That is a nice sentiment.
It is empirically wrong.
Reika tried the more open approach. During the Monster era. It ended disastrously, as has been repeatedly noted in this discussion.
RC/ReC/ElC/CC Policy Changes
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That is a nice sentiment.
It is empirically wrong.
Reika tried the more open approach. During the Monster era. It ended disastrously, as has been repeatedly noted in this discussion.
I don't think so. Notice how most smaller mods don't generate so much hate. I think the argument may be cyclical. Reika generates hate for the rules he did have so he put more in place. The more users felt restricted the more they rebelled. Most normal mods don't generate hate. Also the only immature creatures that do hate, should be discredited for what they are. 12 year olds who can't understand the mods.
I think there's a valid analogy between Gregtech and Reika's mods, in that they are HARD and require much more time, effort, and intelligence to use. Much of the hate directed at him has been regarding the mod's difficulty and requests to dumb it down. It's not easy or popular to say NO to dumbing down content. From the postings I've seen, they revert to personal attacks instead of spending the time to figure it out.
GT edited vanilla objects to rewrite the early game which caused additional friction. I don't believe any of Reika's mods change the vanilla recipies, so he's only asserting you shouldn't change his content added by the mod, instead of rebalancing vanilla or other mods present.
Be sure you don't blame the victim here, Reika doesn't deserve much of the drama thrown at him. The only reason we're having this discussion is that like any programmer he has tried to fix a social issue by using a system of rules, whether that is his mod pack policy or the code in Rotarycraft to detect tampering. For some reason many users feel entitled to his work and have a fit when he stands up for his ownership of his content.
I've never had the impression it's "his way or the highway". I've had changes to make and he's been very responsive, and outside of a tightly themed pack I don't see how this policy causes any issues to most users.
This is also repeatedly demonstrated false. Its been covered several times in this thread that there are notional adults, some with very respected names, spreading flat-out false information that many others are accepting uncritically and using as a basis to attack both Reika and his mods both technically and socially.
Let me rephrase then, sad creatures with 12 year old maturity and dare I say mentality. Rational, mature, intelligent adults don't do that. What I am trying to say is that I am sure most of the community does not share there views or method of presentation of those view.
This is the Internet... Where have you been?
EDIT: If users were acting rationally like mature intelligent adults none of this would be an issue.
ikr.. Im saying I think most of us are more mature. The problem people are not on these forums I would bet. So for users other than them it sucks that we are limited because of there idiocy.
I think that's another item to keep in mind. The community on the FTB forums is of a much higher quality than MCF, but Reika is having to deal with the lowest common denominator.
Yeah. Then there's /r/feedthebeast, which is a cesspool of drama.
This is a nice sentiment, but it is sadly and completely wrong. I am somewhat of an insider to what he has to put up with, and the stuff that you normally see displayed as evidence of the hate he gets is just a fraction of the junk he gets. Unfortunately, I have seen/heard about messages almost every day that could be examples on this thread. Heck, I can post my records of the first 20 issues on the Github issue tracker, or the first time Reika opened his issue tracker, or any number of other communication methods. Most of the time, if either references lag(Usually falsified), minetweaker incompatibilities(I used minetweaker and RoC with no issue, @Haggle1996 made a pack based on RoC that uses MT heavily), old versions, or, the king of them all, personal insults of a nature that just not needed in a reasonable community. Point is, there are plenty of attacks, even if you can't see all of them due to them being in PM, or in some random subreddit, or in IRC in an odd channel. And all of this is coming from someone who has seen and watched all this happen. The stuff that Reika puts up with is incredible, and if it was me in that position, I would have walked away and just kept the mod to myself around v20.
As a former moderator said about Reika's MCF thread, without mods removing posts from it, it would be 5 times as long and 10 times as nasty. I have seen posts that were almost immediately removed by the moderators, but that were screenshotted just before they were removed. Some of the things said in PM are equally evil.
My overall point is, what you have said is meant to help, but it does not take into account the sheer amount of vitriol thrown at Reika on a regular basis. As an issue tracker moderator and semi active PR person, I have seen a small amount of what happens, and it directly goes against those who say "nobody hates you, just relax and it will be ok". No. Maybe not all people, but some people do actively hate him, for his mods or just who he is.
This.
I understand your intentions are positive, @Luminary, but this is very much not a case of "got attacked a few times then locked down". Getting attacked did become the normal routine, and hostile interactions very quickly outnumbered the friendly ones.
You mention my dedicated threads. Those are not representative, because for the most part, those people who are routinely friendly with me and post on them are "regulars", i.e. people already in a position to know the falsehood of the rumors, and who are already biased in my favor by some amount by virtue of the fact they like my mods. Even something like the subreddit, widely decried as a drama pit, is artificially positive, because moderation keeps the worst out and thus both skews the average and neuters the community's ability to take an emotional and motivational toll. Horrible as it is, a more accurate cross-section is an unmoderated forum thread, or private messages, the latter of which barely exists and the former of which is, by definition, private, meaning that the true extent never really becomes clear to the community.
Go back and read the revision.
Some of the problem people are on these forums. One in particular - I am not going to say who, but someone who was involved in many recent debates/discussions around my policies - was someone who made the "unified unequal materials then blamed RotaryCraft for balance problems" category. And, I know from his posts, he is not a spoiled child, but an adult. And his opinions are generally well-received and agreed with by others.
I never said that. I'm not denying people hate Reika. There is clearly a real hatedom there. And given that the internet is full of a-holes, some of those haters are going to be vocal. What I'm talking about why it continues.
The average idjit on the mod community street probably is more likely to have a negative view of Reika than not, I'm sad to say. But why? It's not a common affliction amongst modmakers.
@Reika
I'm going to sound like a fortune cookie here (a very... verbose fortune cookie) So apologies for that.
We create the narratives we live by. And I don't mean that in any sort of spacey, spiritual way.
Every time you paint yourself as the most hated person in the Minecraft community, somebody like me—with no stake in anything—will believe you. You really don't want people thinking you're hated, because people generally and wrongly believe in a just universe where that's warranted. Every time you do something to forward that idea, you cement that thought. Every time you tell yourself that's the absolute truth, you force yourself further into a corner.
Take some random proverbial shmo. He has never heard the name Reika. He doesn't know what RC etcetcetc is. He runs across a situation like this. What does he see? A modmaker being far more defensive than any other modmaker. A crowd of peanut gallery seatwarmers rolling their eyes about it. And you, talking about how you're constantly attacked. How a whole segment of the community exists just to spite you.
So what is this random shmo to think? Is everyone else the bad guy, or are you? Even just statistically speaking? What do you think people are going to bank on?
And so another group of people with a sadly negative Reika view is created. No evil forum admin illuminati required.
Leading back to my point from previous. People think you're a jerk. That is the image they have. As you and 1M pointed out, I don't know the background. But I'm more concerned with the foreground. The foreground is all the new people you'll be running across. The bulk of the people that would play your mod and come out liking the name Reika. It's the popular support. It's the sea of faces that either smiles or frowns when you're spoken of.
I'm not saying if you kick back your feet, all will be well. I'm saying that it's never, ever going to get better unless you do something to change the direction of the spiral headed toward the toilet drain.
People are being jerks to you? Screw 'em. If you act with good grace and humor, they come out looking like bastards while you smell like roses. When a post full of grouches in an IRC chat surfaces, do you point to it so everyone notices and talk about how much people hate you? Or do you shrug and say 'Yeah, what a bunch of jerks'. Which makes you look more reasonable?
Some pissant thirteen year old running a server on his parent's dime is selling your items? Do you double-down on protecting your code and hold it as a badge as to what will happen if you don't crack down? Or do you laugh it off as the utterly hilarious farce that it is? Which do you think ends up with a Reika people look up to?
Some server owner is flailing his arms comically and screeching about something breaking when they Minetweaked half your stuff? Do you say 'Sorry, nobody else has that issue, and I can't diagnose that when you mess with it', or do you create an elaborate permission system that promises to keep your mod from view? Which is the one that makes you look friendly an approachable?
I have absolutely zero doubts that you are a thoughtful and intelligent sort. None. So I don't think I have to sell you on the idea that you can't make gains just by trying to erase a negative.
If you profoundly hate this reputation you have, and I can't imagine you don't, then forget the current plan of pointing out how much people love kicking you. Clearly, it's...um... going super well. If the focus on being the harrowed, hermit mod developer with his small, loyal group of minions (or whatever) is making it worse, try a different version. Focus on not feeding that image, and try to present another part of you that's just as true. Let the drama fester out of everyone's eye where 99.999% of people will forget about it entirely, and be the kick-ass mod dev that makes kick-ass mods who wants kick-ass folks to try it. Maybe that tiny group of grumpycat impersonators will still hate you. Let them sit there in their IRC chats and choke on their bad nature.
In other words: win some hearts. You can't do that by focusing on the ones you've already lost.
It'll be a hell of a lot better if the peanut gallery like Lumie can happily say 'Reika? Meh, leave off, he's a great guy. Try his mods before whining.', rather than 'Reika? Yeah, his collar is on three sizes too tight. Too bad, he's nice otherwise. I wish his stuff was more accessible'.
Your entire argument is founded on the premise that much of the reason people treat me the way they do is because I 'prime' them for it by being defensive. This fails to account for the fact that this whole problem got started without any such input from me, and that I only started getting defensive after this had been going on for months. In reality, things like this get started because someone with some influence gets some people to start believing something, and without sufficient contradiction, that view can spread - especially if not easily disproven - and once it reaches a certain size it is entirely self-sustaining, even without the active maintenance certain people give it.
I strongly suspect part of it is human nature; people, both online and real-world, seem much more easily convinced of the negatives about someone or their actions than the positives.
Also, the reason I get defensive is to prove claims wrong. When someone says "Reika crashes if he detects Minetweaker" or "Reika's mods cut your FPS in half" or "You want to kill your server? Add RotaryCraft" or "Don't bother listening to Reika, he's an @$$hole who needs to be shunned", I try to prove them wrong so that whoever they are trying to turn against me does not make a judgement based on incorrect information. Human nature applies here again - people overwhelmingly take non-defense as implicit admission of guilt.
I know. But being defensive does not make someone a jerk - and no reasonable person would make such a judgement - so that mentality comes from something else.
Again, basically noone is going to even try if, before they start, they see a wall of reasons why they should avoid me or my mods like the plague.
I am not convinced that is where this is headed unless someone takes certain extremely destructive actions - I am talking things like doxxing me and threatening real-world violence. And that will not be because of being defensive. That will be someone acting on views instilled into them.
Monetization is not a PR problem for me; that is not the main reason why these rules exist. Also, "some pissant thirteen-year-old" is hardly an accurate description of most of them.
This ignores all three problems of A) People listening to them anyway because they are popular and any defense I make can be claimed as "lies to protect my reputation" B) people actually taking action against me, like that guy who tried to sue me or people who try to drum up support for things like doxxing or DDoS, and C) I often spent hours chasing issues introduced by people modifying things, hours I will never get back.
While I understand that this is meant as positive and helpful advice, I fear that it has not, and cannot have the intended effect.
We are dealing with what is, in effect, a classic bullying problem. Reika loudly and proudly makes mods that are **different** from most of what is out there. He is unapologetic about it. He declines to follow the ebb and flow of trends in the community, and does not apologize for it. Of course the mob gets upset. It is a mob, that is what it does. Unless the applicable community affirmatively decides not to tolerate it.
While I understand that you mean well in suggesting that Reika might be able to partially placate the mob by tweaking how he interacts with it, you have (I assume unintentionally) advanced a paradigm where the onus is on the bullying victim is to avoid being bullied.
Where do you draw the line? Reika has publicly and repeatedly put forward evidence of egregious misbehavior aimed at him, including by people in positions of importance who most definitely are not 13 years old. But it seemingly never draws anything more than pro forma statements that are immediately forgotten. Meanwhile, Reika is constantly criticized (by you and others) for failing to properly placate the bullies?
This is an example of a borderline personal attack. Don't do this.
Good lord. Talk about inspiring eye-rolling.
As a shmo who's never played any of Reika's mods (just haven't gotten around to them yet), I see a guy who has strong convictions and stands by them at considerable, and unfair, cost to himself.
RotaryCraft is clearly designed to be a particular experience - as much about the journey as the destination - and Reika feels it's important that it be experienced a certain way. He seems obsessive and possessive about his creation. And he has EVERY RIGHT TO BE. Does he have flaws and personality quirks? Yeah, probably. So do we all. Does he always handle everything perfectly? Probably not. Neither do any of the rest of us. Stones, glass houses, and so on.
All your smug quasi-Tony Robbins pseudo-inspirational fake concern aside, if there's one problem I see with Reika, it's that he's too available and too responsive. He should probably tell all of us to to -redacted-. But since he's probably not going to do that, it seems like he is trying to reduce the amount of time he spends wading through bullshit bug reports and whining directed at him for problems he did not create. This seems like a highly rational thing to do.
It's telling that you spent hundreds of words trying to convince Reika that he is a "jerk," and got a reasonable, polite response. Really, who is the jerk in this scenario?
Remember when FTB was about respecting the wishes and work of mod devs? Man, those were the days.
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I can't believe that something like this emerges from thin air. Maybe you didn't realize it when your reactions were harming your PR, as I saw how you like to return it when someone is being rude to you. Provided that it was not a PM, your answer to these persons are publically visible and many unrelated people are going to see them and think their part about you.
Question Reika: Imagine someone posted something like this in your thread. What would your reaction be? This is the first and only negative comment that I recieved so far. So what? When I don't give in and answer, this person will look like an idiot and noone bats an eye.
And when people spread rumors about bad performance etc. they're not really complaining about that. They're having a personal problem with you. These rumors won't get very far when 1) they're false and 2) people don't think bad about you.
This video might explain some of the things that are going on:
Again, by the time I started that, my reputation was already in the toilet.
Sometimes. Often, however, they really did experience a problem and assumed it was my mod's doing, be it lag from engine spam or unbalanced gameplay or impossible progression.
Very demonstrably untrue. The Minetweaker rumor being the obvious example. All that is needed for a rumor to be believed is that it be theoretically possible and that it be backed by someone with some credibility.
Good luck with that. No matter what I do - even if I totally removed my rules altogether - there are thousands of people who will never think anything good about me.
I have no idea why people started having an issue with you. The intricacies of Minecraft drama were something I couldn't care less about back then. But whatever conditions led to that are unlikely to be here or existent. But people still whine. People who have no idea what those conditions were either. The problem now has an unfortunate momentum of its own.
In the end, if you desire to counteract that momentum or not won't affect me much. I'll be a bit sad to see it continue, and a bit happy to see it stop. But it clearly isn't going away on its own. And I wouldn't expect it to. If you're okay with that status quo, then by all means, continue.
But personally, I think that status quo absolutely sucks.
It makes someone seem unpleasant, generally. Closed and unapproachable.
Most people don't sit there and get all the facts. We run across hundreds or thousands of people every day. We'd die long before we did anything but judge the book by the cover.
I really don't think the technical side is nearly as prominent as you think it is.
The worst I can say I've seen is whining and complaining about things included to stop paywalling and the like. Heck, there was some of that recently.
Avoiding you is the problem I'm urging you to try to solve. Because that's something you can deal with. You'd be amazed how much slack people will give someone they like. And how much they'll rush to their defense. And I know you can be very likeable.
Heck, the fact that you can sit there probably only quietly dreaming of ripping my head off instead of ranting at me proves as much.
I must be incredibly aggravating right now.Touch base with some of your fellow modmakers. There's a rich community of them. And many of have the same annoyances on the technical side that you do. Figure out how they deal without it becoming a big thing. I'm sure they'd be happy to share. Most seem pretty nice, from what I've seen.
As for DDoS'. Well... that sucks. It's a crappy symptom of a crappy problem. Having a hatedom on the internet means internet-specific problems.
And suing? C'mon. Can anyone actually take that sort of bumbling, juvenile tantrum seriously? I mean, besides the moron that suggested it?
Yes.
You are preaching to the choir.
My view, however, is probably different. Reika sticking to their guns isn't making them happy, so far as I can see. Frankly, when dealing with a hobby one does for amusement, happiness is rather the key component. But hell, maybe they're a walking ball of glee, and I have the wrong image.
<3
I'm inspiringly concerned about your anger.
Yes. In this I very much agree.
Ahem, Forget It (are we allowed to swear here?) is the correct answer to many, many problems. That was kinda my point in a lot of those examples. Instead of freaking out, a strategic application of dismissing the problem is preferable. And one of those problems that needs to be dismissed is the jerk patrol plaguing him.
Um. I like Reika.
I said their image is being jerkish. I never said I agreed with it, or that it was justified. Reika is an adult. They can handle the truth. Even if the truth is lame.
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I'm not sure how this changed from "I'm updating my license" to a psychoanalysis session, but here's a suggestion. Reika I would suggest you focus on what you need to do to keep yourself positive about creating and maintaining your mods. You write great code and have made many of the best mods I've ever had the privilege to play. I appreciate your efforts and don't want to see you burnout on lusers that don't deserve your time.
I would simply focus on what good you can do for yourself and your mods. Only pay attention to the positive people and ignore the rest. Giving attention to negativity by response or defense gives it credibility, increases it's duration, and stresses you out. You're always very responsive and supportive, and you have many fans. Dedicate your time among them and cultivate Team Reika, and ignore the rest. That goodwill spreads slower than negativity, but also lasts much longer.
No. I strongly suggest those involved in this debate adhere to the second rule of these forums. The next person I see violate the "no obscenities" clause will be handed warning points. Previous violations have been removed and forgiven this time.