User talk:A D Monroe III

This is a talk page. So talk. --A D Monroe III 17:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

CoH Game Crash September 10 2008

I was playing CoH yesterday, and lost mapserver connection.

I checked the server status, and couldn't get to the site (http://www.cityofheroes.com/servers/index.html) -- 404 error.

I tried the forums and NCSoft support; all were down.

This morning, I still can't get to any of them.

I came here, and didn't find any news.

Anyone getting through? Anyone with any news?

(Yes, I know this isn't the best place for inquires, but I can't find any other.)

Corrected your link above. Try it now.

Moved discussion from article to user talk page as it's probably better placed there.

I didn't have any problems playing last night and to the best of my knowledge there weren't any major crashes yesterday or anything. You might check the official boards for information, though. --Eabrace 13:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but your advice is not helpful. As I stated, I can't get to those sites. Since all CoH and NCSoft site seemed down, that's why I thought it was something global.

I've run out of options. The problem is preventing me from checking status of servers or my account, much less submitting anything to them to say I'm having a problem. I can't even cancel my account. Since there's no help here, the only vaguely CoH site I can get to, it seems I'm done. I'll just have to cancel my credit card to stop being charged by NCSoft.  :( A D Monroe III 02:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

My mistake. I thought that the issue was that you were trying the wrong URL. From the subject of your original response on my talk page, I interpreted it along the lines of "Thanks, the corrected URL made the difference." Clearly not so much. (And yes, the fact that I posted my response to your user page and not your talk page was unintentional. Obviously not my best day. :))

All that being said, I wouldn't give up just yet.

I just checked the forums and there's a thread that Lighthouse started at 5:47 (EDT) this afternoon. Since you can't reach the forums, here's the post that started the thread:

Our Support Team is actively researching reports provided by players that customers are experiencing intermittent connectivity issues to our various North American game service as well as our web sites.

At this time we are uncertain of the exact impact of this issue as our player graphs look as they “should” for this time of day. If anyone is experiencing difficulty, please reply here with details as well as clicking the link in my signature to contact our technical support, if you haven't already.

Thank you!

Immediately following the post by Lighthouse are several responses all describing the same sort problems you've described. Some have also been having the problem since early afternoon September 10. For several users the problem is sporadic, but there's more down time than up. At least one person has stated that while they could not reach www.plaync.com, they were able to reach help.plaync.com to submit a trouble ticket. You might try that.

At any rate, it sounds like NCsoft is aware of the problem and attempting to figure out what's going on. I would expect that a fix should be in work as soon as the root of the problem is located, but it might be a day or two before this is cleared up, and it's probably not going to be NCsoft that's the source of this.

In the mean time, in case you're not able to reach the NC help site to submit a ticket, I'll put that thread on watch and try to let you know if any major developments occur.

Sorry about the mixup back there. --Eabrace 05:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I had something similar happen to me euro side, it was found to be the internet provider what was causing the problems. So i'd check that if i were you. -- DM Yarrow 13:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

From the information being posted on the boards, it appears that the problem is likely not with CoH or NCsoft, but with an ISP's lines (possibly Qwest.) The issue also appears to be related to players in the West trying to reach across to servers on the East coast. For curiosity's sake, which server or servers have you tried to reach? If you can't get past the updater trying to connect, have you tried skipping the updater using the cityofheroes.exe -project "coh" workaround?

This sort of issue seems to pop up at least once every few months, but I don't think we've ever posted articles in the wiki for anything that wasn't an issue with the game client its self. --Eabrace 13:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just adding a note: As pointed out by Eislor on the boards, NC also has phone support for technical and billing issues.

Phone Support

We offer telephone support for billing and technical support issues only. You may contact a member of our Billing or Technical Support Teams by calling the number below. We do not offer telephone support for general game support issues. Any calls regarding game support will be directed to use one of the available support methods listed in the Game Support section.

1-512-225-6359

Mon-Fri

12pm to 5pm, Central

So, if all else fails, at least that's another method you might try if you're still trying to reach support. --Eabrace 16:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how I can make this clearer. I can not get to any CoH or NCSoft site. I can not get to any list of servers, so asking if I'm West or East server is nonsense.

The phone number would have been a good idea, if I'd known about it sometime before 5pm Central today.

The ONLY site I can get to that has any relation to CoH is THIS site. Apparently there are others in my situation -- maybe dozens, maybe thousands; since the problem is they can't contact anyone, there's no way to know.

UNLESS, CoH Wikia steps up and does something to gather information and tell people. It's nice to have things like the latest pictures of badges locations updated, but these things won't stop people from leaving CoH for good. Telling them something about this problem can actually make a big difference to the CoH community.

Do something, please. --A D Monroe III 00:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

And I'm sorry, but this is about all we can do. We're players just like you. We don't have a special hotline to NCsoft support or anything. I know it's frustrating, but we're not tech support. There's nothing we can do that's going to help get this fixed. --Eabrace 02:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Official word from NCsoft Operations is that everything on their end is functioning properly.

Posted by Niviene (11:19 PM EDT)

We have been in touch with our Operations Team and they have reported everything is now working properly. If you are still having problems connecting please check with your local ISP and then post here.

Posted by Ex Libris (11:27 PM EDT)

Operations has reported this issue as resolved. Please try logging into your regular play server. If you are still experiencing issues connecting to the game, please first try checking with your local internet service provider (ISP).

Also post here with what server you are trying to connect from and what geographical region you are located from.

We thank you for your continued support and patience.

Regards,

Ex Libris

Of course there's something you can do -- post an article. It's what you do, right? People need information about CoH, you provide it. Specifically, this is information that they can't get anwhere else. I'd thought you'd be eager to do this. Instead, you move this all to my talk page, where no one gets it. Sorry, I don't understand this.

Yes, everything is fixed now, so the most significant part of this opportunity is passed. However, it's still good to have an article that can be referred to for others that haven't tried to get back in, or have given up getting in. Also, this may happen again.

Really, right on your home page, you have "News" section. Do you actually think none of this is news? --A D Monroe III 19:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A D Monroe III, I sympathize with your recent inconvenience regarding connectivity with City of Heroes and the NCsoft site, but the fact of the matter is that technical issues on NCsoft's behalf are entirely out of our control and we should not be expected to respond to them. I understand your point about Paragon Wiki being the "last site standing," as it were, but in reality it's just another fan site and has no formal obligation to keep players in the loop as far as the quality of NCsoft's services is concerned.

Technical problems happen to everyone from time to time, but it's never the responsibility of someone else to notify the public about it. If Paragon Wiki experiences downtime, for instance, we won't expect NCsoft to keep people updated on the situation. It can be inconvenient and frustrating at times, but things seem to be sorted out now. I'm sorry your experience was not satisfying, but Paragon Wiki really was not in a position where we could do anything about it.

GuyPerfect 02:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Look, let's keep the discussion focused. Does CoH being down qualify as News? --A D Monroe III 14:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Not in the scope of this project, no. Occasional downtime should be all but expected. --GuyPerfect 16:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What is news, then? --A D Monroe III 17:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Game updates, for the most part. A few other announcements have gone in over the years, such as wiki news or contests or such, but most of it involves updates to the game specifically. --GuyPerfect 17:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be stuck in a rut. You only report what you've reported before? If, for example, CoH and all other NCSoft sites were down for a week, a month, or a year, you wouldn't say anything? If it then came back on, you would keep quiet? --A D Monroe III 12:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

ruts can be useful things. I use them quite often when its very snowy outside and I need to walk somewhere. I imagine that if NCsoft closed down for a month or more, we probably would be saying something on the site. If they shut down for a year, I expect that this site wouldn't serve much or a purpose. I can assure you that if a flaming ball of rock falls from the sky and hits NorCal, we'd put it up on the news. It largely comes down to scope, and by that, we're looking at the effect over time. Outages happen, major ones would possibly be recorded (like when someone gets fed up with the mapserver and takes an axe to it, taking out all the west coast servers). An outage of a few websites for a day or so.. websites do need to be updated, service providers sometimes have issues (<-- used to work for Charter comm, you have no idea the issues >_< they make).

In the end, this isn't really the sort of thing you use the news section for, its more the sort of area you'd have the RSS feed for (yes, doesn't work for undeclared outages, they often do tell ppl though). Several of the other Fan sites have them. We might be looking into such at some point in the near future though, some change to organization and such are being discussed right now by the admin. Ultimately, its a matter of man power in many cases.--Sleepy Kitty 18:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That's all a little vague, but at least you're not denying that you would never do anything like this, which was the nonsense I was hearing before.

As an undeclared outage of all sites (as it appeared to many people), wouldn't this fall into your qualifications? Manpower isn't the issue here, as several people have been willing to spend their time discussing it, and I was willing to start the page myself in the first place. --A D Monroe III 11:21, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Since everyone else seems to be weighing in, I'll throw in my two cents as well. In order for an outage to merit "newsworthiness" I'd be looking for one of two things: an official announcement from NCsoft (not just a dev or community rep post that officially acknowledges it on the forums; I mean something that goes up on their actual non-forums website [1]) OR news coverage by the press (newspapers, televisions, CNN, whatever). In either of those two cases, then yes, I'd expect to see an article go up about it here.

Otherwise, then no, I wouldn't. In this case, it wasn't an outage of all sites. It was a lack of connectivity. The sites were still fine. So reporting it as an "outage" would have been misrepresentation. As for widespread connectivity problems... well, while I certainly think it sucks, I don't think it constitutes something we should post here. If we covered this, then we'd have to cover a lot of other technical support scenarios that have occurred over the years. I can think of several instances where servers have gone down for periods of time. Do they get an article? Where do we draw the line? These things just seem outside the scope of the ParagonWiki. It exists primarily to document game content and gameplay. While other things end up being covered too, technical support issues seem to fall too far outside of our scope. I'm not inclined to start including them now, and apparently neither are the others who have weighed in on it. -- Sekoia 15:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If "x" is newsworthy, then anything that looks just like "x" is newsworthy, even if just to assure people it isn't "x". Say there's smoke coming from a nuclear power plant; people are worrying that the plant may explode. If a reporter finds it's just a car in the parking lot behind the plant that's burning, he doesn't say "oh, then no one needs to know this".

And, in this case, it was and outage of all sites -- just not to everyone. The equivalent of saying that not everyone will get irradiated from the smoke at the plant; the people who are getting affected should be told.

But, yes, repeated occurrences of the same thing aren't news. So, how often does this kind of thing happen?

I've seen the servers go down, and the CoH server status page says their down. Usually, I'll expect they'll be back up shortly, or I'll soon see some explanation from CoH. This isn't news.

But, that's not the case here. The servers are down like other times, but I can't get to the server status. I can't get to the forums. I can't log a question with NCSoft. Every single CoH domain is down. I've never seen this before. But, I can get to CoH Wiki. At last, some link to the CoH world!

And what do I find? Apparently, I find people that aren't prepared to deal with anything unusual, because only usual things are news? But, oddly, I find a lot of people interested in telling me why it's not interesting.

If this sort of thing happens a lot, where CoH Wiki is the only link, then there should be a general article in this Wiki pointing out that repeated history. If it happen very infrequently, then each occurance is worthy of an article.

--A D Monroe III 13:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your leading premise. Reporting something as news only because it looks like something else that would, in fact, be news is not good reporting. If a reporter discovered that the smoke from the nuclear plant was only a car fire in the parking lot behind the plant, I'd be surprised at any reaction beyond, "Well, that was a waste of my time." If I actually saw the report on the news that evening, my reaction would be, "Slow news day, fellas?"

Reporting that there had been an outage of all CoH sites would have been speculative reporting at best. And we would have been wrong. There was no outage of the CoH sites. There was a connection problem caused by the infrastructure of the internet. That no more equates to an outage of the CoH sites than the inability to turn on your TV to watch Fox News during a power outage equates to an outage of your cable service.

I don't recall exactly when the last connectivity issue of this nature ocurred, but I want to say it was within the last 8 months or so. It's at least the third or fourth time I recall seeing one. I don't consider that frequent, but I don't consider it to be unheard of, either.

What you found here was that people were willing to take time out of their day to relay information to you in an attempt to offer some form of help despite the fact that your particular issue fell outside the scope of this project and was not an issue with the game itself.

For the record, and for future reference, the forums (link located under the Navigation heading to your left) would have been a better venue for this discussion. Had I any inkling that there would even be a discussion, I would have pointed you there to begin with. --Eabrace 14:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Going to add my comments as well since anyone that knows me at all knows I have no problem doing so. It has been stated above several times that this site has no magic link to NC Soft headquarters and the problem you described originally is a Tech issue that could only be resolved by them. YES if an official announcement came out from NC stating, lets say, due to a virus infecting all servers the game would be shut down for a week, 10 days, whatever until it could be purged someone here would certainly post that here. A temporary outage that didn't even affect everyone and was taken care of the same night it occurred? Keep in mind this isn't anyone's full time job. No one is here round the clock to check on every issue that comes up in game. I understand your concern and I'm sure the problem you described affected a lot of players but I am on almost every day and I know for a fact I was on on September 10th and didn't have any major issues.

Now I'm not sure if its even the same night or same incident but somewhere in that week I did have a mapserver problem myself (quite a few of us get them these days from time to time) and when I attempted to log back on every other server except Virtue (where I play) was up and running. I waited about 10-15 minutes logged on again and the server was back on line. I don't even recall trying to check server status on the offical site since obviously I already knew VIRTUE was temporarily off line.

Now think about that situation and your demand for NEWS. by the time I logged in here, drafted and submitted an article letting anyone know that Virtue was down the chances are it would have already been back up... Like I said I only had to wait at most about 15 minutes. I know it can be frustrating not knowing what is wrong but the best place to go for those answers is NC Software. This a a Wiki, and on line reference source for players to come and find answers to questions they have about the game like how many Lost bosses do I need to get the Finder badge. It is not tech support and while I am sure NC Soft appreciates the efforts we make here to help people enjoy the game when they do have a technical issue arise no one is picking up the phone to call and let us know. WHO would they be calling to begin with? --Taxibot Sara2.0 16:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The fact of the matter, A D Monroe III, is that since this was a technical issue that affected a small portion of the userbase for a relatively short amount of time, Paragon Wiki staff has decided to not bring it to attention here, and will not do so for similar cases in the future. If you are unable to understand this reasoning, at least understand that this is how things are gonna work.

As has been stated multiple times already, we are not NCsoft. We are not affiliated with NCsoft. We have no connection with NCsoft whatsoever. What happens with them is not our responsibility, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we don't appreciate when someone tells us how to do our voluntary, free-of-pay jobs on this site. I certainly won't ask you to agree with every decision we make, but I do ask that you respect our decisions and that we make our considerations to the best of our ability to do so. --GuyPerfect 17:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, thanks for all the attention. I assume that the interest is in the issue, and not me, since some of the more recent comments have not been as friendly as they were at first.

There’re a lot of long responses, and It’ll be a little difficult to answer all these. I don’t want to let the threads scatter about too much, but I’ll still respond directly to a few of them.

About my analogy of the apparent power plant meltdown, it was stated that wouldn’t be news. If people think it’s a meltdown and it’s not, any reporter that kept quiet and let people panic would be acting irresponsibly. Yes, the resulting news story would be short -- "there is no danger; rumors of the power plant meltdown are confirmed to be false..." -- but there would definitely be a story reported.

It’s been stated that we couldn’t report it as an outage. Yes, the full nature of the problem wasn’t known (and, in fact, still isn’t known), so the report would be sketchy. That’s the way news works; just like the current hints posted about Issue 13. People understand that.

If it’s not reported, then an issue is unheard of, by definition, and is news. If it happens all the time, it just needs one article pointing that out, and then it’s not news.

The issue was not corrected the same night it occurred. It started on the afternoon of the 10th, and lasted until the morning of the 13th.

I’m not suggesting that we don’t wait 15 minutes to see what’s going on before saying something. I myself waited a day before posting something here.

As to not being affiliated with NCSoft – who suggested you were? In fact, posting something about trouble at NCSoft would show you weren’t affiliated with them, while keeping quiet implies the opposite. I never suggested that we do something to help NCSoft. I only suggested we do something for the lost users.

All I’m suggesting is what Eabrace did for me we should also do for other users. I hope no one here thinks that Eabrace should not have communicated to me what he found out about the issue. We are, I believe, only talking about the scope of the response.

As to "our" jobs and "Paragon Wiki Staff", I thought this site was more egalitarian. Are you implying I’m not allowed to participate? I’m just making a suggestion. I haven’t worked to disrupt this site; instead, I let this debate go on just on my user page. I do believe that this should be moved to somewhere where others might join in, but I’ll leave that to you. There does seem to be some interest about the issue, or no one would have responded at all. I assume you’re not afraid of what others may think. If you are, that shows weakness in your conviction.

--A D Monroe III 14:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

You have made assertions that Paragon Wiki should act as an extension of NCsoft's public relations and technical support departments by notifying the public of a problem report to ensure no one "leaves CoH for good." If people decide to stop playing due to such an outage, Paragon Wiki is not in any way responsible for their decision. Paragon Wiki should not be held to such expectations based on something as superficial as being the last known, reachable site related to the game.

Saying nothing about it in hopes that NCsoft will quickly resolve the issue on their own does not suggest affiliation; quite the opposite.

Paragon Wiki has an established board of administrators who oversee the maintaining of quality and determine the direction of future growth. I appologize for your dissatisfaction in regards to the decision of site staff in this matter, but it was deemed that the situation was--if I may use the word--unimportant enough to bring to light. I understand the extent of the impact this connectivity error had for those who were affected by it, but the nature of the incident still falls into the category of "temporary technical issue."

Site staff values the feedback of the users and makes every effort to accomodate their concerns and desires as they are presented. Having said that, we cannot always ensure that everyone stays happy and in this situation we have decided against the considerations of a user. It was not intended to devalue your opinion or to flex administrative muscle, but to maintain quality not by bringing what turned out to be a short-lived problem to attention, but by trusting in NCsoft's ability to fix the problem on their end.

--GuyPerfect 22:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have not asked the wiki to act for NCSoft. I have asked that what Eabrace to me be extended to others.

So, the "established board of administrators" decided that making an article about this issue threatens the "quality" and "future" of the Wiki. Further, they've decided that even moving this discussion where people outside the "established board of administrators" might see it is also a threat. And they do this while they make every effort to accommodate concerns and desires of the users. I'm assured my opinion is valued, and they're not just flexing their muscle.

Really, what are the wiki's priorities? We've agreed it's not NCSoft, even though keeping quiet about this helps NCSoft. I would have thought the wiki's top priority is its fellow users. Based on that, getting word out to help troubled users would be a good thing. But I'm told it's not; other things -- "quality" and "future" -- are more important. What are these? I'm not sure, and perhaps others aren't sure either. But, we should be able to discern it from the current state of the wiki. What's left besides the only two entities external to the wiki -- neither the users on one side nor NCSoft on the other. That just leaves the wiki itself. The wiki exists only to serve the wiki?

No, that can't be right. I'm sure the "established board of administrators" wouldn't be so self-serving as to keep what appears to be a public service only for their own vision of a perfect web page that needs no other justification. I know that can’t be their intent.

But, to make sure it doesn't devolve to that sad state, the wiki needs to stay connected to its top priority -- the users. If the administrators look only to their own judgment, their actions appear to be mere authoritarianism. That, by itself, is unseemly. Worse, the administrators, even if well-meaning, are human and can make mistakes. In fact, acting without user feedback is, by definition, authoritarianism.

Then again, perhaps this is one of those times when authoritarianism is best. There's a job to be done, and mere users interfering would make that job impossible. I wouldn't think that's the case here, but I can make mistakes too. If so, the only issue is that this site appears to promote equality among users. If the administrators will run this site as they see fit, so be it, but they should say so. Have an article, linked to the home page that says how things work here, listing the inner circle and clearly stating the goals they work toward. That would help everyone. That article would be smaller than this discussion is so far, so would clearly save work for several people, even if this were the only case. Besides, it would also let the administrators appear honest and unafraid of their decisions, rather than the opposite.

On the other hand, moving this discussion to an open forum would be the least work, and still let the administrators appear honest and unafraid. They may even learn something to their benefit. But, if they are right, I'm the only one that needs to be taught a lesson. Having my peers tell me so would benefit me, and might, it seems, bring some joy to some people here. Win-win.  :)

--A D Monroe III 15:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm a user of of several gaming based wiki and a sysop of at least one. Theres nothing wrong with this wiki, the news? as it should be, this wiki is about the game "CoH/CoV" as such it's updates and similar get posted on the frontpage as news. Downtime? shouldn't be posted as news, if coh was going to be going down for 4/5/6 months then sure, but that'll never happen short of a mass melt down of the gaming servers and the backups....again which will never happen.

This isn't and will never be an "offical" wiki, as an official wiki is run by the game owners, in this case NCsoft. In this case there isn't one which gives NCsoft one less thing to worry about. A sign of the confidence in the job that this site fulfills is shown by the inclusion in the on screen tips of the website address (yes i'm aware those are user posted ones, but ncsoft has the power to veto them) as well as the absence of an offcial CoH/V wiki - and you can be sure if they thought we were doing a god awful job with this wiki it would a) be reported to the mediawiki peeps. and b) they could set up an offical wiki.

To me personally you seem to be acting very much like a "troll", stirring up trouble where it isn't. But thats my opinion.

Any person can be talked to/with/at/etc on their talk page, with any and all alterations of the site are shown on the recent changes page, so if a user/mod/sysop is abusing their power/responsibiltes it is shown in clear black and white on that page.

Finally, on the subject of problems with isp and not connecting to CoH, as i mentioned above, when this happened to me on the Euro servers, it was found to be the ISP at fault and while they intially denied the fact when i rang up to complain to them again the informed me that a server/router/whatever had gone down that linked me to the coh servers and that it was on their networks (Vrigin Broadband) and that it would be fixed. There can be many things that cause this, from your isp restricting information pathways, to things crashing somewhere on the way to the CoH servers. So if the vast majority of the US's 100k+ users are not experienceing the fault it's deffinatly not something that is affecting CoH and is sadly not theirs or this wiki's responibilty to answer for.

However there is one thing that you said that has merit and that is provideing info in regards to what todo if this happens to a user, but it should just be a help/how-to page/topic and not a news item. Like i said, the day it does is the day nobody at all can get on to CoH, and i don't forsee that ever happening. -- DM Yarrow 18:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Does Technical Issues satisfy your complaint that the wiki (which shouldn't be dealing with technical issues at all) does not direct players appropriately? Are there any redirects you can suggest? I have created the following redirects: Technical Issue, Technical Help, Tech Help, and have added a See Also link in Bug, Petition and the slash commands for each. -- Aggelakis 21:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

A D Monroe III, If you really want to see this on a forum, there is a link to the associated form up in the top nav box. We can't move this discussion directly there due to this being in a wiki format, and it being phpBB (or rather, everything said would be lump summed into the first post). Feel free to start this thread there, you can even make a poll to get some actual data on how the community feels. You have a mix of admin and users in here though. "Established board of administrators" make it sound like we're stock holders. I'm sorry to inform you, but there are no dividends payed for this job. It a form of community service that is sadly not recognized by the presidential community awards (but who knows! some day..). Your opinion is valued, but please remember, we have our opinions too and would like them to be occasionally considered as well.--Sleepy Kitty 11:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for all the responses; I'm having trouble keeping up. I'm not going to be able to get to all the comments/declarations/accusations, but I will respond to the most important threads.

I'm getting some feedback that some sort of page like I've suggested is possible. And, yes, the Technical Issues page looks promising. Adding a short paragraph describing this situation of not being able to get to any NCSoft site and a possible cause (stuff that can be lifted from this page), is the kind of information I was looking for. The name of the page, though, doesn't lend itself to being found. Adding a couple more redirects from "servers down", "NCSoft down", "connectivity problems", or other phrases lost people might likely type in, would do the trick. And, again, doing this would be less work than all the fine efforts directed to my talk page.

The issue raised by my issue, how decisions are made here, is still a concern to me, but a less specific one. It does sound like something for a forum, but I'm not sure I should be the one to start it. Several have expressed dissatisfaction with my actions, when I'm just responding on my own talk page. My taking this outside might get me in more trouble from the "established board of administrators" than I can handle.

(BTW, "established board of administrators" wasn't my phrase, it was theirs. Is there an official name? The traditional phrase would be "cabal".) --A D Monroe III 02:32, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Accusing administrators and frequent contributors to the wiki of being part of some secret society making decisions behind closed doors makes it extremely difficult for me to take anything else you might say even remotely seriously. If we were in the habit of being so secretive, there wouldn't be anything on this talk page and there wouldn't be a link to the forums over there on the left. I believe the traditional phrase I'm only barely trying to avoid is "troll." And I'm avoiding a long tirade because - whether I like it or not - being on that admin list might cause some to mistake my personal opinions (which this is) for some kind of wiki policy (which this is not.)

Your issue has been given due attention and is actually being addressed. I would advise that if you wish to continue being helped rather than being ignored by your fellow contributors, you might avoid making further accusations. --Eabrace 14:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm certainly not accusing anyone of being secret. I'm only responding to what appears here.

"...we don't appreciate when someone tells us how to do our voluntary, free-of-pay jobs on this site..." I'm excluded?

"Paragon Wiki staff has decided to not bring it to attention here, and will not do so for similar cases in the future. If you are unable to understand this reasoning, at least understand that this is how things are gonna work." This "staff" has made a decision, and it's final? Where and how was this decision made? By whom?

"Paragon Wiki has an established board of administrators who oversee the maintaining of quality and determine the direction of future growth." How did it get established? Where is their authority spelled out? How do they determine quality and future?

A true cabal would be secret, because if it became known that they acted this way, the excluded users would not like it. What's claimed here isn't secret; in fact, they seem eager to explain how they act as they feel and I have no power. So, if not a true cabal, what's going on here?

Maybe there is no "board" or whatever that has particular extra authority over ordinary contributors in determining the future of this wiki. But why are people telling me the opposite?

As noted, my initial suggestion is being slowly addressed. Apparently my suggestion has some merit, though others didn't think so at first. Yet a good many of the arguments are directed not at my suggestion, but at me, my motives, and my standing here.

Here's my whole point. I'm being told to stop voicing my opinion. Why?

My guess? People just plain haven't thought this through, and were caught off-guard when I suggested they have a duty to serve the users this way. Some of them claimed authority they didn't have to attempt to quickly deny the idea. To make it worse, no one corrected these misstatements; in a sort of comedy of errors, everyone just kept sticking their foot in each others' mouths.

But there's no way for me to know if these statements are false, so I've tended to take them at face value.

This problem is easily solved. Have some of these people who might be this authority make a page stating "how things are gonna work" here, and link it to the home page. Just plain say what you're trying to do with this wiki; it's a lot easier than all the effort spent on this talk page. But if you're not ready to make any such statement, then open a forum to discuss and figure it out. Don't let people who haven't thought things through make disruptive statements about this based on nothing but their personal emotions at the moment. It's wastes peoples' effort not to actually know what our goals are.

--A D Monroe III 13:31, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be the discussion that has no end. As YOU stated .. and to the best of our limited ability since as stated numerous times no one that contributes here has either a crystal ball or a hot line to NC Soft ... You're situation is being addressed. As I stated previously I play just about every day including the day when your problem occurred. Now I am sure others probably experience this same situation but I did not and for all I know neither did anyone else that contributed here on a regular basis.

This is a Wiki(an on line encyclopedia) offering up useful information on the City of Heroes/Villains. It is not a daily news paper or Television station that can report almost instantly every conceivable issue (technical or not) that occurs in the game. Growing up my parent purchaed a set of encyclopedias for my brothers and I to use and once a year the company sent an update that contained changes that had occurred since the original printing. ONCE A YEAR... the on line wikis and encyclopedias that exist today can make those updates much quicker and offer their users a much more accurate picture of the subjects they cover. The improvement is a vast one however since no one works here 9-5, Monday to Frinday and none of use has access to NC software directly the ability to instantly post an article on a situation that occurs is impossible. There are people contributing here that have played the game since issue one and they offer up their knowledge and insight for all to enjoy but they also have real lifes an from time to time want to actually spend time PLAYING the game. You seem to have taken your frustration, over something no one here can control or fix, and turned it into their being some secret society determined to withhold information from the general playing public. Keep in mind no one has to do any of this at all. The fact that this site exists and people do their best to provide as much information about the two games as possible proves that the "adminisrators" care about the game and their fellow players. If you smack some one in the head with a stick do you honestly expect them NOT to respond in anger? When this whole discussion started several people gave you a toll free number you could call to contact NC Soft for tech support and your response was "The phone number would have been a good idea, if I'd known about it sometime before 5pm Central today". Hmmm well speaking for myself I work Monday to friday from 7AM until 3:30 PM and get home around 4PM. After I make dinner and take care of things I may get on by 5 or 5:30PM (ET). SO on the day in question, with no problem showing on my PC, I am supposed to KNOW that you have one and need my help? And of course that's JUST ME. What about the people that work 9-5 or live on the West Coast and at 5PM your time were still in their offices or at school? I'm sorry but you seem to have the attitude that we all work for you and should be jumping through hoops to keep you happy.

I think, hands down, this is the best resource for information available and its all being done by volunteers. Taxibot Sara2.0 16:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)Taxibot Sara2.0

I recommend taking this to the forum and archiving this page (it's over-long). It doesn't belong here. -- Aggelakis 17:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

(Responding point by point as time permits throughout my day. Others may post before my final draft gets in.)

"...we don't appreciate when someone tells us how to do our voluntary, free-of-pay jobs on this site..." I'm excluded?

The original statement you quoted was made by an administrator. Keep in mind that the position of administrator is not just about having the power to do things like delete articles. There's also a responsibility to help the wiki by patrolling edits, fact-checking contributions, monitoring for spam, trying to keep articles from becoming too cluttered while keeping consistent formats, etc. There are also things like dealing with the site's hosts, trying to help arbitrate disagreements between users on the rare occasion they should they arise, and issues of a nature that the average contributor should not have to be burdened with. Admin is not simply thrust upon anyone who is not approached by the current administrative staff to ask if they would be interested in taking on this role. In that respect, the position of admin can be viewed as a voluntary position of responsibility.

Non-administrator contributors to the wiki are excluded from the responsibility of performing administrative duties. So, yes, since you are not an administrator you are excluded from the responsibility to perform administrative duties on the wiki.

This "staff" has made a decision, and it's final? Where and how was this decision made? By whom?

No decisions are ever absolute and immutable. However, that being said, precedent weighs very heavily as there always needs to be consideration given to how any change in direction should retroactively apply to existing wiki content. In this particular case, the wiki has - to the best of my knowledge - never attempted to address technical issues with anything other than the wiki itself. Such issues are completely out of our control and best left to the parties that are responsible for fixing the issues lest we accidentally supply bad information. As such, the only guidance we can provide that we know to be accurate concerning tech support issues with the game is to direct people to tech support.

In your specific case, I understood (eventually) that you were completely unable to reach tech support in any manner whatsoever, so I supplied the only official information I could in form of copying and pasting official updates from the Community Reps in the thread on the CoH boards. I would have much preferred to do so in a private message, but user talk pages are as close as we get to PMs on the wiki. Doing so overstepped the responsibilities of the wiki.

Discussions and decisions about the responsibilities of the wiki are made on the Paragon Wiki forums (which we've pointed you toward several times now.) Anyone is welcome to being or take part in the discussions there. If anyone wishes to be part of a decision on the contents or format of the wiki, they need only take part in those forums. It goes without saying, that not posting in discussions there means not being part of the decisions that result from those discussions. So it would be accurate to say that people who post there are the people who make the decisions on where the wiki is headed.

Now, it would also be accurate to say that the administrators are as a group able to weigh in very heavily on those discussions when they see issues that need to be addressed for maintenance, formatting, clutter, etc, but rarely do so and only when they feel there's actually a need for it.

Again, I highly encourage using the [Paragon Wiki forums. As I stated earlier, the entire discussion that's taken place here should have taken place there.

"Paragon Wiki has an established board of administrators who oversee the maintaining of quality and determine the direction of future growth." How did it get established? Where is their authority spelled out? How do they determine quality and future?

You'll find a history of the Paragon Wiki here. In brief, the wiki was established a few years back as an offshoot of the Paragon City Free Press by TonyV. Over time, he established a precedent of extending invitations to users who spend large amounts of effort and time updating and maintaining the wiki to help administer the wiki. That would be how the initial group of administrators was established.

From this point on, keep in mind that I'm the new guy on the admin team, so other, more established admins may have more insightful information to offer.

Currently, additions to the admin team are initially recognized for contributions and effort spent to maintain and update the wiki even without the responsibilities or added tools available to existing admins. An actual invitation to become an admin is only extended after discussion of the proposed invitation among and approval by the existing administrators. The invitation is extended in private and it is left to the user to accept or decline the offer. Now, it is true that the nomination, discussion, and invitation to join the admin team take place in private, but it's the whole process could be compared to being given a job offer without coming into the office for an interview. Your resume and application are your body of work and contributions to the wiki, the hiring managers and HR department are the existing admins, and the invitation is the job offer. Should a potential admin decline the offer, there's no need for anyone else to even know the offer was extended.

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't any specific documentation stating in black and white terms what admins are or are not given authority to do. There are additional tools granted to admins by the wiki itself (i.e. deleting files, locking pages to protect them against vandalism), so the functions associated with those tools are obviously admin abilities not available to normal contributors. For the most part, however, the admins approach this wiki with a very hands-off approach and are left to exercise their best judgment on when to apply admin-only abilities. We usually blend right in with everyone else on the Recent Changes page. When we do feel a need to exercise admin authority, it's extremely rare that there won't be at least a note associated with the change that states why we felt it necessary. And we certainly do not discourage discussion on the matter. (Looking at this talk page, that should be obvious.)

And again, quality and future are largely based on standards established by precedence over time and discussion on the Paragon Wiki forums. (Have I mentioned the forums yet? *wink wink*)

So, if not a true cabal, what's going on here?

What's really going on (in the general sense) is that there are a group of contributors that have been recognized by their fellow contributors as having taken an unusually high level of interest in seeing the wiki grow and prosper. These individuals are granted a few special tools to help maintain the wiki and are sometimes able to lend just a little extra weight to a discussion not because of that recognition, but because of the amount of work and effort they have already contributed to help make the wiki what it is today.

What's going on here (in the more specific sense) is that the original content of your contribution was a question from a relatively new user, not a fact article or a players guide. Since talk pages are the best place for questions (and responses to them), I moved the initial question to your user page. (And noted the reason for the move in the deletion revision note of the original article.)

That's really all that happened initially. Somehow it all snowballed from there.

I'm being told to stop voicing my opinion.

It's not so much that we object to you voicing your opinion. It's how you've chosen to voice that opinion in a few instances here that are getting under people's skin. Whether intentional or not, some of your responses have come across as being very antagonistic and accusatory.

People just plain haven't thought this through, and were caught off-guard when I suggested they have a duty to serve the users this way.

And our stance on the issue is that Paragon Wiki only has the authority to serve the users of Paragon Wiki. That's all we have control over and we do not have the information necessary in order to properly support anything beyond the wiki. Since we try very hard not to document conjecture and assumption as official information, the best we are able to do (and did) for technical issues is to tell you where we would go for help. (And if I couldn't reach any of the NCsoft sites, I might post a quick question in the General Discussions on the Paragon Wiki forums. Have I mentioned the forums?)

Have some of these people who might be this authority make a page stating "how things are gonna work" here, and link it to the home page.

Some of that has actually been documented here. It's not a direct link from the splash page, but it is the first link on the help page. It's a living document, so it might need a little updating in a few places, but that should give you a general idea of what the purpose of this wiki is and is not.

On a related note, I can see that it might be worth documenting some of the abilities granted to administrators on the admin page to clarify the role of an administrator in the wiki. Being the new guy I'll bring that up with the other admins and allow them to share their collective wisdom rather than attempting to wing it myself.

But if you're not ready to make any such statement, then open a forum to discuss and figure it out.

Have I mentioned the forums yet? -- ::I recommend taking this to the forum and archiving this page (it's over-long). It doesn't belong here. -- Eabrace 18:12, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

(Responding to Aggelakis:) Agreed. --Eabrace 19:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

o_o hey! I resent being referred to as cabal! I'm more of a Fir Bolg supporter! --Sleepy Kitty 03:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)