I believe [UrbanUnit] got one of these too. Found it here

Considering that this clan is legendary, I really think it should stick around even if all of it's members become inactive. Or maybe, have a new rank for clans, legendary. It could be above official, and you could put clans that have made great strides in the community there.

That way 'dead' clans aren't in the alive section, but still recognized against the other 'dead' clans.

Regardless, while I understand that this may be procedure, I think the best thing to do here is to come up with some sort of alternative for clans like this. [RAWR], [bncy], [UrbanUnit], [eVo], [MAD], etc.

I disagree with the removal of such clans as most people in the community does. I agree on a legendary status for certain clans like the individual status, but that would go into suggestions board.

Clans like RAWR and bncy have greatly impacted the community over the years and did shape it. No, not all clans combined shaped the community, certain clans did, then others followed. Those were the clans that did something great and others used it as a guide to continue. Its like saying every phone brand combined shaped what phones are today, which is not true, the inventor of the first phone did, then the inventor of the first wireless phone, then touchscreen and so on, and those were the people and companies others followed and created similar or improved products.

Removing these clans is like deleting a chunk of history and a chunk of the community. I agree that all clans must be treated equally but let's be realistic here, since clans are more significant or important than others historically wise. A citizen does not get treated the same as an important politician, even tho some believe so. Everything has priorities and history is one of them when it comes to a community that has been running for such a long time. Those clans and their members probably worked harder than the people claiming they need to be removed, not trying to offend anyone, but it's true.

From Faint

SO it seems that being a so called staff clan protects a clan from being deemed dead. That some of the members just doing their jobs is an excuse for activity. As Haxx said we can get a rough idea of activity from events like the Clan Siege, which NO has only really been discussed by Mwah and Tribe doesn't look to prepared either. Many members have pressed forward this argument, why would you even need to kill Urban. Why not just let it kill itself?

Referring back to what Hatt said, absolutely. Up to black belt, Nuthugs work was a driving force and inspiration to me, because of that I tried so hard to get decent at Toribash so that I might have a chance at getting into RAWR. While, overtime, things changed, and I made Toribash friends, I still had that driving thought to become great so that I might stand up to some of those greats at some point. And a single clan impacted me THAT MUCH, and I couldn't have been the only one. Hatt said they impacted him as a Player too, and absolutely, they should be granted a legendary clan Status.


My closing statement is: Anyone, or any clan, can completely change the way players think about Toribash, and drove them to become as good as they can be, should never be taken down.

it's not based on forum activity alone.

people who aren't active on toribash as a whole will be removed, not because they do not spam their board enough.

Alright, I'll bite.

I'd like to preface this by saying that I am not the only person making the decisions. I don't hide away in a hole and come out every now and then to upset people. I work with alongside a solid team of clan-savvy users that are from all walks of Toribash. There's input from each and every single one of these users in every step of the activity check process, from how we do it, to when we do it, to who gets hit with the warnings and who doesn't. This isn't a one man operation, it's a team of people who all discuss this at great length and have all come to the agreement that this system is fair. When a thread like this is made and you make the statement "has Gynx gone too far?" you immediately dramatise the situation. This should be handled professionally, as all forum politics should. Blowing up clan's warning threads and so on is doing nothing but making you look irrational over constructive.

With that said, lets continue.

I'd like to initially talk about what WeRd said regarding RAWR's removal in particular:


First off, I want to flag that WeRd has the obvious intention of defending his clan and is (quite fairly) upset that RAWR is in the position it's in. I don't blame him for taking this out on me, I actually really like the guys over at RAWR and it's a shame things are the way they are and that I'm the one that has to do it. First of all, I'd like to get away from the idea that clans should be given special privileges based upon the amount of time they've been official. Yes, 8 years is a substantial time for a clan to be alive and if a clan has achieved as much as RAWR has it's doubly sad to see the clan die - sure. That's true, but that's also the natural course of a clan's lifespan. You become official, you do stuff, you die. Many clans have walked this route, many of them historical. A lot of you won't even remember clans like [fluff], [Torigod], [a], [CBK], [DAT], etc. and they were all major inspirations to me too when I was beginning. I remember it being rough when they were removed but many of the members in those clans a) stopped visiting Toribash long before it died or b) didn't quit because it died. I doubt RAWR (or any other clan) is much different, and whilst the backlash is obviously potent right now I wouldn't be surprised if WeRd and the other RAWR guys come back as often as they used to (which sadly isn't that often).

Regarding his points about me "tearing communities apart" - that's truly a false statement built on the drama of the situation. RAWR stopped being a Toribash sub-community when its members stopped being active in Toribash. There's literally no argument that you can make to counter that - yes, they may still be popular within the community but that's not taken away with the clan dying. Guys in that clan are all legends, being revered and supported by the community isn't something exclusive to them being in the clan. The notion that we should treat inactive clans with great members differently from inactive clans with normal members opens up a slippery slope of unfairness and bias, there's no room for that within a council that prides itself on being impartial and supporting the chance for newer, fresher members to carve out recognition in their own way. RAWR should be held accountable to the same standards as everyone else, and with an activity check as lenient as ours is currently, there's little to no reason for anyone even slightly active to fail. Our warnings are always given with plenty of time in mind for clans to make a change, in RAWR's case this was 2 months and little to no change was evident.

Lastly, the comment about the "3.5 million registered users" and having "<500" online means little to nothing, if WeRd's point is that the community doesn't change and that killing clans is going to drive people away from it then he's wrong and there's hundreds of clans to prove it. Legendary users stand out on their own and even should WeRd leave the community in its entirety (which would be a shame) because of this decision people would still look up to him for what he did, not where he is now. The same goes for any of those guys, I still look up to guys like CheZDa and Mosier in the same fashion. Not only that, but I rarely remember Toribash having numbers generously over 1000 even when Toribash was in its prime (3.0/steam release), though my memory may be hazy on this one so don't quote me on it.


MAD is the only untouchable clan because it was made by the developer of the game. Out of all the reasons to have untouchable clans (read as: ones that are treated favourably over others) this was the only one that I could justify.


So, here's a user that thinks we only judge forum activity. We don't - we judge forum, in-game and IRC activity wholly against the members of a clan. RAWR in particular had less than 2 active members prior to my first warning. After that, 2-4 members total were active in any one place, one of those is Dargon who only ever idled in IRC and another was Bitlord, who was legitimately active in-game. The rest were inconsistently active to the point where within a span of 2 weeks 4 members maximum would show - this isn't good enough. You can't make the argument that they're active when they're simply not. We're not concerned with the fact that they're not posting in their board non-stop, more that they're not doing much at all, ever. It's nothing to be ashamed of or something to be surprised about - many clans end up here and it's the way things normally work.

The other fact you bring up is silly, of course members from the clan that haven't logged in for months and months would come to the forum to discuss their clan's removal - this doesn't mean they're active on Toribash. They were told through other social channels and came as a result, I sincerely doubt that those users would have visited the forum, game or the IRC had it not been for their activity check failure. It's something that happens with every clan, RAWR, once again, are no exception.


I agree with you completely, though I will say when our warnings are as implicit as they are with plenty of time to prepare, two are more than enough. I respect your decision to stay on the fence, this isn't an easy thing to discuss and when you choose a side you have to deal with many armchair clan professionals.


Pretty dramatic statement, but I expect no less. The community isn't getting helped or hurt by any of these decisions, the real impact of this only hits RAWR - the rest is superficial collateral that is being hyperbolised by statements like yours and melodramatic users that refuse to bring anything substantial to the table except for ramblings about how this is an "injustice" and that we're "wrong". I can tell you here and now, you can absolutely go a day without reading something from BenDover because BenDover doesn't post every day, he rarely posts weekly. This isn't a jab at Ben, it's just me making yet another example of an armchair specialist in all things clans as soon as this becomes the hot topic to bandwagon on. Yes, RAWR has achieved much and yes, if you're inclined to agree with your own opinion (lord knows you are) you may weigh them as more influential than bncy or another old school clan that's been around for a while (maybe some of the ones that are dead, but hey who am I to bring that up right?), you cannot however make the point that they are active. I will agree that they're influential, inspirational users that bring a lot in terms of ambition to the users that do look up to them, but I credit the users more than I do the clan. The clan doesn't make them what they are and losing it impacts nothing real - it's not about "freeing up space" like you declare, it's about looking at a clan objectively and recognising that it's at the end of it's lifecycle. It's about being as fair to RAWR as we are to every other clan that's been as inactive as it is currently, getting rid of clans that are inactive indiscriminately allows for newer clans to carve their way into the annals of Toribash just like RAWR did - not only that, but it gets rid of the archaic system that we had before this that literally hurt clans more than it helped them.


I'd like to reiterate for the nth time: clan board activity != total clan activity. Please, if you're going to criticise the system at least read about how it works. Moving on...

"The argument that..." - good job we're not making that argument then, isn't it? Again, total conjecture at the base of taking somebody who has nothing to do with the system's word on how it's run & why it's done. Your argument that you'd be "done with Toribash" as a result of being removed is fine, but I'd argue that you were already done with Toribash if you failed an activity check. RAWR was pretty much wholly inactive before the warnings were issued and things were blown out of proportion. Additionally, the clan being an inspiration to you (and to me) is not a fair reason to keep it alive, if it's dead, it's dead. There's no room for special exceptions based on bias, which is exactly what this is. The vocal minority that is comprised of somewhat older members is going to defend their friends and interests, I understand that - what I also understand is that it's wrong to do that when you have an obligation to be fair. The council & I have an interest in non-bias and equal treatment for the sake of proper judgement; this is not proper judgement.


Sincerely I believe that there's a silent majority and a vocal minority on this issue. I know the council are refusing to comment (for obvious reasons) though if they did this thread would probably have been squashed by now.


I'd just say you're plain wrong. Regarding your phone analogy, I'd argue that each major iteration of the phone was a huge innovation and that while the core stayed the same the concept evolved greatly. The same could be said for clans, replays, mod-making, anything really. This game evolves - I couldn't tell you how different things in this community are in comparison to how they were. Clans in particular went through a dark age where gems like RAWR were one in a million but this doesn't mean that there's no potential for others to rise to the occasion. Clans are in a much healthier state now the fat has been trimmed and we have the most active, invested and deserving clans that we've had in a long, long time. I'd totally attribute this to 3 things: 1) the newer users making awesome, active clans. 2) the clan council remodel and 3) the new activity check system. We have the best team and the fairest, most effective judgement process we've ever had and it's these two things that are giving newer clans the space, recognition and opportunity to grow.

Regarding the rest of your comment, you're literally saying "I know we're trying to be fair here, but let's not be fair". I can't get on board with that.

--

So, if there's anyone I didn't reply to your comment was either too stupid for me to address or I believe I answered it here. I will not be making a habit of replying unless there's valid criticism or an informed opinion that I feel is actually constructive to the discussion at hand. To ensure that I answer your question/statement, please do your best to understand the topic that you're talking about. This may mean (shock horror) reading what I say and understanding what is said. If there are questions, don't hesitate to ask. Once again I'd like to make a point of apologising to RAWR about the excessive use of them as an example but I feel that due to most of the users bringing them up as the "go to" as it were it fit best.

EDIT: Oh, and if anyone actually takes my forum set seriously I feel sorry for you, as you clearly have never had sarcasm in your life.

Those Clan has stuck to me like gum under a public school desk, why in the world would u bring them down. #HallofFameClans.

Beginners look up to these clans. Long Live RAWR

Is the sole reason for archiving clans to free up space? Does moving them to dead clans really free up so much space to warrant constant deletions?

Maybe if Gynx would explain what the point of deleting clans is then it might be easier to understand. Why should inactive clans be archived?

dead clans cannot be posted in, which i think is the point.

That is only a recent addition. A year or maybe 2 ago you could, but clans have been archived for many many years.

What is the point in stopping people from posting in them? If it was truly dead then no one would be posting anyway, right?