Don't worry xDragon, getting banned for admins having different points of view of the same TOS is a rite of passage on KGS. The best way I've found is getting to know each of the admins and learning what their views and interpretations of the TOS. Personally I think grey area issues like this could be resolved quickly if the person in question says an admin told them their action is ok, the other admins drop the issue and resolve it among themselves. Conflicting information from admins should be an admin issue, not a user issue. Admins should act more as a collective body. The current way individual admins overrule others and what was ok the other day isn't ok today because different admins happen to be logged in is the major reason behind most admin complaints I see. The rest of the complains are disagreements with how fair the KGS TOS itself is but that is a different issue.

That being said, I don't really see the problem with posting a link to a Korean language video stream of the game in the chat of an English professional commentary on a primarily English Go server. I would imagine the people asking for the link just wanted to see the players playing on the actual board and not for the Korean commentary. This would effectively be the same as posting the link to EuroGoTv in chat. Are KGS admins really afraid that the link would cause everyone to leave to watch a video very few of the people linked would even understand instead of continue listening to the professional English commentary they are currently listening to?

Saying that it was advertising is a fine line. Where do you draw that line? Is it at linking other Go servers since they provide the same service and are direct competitors? Is it websites that provide competing information? If that is the case I'm fairly sure joseki websites, Go book stores and even sensei's library provide much of the same information as KGS+ lectures. Is linking the AGA website now considered advertising since they can cause players to play more in person instead of on KGS? They hold tournaments that could have directly competing times with KGS tournaments. AGA and website that sell Go books are businesses. How direct of a competitor does it have to be to be considered advertising?

How can someone who is not a professional show unprofessional behavior? Inappropriate perhaps, but not unprofessional. And I am not saying it is even inappropriate as I don't know all the facts.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Some admins seem to forget that, due to their greater power and responsibility, they should have a higher standard of behaviour than the regular users they police. xDragon has quite probably deserved some of his past bans, but that shouldn't prejudice new cases and sweety's response was uncivil and inappropriate. RBerenguel, I doubt there was deliberate plotting on Nyanilla's or the booting admins part, based on the info so far probably just the booting admin thought she has said 'no more links' rather than 'correct links', or thought that themselves, plus a predisposition against xDragon means a trigger happy boot.

Some clarification: I've been told that USGO1 himself asked people not to post the YouTube link, early in the relay, but of course that would have been lost rapidly in the chatter. I don't know whether that was why he moderated the chat.

I can't read any text on the YouTube link (apart from the "marked as spam" comments), so can't check how official it is, especially since I hadn't seen any authorization for that link. Yes, it is a relay of BadukTV's own stream, but I still can't see that from that link. BadukTV's stream is the one to promote within the kibitz. Note that at least one of the admins has told me that the YouTube link is blocked in his country for copyright reasons, so it's not a useful link anyway.

We are very concerned about following the wishes of sponsors.

Another point.... This has happened before, I believe: once you start PMing individual admins who might not be directly involved, things start getting very confused. At least one of them mentioned specifically in our room that you had said something to him, and another hinted at it, but not all of the admins type fast enough to keep the rest of us informed of every single post they receive, or read fast enough to keep up with that rush of posts, and it can happen that other, previously uninvolved, admins start acting on the information they are given without knowing the full story.

It's best not to add more confusion to a situation, especially given your history on KGS. Unfortunately, it will take a while for that history to die down, although there have been many times recently that we have told each other how helpful you have been in the Main rooms.

Yes, I am very sure this wasn't the case, just that it may have been thought as so. There would be no reason to do something as complicated when you can directly ban him, but I just pointed it out because it strikes as weird.

Also, I forgot to write down what DrStraw put: there is no unprofessional behaviour when being and admin is not your profession!

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I was in the room at the time, and after reading xDragon's first post, I was in complete agreement with him, but by now that I've read through the whole thread, and despite disagreeing with most of what tchan says and being extremely put off by the nature of the admin's responses, I'm starting to see things from their point of view.

First of all, at the time, I felt grateful to Pempu and xDragon for pointing out where the video could be viewed. I wanted to look at the video as well as watch the game on KGS, and passing along this information is more a friendly thing to do, and less a matter of promoting the competition. They were doing the KGS viewers a service. Thank you. Was the link allowed? I can't say, but after the issue of its legality was raised, xDragon found a link that was definitely legal and in agreement with the admin who was involved in the issue.

On the surface, it would seem that there is little to justify a ban, but thanks to xdragon's meticulously documented self defense, we get to see that what got him banned was his history of trying people's patience.

There is much to criticize in the actions of the KGS admins, and I hope that hearing it from a neutral source will give them pause. Their responses were rude (dear troll), incomprehensible (we didn't forget what you had brought us...) obnoxious (<delete>), unnecessary (banning after the situation had been resolved) evasive (not stating a reason for the ban) circumventive (pretending not to understand xDragon's complaint) irrelevant (saying that what xDragon did was unnecessary, which is not a reason for a ban) disingenuous (justifying the lack of explanation with the assertion that xDragon would not accept any explanation) and infuriating (why didn't you accept her judgement in the first place?)

That's a lot to criticize, so I asked myself: Where did all that come from? I started by re-reading
xDragon's first post. He writes:
Ok, this is an exaggeration. Maybe there were two or three others who defended the link. Then he writes:

Hm. This sounds nitpicky and condescending.

Then: This reminds me of a kid who asks his mom after his dad said no.

A bit later he writes: A small victory? Is that what this is about? About winning an argument? I'm starting to think so.

Then there's this exchange:

Who's muddying the issue now?
Then:
He's right, it's not, but again, this sounds like nitpicking because his actions support the advertisement.

A bit later: He had to point out? He could not accept it? Exactly.

Then xDragon tries to find out what got him banned. I'd like to know too, but I suspect for a different reason. I think he wants to know so that he can say that it was wrong. He writes:

There is a difference in intent between setting the record straight and proving someone wrong. One sets the record straight to get correct information out to the public, one proves someone wrong to undermine their authority.

And all this was just in one post.

Appearances can deceive. The justification for the ban is that no one can be expected to have the time or patience to repeatedly submit to such tedious onslaughts in their free time. The admin's responses were ugly, but they don't appear to have come out of the blue. In my opinion, xDragon brewed the very storm that got tossed him out by displaying a know-it-all, nitpicking attitude, by publicly confronting an admin, by dragging in other admins, and by giving credence to their previously formed opinions of him. While the responses of the admins was sub-optimal, I find it hard to blame them.

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Patience, grasshopper.

A lot of people seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

- I would feel very pressured and morally hollow if I had occupation that consisted of restricting the freedom of speech of people for the sake of company's speculated profits.

S.h.i.t like that does not happen to me at Tygem anymore .

OTOH, If you're not against them, they probably aren't much of a problem. Sure, power corrupts and admins can be tyrannical, but how much power do they have? The worst they can do is ban you for a day or two. I must say though, that the article you linked to totally resonated with me. It reminded me of how they removed the trash cans from Rhode Island's public beaches, and trash-scattered beaches became pretty much a thing of the past. People generally will take care of things themselves when the responsibility lies with them.

As it is now, responsibility for KGS lies in one person's hand, and he's decided to delegate it. It would certainly take a good deal of courage and a leap of faith to abandon the time-honored tradition of nannying as did the Auckland school and the Rhode Island Public Works, but were KGS to do it, there is no guarantee that it would be a better place - only that it would be a different one.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Well I was disappointed to learn that I just brushed you off. I read your complaint in private message and responded to it, I believed that I actually responded quite positively to your complaint. Despite the niceness of having the jubango on KGS, I was busy with other things and wasn't paying much attention at all to the game or the server. It does surprise me then to learn that you persisting in argueing with other admins until you received a ban, and that you then logged in again with another account to continue to argue the same point.

On a broader note, it is important to KGS that we first verify any broadcast links are correct if we want to keep a broadcast on the server in future. Therefore you shouldn't be surprised to see a sort of knee jerk admin response to a link on youtube. If the link is actually fine, it's probably best to just explain that calmly, and wait for the admins in question to verify that. I don't really see what could go wrong there.

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North Lecale

this feels like a lot of nitpicking. i was merely trying to give my thought process at the time, i didnt necessarily say a lot of those things you complained about to them. but what you are basically saying is because of a history, i should have been banned unfairly and treated like that by people who try to say theyre professional?



i did discuss it with you and when i made the claim that the link was fine, you just said "okay" and then nothing changed after that.

the issue was that nyanjilla did not listen to us at all. even though daal said it was an exaggeration, there was not only "2-3 people". i would say no less than 6 people were talking to nyan about it. she appeared to make no attempt to verify our claims that the link was legit and said "youtube is not an authorized broadcaster" probably 3-4 times and continued to give us reasons why the link was illegal when it wasnt.

No, I don't think that you should be banned unfairly - it's just that it makes sense that it happened.

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Patience, grasshopper.

but that would imply that youre bring emotion and bias into these decisions when it doesnt call for it. thats not behavior an admin should use when making such a decision

I did listen. That was why I was trying to search various sites for any information about whether or not YouTube was authorized as a place for relaying the BadukTV stream, while keeping an eye on the chat in several places and typing responses where I thought they were needed. A real click-fest. And admittedly my responses were terse because I wanted to sort out this detail as quickly as possible.

Yes, I could have dropped everything and concentrated on addressing each and every one of your concerns without any information to back up my words, but at the time I decided it was more important to find out whether the YouTube link had been authorized by the sponsors. I am sorry if that gave you the impression I was not listening.

but would it not be logical to think that if baduktv was streaming it on youtube, that it would be fine? especially since you said later that baduktv was allowed to broadcast it. you did keep saying that "anyone could have uploaded it" but it was on baduktv's youtube channel...

you also did take a lot of time trying to defend yourself using the same arguments over and over again.

Why not? These people are volunteers, they are under pressure to make sure the server is running well, no laws are being broken and that everybody is having a good time, and then when someone comes along and gets all under their skin, telling them how wrong they are and how right he is, badgering them and bugging them* then emotions start figuring into the mix. I understand that you think they should be only making rational decisions, but you should understand that you make it really difficult for them to do so.

*Nice example above btw., where you berate Nanjilla for an absence of logic by making the questionable assumption that its immediately obvious to anyone whether something on youtube is legit or not.

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Patience, grasshopper.

well, bad admins do make rash and emotional decisions like that. as a user, you shouldnt be defending that behavior

The admins were 1) factually incorrect about the legality of the stream (and too obtuse to understand); 2) banned the user after posting the second link even though an admin actually demanded a clickable link; 3) responded unprofessionally to a customer inquiry; 4) changed their explanation of why the link was bad; 5) refused to answer the simple question "why was I banned".

Okay. That's more than enough info for me to steer newbies away from KGS. I assume that the reason I haven't seen this ugly side of KGS is because I just play auto-match games.

Things like this are why people are moving on from KGS. Unfortunately they aren't going to another server, just leaving go entirely. Go in the west isn't exactly strong so I don't get why people can't figure out that berating each other is not going to help. There are always going to be crazy users though, so its not good that the admins can't hold to a higher standard. Sending multiple <CLICK DELETE BUTTON> emails is pretty shameful.

The silver lining is that I was looking for this game on J-TV and couldn't find it, so it will be nice to have some video to watch along with