is all but a re-post with a slightly friendlier tone, the only new piece of "evidence" being a mild argument between Octo and Chef/Legend. Maybe if this post came a year ago in the midst of Octo actively being much more hostile than he is now, I may have given this more consideration, but I'm not in the business of cancelling people for actions that are long past. Octo has only recently begun being active again, after months of not being on very frequently, so this whole cancellation or whatever feels very unnecessary.

In my personal experience, the majority of players don't have an issue with Octo, and it seems much of his problems are with a specific friend group in particular; I've yet to hear any dissatisfaction from players outside that group, which suggests to me that it may be a vocal minority raising issues with Octo.

I wouldn't characterize this as a repost at all. I tried to make the case a little more concise and easier to understand because it was all over the place during the other thread. Which probably failed because I was super tired when I wrote this but whatever. Not sure why you put evidence in quotations, it's literally evidence, and pretty good evidence. Most of the evidence I have provided was concentrated in that time frame, but the behavior has continued to now, as seen by the new addition. I don't think this would be cancelation due to past actions, but rather a rebuke against current and ongoing actions.

The fact that only a select group of people have spoken up is probably because they are the ones that have seen this behavior the longest and first hand. I wouldn't really consider us a group at all, sometimes we share similar opinions and that is all. Also keep in mind that many others, as Ako said, have raised these concerns, just in private. I think that the main thing going on here is that there were a lot of players who were on the server throughout the entire spring and summer, myself being one of them. There has been a recent influx of people coming back or joining within the past two or two in a half months. I think that a lot of the older players who are coming back still have the notion of what the old VC culture was ingrained in them, the culture that developed on the server over the past year or so has been very different than that old VC culture. This combination has already caused some growing pains, and probably will in the future. I think one of my main reasons for writing all of this was that Octo returning certainly correlated with part of that old VC culture also returning, I don't think it was only Octo, but he was certainly a part. Personally, I'm not really a fan of what the server used to be, so after seeing some of those effects start to appear, I wrote this post. Not out of hate for Octo, or desire for him to be driven off the server, or any of the things that people have suggested; but rather as an attempt to try to preserve some of that very nonchalant and positive attitude we had going for a while. Hopefully, it will at least partially succeed, but I guess we will have to see.

this friend group is a friend group im part of and i have nothing wrong with octo specifically but i do take offense to people insulting and or being plain rude to others so don't just say everyone in this friend group just for being in that friend group instantly hate octo

I would say its a mini-posse inside of your friend group, they're pretty obscure but I'm fairly sure that they do all hate Octo.

You're in an early stage of moral development, so it could be more difficult for you to see this, but I do not hate Octo, I dont think anyone on this server hates Octo. The nature of that emotional development is that younger brains- around your age- have a more difficult seeing nuance in moral situations. It is easy to characterize people as hating each other, when that is not at all the case. I have a professional disagreement with Octo on a Minecraft server. I don't know the real him at all, therefore I cannot hate him.

I'll just say that I don't know what the bounds of that friend group are. I don't know who is included or excluded, but I can say complaints about octo have been given to me from outside of what I'd generally consider that friend group. They generally request anonymity, fortunately or unfortunately, so I can't really say anything further than that, you'll just have to take my word for it. This is totally regardless of the arguments and opinions expressed in this post, I'm just adding information.

Regarding the sentiment of the arguments and opinions expressed: I have seen hostile, aggressive, difficult, temperamental, unhelpful, and hateful behaviours from Octo plenty of times. Anyone who has played enough in the last 2 years or so is likely aware of it; Octo himself was of course quite aware of it when it got to its worst level and took a leave. I know that multiple players severely reduced playtime or left the server to avoid him, some of them dealing with their own mental health problems that they felt were being exacerbated by his conduct, and some of them just wanting to avoid a staff member who they felt was looking to pick a fight.

This alone should be enough to warrant removal from staff. However, as Ako said, Octo has noticeably improved in the time from when this discussion began. I would therefore say that Octo still deserves to be staff as long as he keeps what he's got going on at the moment. In think it's a really great step in the right direction, and I hope it continues. It is regrettable that it had to be accomplished in this manner, but it seems to have at least partially worked. Hopefully that some of the players that may have been driven away by past behavior can return and enjoy the (relative) peace.

Anyway, I'd like to publicly apologize to Octo for coming after him so hard, and to the community, which partially because of my actions has seen some strife over the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, both of these results were apparently necessary to reach any sort of positive resolution. I think that some sort of mechanism where we can discuss staff behavior more constructively and pragmatically could be helpful to avoid future instances of this approach, however effective it may be.

[RedFox_13]

I have 2 somewhat unrelated comments but those groups arent that obscure, also what are they supposed to do? Hang out with Octo? Like obviously they hang together lmao

[Airbongo]