We Are Not Predators, and You Are Not Prey

[Raionitu]

I do not appreciate your final comment Cormac, as in it you are essentially calling me a liar or cheater, and saying that everyone involved in DEN is a liar and or cheater. With your comment you are acting little better than the people who are overreacting and saying that this makes all raiders bad. I find it hard to take advice from people who will turn to comments and insults like that, while claiming to have good solutions. It's a little thing called respect.

I'm neither calling you a liar nor a cheater, and I apologize if that seemed to be what I was saying. I'm saying that the responsibility for Predator lies with raiders, and we shouldn't be saying defenders should have been checking to see if Predator was legal -- that was on us, it was our triggering tool. Trying to include anyone else in responsibility for this is way off base and is unprofessional. That's all I'm saying.

I understand, and I agree that we should have done more ourselves.
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. My original post was a reply to a question about non raider knowledge of Predator, and you are turning it into me pushing blame off raiders.
In the end, it comes down to your personal opinion and belief of who all was responsible, and I think you're the one being unprofessional by saying I'm unprofessional by disagreeing with you.

EDIT: see how easy it is to make someone seem unprofessional? Whether of not some one is unprofessional is half based on your opinion and belief!

[Souseiseki]

I've been reading through much of the information/evidence presented about the scandal the past few days. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't many people, not just raiders, know that Predator was controlled by a DoS player? Public conversations on this very forum often included snippets about this "mysterious tool" that General Halcones controlled, if I recall correctly.

Yes. I believe there was even at least one defender who was able to look over Predator code, and did not find a fault (see http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... #p26944459 , there were later discussion but I cannot find the post at the moment, I believe they are somewhere in Benevolent Thomas's thread "my thoughts")

That also shows all the people who said raiders "should have done more" that it was not just raiders. At least one defender has stated they had access to Predator, and they did not report it either. Trying to point blame at the raiders is, quite frankly, pointless. If you know someone who specifically broke rules, send a GHR, don't sit here and repeatedly talk about how horrible raiders were for not knowing Predator was bad.

It's worth noting that as far as I know they had the actual source code. If they did that is a fairly major deal.

[Cormactopia II]

I understand, and I agree that we should have done more ourselves.
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. My original post was a reply to a question about non raider knowledge of Predator, and you are turning it into me pushing blame off raiders.
In the end, it comes down to your personal opinion and belief of who all was responsible, and I think you're the one being unprofessional by saying I'm unprofessional by disagreeing with you.

I apologize for misinterpreting you, then. I would caution you to be more careful how you words things though, because I'm not the only one who read your post that way. But thank you for clarifying what you meant and, again, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Raionitu]

I understand, and I agree that we should have done more ourselves.
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. My original post was a reply to a question about non raider knowledge of Predator, and you are turning it into me pushing blame off raiders.
In the end, it comes down to your personal opinion and belief of who all was responsible, and I think you're the one being unprofessional by saying I'm unprofessional by disagreeing with you.

I apologize for misinterpreting you, then. I would caution you to be more careful how you words things though, because I'm not the only one who read your post that way. But thank you for clarifying what you meant and, again, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

I went back and edited my original post to clarify. I would ask that you not disregard and insult anything that disagrees with you, as that is what I view as unprofessional.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

To add on to Predator adding to overall raiding publicity and destruction - that may be a bit of a misstatement. Yes, Predator was responsible for the level of tagging - but not necessarily by nature of it's illegalities. Preliminary testing on other tools shows that a legal tool in the same vein with a fraction of the calls to update times should be as little a second more off than Predator was, and would be able to have all of the same other functions. The illegality was, frankly, entirely unnecessary and didn't add all that much accuracy to the tool. If Predator hadn't existed, a legal alternative would probably just have come about far sooner. It's really not all that difficult in concept to do, if a fair bit of actual coding, it was just largely put off because most anyone who wanted access to something that did basically all the work for them could get it. Now that there's a demand for one again, you'll probably see an equally effective but perfectly legal tool sometime in the next few months.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Yes. I believe there was even at least one defender who was able to look over Predator code, and did not find a fault (see http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... #p26944459 , there were later discussion but I cannot find the post at the moment, I believe they are somewhere in Benevolent Thomas's thread "my thoughts")

That also shows all the people who said raiders "should have done more" that it was not just raiders. At least one defender has stated they had access to Predator, and they did not report it either. Trying to point blame at the raiders is, quite frankly, pointless. If you know someone who specifically broke rules, send a GHR, don't sit here and repeatedly talk about how horrible raiders were for not knowing Predator was bad.

It's worth noting that as far as I know they had the actual source code. If they did that is a fairly major deal.

In line with my post here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=371493&p=28116331#p28116331

If they did have the source code, that's more than probably any user on our side past Halc himself had. Even those with an idea how it worked behind the panel knew so from a combination of chatting with Halc and filling in the pieces themselves.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I will add that your posts (especially this one), in which you try to evade any responsibility for the raider community and even try to point the finger at defenders, aren't helpful and are just making raiders look worse. You should perhaps leave this to COE or someone else from the Council of the Hawks, because your posts are not representative of the views of your leadership based on what I've been hearing, and you're making The Black Hawks look unprofessional, to say the least, by flying that flag while you evade and point fingers. That flag is better than this -- I think perhaps you'd look better in blue and gold.

Once again, this is thread for clearing the air and speaking honestly, not a thread for damage control and reputation management. Raionitu speaks for himself, and I believe he is speaking honestly. He has accepted responsibility for his part in the Predator scandal (that is, being too quick to accept directions for his leaders without question, and participating in tag raids that were triggered by Predator) and he has made a commitment to do better in the future. He has expressed confusion that the expressions of contrition and remorse are being met by scorn and ridicule by some. He has pointed out that it may be unfair to place the blame for Predator's illegality going unnoticed solely on raiders, since its existence, origin and basic function was basically public knowledge, and no one else thought to prompt a moderator investigation of it either.

None of this seems like evading guilt or shifting blame to me, on a personal level. On an official level, in my capacity as a leader in TBH, I resent that you are characterizing Rai as a poor example of a Black Hawk, and insinuating that he does not belong with us. Rai is a valued member of The Black Hawks, and he doesn't have to take that.

I understand (having read the posts in this thread that have appeared since I began this reply) that your words stem in part from a misunderstanding of Raionitu's post. However, even if your initial understanding of Raionitu's post had been accurate, I think that your reply was unwarranted.

[The Will of Kane]

Late to the party I know.

I did use Predator personally, with the last time being many many months before Halc was deleted. By the time TBR fell I was logging on once a month just to be active due in the main to rl issues.
I used the earlier versions of the tool when it was still teething and would seize up as often as it worked well, and we were sworn to secrecy for the usual opsec reasons. It honestly never occurred to me that the tool was then or would be developed into something that broke the rules. Halc has been around a long time both as TBR founder and with his previous raiding career. I trusted him to adhere to the rules...there's also my total lack of coding knowledge even if I had seen the script. After a few months, a hardware change took me off the authorization list and I was never re-added.
Regardless, I did use it and initially embraced the charge towards what I saw as the industrialization of tagging until we achieved it. After a few weeks it became clear that the tool did only one thing that other methods and tools could not do but that one thing was huge. Consistency.

I've raided pre-predator and gods willing I'll continue post, and have seen manually triggered jumps of less than a second many times. What the tool did was make that accuracy repeatable on a consistently large scale. I'm not trying to minimize it's impact, quite the opposite- anyone involved in r/d will understand right away what a massive advantage this is. Removing the human element from target acquisition and timing was a ridiculous advantage, and as the tool was ironed out it only became more so.

The thing is, and I'm probably showing my age here, but I need defenders. As COE said, we are adversaries not enemies, as a raider without them I am nothing. It is our opposing numbers that give us a yardstick to measure ourselves against. The fact that we had been given a way to virtually eliminate them from the process gave me pause and eventually robbed the process of any enjoyment. I came back to TBR after a brief break and participated in a tag run where someone was triggering with the tool. It was terribly impersonal and ultimately pointless and I became inactive again. Where is the test of skill and thrill of fallibility in maneuvering when a script is giving the orders? Regardless, I stopped tagging and never had anything to do with the tool again in any capacity.

So although I don't know any of you guys personally, I do know some of you by name at the least, and I'd like to honestly apologize to the Defender community for being involved in the use of this. The fact that it's illegal is really just a reason to say it, but it has been needed to be said for some time, at least from me. It is r AND d- you guys make the game possible in so many ways. That our side stepped beyond the boundaries of our enjoyable conflict into pointless superiority, and the fact that it was done in breach of site rules are BOTH things we should be sorry for.
And I am.
Though we both have our systems, powergaming is not something I endorse on any platform.

I'd also like to say that the scoring of political points or general crusading against all raiders due to this issue strikes me as sad. The Admins will decide what measures are to be taken and can probably come to their own conclusions without suggestions on how wide a net to cast, though they are no doubt grateful for the advice.

The general restraint and graciousness shown by most Defenders is more than admirable. Had the situation been reversed I would hope our side would have shown such maturity and control, though I have my doubts.
So in closing, my sincere apologies to our opposite numbers whom we cheated, the regions who fell victim to our intrusions when they should never have happened, the general community for the feeling of unease that accompanied what became a rampage through Nationstates based on cheating. To the mods and admins as well, because enough goes on without people deliberately making this kind of a mess for them and the disrespect it shows them as well. I've always done my utmost to abide by the rules. I mean, what's the point of the game otherwise?

Sincerely,
wetwork