Well it appears that Sergeant Mark IV has been banned from the Zdoom & Zandronum forums..
Apparently someone on the forums was complaining about the mod and he told the guy to go kill himself, well I suppose that could have gone over better. But if anyone took it that seriously I think thats a bit ridiculous how some other people took it seriously eventhough it wasn't directed at them.
Regardless I think that he should eventually be unbanned.
If you wanna find out the why and how,
Zandronum.com
For more info you can contact the admins. the link is here.
This may sound unapologetic to unban him just "because", but I think that no ban should be a permanent one just because he has a tendency to sound rather abrasive. Being blunt and callous does have a negative effect on the community on a smaller level.. but we're not really speaking about just one person here. Really what does that have to do with all the contributions hes made to the modding community? The wider benefit of having a big contributor to the community?
Because he wants to contribute, he wants to breath life into Doom, and hes been doing that for awhile now with little help.
Brutal Doom has been, largely, a spearhead to bring modders together. The huge rise in popularity of Doom, and Doom 2, and many other games on the engine has been tremendous. Hes changed our perspectives of what we thought was a "outdated" game, and showed that it's not only relevant to gaming but MORE FUN than the vast majority of titles we pay lots of money for.
I don't want to be the naysayer of doom, but if this means that we we will not be seeing much of Brutal Doom or the other of the various stuff Sergeant Mark IV is working on, that would be really disheartening.
Brutal Doom is pretty much synonymous with Doom now. We owe alot to something as "unlikely to become so popular" as a gore mod, to be pushing the boundaries of modding and our perspectives on Doom, its like a central hub for modders now.
The moderators giving infractions and warnings to anyone who wants to discuss his ban, just voicing our opinions.. under threat of being banned? Is that how we deal with issues? sweep it under the rug? Why not let the people decide his punishment and whether his presence is negative or not.
Everyone needs time to cool down, peoples get upset and then things die down.
I think downgrade his ban to a temporary one. I think that's fair.
I will say this here since I will get hammered for trying to on the forums. The reason they banned Sarge wasn't so much because of the stuff he posts, but because of the reactions the forumites get when he does. And because people TRY to start ****, whether it was negative or positive in reply, the mods/admins have to step in. And the staff on Zdoom Forums are punchy, they get irritated easily like they are doing a job they don't want to, and often issue warnings and strikes to lame reasons.
nailed it.
I love how they keep saying you dont joke about suicide and then say hes worse than hitler for suggesting a way to suicide to an 18 year old who wanted to disembowel himself. The blood of about 6 million jews (including kids and unborn babies) are in hitlers hand, so the "worse than hitler" thing is seriously bad and just as well, not a thing to joke about. ****** hypocrites. Also, I totally agree with the temporary ban. Not to mention they ALWAYS judge people by the bad things they do, and never by the good things. Sarge gave us soooo much, and he WAS a good developer (that maybe went too far to the haters / dislikers of his mod) and a temporary ban is much better than an infinite one.
If you look at the post at the end of the thread:
Forum.zdoom.org
I don't see any good reasoning, anywhere behind why he was perma banned. Any conversation about it is killed off by admins to "protect the community". I'm disappointed in everyone involved, whether it be the admins, Sarge and especially the people who went around posting about Sarge's thread.
Xaser was going around promoting the "hate this modder and the mod because of what he posted" in every place Brutal Doom had a name for it in when that suicide thread came up. That stunt is what got Sarge banned on Zandronum, so, I think they were targeting him on purpose and getting away with it because they are "well known people". Starting those threads is what lead to the flamewars and what brought the need to take action and "protect the community".. which for some reason involved banning Sarge.
And yet the people who started those threads weren't banned, it all just acted as a way to sway the admins to their advantage... either that or one or more of the admins being the oldschool Doomers that they are, just wanted an excuse to get rid of Sarge.
My argument is this...
I've played Brutal Doom, which actually got me re-interested in this old game. It's not 100% perfect, but it's damn close.
While there is a lot of things going around, let me play Devil's Advocate here with some harsh overtones and brutal honesty. It might/will be NSFW and for Mature audiences (you've been warned):
1. Brutal Doom, nor any Doom mod is under any real stickler licenses other than good faith and public domain. This isn't the ******* commie Stallman **** sucking and chode swallowing GPL trying to say "You have to give credit or else we're going to tell on you!". GPL can go **** itself to death for all I care. You want a real license use BSDL or MIT then you can have total control as author. If not shut your **** hole mouth up.
2. It's been a WIP Mod since day 1. Stuff is always being added and changed so this "spaghetti code" the guys at ZDoom bitch about like little snowflakes is un-optimized scripts and stuff that's getting things working. Is any WIP code going to be streamlined or non-spaghetti? No... If they wanted to be helpful rather than ********* they could actually offer to fix things and make things better, but no, they armchair and cry and tell Mark is work is ****. If they actually cared they themselves would want Brutal Doom to succeed. After all Brutal Doom requires gzdoom or zandronum which has regenerated interest in those engines.
3. Was it wrong of Mark to tell someone to go kill themselves? Probably not if you think about it. It's his work, even if not all of it is his source, his efforts, and his baby to maintain. I don't condone suicide, but when you have armchair judges trying to say this and that when they aren't working on anything, or even trying to fix stuff, sometimes it doesn't hurt to tell some pecker head to go shove his head in a trash compactor and hit the start button while the kiddies watch on eating popcorn.
4. Is there jealousy or ego? If you had John Romero, one of the original Doom team, tell you publicly your work is something that would have literally nuked the gaming industry back in the 1990s, and is badass, you get an ego and you have jealous pricks who think they know better than you. Do you now blame Mark IV for being the way he is? No blame the ***** at zdoom who armchaired ********.