Negotiation with AC

[Victor]

Their representative replied (on the same day, but I didn't see it since it went to spam):

Hi Victor

I hope you don't think me rude, but I'm not going to activate your forum account, for obvious trust reasons, simply based on your recent threads.

I don't know if you know me, but I'm not a coder, I have no experience of producing software and I'm not a leader by nature, but I seem to have become, almost by accident, the spokesperson for AC. I also look after the master server config, so I know exactly what's been 'going down'.

What I can do is ask, how can I help?

jamz

On June 30, 2012, I replied to him or her:

To whom it may concern:
(Redacted to save space, mostly repeats the original letter)
...
It is my intention to understand why AC dislikes the ACR mod, and to
mitigate that as much as reasonably possible.

I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Please reply either
directly to this email--and hope that it does not get stopped by a
spam filter--or post to the ACR forums.
...
Best Regards,
Victor

P.S. I have marked up your original email with grammar corrections. I
do advise you to use proper grammar.

Appendix A
(original letter)

(Jamz's letter, but marked up with grammar corrections)

[Victor]

He or she writes again:

Hello again, Victor

i remooved a gross porshion of you're messudge(it was to long( - hear are the mane points! answered too the best off my abilty...

1. Respond with the full description of why you dislike this mod
As a development team, we don't dislike the mod. On a personal level, I haven't played it, but it looks too 'busy' for me; I have simple tastes.
2. Cease to mislead your users with false allegations of copyright infringement
3. Not waste time trying to hide our name, AssaultCube Reloaded
I've lumped 2. and 3. together, as they're covered by the same catch-all. When users register on the AC forums they're presented with a "Registration Agreement" which contains the following:
"You agree that we have the ability and right to remove, edit, or lock any account or message at any time should it be seen fit."
4. Notify us of any copyright issues that we may have missed (probably not)
I don't know anything about any copyright issues. Someone told me some of the sounds come from another game, but I don't play anything else, so I wouldn't know. Someone else pointed out to me that you've repackaged the game under a different licence from that stipulated by the Cube engine licence. As I've said, I'm not a coder and I have no legal expertise; it's just something I read.

I hope you have fun reading this. I made some mistakes, just for you to correct, because I can tell you have too much time on your hands.

Say 'hi' to all your friends and family for me

All my love

XXX

jamz

In all seriousness, Victor, I'm concerned for you. I hope you can get some professional help. The issue we have is with *you*, not your game. You first appeared on our radar as a cheat, and your personality went downhill from there. You're trying to force ACR upon a community by using that community's official game forum; of course it's going to put our backs up. You correct grammar in an email, for heavens' sake! Don't you stop to think for a second about what a douchebage you must appear? I realise you're not going to take the blindest bit of notice of me, but that doesn't stop me hoping. Take care.

This is my reply:

To whom it may concern: (it's the same gender-neutral salutation [that] I use)

Good grammar is important. To prove this, I will, starting with this sentence, use a combination of incorrect grammar and archaic grammar. Notice you the incorrect usage of will in the last sentence? It should be an "shall". Correcting your grammar doesn't help I, but this showeth why thou shouldest use proper grammar.

Me does value thy feedback. This games (ACR) might is a little too "busy", so me shoulds works on that.

Me have attached file ("googleac.png", which mean either "Google Auto Complete" or "Google 'AssaultCube'", whichever thou decidest) which (instead of that) proves thou are wasting time to hide (instead the of gerund hiding) ours name. Perhaps that will be after thou leavest AC, and it wouldn't matter to thee anyways.

The licence for AC's code are allowed to be changed, since it am the Cube Licence. Since the Cube Licence's 4th clause only apply to Cube, it does not applies to AssaultCubes code, which allows I to change the codes' licence to an GPL. The /packages directories get distributed under the original licences.

After to read (reading) your post scriptum, methinks that if me transfer ACR to another dev, you has no problems with it. Since me are going to leave eventually, thou wilt have zero problems with it on the future.

The improper grammar does end here, in this sentence. If you have had trouble interpreting any of the above--even though it has hints, please request a proper Modern English translation from me.

My policy is to not cheat on games that I created. This policy does not extend to games that I have not created. If you have a former cheater, you should recognize that persons can change. They can stop cheating, like me, who am no longer playing/cheating AssaultCube.

Best Regards,
Victor

P.S. I am noticing you and am not going to take the blindest bit of notice of you, since I am not the most blind.

Attachment:

[Victor]

Hello again Victor

I must confess, I thought I'd get a serious discussion out of you if I was honest, and addressed you personally. It seems this isn't the case, as your reply is nonsensical in the extreme. Also, I've had it pointed out that you posted my email on your forum thread, for you and Nightmare to wank over. Don't you have any idea of social decency? I'm emailing you as one human being to another, not as corporate bodies trading legalese. You don't even have the courtesy to address me by my 'name'.
On your point of "...wasting time to hide...ours name", I don't like people advertising cheat links on the forums either, but you can be sure I know they exist and that the players only have to use a search engine to find them. This doesn't mean we're going to start promoting them.
It's starting to look like there are two possibilities here. Either you're a troll, with nothing better to do than waste my time, or you have severe psychological issues that I'm not qualified to either diagnose or deal deal with. If the latter, I sincerely hope you speak to someone; interestingly, a point I made previously which you did not address.
I'm not going to respond to further emails. I'm not paid enough in AC to deal with this. I have a real life, with real relationships, real children who love me, a job, and work I get paid properly to do. Not this shit.

Always,
your loving friend,

jamz

My attachment (as jamzspam.png):

Dear [I can't read your mind, so you have to put your real name here]:

The attachment I sent you had your full email address. I have redacted the copy that goes to the forum and re-posted it.

Best regards,
Victor

Dear [insert your actual name here, not an alias]:

If you no longer wish to reply, please read this letter, as it addresses everything in your mail and everything in my viewpoint of that mail, and refer me to another one of your representatives, since you seem as if you do not wish to continue to represent them on this matter. It includes advice later on how to configure email servers.

I thought we did have a serious discussion. My reply made sense, if you had translated it to Modern English correctly. We are emailing each other "as one human to another", but also "as corporate bodies trading legalese". I don't know your name, so how am I supposed to address you? Am I to use your alias? I publicly posted these messages as these represent ACR's and AC's representatives trying to resolve issues with each other. If you would like any of those messages taken down, one email can do that.

As per your suggestion, and the suggestions of others, there is now an option to disable console obituaries in favor of the visual ones. That makes the game less "busy". You hoped I speak to someone, which I did. I spoke to you through an email reply. The entire email itself addresses that. You missed more possibilities, such as trying to understand how to get AC to stop hating ACR. If AC hates this project solely because of me, I shall leave it in the future, but possibly not before AC's devs leave theirs.

You don't have to promote a fork, but you do not have to blatantly censor every instance of it. You can, since it is "do not have to" instead of "must not" or "have to not", but you do not even allow your users to mention a name of a fork. If you hate a fork to that extent, you should at least tell them how to resolve it.

Now, the part that you've probably been waiting for: to fix your email servers is to improve everyone's experience.
Please find attached a copy of your email as rendered by me. You now know my time-zone, but I thought you already got it by deleting my AC Forum accounts.
Why does Google think it's spam? Here are three of my theories from Google's help:

• Messages sent from accounts or IP addresses that have sent other spam messages
  • Actually, I didn't see your sending IP as blacklisted by anyone, but how would I know if your IP has been used by someone else in the past to spam?
• Behavior of other Gmail users, such as many people reporting spam from a particular sender
  • Did some former user send spam through your domain/IP in the past?
• Similarity to other spam or phishing messages based on a combination of things like subject matter, elements like spelling and formatting, and suspicious attachments
  • This is actually the most likely.

Perhaps this line will provide more details:
Received: from cubers.net (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])

versus a legit sender:
Received: from BLU142-DS16 ([65.55.111.73]) by blu0-omc2-s14.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);

Best Regards,
Victor

See? AssaultCube's representative will not resolve AC's hate against us. I hope that they will at least fix their email sender, so that it doesn't end up in their recipients' spam box.

[VenteX]

For the record, most people don't appreciate it when you sidetrack their conversation to complain about their grammar. It makes you look pretentious- like that kid in your 8th grade writing class that thought he could impress everyone by swapping every word in each of his essays with ones that contained no less than 4 syllables each.

I'm astounded that you haven't complained about my grammar when I "spammed" your Introductions section. After all, a 16 y/o idiot such as myself must make TONS of mistakes.

[Victor]

Since the word "spam" never appeared anywhere in my conversations with you, it purely means that you are calling yourself a spammer.

Yes, you must make TONS (metaphor/hyperbole) of mistakes. For example, as mentioned above, you probably misunderstood the anti-spam system. The first post a user creates, in the introduction forum, is moderated, but you are allowed to post anywhere 20 minutes after making that post. You called it annoying, but I told you the purpose was to prevent spam.

In a forum, you should be able to use some informal constructs. So starting a sentence with a conjunction like this is fine. And some sentence fragments. If the reader can understand, with no possibility of error due to grammatical reasons, it is usually acceptable. However, e-mail, except personal ones, should usually be using formal grammar.

In addition, you made a grammar mistake:

After all, a 16 y/o idiot such as myself must make TONS of mistakes.

It's fine, since we still understand, and it is a forum, but it should be "me" or "my self". "myself" is reflexive, and "a 16 y/o idiot" does not refer to you, otherwise you would have to replace "a" with "the".

[VenteX]

4th post in my thread:

You can now spam out this forum if you wanted to, since you reached 1 post and waited 20 minutes.

Also, do you want to know how much I care that I made a grammar mistake? None at all, so fuck off. Correcting people doesn't make you look more intelligent.

[Victor]

I correct myself. Since the word "spam" was never used to indicate your past actions, you are calling yourself a spammer.

You can means that you are physically capable. It does not indicate that you have spammed anything.

[pwned]

@VenteX
I just want to point out that the reason why we need that "introduction" thing is because this forum used to get spammed by bots. those so called bots would post ads on the forum which make the forum looks bad. also correcting grammar never hurts anyone. I know i make a lot of grammar mistakes since my native tongue is not English, and i get lazy when writing posts.

@Victor
oh yeah that reminds me. there was a time when a guy also named "victor" who was constantly hacking/trolling in AC, the admins were pretty frustrated with him. there are few IPs blacklisted under name *victor* (name various) on the SK Blacklist. but that was couple of years ago. i already forgot about it
one reason i dont like AC anymore is because pwnage{TyD} along with several other well-known admins. im not going into details.
but anyways. if jamz dont want to solve this. can't we just ignore this? since almost everything you used were licensed except for some sound/texture from makke? it just seems like you are wasting time on him...
(on the side note, i dont mind if jamz see this. he can range ban me whatever. im not gonna play ac again anyways. keep this in mind that some Canadian players will be affected if you range ban me.)

[Victor]

Yes, VenteX, as he repeated, the introductions forum prevents spam.

There are some example forums: Forums 1-3, Introductions Forum, Forums 5-n. Let's say that the spambot likes Forum 5. It can't post there, since only the Introductions Forum is possible. Then the bot fails. This is very effective, since all those spambots "didn't want to introduce themselves". If spambots start posting there, a new strategy will be employed. Everyone who posts into the introductions forum can automatically be able to post anywhere else, after 20 minutes.

That "victor" might have been me, but I stopped playing AC. In fact, I started ACR originally as a project to fix AC (switch sides to anti-cheat), but the gameplay modifications changed it into a new game.

[Jagged]

"My policy is to not cheat on games that I created." Looks like a split infinitive to me. "you do not have to blatantly censor every instance of it." And another one! Letters may be written in thoroughly formal English, but e-mails rarely are unless they are corporate. "My reply made sense, if you had translated it to Modern English correctly." Poor use of conditional there, it should be either, "would have made sense", or "makes sense" and "if you translate". Practiseth that which thou preachest!

I believe that it was a bit of an exaggeration to write that grammar correction to jamz. He is maintaining the community best he can, and what's the point in correcting his grammar? I'm not going down the "I don't give a fuck" route, but it doesn't help your argument. jamz banned me, but he was utterly justified in the sense that he's set a precedent for the community. It does seem that you are legally allowed to operate this game, but don't attack jamz - and if you do, why not just attack his points. The grammar is irrelevant and simply serves to irritate. I do like ACR though