April Fools Gone Wrong

Post by **Tigereye** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:39 am

I have something to say to all of you, and I'm sure you're all going to end up hating me for it.
These last few days worth of drama was started by what was supposed to be a small phase in an elaborate April Fools prank. Instead it has spiraled out of control so much that it has begun tearing the community apart.

As much as I hate ruining pranks before they're played out, this situation has quickly fallen out of "prank" territory and has begun harming the community. That is where it stops.

The goal was to add a small ounce of credibility to a prank which was planned for April 1st or the day before. The prank was to implement a callsign randomization feature so that anyone logging in on that day will log in with "Pilot12345" or some other number. Since this move on April 1st would have been an obvious April Fools prank, we decided to do something to "pretext" it so that it would appear PLAUSIBLE that this prank may actually be true. The next day we would have turned the system off, revealed the prank and everyone would have had a laugh.

Unfortunately that's not what happened.

In order to add this small ounce of credibility, we decided to bring stacking to the foreground by appearing to "crack down" on it. We created fake players (like Joseph1 and CanaryDude) for the sole purpose of banning them for stacking in order to make a *SMALL* public outcry a week beforehand. We anticipated the community reacting to the bans and starting a topic about stacking, the pros/cons of using banning to combat it, and were hoping someone would suggest some automated system to perform it automatically. (we know an automated anti-stacking system is impossible because stacking is subjective, but hey it's a prank.) We would then run with this player's proposal and announce that we have in fact created such a system and will be turning it on shortly, which would be just in time for April Fools. From start to finish, a 1 week prank.

This is what was planned.
Instead, this is what actually happened.We did not communicate. When we started to make stacking a "problem", we did not make a post warning everyone that stacking was going to be enforced. In hindsight, this one simple act is all that was ever needed to kickstart the pretext we wanted.BV and I both got impatient. We wanted to pull the prank so bad that we just went with it. We began the "create a small public outcry" phase too early and banned the first fake player, Joseph1We decided to improvise. We asked some real players online if we can use them for an April Fool's prank. Beer, Defiance, and a few others were TREMENDOUS sports and said "Yeah I can go without Allegiance for a bit to see a prank play out" and allowed us to ban them. So we did.We banned too many. Instead of creating the small public outcry about stacking, we appeared to ban so many people that we shifted the focus from stacking to abuse of administrative privilege. The threads we helped cultivate were no longer discussing the topic we wanted to be in the front of everyone's minds, they were about the community taking sides in some epic crusade.When I realized things started to spin out of control, I decided to do what I can to help the community see that this was fake. If you look over my posts again you'll see that every one was pointing to the people who were calling the situation "a joke". That's why I praised Psychosis and NightRychune after their words, and it's also why I hinted that things may appear different in the near future.

To anyone who was PMing me, I carefully tried to hint that things will change "in 7 days" or whatever, pointing to April 1st. I also tried to post as much out of character as possible so that those who knew me would see that it isn't really me. I mean - come on. When was the last time I sided with something without listing every possible argument for it? You guys know I can't state an opinion without posting a book on all the reasons why it's the right one! I thought my blog was a dead giveaway, but apparently I suck at that too.

So here we are with a fence drawn throughout the community dividing it into three camps. Those who are for the admins, those who are against them, and everyone else who is throwing their arms in the air saying doubleyou-tee-eff. I took a prank suggestion from Pook and thoroughly ruined it, but it is not me who is bearing the burden of a prank-gone-wrong... it is the entire community.
I cannot possibly write down how sick this makes me feel. I am the community administrator who is supposed to do things to help the community and now I look and see my hands have done the exact opposite.

I'm sorry to Pook for taking his good prank idea and $#@!ing it up.
I'm sorry to the ZLs who I told about the prank and asked them to keep quiet about it and not give it away. That must have been a terrible burden to uphold, seeing the community like this without being able to intervene.
I'm sorry to BlackViper and Pook for giving this prank away right now, but well, this was needed.
And most importantly I'm sorry to the entire community for misusing the trust you have all placed in me. Pranks are fun but this... this was just bad.

But hey. There's actually a bright side to all of this.Nobody was *actually* banned at all, so nobody got hurt. All of the real players who helped participate in this prank will have the bans removed so it doesn't affect their autobans.There is no silly ban crackdown on stacking because policy hasn't changedAll of those posts you read over the last 3 days where TE sounded completely out of character and off his rocker? Well they were done like that on purpose, so you can stop reading into them.That just-for-fun imbalance=na game where I banned BEER for stacking because I apparently can't read? Yeah that was done on purpose too because it was the most preposterous situation I could have thought of.Stacking seems to have actually declined out of this! but that just may be because people are scared of being banned for eternity :s
At the very least, everyone's thinking about it now which can only be a good thing, right?...and probably the brightest part about it all is: you got to see just how BAD a sense of humour I have, and have all earned the right to never let me live this down because let's face it - I don't think it's possible to have a WORSE outcome for GOOD intentions, do you? /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

I will be moving the "planning" threads from the private forums here into the public so you can see how our intentions were drastically different.
They are here:
http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=40321
http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=39927

Thanks for reading this post, and if you didn't already, thanks for not losing all faith.
I apologize to all of you for the outcome of this prank, and hope you can forgive me for what has resulted.

For now, let's pick up where we left off last week and move forward. This community has made it through far worse situations that were done by intention, surely we can recover from this situation that occurred by accident.

--TE

Paradigm2 · Post by **Paradigm2** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:45 am

Man... I kept telling people to think about it, it only took me about 30 seconds.

And NO I was not privvy to this thread or information.

It was more:

1. Is this in character of TE and BV
2. Does it make any sense the people they banned
3. None of the other "main guys" in the community were saying anything.

SP4WN · Post by **SP4WN** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:46 am

/doh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doh:" border="0" alt="doh.gif" /> /laugh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":lol:" border="0" alt="laugh.gif" />

Bard · Post by **Bard** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:51 am

ROFL.

Something in the back of my head told me not to get my panties in a bunch over this.

Thanks for attempting to bring some april joy into our lives, even if it didn't work out.

I think people just get weird over long winters. This could have been epic.

Ah well. Next time /mrgreen.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="mrgreen.gif" />

Zapper · Post by **Zapper** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:55 am

Damn.. the minut i read the board and saw the post "So admins ban stackers now?", and looked up the ban list i realized it was a prank, and only 5(6 ducky included) people got enuf humor to understand that, yet i set forth to buy a web domain and setup a new crude forum with the title "New free allegiance" ofcause first topic would be "donate to the Stacker defence fund, free allegiance, again"..

Ohh well.
Thx, TE and BV.... better luck next year.

Z

Bard · Post by **Bard** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:58 am

Zapper wrote:QUOTE (Zapper @ Mar 25 2008, 01:55 AM) "donate to the Stacker defence fund, free allegiance, again"..

NightRychune · Post by **NightRychune** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:00 am

Pssh. It was partly MY idea, too, dammit.

I knew something was up. There's a reason I didn't jump to the "OMG TEH ADMINZ IS EVIL N ABUSIN POWER GAIZ" conclusion most other people did.

Post by **Tigereye** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:03 am

wait... so far every one of you knew it was a prank?

Do you mean to tell me that there was a good possibility that this all could have actually worked in the end?!

I'm starting to wonder if I'm the one who was pranked by the community by acting like they believed it too seriously :s :s

oh man that would be so evil of you guys /blink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":o" border="0" alt="blink.gif" />

--TE

Zapper · Post by **Zapper** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:09 am

I totally agree that the stamped would have killed some games, with retaliatory booting and anarchy.. but hey.
1 week before april + the players have to much time = alleg drama.

Pink board was better... /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

zecro · Post by **zecro** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:11 am

At first I was all like "WTF" and then I lol'd.

Now all we have to look forward to is another pink forum. Oh well, maybe it'll be green or something this year.