Omnimaga

General Discussion => Other Discussions => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: SirCmpwn on June 17, 2010, 07:26:10 pm

Title: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 17, 2010, 07:26:10 pm
Kevin Ouellet (DJ Omnimaga), as many of you know, deleted the entire Axe subforum today and demanded that the new token changing funtionality in v0.3.0 be taken out before the forums would be restored.  There are several things happening in DJs life right now that contributed to this, as well as some other factors.  As he is still trying to figure some things out, he has asked me to explain some of this on his behalf.
First of all, Kevin would like to apologize for his rash behavior.  What he did was a spur of the moment decision that he wishes he could take back.  You may find this apology a bit insincere because it is not in person, but you may understand more after reading this post.  He is going to spend the next couple days thinking over things and compose a more personal apology in a few days.
Kevin has some life problems.  His father and brother suffer from Asperger Syndrome, and, although he was not diagnosed, Kevin believes he may have a minor case.  He struggles to get along with some people, and has trouble learning new things.  For instance, Kevin still does not entirely understand how to do tilemapping in Axe.  Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to be told how to do something over and over, and still not understand?  He also suffers from a very short fuse, and can easily overreact.  His deletion of the subforums this morning was influenced by his dislike for the new tokens.
Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and Kevin's opinion is perfectly fine.  However, this did not sit very well with him.  For some reason or another, that we will probably never find out, it hit just the right chord in his mind.  Kevin took serious offense to the new tokens, and deleted the entire subforum until they were gone.  His major concerns were that the community would be divided between those who use the tokens and those who don't, and that source code would become confusing, and that the documentation for the original tokens would cease.  Kevin struggles to learn new things or adapt to change, and this was a too drastic one.  He regrets his decision to delete the subforum earlier, and is still shaken up by his choice.
Kevin has done several things to make sure this does not happen again.  Several of these things were done in the past as well.  For instance, the main reason that BuilderBoy and Ztrumpet were promoted was to ensure the safety of Omnimaga if Kevin were to blow up again, so that there were more administrators to protect the forums if he made a mistake.  This does not mean that BuilderBoy and Ztrumpet are not good candidates for adminship, it simply means that there were more reasons behind it.  Another method of protection was the change in site ownership to rcfreak0.  Rcfreak0 now has control over the server and can manage it separately from Kevin.  This protection worked, too.  Today, the new admins were able to back up the entire Axe subforum to a separate location in case it was permanently deleted (it was moved to the hidden trash folder, not deleted).  In addition, Kevin has asked rcfreak0 to change the 1&1 password, as well as the Omnimaga FTP password so that Kevin can never completely delete Omnimaga.
I personally have great respect for Kevin, who has managed to deal with all of this and still make the most popular calculator forum in the community, and contributed the best TI RPG I have ever played.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Zera on June 17, 2010, 07:59:15 pm
Pretty much just a normal day for Omnimaga. We're all desensitized to this by now.

Don't worry, Kevin - we still love you. Come back to us. :-*
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: calcdude84se on June 17, 2010, 08:25:50 pm
Thanks for the explanation, I'm sure a lot of people were waiting for this.
Thought I was already somewhat aware of this (what's up with DJ), a full explanation has him my full sympathy. (I don't know if he's looking for sympathy, so I'll leave it at that.)
And yeah, we still like you, Kevin. Your part of this community, and that'll never change (you cannot leave! :P)
Best wishes to you, DJ!
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Geekboy1011 on June 17, 2010, 08:56:34 pm
even knowing of this prior to this message it makes me sad
thank you for the explanation and i hope that your off time can help you relax and then come back with us at full force and to the best of your ability ^_^

i mean one of our rules is to not make fun of ppl who cant do something on the first try right or hell even if they cant do it at all we still encourage them

so till your back and feeling better
                     and if you ever need some one to talk to you know where to find me ^_^
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: yoman82 on June 17, 2010, 10:38:28 pm
Thanks for the explanation. I'm new here, and I didn't really understand what was going on, so I guess I owe you all, (Especially Kevin) an apology if I sounded somewhat insensitive.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 17, 2010, 10:42:22 pm
I appreciate that at least, there are people including the new ones that don't jump to conclusions right away when a person flips. In one case, one person saw me flip only once then never wanted to talk to me again, and it was something really small, like, I was in a bad mood and replied harshly to the person's comment that I took badly. He never let me any chance to explain myself or anything
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: rcfreak0 on June 18, 2010, 12:08:44 am
Thanks for the explanation, glad your still here DJ :) I dont want to see you gone :(
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Eeems on June 18, 2010, 01:56:38 am
Its good that this explination is out there now, people can ubderstand now the whole situation and take it all into account if more situations come up.
I respect you DJ. I dont always respect your desisions but i always respect you.
The speed at which this was solved is a great testament to how far you have come DJ :) especially with the good response by a large portion of the community. Hope this break you are taking helps calm things down for you.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Ikkerens on June 18, 2010, 02:06:01 am
Wow...
If I would've known that...
Kevin must be going trough a hard time now.
It must've taken a lot of courage to make those decisions.
I wish I had that kind of courage.

Il keep it with this, since I'm one of the persons that reacted too rashly.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Silver Shadow on June 18, 2010, 09:41:47 am
Pretty much just a normal day for Omnimaga. We're all desensitized to this by now.

Don't worry, Kevin - we still love you. Come back to us. :-*
^^ ++
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: jnesselr on June 18, 2010, 01:44:50 pm
Yeah, it's totally fine. Getting upset with decisions is easy. Finding out why and understanding that decision is hard.

It's all better now, though!
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: calcdude84se on June 18, 2010, 02:01:32 pm
A bit unnecessary, but this (http://www.omnimaga.org/games/starcraft/starcraft.swf) is how we feel about you, Kevin :P
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 18, 2010, 02:02:38 pm
/me *almost* clicked it, but was lucky enough to read the url in the status bar.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: calcdude84se on June 18, 2010, 02:04:17 pm
If I could remember how to embed it, I would, Sir. But don't give it away! :P
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 18, 2010, 02:04:43 pm
Hey, everyone likes a good game of Starcraft.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: jnesselr on June 18, 2010, 02:45:17 pm
Hmmm.. .swf files don't seem to work on my iPod... Oh well.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: meishe91 on June 18, 2010, 02:53:23 pm
Yes, yes we do. :P
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Builderboy on June 18, 2010, 02:58:38 pm
DJ, I leave for one week and this is what happens :P seriously though, a long time ago i saw this from the outside, and thought the same thing many of the haters think today.  But when you get on the inside and learn the full story, you realize how courageous and amazing you really are.  Do what you have to, get some R&R, and take your life where it needs to go.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 18, 2010, 04:33:39 pm
There are still a bunch of people who dislike me because they only care about the outside, sadly. However, as years went by, the TI community userbase renewed itself and a lot of those people are less active now, not to mention I try to be careful when I feel down to avoid certain places in particular (even #omnimaga sometimes). That way I am less at risk of blowing up and seeing those people hide in #cemetech or #tcpa (since they are not logged) to bash me and bring up past events. However there are very very few people that bother participating in that stuff anymore so everyone moves on after a while. Not that it really matters much, though, since that stuff is not happening here much. I dare them come on the forums to flame me. I wouldn't be surprised if we did saw a lot of posts with a dark blue cell/div background color :P
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 18, 2010, 04:35:25 pm
If I could remember how to embed it, I would, Sir. But don't give it away! :P
Code: [Select]
[youtube][/youtube]But then it won't auto-play (only admins can do that, since they can use HTML. HTML is disabled for regular members for security reasons)
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: meishe91 on June 18, 2010, 04:39:44 pm
What exactly is the dark blue background color thing you've mentioned a few times?
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 18, 2010, 05:06:25 pm
When a post is rated -8 or something like that, the entire post area changes from the normal light blue color to a dark one. I disabled that but for some reasons it still happens anyway
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Galandros on June 18, 2010, 05:25:57 pm
DJ Omnimaga took really many measures to protect Omnimaga from himself. In a movie that would sound cool but is a bit unfortunate for him.

In any case I don't loose thrust on DJ Omnimaga because I know that when gets out of control of himself, there is no stop, but when things settle down, we are back to peace. The only issue is, of course, between that it leaves some problems like we saw.
It is really a hard situation to live with in the forums because it creates lots of bad reputation waves to DJ Omnimaga from people that don't know much of him. Even to me, I couldn't believe at first and earned somewhat confused thoughts of him, but totally abandoned them after getting more information. I guess I learned a bit more and am more prepared for a next time. I still prefer to not need to intervene in anything like this again.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: meishe91 on June 18, 2010, 05:36:15 pm
When a post is rated -8 or something like that, the entire post area changes from the normal light blue color to a dark one. I disabled that but for some reasons it still happens anyway

Ah ok, gotcha.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: yunhua98 on June 18, 2010, 05:39:20 pm
I'm glad I wasn't here yesterday, I might not have understood since I'm pretty new here.  But I'm here to stay, and now I know.  ;)
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: TravisE on June 19, 2010, 07:18:27 pm
These kinds of issues truly are unfortunate due to the damage they do, especially since not everyone is apparently aware of anger's extremely scary habit of transforming people into who they aren't outside of their will. And thanks to human nature, this makes it almost natural to assume acts like these are being done intentionally out of malice.

And I'll also admit that it was tempting at first for me to feel the same way. In my case, though, given other things I had already seen plus personal experience (such as the fact that real-life situations aren't these nice, simple clear-cut “this is a good guy, this is a bad guy” kind of stuff that you see in cartoons and fairy tales), I remembered that I really needed to wait until I had a better idea of what was actually going on.

Unfortunately, I don't think much can be done about people who don't realize this (or worse, do and refuse to believe it). But what really counts in the end, I think, is that DJ Omnimaga does eventually recognize when he's gone over the line and goes back and tries to make things right and try to prevent similar occurrences, which is probably about the best anyone can really do in this situation.

I am finding that learning this is helping me handle these sorts of events much better since I've found that when they really do seem wrong or unreasonable, they're not actually meant and get worked out. So I no longer get as worried as before.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Zera on June 20, 2010, 01:14:30 am
I don't want this to sound preachy, or seem negative in any context. Just giving you a foreword so you know I'm being compassionate...

I'm not sure what anyone means by "haters." Trolls? They exist all over the Internet, regardless of who you are or what you do. It's not that trolling / flaming is being directed at a person because of who they are at the core, but just because this person may respond to the flaming; and thus be a vulnerable target. Kevin's best defense against this would be to never reciprocate it. Some people certainly try to troll me, but it never progresses because I just don't care. I don't even believe I have an online reputation. When I close my browser, none of this matters to me.

Kevin - don't get the impression that people are aligned against you, because they aren't. There are just a lot of immature people using the Internet. They apparently have no grasp of the fact that other people exist behind their monitors, and that any of their interactions can carry the same gravity these actions would carry in real-life, interpersonal communications. Some people look at Internet communities more objectively - and don't pay any attention to things like trolling or flaming - but some people feel it has a more serious impact. You just have to train yourself to be more like the former: Try to look at these communications more objectively. If you appear vulnerable and reciprocative to negativity, then people are only going to pile it on you even more. It's not fair that things happen this way, but I'm just saying... There's no other way to fix the problem, other than to prevent yourself from caring about it in the first place. You can try to hermit yourself up in a single community where you believe you have control over everything, but that won't help you to desensitize yourself.

I say go out there, post wherever you like, and if someone gives you lip about it, just don't pay any attention to them. Nothing is going to happen to you, other than what is being done by your own emotions. This is the underlying truth, here. Absolutely nothing negative can come from trolling, other than your own, relative opinions and emotions of these events causing you to beat yourself up; and that's exactly why people troll. They find a target who is vulnerable to this, and start piling it on. It's like being a puppet on a string. Are you in control of your life, or are other people in control? If people can this easily manipulate your emotions and turn them against you, then wake-up! You need to fix this before someone goes too far and throws you over the edge. Your well-being is important to us, Kevin. There are some people on the Internet who do try to troll to the point of inducing suicide in their victims, or interfering with someone's real-life reputation. (e.g., blackmailing them, or giving very personal information to their families and co-workers) It would be terrible for something like that to impact you, because you were a vulnerable target to it.

So, consider that this all comes back to you - your emotions. You can take control over that with practice. Albeit, you have improved over the years. Just keep working on it. In the meantime, you really shouldn't worry about anything that transpires on Omnimaga.org. Everyone here has been supportive of you, through and through. I don't think anyone has any intention of causing problems for you. Just remember who your friends are before you get carried away. If you aren't careful, you may push them out of your life by making them feel betrayed. If you come to a major disagreement with someone, at least give yourself time to think about your response before you take any actions. You might cool-down, and then think, "Well, maybe I was getting carried away."

Either way, this all blows over pretty quickly. I don't think anyone was seriously offended by any of this.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 20, 2010, 02:34:38 am
Nah don't worry I doubt people (including myself) will be offended, since there are nothing meant to be malicious in this post. However, I need to let something out: I think you need to be a bit more open-minded about the fact certain people will take considerably longer to desensitize themselves. As you say later in your post, I did improve over the years, but notice how incredibly long it took. Everyone is different. I also think I do have some mental issues, even if probably minimal (such as asperger syndrome) Since the past few months, many people showed me that they wanted to drop old problems between me and them. Instead of bringning up the past, they wanted to focus on calc programming. In addition to the increased support I got on Omnimaga compared to the old board, this greatly helped me. Sadly, real life issues caused me to have certain days where I feel in a bad mood, and this is at those times where I become unstable. However, the support from people helped me a lot getting out of the hole and trying to do a huge effort to pretend to ignore what people say behind me elsewhere helped reduce the pressure on me, eventually allowing me to manage to ignore stuff people say behind. The only time where I usually feel bad about something said in my back is if it comes from a person that I thought to be friend and trusted a lot. At those times, it hurts (not really what the person says, but the betrayal).

Another thing I did that seems to have improved me slightly lately was that when I feel down, I try to avoid going in IRC channels or forums where I am still at risk of blowing up. I also avoid places where I only go to talk to just one person but am at risk there too. I try to find another way to talk to the person, since I don't see the point of going to those places otherwise. Eventually, I unconsiously discovered that my sensitivity improved a little bit more, despite still having a long way to go. Now instead of just visiting #omnimaga and Omnimaga, I also often visit #ti and even #cemetech and even Cemetech itself, even thought I often had feuds between some members there in the past. In #ti, there are rules regarding trolling because they want the channel to remain exclusive to TI calc talk, no off-topic discussion allowed. In #cemetech it's more lax except on swearing, and if people start trolling don't expect them to get kicked, unless the person spam or flood with caps lock and mass highlight. When I go there, now I just tell myself that if some people don't want me there or wants to troll me, then they can fuck off. I got some experience with some type of trolls now and discovered that those people cannot be taken seriously, so you either ignore them or totally mess with them (altough I don't do the later, since I suck at it. I just watch instead and laugh at their stupidity.). Plus if issues occurs, I just tell myself that they can't harm me because they're separated by a computer screen. If bad people goes as far as e-mailing me, it's very easy to just click a delete button. As for Omni, nobody wants troublemakers anyway so they'll just request the banhammer hit on haters. Not that haters are really common around here nowadays, anyway. Not to boast or anything, but I think Omnimaga became so huge (and the source of many TI programs) that any troublemaker coming around would just be made fun off, indirectly.

I still need to be VERY careful, though. As you could see the other day, I did not improve a whole lot. I still have a long way to go, and the only times where I really improve are when no real life issues are going on. Example, tonight, Nikky tried to troll me on Cemetech and nothing resulted from it, but on another day, I could be at risk of getting annoyed. I try to do an effort to make sure to detect those days and try to avoid potential issues then.

Maybe one day I'll be able to handle every bad situations well. However, I cannot promise this will happen like in a year or two. This could even take a decade.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: Zera on June 20, 2010, 03:52:54 am
It's not that I look at the situation too lightly. I do recognize that people vary differently about how they handle circumstances, or overcome them altogether. I just want to encourage you, and keep you motivated. I don't want you to spiral into less optimism , or subtly justify a lack of improvement because you look at the bigger picture and feel overwhelmed.
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 20, 2010, 11:26:18 am
Aah ok, I see. Well thanks for the support
Title: Re: A Formal Explanation for Today's Events
Post by: ztrumpet on June 21, 2010, 10:28:11 am
DJ, within the first day I ever "talked" to you, you exploded.  It was the night you left TIBD, and I saw your reasoning and knew you had to do what you had to do.  It's the same not.  I'll always respect your decisions, no matter how much havoc they cause.  This one was apparently very bad, but I still respect you DJ.
Thanks for everything you've done, and thanks for the explanation Sir. :)