But no, I'm not going to accuse TBH of being bullies, I'll leave that to others. In fact I commend Rawr for taking a principled stand against participating in TBR's attempt on RORMS a couple of weeks ago, for which they weren't able to get enough endos. He mentioned that the griefing of Region of reunited muslim states had been too intense for his liking. Guess I'm not the only one, eh?Greetings gameplay, I would like to discuss the topic of political and ideological bias in the R/D game. Or perhaps more specifically, I would like to bring up the topic of The Black Riders alleged anti-islam bias and why it isn't what people say it is.
Above, I have included four very recent quotations from UDL defenders referring to TBR's alleged bias. It should be noted that while these quotes serve the purpose of helping us make our point, they are not important in and of themselves. I could replace the quotes with any number of other ones and my argument here would still stand.
The assertions themselves are highlighted in bright red so you can see them. In the first and second quote from Cormac, you can see how he asserts that TBR really does have an anti-muslim bias without providing any evidence for his claim, and also asserts that there is clear pattern in the way TBR conducts its raids.
Unibot uses slightly stronger language and says that there is a noticeable trend, and even that "eastern and Islamic regions are disproportionally represented in the list of victims." Now if no list of victims existed, then it would simply be my word against his. However, we DO have a list of victims, and I would like to show you just how Unibot lies here.
http://www.nswiki.net/index.php?title=L ... ack_Riders
Above is a link to the incomplete list of regions TBR has raided since its inception. I call it incomplete because it doesn't record our failed raids and/or very minor assists with other organizations, but it is more than enough to make the point. Also included is a spoiler list with all of the "eastern" or "islamic" regions from our NSWiki page set aside for scrutiny.
Of TBR's 259-269 successful raids since its founding, only fourteen would be considered "eastern or islamic". Only FOURTEEN. This would mean that only about 5.4% of TBR's total raids are on Islamic targets. Now look at Unibot's previous assertion and see how dishonest it is.
Unibot II wrote:Raiders often suggest that they do not choose targets on the basis of political justification, they just pick twenty fairly random regions in an update to tag. Observers have reason to question how committed you are to "random" and "purely chaotic" destruction, when it seems like eastern and Islamic regions are disproportionally represented in the list of victims.
I don't care how much you spin this. This is not a "pattern", nor is this is a "noticeable trend". This is clear misinformation. No spinster in the world could make 5.4% into a "disproportionate share" of TBR's raids. But suppose the defenders use a couple arguments:
"The raid on RORM was really bad."
"A couple of your members posted really naughty comments on RORM's regional message board."
"You stayed in RORM for over a month."
Notice that none of these points would change anything. All three of these points could be true and TBR could still be unbiased. Allowing ourselves to get bogged down in the minutiae of a single raid is a distraction, and does nothing to establish a "pattern of targeting islamic regions". To assert that there is a pattern, the defenders have to provide more evidence than three or four raids out of hundreds.
If anyone would like to dispute or challenge what I've said here, I invite them to talk about it in this thread. But I believe that the moralists are clearly in the wrong here.
