These are the final statements I make on the issue. They are not .Org staff statements, they are my own. I have looked at the issues from every possible angle. These are the conclusions I draw based on that. Feel free to agree or disagree.
Replies to these statements in this thread are subject to special rules. No post will be deleted, whatever the content. But your posts have to be in line with normal rules of conduct. Flaming will not be acceptable, and will be edited out of your post. Roleplaying, as excercised by some people in the past, is not recommended. You have something to say, so don't hide behind an alter ego.
The goal of these statements is to get the matter over with and make my position on it clear. I have no intent on more mudslinging. We have seen enough of that.
First I will comment on the controversy of the abuse of passwords, after that I will clarify the position of the Org, and our actions after that.
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Statement on the abuse of passwords
As you all know our former admin, Terazawa, has been accused of abusing his possibility as admin of the org to retrieve passwords, and with these access private forums of clans and trading the passwords with others. The accusations were brought to the attention of the Org staff 3 or 4 weeks before they were posted here. The Org staff decided not to take any action. The reasons for this decision is not the subject of this statement, I refer you to the other statement I make in this forum. The accusations were posted here and defended by Tinky, Magyar Khan and RageMonsta.
Many have spoken on his defense, mainly based on his reputation with everything he has done for the Total War community. Others have condemned him, in the opinion that infiltrating private forums and especially abusing his powers as admin of the Org is unacceptable.
The evidence provided is a tense matter. It has been based on chat logs and a screenshot he allegedly made while visiting the Wolves’ forum. The authenticity of this evidence is always debatable, since it can all be tampered with. We have seen examples of that in the past . I have been looking into the evidence for more than a week now, and I do have some unanswered questions about some of the evidence.
However, for much the same reason, there is no conclusive evidence against those that started the accusations. I have found no proof whatsoever that they manipulated the evidence to falsely attack Terazawa.
At this point I reached a stalemate, not able to prove either guilt nor innocence. Someone is not guilty until proven guilty, and as such there remained too many questions to confirm Terazawa’s guilt. Plus, in the statements made by the accusers there were many contradicting points, which made their case appear questionable.
Then I was approached by KenchiGambatte (name listed here by his own request). He informed me that Terazawa had confessed to the accusations to a number of his close friends, some of them trusted members of the Clan Kenchikuka. On my request, other members of the clan confirmed this. Neither could provide me with Terazawa’s confession, so it remains vague what he actually confessed. Yet, there is no reason for doubt that this confession is genuine.
Because of this, I conclude that Terazawa did indeed enter private forums without permission. But it remains unproven to me that he did indeed use the passwords on the Org to get into private forums. Maybe he confessed to this, but again, I have not seen his actual confession. Terazawa is the only person that can shed light on this, but sadly he has not returned to this forum.
Why was this not posted before?
I have taken my time to look into most of the evidence and think this matter through from all sides. And after all the confession Tera made to his friend was the thing that convinced me of at least part of the truth. The members of Clan Kenchikuka could have posted this before, but they were faced with a dilemma. Terazawa had stated that he would post a confession to the public himself, and they didn’t want to take the opportunity from him to do so. They stood behind their member, and deserve nothing but respect for that, as they also deserve respect for ending the dilemma and informing me.
To me and to all his friends this has come as a disappointment. Until his departure Terazawa has always denied the accusations. This has led to much strife that could have been avoided.
It is easy to pass judgement and condemn someone who admits to the accusations. Yet, while I am disappointed in Terazawa’s actions, I will speak on his behalf also. While he has made mistakes, I also bring to mind all the effort he has made for the benefit of this community over the past years. Every community needs people that carry it, that spend time to improve matters and make it better for all the members of the community. Because of this, personally I am ready to forgive all of this and welcome him back as a member of this community. And I speak on behalf of the entire Org staff when I say that we would welcome him back as member of the staff of the Org as well. Maybe not in a position where he could access the passwords anymore, for obvious reason.
Tera, we all make mistakes. The biggest mistake however is to run away from them and not learn from them. I would like to hear your reply to this more than anything.
Tinky, you have been involved in the password trades with Tera. You brought this to the attention of everybody here to warn everybody. While I applaud this, as much as Tera is guilty of the accusations, you have also been involved in password trading. To many this may seem part of the Clan system, but I reject it for the same ethics as I reject Tera’s activities. I ask of you to also accept that you have made mistakes there and learn from them.
Magyar and Monsta, you have played a role in this as well. I disagree with the way you have brought it to these forums. I know you brought this to the attention of the admins before it was posted in the forums, but on the whole you did not present a clear case that was ready for the forums. You could have handled it differently which would have helped avoid the turmoil that started afterwards.
The way the Org staff responded is dealt with below.
I call upon everybody to leave this matter behind us now. State your opinion if you feel you want to, but do so with respect to all other patrons of this community and in accordance with the policies of the Org.
I would like to thank a number of people who helped me in finding the information I needed (in random order):
RageMonsta
Barocca
Magyar Khan
TosaInu
AggonyKasuga
Tinky
KenchiGambatte, Rath and the entire Clan Kenchikuka (your honour in this is beyond doubt)
Have fun
Erado San
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Statement on the actions of the Org Staff
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There has been much talk about our actions related to the accusations against Tera. There were reasons for our actions. I will try and explain them here.
A big issue has been made by some people about the warning the Org has received about the accusations, and in particular about the fact that we have done nothing with that warning.
Yes, we did receive a warning, from Ragemonsta, a few weeks prior to the moment the accusations were posted here. But in that warning Monsta asks us NOT to take action, and repeated that twice in the mail exchange that followed. We did respond, by the way, and Tosa has been in a mail exchange with Monsta about it. In that mail exchange, there was talk of a screenshot that Tera had in his possession on the 24th of September. That screenshot was later used as the main proof. But on the screenshot there was a post dated on the 29th of September. That alone was enough reason not to accept the accusations against Tera, and is something that still has no solid explanation at all.
No, we don’t take action against wild accusations. In the statements made there were too many discrepancies, where one actually contradicted the other, that there was no solid ground to accept that the accusations were true at all. Only because of the confession Tera made against some of his mates in his clan I believe he has done it. If I didn’t have that confession, the way the accusers stated their accusations makes it all sound extremely thin. We have all the statements, and collected about 60 pages of inconsistencies I believe.
Accusations are not allowed on the Org. When Dan founded the Org he adopted a simple philosophy: The Org is a no fire zone. Visit the internet, look at some forums and you can see why this policy exists. It is stated in the policies you all agree to when you register. In the past there have been situations like this, and the Org always adopted this policy. We have no reason to change this policy at all. The Org is not the place for this. After all, this was something the clans should take care of in the first place. It is Your Private Forums, not ours. You should protect them better.
The main interest in this was to us, is the fact that one of our admins was accused of using Org passwords of patrons. As yet this still is not proven to me. There was only suspicious proof, the statements made by the accusers were highly contradicting, so we had no doubt about what actions to take. The policy was and is a good one.
So, as a result of all this, we decided to stop the accusations according to that policy. When the accusers continued, and increased the abusive language and inflammatory posts, we had no alternative but to ban them. These were temporary bans in all but one case.
I see only one mistake we have made. From the beginning we should have made it absolutely clear that this was not going to be accepted. I have posted a number of times that this did not belong here on the Org, but a more solid statement from us should have been made.
Having said all this, I see no reason now to change our policies in any way. They are there to protect innocent people against wild accusations. Sometimes they may also protect people who are guilty, but that is a result of the fact that nobody is guilty until Proven guilty.
Forums are a means for patrons to discuss the subject the forum was created for. But every community has social rules. For the forum, they are laid down in the forum guidelines. If you don’t behave within these guidelines, you run the risk that moderators act against that, by deleting or editing your posts, or outright banning you. Of course you won’t agree, and some others may not agree either. But that’s the bottom line. We, admins and moderators uphold those policies to preserve the nature of the forums. If you don’t agree with that, either you conform to the policy or leave the community. If you don’t accept the guidelines of our forums then you don’t belong here.
The Total War community is fragile. At times the way some people think they can treat another is worrying. We're friends here, with a passion for the game in all its aspects. The policy is there to preserve that community.
That’s it. Back to gaming as far as I am concerned.
Have fun.
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