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by Joe
Gandolfo- jgand@pcfootball.net
4-28-03
Why David, why?
Why do you insist on making my
job so much easier than it needs to be?
For the past few months I have
enjoyed not having to comment on the activities or delusional
rantings of one David Branda. For the past few months, David has
been relatively quiet and has been doing or saying nothing to
call attention to himself.
Guess who has gone and stuck his
foot in his mouth?
His latest proclamations on how
people get banned at his site are to say the least fascinating
reading.
It is to say the most,
subterfuge.
In his own words, here is what
David posted on his forums of April 7, 2003:
A couple of things i'd like to say about this:
a) anybody who was banned was given warning (assuming some was
warranted) and got removed for breaking MaddenMania rules that
have been very clearly spelled out for as long as I've been in
charge.
b) the mods aren't going to play he said, she said on these
things. if somebody was removed it was warranted. if you can't
accept that - well accepting it is grounds for being here (check
the disclaimer you all agreed to when you joined MM) as a
general rules folks are given a long leash to hang themselves
and getting banned usually means weeks of acting up.
c) one of the things we consider an automatic grounds for
removal is posting in these forums under two different
identities and acting like you're two different people. many of
the folks people are wondering about were the same person under
different identities, or people that were previously banned and
came back as another identity only to get caught. with that said
if you've got more than one identity at MM, i'd come clean now
because if we find out on our own you're done. and we've got our
tricks of the trade - i'd say about 90 percent of the
"people" banned at MM are just alias of others.
d) don't think a certain amount of seniority buys you a get out
of jail free card. i've seen it happen a lot - people start
posting and begin to think they can break the forums rules
because they've been around and the "mods wouldn't dare ban
me." we will.
e) the post count - do people misuse it? yeah. do people spam?
sure. does that mean we should get rid of the post count? no.
there'll be spam at message boards regardless of whether there's
a post count or not - spammers want attention either by a post
count or just always being in people's faces. case in point,
gochiefs who is largely considered a huge spamer at that other
joke of a football site - which btw doesn't have post counts.
post counts are fun, a general guage of seniority, but nothing
concrete.
i've said it before and said it again - this site has thrived
and is where it is today BECAUSE of the rules we've got in
place, not in spite of them. most of the folks here want a place
where they can talk about Madden and not have to deal with a
GameFaqs type atmosphere.
as long as i'm in charge, and the current set of mods are in
charge, these rules will be considered essential to MaddenMania
remaining the number one Madden site on the Internet
Hmmmm, gee, where should I start?
I’ll just start at the top and
work my way down.
- Not everybody who was banned
at MaddenMania was given warning. Case in point: me. David,
nor any of his lackeys ever gave me a warning of my
impending banishment. In fact, until I had stood up to him
and told him that the Instigator franchise was not his to do
with as he wished, I had been a model citizen of his forums
and I thought in good standing. I had never broken any of
the rules of the forums, nor had some of the other posters
that had been banned from there like Nob. The only reason
persons like Nob, Concussion, JaqStrappe, phenom and others
had been banned is because they had also posted here at
pcfootball.net. David didn’t like that they were not
exclusive to him, so he decided to make an example out of
them. Period.
But Brutus is an honorable man.
- I guess standing up for
yourself is unacceptable behavior at Maddenmania. But it is
acceptable for a mod to call a posters sexual orientation
into question any time they choose. It is acceptable for
David’s friends to flame anybody they want over at MM
without fear of reprisals. But woe to those who take
acceptation to these practices for they shall feel the wrath
of thy Lord Darth Gilmore. And by the way David, it has
never been clarified to me or to anyone else what I had done
over the previous weeks leading up to my banishment that
could be look upon as "acting up". Or for that
matter, what was Nob doing in the weeks leading up to his
execution? That was a pretty short leash there David.
And yet, Brutus is an honorable
man.
- Now, it is true that some
people have gone back to MM under other names to tell David
what they thought about him and his policies. I myself have
re-registered under another name if only to see what idiocy
David and his lackeys had been spreading around. And no
David, I have never posted under that new name and don’t
intend to. So if you want to go rooting through the more
than 10,000 names you have registered on your site to find
that one name so that you can ban the account, be my guest.
If that doesn’t work for you, you can always call me up
again just so you can cuss me out. Hell, you did it once…
But still, Brutus is an
honorable man.
- You should be careful whom you
do ban however. You never know when it will come back to
bite you in the ass in the form of a columnist who is not
afraid to call it as he sees it.
- The fact that there are post
whores out there is nothing new to some boards.
Unbelievable, something that David and I can actually agree
on. But the fact that there are post whores out there is a
testament to the maturity of the individual poster, not to
the quality of the board itself. The reason that we don’t
have post counts is that no one cares how many posts we
have. We are not concerned with giving out awards and
buttons for quantity over here. We are concerned about
quality, and there is where MaddenMania becomes the punch
line.
And Brutus is an honorable man.
The site has the numbers it has
because the banned members over there have not been taken off of
the roster, thus the 20,185 registered members at MM is an
artificially inflated number. The challenge is still out there
David, but I’ll remind you. I challenge you to do an audit of
your site. I challenge you to go through your membership list,
and delete all of the accounts for those people who you have
banned from the site. I will bet you that the number of members
will decrease significantly.
Sometimes I think David does this
stuff because he is bored and he wants the attention. It’s
like what one of my cats does whenever I clean the litter box.
It seems like every time I clean it, he comes walking by a
couple of minute’s late just covered in litter. It’s like he
rolls around in the stuff because he gets dust on the top of his
head, litter in his ruff, his belly, and his haunches –
everywhere. So what do my wife and I do? You guessed it; we
chase him down, catch him, and comb the litter out of his long
fur. And since he is a Maine Coon, you can guess how much of it
we have to clean up.
My point is that I think David
just gets off on the attention. He sees no one around him, gets
upset so he says something stupid that he knows I’m going to
comment on. He knows that I can’t resist calling him on the
stupid crap that he spews forth from his keyboard because, hey
– it’s what I do.
Now you go and do something that
is going to hurt your site – you close registration to stop
people from re-registering! David, let me ask you something –
how are people new to your site supposed to get on your forums
if you close registration to everybody? If somebody does a
search and finds your site and wants to get in the forums to get
some advice or talk about the game, how are they supposed to do
that? If they find that registration is closed to them then they
may decide why should they bother and never come back to your
site again!
Once that happens, then you would
have hurt no one but yourself and MM’s reputation yet again.
However, Brutus is an honorable
man.
Now as of this morning I also
found out that registration has been restored. I guess he didn’t
feel like punishing the whole class after all.
Now, I don’t want anybody to
get the impression that I enjoy talking about David Branda and
some of the dumb things he says and does. Believe me, I don’t.
I hate the fact that there are instances when I have to waste my
time exposing him to the harsh light of day when there are
other, more interesting and exciting topics to be talking about.
Like the ESports Arena for
example.
The ESports Arena opened up
recently in the Pacific Theatres Gaslamp 15 multiplex in San
Diego, Calif. According to an article in the May issue of PC
Gamer, one of the multiplex’s former 230-seat theatre is now
home to 110 high-tech gaming stations offering the latest in PC
and console gaming, as well as internet access. Plus the big
theatre screen can be utilized to display tournaments or to show
off a game in progress. Right now at the ESports Arena, gamers
can play games like Warcraft III, Diablo II, Starcraft, Halo (Xbox),
Guilty Gear X2 (PS2), and Galerians: Ash (PS2) as well as, you
guessed it: Madden 2003 for the PC!
So far there has been no
disruption to the operation of the theatre itself, and the
entire operation is run to be as family-friendly as possible.
There are plans to have an area at the front of the auditorium
devoted to non-violent games underneath a canopy so that the big
screen can’t be seen. This way players of The Sims and Harry
Potter can co-exist with someone playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice
City.
This is not to say that the
entire venture is free however. Everyone who wants to take
advantage of this new gathering place will have to become a
member. To join you just need to give your name, age, and agree
to the pricing set forth by the management. Right now it is
$4/hour after 4:00 pm, and $2/hour during daytime hours. There
are also plans to open up 400 additional ESports Arenas around
the country. In addition, 2,000 smaller ESports Clubs are in the
planning stages to handle any overflow from the Arenas. The next
six cities up for ESports Arenas are Los Angeles, New York,
Seattle, Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta.
This is good news for those of us
who wish to play tournaments to see who has the better gaming
chops out there. Especially when it comes to Madden. Hopefully
in the near future with more and more locations being opened up
around the country, it will become easier to have national
tournaments to see who is the better gamer out there. There is
no word on weather PS2 players of Madden would be able to play
PC gamers or not. But the way the game is coded now, I don’t
think that is possible, yet.
I hope to see one day a true
National EA Sports Madden Challenge where players of the PC,
PS2, Xbox and Gamecube are able to go to their local Arena or
Club site to participate in the tournament. Then, and only then
will we be able to crown a true National Champion.
Not only that, but I am also
looking forward to the day when I can go down to my local
ESports Arena, get online, and give David Branda the thrashing
at Madden that he so richly deserves as it is displayed up on
the big screen for all the world to see.
Et tu Brute?
Until next time……
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