This is an interesting thread.

Most interesting because it exemplifies one of the key issues with an online community:

Typed messages fail 90% of the time in carrying their intent.

I am a member of both sites. I am privy to V-set info as I am an admin on Gamers. Does this make me cool? I don't think it does. People don't often seem to care what I have to say, and I'm not a genius player (I am pretty good though! :D ).

It would be nice it we were all on the same website, but that isn't likely to happen.

@ desire for V-set stats on squad builder:
You can't have them because:
A) the set isn't done and ready to be released
and
B) If we got a Cease and Desist letter, how long do you think it would take to get the content removed from Bloomilk? On Gamers there are 7 people who can do that.. and one of us is usually online. On Bloo, only Shinja could, and I know that sometimes life gets people busy. Dean is asking that Shinja get someone Shinja trusts to look after things when he can't be here. Once that is done, I'm sure that you could be free to post whatever V-set stuff you wanted.

Now that you've finished reading, or ignoring my post, I hope some things are more or less cleared up.

I didn't deny that some elitism does exist. It's like the High School example I gave. Yeah, guys like Dean, Bill, Deri, Dennis, myself, etc....we feel sometimes like we don't deserve the crap we have to put up with. We have poured out our lives for this community, day after day after day.

The amount of time I spend on these forums is absolutely insane. And I do 95% of my forum involvement while I'm sitting at my desk for my job. Now, I don't get in trouble for it at work, but if I wasn't spending my time doing this, I could probably be doing a LOT better at my job, and would've probably had some nice promotions and raises by now. But you know what, it's more important for me to contribute to the community, help out fellow players, give advice, critique squads, help run things behind the scenes...all of that stuff. I sacrifice parts of MY OWN LIFE in order to help this community.

So....yeah, that makes me a little irritated when someone who's been around only a year or two, and has done pretty much nothing outside of post on the forums here and there, starts belittling the work we've done. And I can tell you, THIS is how others like Dean and Bill feel. So, yeah, there's a small feeling of elitism there. But we are human beings. That kind of thing is going to exist, and if people can't deal with it, and learn to work around it (THIS IS THE KEY), then you won't get along here, let alone the rest of life. Oh yeah, because that's right. Elitism exists in the workplace too. At an office, on military bases, corporations, heck even fast food joints. Other people recognize who the ones are that put in tons of effort, and who the people are who sit back and just do the bear minimum. So when the guy doing the bear minimum starts to make a big fuss about the guy who pours his heart out for the job getting a promotion...well, yeah, there's some hard feelings there.

THIS IS LIFE, PEOPLE. Learn to deal with it, and learn to deal with it in CONSTRUCTIVE ways.

If Dean says that jealousy is not part of the reason for witholding the V Sets....then TRUST HIM....regardless of what you THINK might be going on. And if you think there's something else going on, and Dean is lying about on the forums, unless you have irrefutable proof, then DON'T POST IT IN PUBLIC. Send a PM and deal with it offline. Get other community members involved.

Honestly, I think that's also part of why things get so crazy here at BM, because people just post in the open like crazy about whatever problem it is they have, rather than PM'ing the person. People like the anonymity of a forum, rather than being personal with each other. Don't be afraid to be personal.

Anyway...sort of straying there....but yeah, some elitism is going to exist, that's just a fact of life. But like I said, I truly feel like most of that is perpetuated by those who think of themselves as "non-elite". Perhaps there are some times where things are said behind closed doors, where one person is venting about somebody else or whatever. Yeah, that kind of stuff could be considered elitism. But honestly, I consider it friends chatting with each other, and working out their frustrations.

Great points Eric,

I remember back 2 years ago at Gencon talking with Chris West. He had made the Dagobah map and he had 2 versions. One with an x-wing and another without. Well guess which one got published? The one without. Why fear of LFL seeing that x-wing and knowing it is their property. So what do you think?

Do you think LFL will know who Exar Kuhn is? Bastila Shan? Wedge Antilles?

Your point is spot on Eric.

Did anyone ask LFL what they thought? If not, why not, if so, what was the result?

Well, honestly, I just don't see any jealousy involved here. At least not from what I've seen, and perhaps maybe I've just missed it. So, if you need to, JC, feel free to PM me about it if I'm missing something.

But, if there was any jealousy between Gamers/Bloomilk, then that would've been 2+ years ago when Shinja started the site. Just like JC and Mapmaker, over time, you get over that part of it. So Bloomilk has more members than Gamers. So what. Bloomilk has a squad builder and Gamers doesn't. So what. This isn't a contest, and we don't want it to be one. We want it to be a community. Yeah, there were some hurt feelings early on when Bloomilk got started, because at the time, Gamers was fairly young too, and we had hoped that combining the two sites would create a really strong central community. But that's not the direction Shinja wanted to go, which is just how it is, sometimes. So what.

The issue of there not being a super mod here is THE issue that is keeping the V Sets from being available here. I'm sure there may be some other under-lying problems as well, but as I said in my earlier posts, we all just have to learn to deal with those, as we are human, and flawed, and often those things will rear their ugly heads from time to time. But Dean has said over and over and over and over again, if there are more people at Bloomilk that have access to the full site, and could pull down info out of the squad builder at a moment's notice, then the V Sets would be here right away.

Again, as an example, we've got 7 people at Gamers who have Admin powers on the forums, and 5 of those people have Admin powers on the main www.swmgamers.com homepage as well. Bloomilk has just 1 person with that kind of access....one! And there are THREE TIMES as many users on BM as there are on Gamers. So that's a total of a 21:1 ratio! That's a HUGE difference. Shinja is often unavailable, and there's nothing wrong with that....real life should ALWAYS come before SWMs. But that's why backup people are needed instead. The Mods at Gamers know that they can probably reach one of the admins at any time if an emergency comes up. It may not be me or Dean, but one of the other guys. Who knows. But there are at least options. We just simply do not have that at Bloomilk yet.

As soon as that goes into place....V Set stuff everywhere. We WANT to share the info everywhere. But Dean is right to try and protect himself somewhat. Some of you think he's being overprotective. That may be true, but that's your opinion. You have no facts to support that he'd be fine disseminating the info however he wants. The basic premise is, Dean would like to share the V Sets with everyone. But, if a Cease and Desist letter were to arrive to Dean, but then the V Sets weren't taken down off of Bloomilk for a couple days, a week, however long....there's the potential there that LFL could pursue further legal action against Dean for failing to remove the info. Yes, it could happen. So he has a legitimate concern, and he's listed what it would take for that concern to be alleviated. Until that happens, there is absolutely no reason to assume that there are any other motives at work.


@crazybirdman: On the one hand, it's very difficult to get a hold of the right people to ask that kind of question. On the other hand, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. ;) But yes, some people have been consulted. The general consensus is that as long as no one is making money off of the project, then it shouldn't be a problem. However, since we are printing the cards, and collecting money to cover costs (which would still be perfectly legal), it's still worth being careful to not draw attention. LFL could issue a Cease and Desist just because they feel like it, without any good legal reason. But in order to fight the C&D, Dean (or whoever) would have to front the money to go to court and fight LFL's lawyers on it. And I doubt any of us could afford a lawyer good enough to beat the lawyer's the LFL could afford. That's basically what it boils down to.

Precisely! And without the "wall of text" syndrome I suffer from. :P

I think it's important for everyone to keep in mind that Shinja created the entire non-forum part of the site from scratch himself. The type of controls that limited-access admins would need to just "turn off" the V-set data from the squad-builder are probably just not there yet, and I'll *speculate* that he is working on this. A lot of re-engineering is probably involved.

If it were my site, I certainly wouldn't give anyone access such that they could accidentally wreck half of the place. So, understanding the situation, we just all have to be patient. It will be a while yet before the set drops anyway.

Group hug?

If the V-sets can't be in the BM squad builder due to one person access, why can't the stats be shared in a thread in the BM forums? There are plenty of mods who could yank that quickly if ever the need arose. It happened once already.

It probably could. You will recall, the issue that precipitated that was a mod acting out of control among other things. Since it seems that's been covered, and the new mods have shown that they do a good job, I'd have no problem with that. But the reasons to not do it are 2.

1. Time - It's worth waiting until some time had past from that event to ensure it was cleaned up properly. Looks like we are getting there, but it's not a bad thing to be cautious about it.

2. Discrepancy - as soon as you allow talk, everyone will just start complaining about it not being in the squad builder. And since we don't know for certain that Shinja is working on a permanent solution, there's a reason to just hold off until the right time.

But if you want to talk about a figure here, that's fine with me. Just don't post a full stat set or some such that would be hard to track. Honestly though, at the current moment, there is no reason someone can't do the same at Gamers. So until things are fixed here, why keep asking? The situation is the way it is, and until it's fixed and Dean is happy with the fix, it's not gonna change. Pushing for this or that just keeps the problem coming up for more chances to get upset about it.