Yes lets make me one that believes in a conspiracy, just make me look like a senile person, perhaps it aids in your argumentation?
Since there are players who have expressed that exact belief, it wasn't an attempt to paint you as senile, but rather an honest question. If you had answered in the affirmative, it is true that I would have discounted what you said a lot more, however.
Thats where there is a significant error in your words. They actually should be your best buddies.
That's your opinion, to which you are certainly entitled, but I don't share it.
They should have feeling for the situation. Effectiveness is measured by Quality times Acceptation. I have no doubt your Quality is perfect, but your Acceptation is severely lacking and thus your effectiveness is zero. In fact perhaps this entire Atanamir situation would have been averted if you Titans did have any empathy.
I'm not sure where you get that formula, it's not one I recognize.
As for empathy, I can assure you that the Titans have plenty of it. There is actually a pretty good mix in there right now, with some who would prefer to just press the "lightning bolt" button whenever someone steps out of line, and others who would prefer to give lots of gentle warnings and reminders of the rules, and rarely remove people from positions or take other punitive action.
I think what you are missing is that the Titans need to empathize not just with those being reported, but with those who are reporting them—people who feel that their experience of the game is being damaged, either through violations of the Inalienable Rights or Social Contract, multicheaters, or situations like the most recent one with Atanamir. It sounds like you would have the Titans think mainly of the people they punish, and ignore the people being wronged by other players, which we will not do.
There is no other way for me to complain against a Titan is there?
There is, and you know it perfectly well. You can email Tom, and state your case to him.
In fact we do not even know who they are, how competent they are and if they are doing their job properly.
No, you do not get to know who they are, because they are players, too, and they deserve to be able to play the game without people like you harassing them constantly about this decision or that.
Instead, you have to
trust the creator of the game and his very small, volunteer support staff (led by me) to keep them honest and make sure that they are doing their jobs.
If I where in your position I would thank the person for the feedback and accepted. But then again, you do not want to hear feedback since you do not want to improve yourself.
If it had been constructive criticism, that is exactly what I would have done (though I would also have told you that you weren't going about it in the right way). It was not constructive criticism. It was blatant, unvarnished insult. That's not useful feedback, and cannot help to improve anyone.
If you really think the Titan system should be a 911-like system then this game will result in an inevitable close down. You should be using it to improve the gameplay atmosphere, another think in which your entirely lacking.
How, exactly, would you suggest doing that?
It sounds to me like you expect the Titans to be something that they were never intended to be. They were created in about 2005 as a group of players who could help Tom to deal with players who broke the rules, so that he didn't have to do it all on his own. That was their
specific mandate: to punish breaches of the Inalienable Rights and the Social Contract. Not to improve the atmosphere or anything along those lines.
To be clear, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to
have a group of players tasked with trying to improve the atmosphere in the game. I've seen a lot of times where the atmosphere definitely leaves a lot to be desired. But that's not the Titans' job, so complaining that they're not doing it is somewhat out of place.
Instead of giving developers access to this kind of system I would suggest giving people with people's skills access to this system. It would be FAR more effective.
You seem to have an image of "developers" as pimply-faced geeks with absolutely no social skills who sit in basements all day long and write code, never talking to a human being.
I can assure you (though you may not believe me) that that's far from the case.
To be sure, none of us are big party people (at least, that I know of!), but that doesn't mean that we're unqualified to do the jobs of Titans. Again, I think you're misunderstanding the fundamental nature of what the Titans are meant to be.
Where we need people with people skills is as community managers, not Titans.
