State of the pinball emulation scene (LONG)
K M Tanner
minutes of your time and read it.
Why should you care? I think this little story can teach everyone a
valuable lesson of the Internet, and give information about the
current state of affairs at pinball emulation scene.
MCR <m...@nokoreanspam.org.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns92FCF2D868B0Em...@217.32.252.50>...
> kmta...@cyberspace.org (K M Tanner) wrote in
> news:aabcf047.03010...@posting.google.com:
[...]
> > I'm afraid that those people are newbies to Internet, and somehow
> > visualized that good hobbyists, table authors and pinball fans
> > should be disciplined and punished if they dared to suggest
> > differing opinions and new "revolutionary" ideas to the scene.
> > They even banned people who had donated money for them.
>
> ???
Yes, the members actually donate money to VP Forums to keep it
running. The bandwith (400 Gb) costs 100 bucks a month. VP Forums
has over 20.000 members, and 99,9% of those members just download
the tables and go away. Only maybe 0,5 percent of people actually
take part in the discussions and do some actual table work
(and half of the most prolific guys have already been banned
- or left voluntarily).
I don't even want to go through that all ugliness that
made pinball emulation scene as bad as it is today. These
following examples are just a tip of the iceberg, and I only discuss
about the _most recent_ incidents.
One fellow, "PacDude", who's the current maintainer/co-author
of the most popular VPinMAME tables; Addams Family, Twilight Zone,
Tales Of the Arabian Nights, Terminator 2, STTNG, Attack From Mars
etc.
is one of the most hard working members of the community.
His work with those tables is spectacular. Here's a link to a low-res
screenshot of his Williams TOTAN table:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/53153206/60132458hHFcMJ
Some of them look and play just as close to arcade pinball tables as
possible. I would take those over any commercial pinball sim without
hesitation.
They deleted his account, even though he never broke any community or
forum rules. They just kicked him out because he disagreed with
the current overmoderation policy. Of course they still HOST all his
work at their download site, even though that author is completely
banned. Previously when this happened with another table author,
they wanted the table author to _sue_ them before they agreed to
remove his work from their download site.
The moderation policy at VPForums is way stricter than
many discussion forums that handle very sensitive issues like
domestic violence, sexual abuse, incest, etc.
Of course it's not "illegal" to run a message board like that,
or outright censor people in their own "private" forum.
This is what another member of the community posted about this
subject:
Posted by "PcwaG"
==insert
"I still don't see how in the world they can call that place
a private forum when they are taking donations, it is now a
public forum. You can't take public money in any form and
run something privately."
==outsert
Another "nice" example: My friend Xavier who's the webmaster of the
PinMAME Table Station (that has all VPM tables online (without
ROMs of course)), posted a thread of his site at VP Forums.
A few months ago we just had one place to _upload_ the tables -
and absolutely NO decent archive for them. When the tables
expired from the upload engine, they vanished completely.
It was real pain to upload them over and over again, because
some people were too slow to d/l them before they expired
(after a few days). Xavier did everyone a big favor when he
started his site. But his sin was this: He forgot to include
revhistory.txt file in one of the tables' zip files
(made by one of the moderators). I think this was totally
insignificant mistake because who the hell reads revhistory
files anyway? He even corrected his mistake immediately.
Well guess what, his ALL posting and PM rights were removed right away
without warning (I just heard about this a few days ago). This guy
wanted to help the community, invested his own money and created a
download site to help the table authors, and they treated him like
criminal. The moderators kept the whole thing secret, and they still
delete and edit all posts that have a link to his fantastic site.
They want to keep total monopoly of the whole emulation scene, and
they require everyone to sign up to VP Forums before they can
download the tables.
One table author, "Emkaah", who's 3D-rendered "Smarty" (Williams) is
technically the best EM-table ever made. He got banned from the site
because he called the moderators "childish".
> > It went to the point where emulation and pinball was no longer
> > the main issue. Censoring good, reasonable adult people is
> > outright WRONG, no matter where it actually happens. It's not
> > the matter of pinball, it's just one of the basic principles
> > in civilized world.
>
> Cant argue with that. This seems to me to be a bit sad, to have a split
> in the community. Thankfully this hasnt happened in MAME since the
> MAME.DK / Arcade at home debacle.
It's pretty funny nowadays at VP Forums. If you want to keep your
membership, you can't argue with the moderators, you can't
post polls about "wrong things" or suggest new rules and
guidelines. You can't even disagree with certain people or
they'll ban you. :)
Been on the Net over 10 years and I have NEVER seen anything like
that. That place reminds me of the late Soviet Union, or some other
communist country from the times of "cold war" :)
If you want an example, take a look at this thread:
http://www.vpforums.com/forum/showthread.php?s=56ca0feec8243b3307820478c1104d35&threadid=22375&perpage=20&highlight=rodgz&pagenumber=1
This thread was the reason why the member "Rodgz" was banned from the
forums, because the moderators thought he was "annoying". In the
"Debate Central" people had right to "debate" about anything.
There were some discussions that questioned the actions
by moderators and their way to run the place. They immediately
deleted the whole debate section because it made them look bad.
This guy, Rodgz (middle aged man, and one of the most reasonable
guys I've ever met on the Internet), just wanted to know why that area
was removed. That was his biggest mistake. His posting rights were
taken away immediately, despite of the fact that he had previously
donated money for these assholes (you see the $upporting member
sign above his avatar). Moderator called "Kinsey" deleted his account.
Her posts are visible in that same thread.
> > However, the major table authors of VP have found a new home
> > for themselves (that board has been up only 6 weeks)
> > http://www.vpfreeforums.com/forums/index.php?s=
> >
> > There is no moderation, and free speech is allowed. Now that's
> > _luxury_ isn't it? Only flooding and abuse gets deleted.
>
> Mmm... These are things we take for granted on the Internet isnt it.
That's the way it should be. I personally think it's amazing that
people who have their message forum running with the members'
money think that they can treat these same people like garbage.
Well, like I said we didn't stay long whining about the sad state of
affaírs, but we already got our own forum running
http://www.vpfreeforums.com/forums/index.php?
Yesterday we got some nice new members. Aaron Giles for example
(welcome), and many others. I hope that everyone at the emulation
scene gives support to our forums. I also request people to remove
all web links to VP Forums because of the reasons I brought to
your attention in this thread.
We have one problem though. We can't handle similar bandwith as
VP Forums yet, so the public viewing of the forums is currently
disabled. So you have to register to get in. It only takes a few
minutes. Everyone is welcome.
And I'd like to thank all the emulation site owners and my
friends at MAME scene who have emailed me (got about 20
messages today) and gave their support. Right now I don't
have time to reply them all, but everyone WILL receive a
response. Thanks again.
Thanks for your time and talk to you later.
Kristian
The honourable father of alt.games.mame
(Sorry folks no RUSH lyrics this time. For some reason
my .sigbot isn't working. :)
trent fleury
After reading these examples, I have only one thing
to say: That's fucking unbelieveable.
LOL, pinball forums running by communists. It sounds absurd but it certainly looks that way. I also scanned that forum chain letter you linked here and I have one question;
Are these people really serious? Maybe they're just mindfucking you and they treat it as some kind of joke??? It must be a joke I can't believe what I read. What a sad place...
Yuck, gotta sign up to your forums later.
Well take care,
T.L
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Covenant
> (Sorry folks no RUSH lyrics this time. For some reason
> my .sigbot isn't working. :)
Maybe, given the subject matter....
"In vain to search for honour,
and in vain to search for truth,
but these things can still be given...."
...then your URL again!
;' )
--
Covenant
A Man With Far Too Much Time On His Hands
Tsunoo Rhilty
>The administrator may have required you to register before you can view
this page.
Is is not possible to have a guest account only to read, what the communy
wrote ?
ciao Tsunoo
Larry
machines are taking up too much time :) Sad to see it has turned into
a lousy soap opera :( I'll check out the new forums.
kmta...@cyberspace.org (K M Tanner) wrote in message news:<aabcf047.03010...@posting.google.com>...
mm
Don't believe this joker. Only 6 people have been banned from vpforums. 2 for modding (altering the work of others without permission),
2 for repeating posting of spam and warez and 2 for being assholes.
here's a link with only a sample of the idiocy known as Kristian Tanner. You can trust him as far as he can kick a jew (which is his
admitted favorite pastime).
K M Tanner
> K M Tanner wrote:
>
> > (Sorry folks no RUSH lyrics this time. For some reason
> > my .sigbot isn't working. :)
>
> Maybe, given the subject matter....
>
> "In vain to search for honour,
> and in vain to search for truth,
> but these things can still be given...."
LOL Covenant. Didn't know you have good music taste.
Old music, old games... Old guys. Or perhaps we just
should use the word "classics". :)
K M Tanner
Pathos, NNTP posting host and all intimate details are clearly
visible in this following header.
Please forward the whole article in question to
ab...@prodigy.com, Cc:d to ro...@prodigy.com and postm...@prodigy.com
with the following headers included. I'm 90% sure who is
behind this slander. I think his statement "You can trust him
as far as he can kick a jew (which is his admitted favorite pastime)."
extremely insulting, especially because I've been married to
a jewish girl, and I'm part jewish (from my mother's side).
It also tells you more about him than me. Person who is behind
this (reposted) original article lost his Usenet access years
ago.
This is another cowardly anonymous attack, and I'm 100% sure
it comes from VP Forums. One of the VP Forum moderators called
me "nazi" in a private message to another person. I'm also 90%
sure who is behind this post.
Thanks for making my day kid. Know what I mean. :)
===insert headers of his post
Path: news.freenet.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!news.astraweb.com!news-small.astraweb.com!prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr17.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail
Message-ID: <3E1DE275...@prodigy.net>
From: mm <mm.n...@prodigy.net>
Reply-To: mm.n...@prodigy.net
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.08 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;SBC! Yahoo} (Win95; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: alt.games.mame,rec.games.pinball,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: State of the pinball emulation scene (LONG)
References: <aabcf047.03010...@posting.google.com>
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X-Trace: newssvr17.news.prodigy.com 1042145953 ST000 66.123.206.154
(Thu, 09 Jan 2003 15:59:13 EST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 15:59:13 EST
Organization: Prodigy Internet http://www.prodigy.com
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Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 20:59:13 GMT
Xref: news.freenet.de alt.games.mame:111429 rec.games.pinball:416384
alt.censorship:154028
===end reposted headers
K M Tanner
> Well... but your new forum address require a login.
> >The administrator may have required you to register before
> >you can view this page.
>
> Is is not possible to have a guest account only to read
Hmm, I'm not 100% sure. Contact the admin, Alex, and ask it
from him. But why not registering up? It only takes a few
minutes.
We've had bandwith problems and removing the public viewing of
the forums helped with that problem.
K M Tanner
>mm mm.n...@prodigy.net thought long and hard, then said...
>> What's funny is you guys believe him. After I counted
>> 6 lies and mistatements in the first paragraph I gave up.
>> Sign up for his little forum and all you'll see is mods and
>> updates to the same 4 tables over and over again.
>And we should believe you because...? He posted a long list of
>complaints/problems (true or not, I don't know). You, on the
>other hand, just basically said "he's lying." I don't know
>if I want to encourage a "point-counterpoint" war between
>you two here, but I would like some clarification on these
>"lies and mistatements".
I'm quite sure that this fellow "mm", is one of the
VP Forum moderators. He just said in another post that
"kicking a jew" is my favourite pasttime. One of the VP Forum
moderators also called me "nazi" in a private message to another
person. My ex-wife was Jewish and I find his remarks horrible
and extremely insulting.
Keep in mind, I said "I'm quite sure", didn't state it as a fact.
I'm sure we'll find out that in time.
Everything essential was left intact in the header, and the abuse
department of prodigy.com has been notified.
Too bad kid, when you actually publicly slander someone,
make it better next time. You're making this awfully easy
for me, and you can except actions taken against you.
>I agree with Larry -- this has all the makings of a (bad) soap opera.
It has been a soap opera LONG time. Go to VPFF and read about it.
By the way Kevin, this article made them delete my account from
VP Forums. They deleted it immediately, before they gave me a chance
to defend myself. In that article I tried to defend my friends who
got banned and censored from the forums without a reason.
This was my last post to the forums (before they banned me):
http://www.vpforums.com/forum/showthread.php?s=8b842c66037e3fe4ecabd34f2992876c&threadid=22477
They kept it secret as long as they could. Only in the last
half of the thread my friends realized that I have been deleted.
They didn't even publicly state that I've been deleted. Or tell
the reason *why* they deleted my posting rights.
Now I get these anonymous attacks from the staff, even here. What a
bunch of dress-wearing girlies...
Oh, and enjoy the pinball, everyone... LOL. :)
trent fleury
>here's a link with only a sample of the idiocy known >as Kristian Tanner. You can trust him as far as he >can kick a jew (which is his
>admitted favorite pastime).
Some complete idiot in that article calls him names. So fucking what? Everyone has been on some flame wars in the past. What the hell makes you think he likes to "kick a jew"?
if you slander someone from your scene at least have guts to use your real name. sorry I read through his original article and it makes quite a lot of sense to me.
sorry for the foul language too. it's just that people like this who back stab anonymously make me SICK.
Yes I called you a coward. And my name is Trent Fleury and I can tell you that I live near the Central Station Bar and Restaurant located at 1001 N. Charles Street in Baltimore's scenic Mt. Vernon District, one mile north of conference headquarters.
Now fuck off back to your hole coward.
K M Tanner
>mm <mm.n...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>>here's a link with only a sample of the idiocy known as Kristian Tanner.
>>You can trust him as far as he can kick a jew (which is his
>>admitted favorite pastime).
>Some complete idiot in that article calls him names.
>So fucking what? Everyone has been on some flame wars
>in the past. What the hell makes you think he
>likes to "kick a jew"?
I think this little fella is referring to the misrepresentation
that this guy is using in his .sig. It's completely taken out of
context. Just look at the lengths to poor kid went to in his
failed effort to divert attention from the facts I presented
in my original article about the Pinball emulation scene.
I had a debate about Usenet issues with certain R.Williams (who's
part jewish like me) and when I (in my subjective opinion) "kicked
his ass" in that particular debate, I said that "kicking my jewish
boy around is funny", or something similar. Can't remember, it's
been at least 5 years...
Everyone knew that it was a joke It's similar thing as black
people sometimes call eachoter "niggers". It's rather harsh,
but never intended as "racist". My debates sometimes get
pretty "hot", I admit, because people like "mm" don't like
when someone makes them swallow the ugly truth about themselves.
>if you slander someone from your scene at least have guts to
>use your real name. sorry I read through his original article
>and it makes quite a lot of sense to me.
>sorry for the foul language too. it's just that people like
>this who back stab anonymously make me SICK.
Typical trait from VP Forums. I'm almost sure this anonymous "mm"
was one of the moderators (or someone very close to them).
The article has already been sent to ab...@prodigy.com for further
investigation. X-Trace: lines, pathos and everything is
clearly visible. Too bad he was too net.illiterate to leave
them intact.
I've had enough ugliness from you guys, and anonymous
cowards like you aren't really worth my time. But if you make me,
you can be sure that I'm not backing down.
And this, little boy "mm", is directed only at you:
I'm willing to take this thing even a few steps further. Don't
consider it a threat. Consider it a *promise*.
If I were you, I would run along now and not come back at all.
We can leave at that. Everything is up to you now.
Have a nice day.
Erik Sommerdyk
(alt.games.mame - i understand that this is crossposted! ) and you have
no right to bash him here. you have earned the only place in my
killfile! GO TO HELL!
Erik!
Covenant
Yeah... Classics sounds good to me !!!
;' )
Covenant
A Man.... A *Classic* Man... ;' )
Larry
to this thread. Folks can decide where they want to participate after
reading up on both sides. Based on what I've see here, and seen in
the past on vpforums (I lost posting rights every time they upgraded,
even though I never posted.. what a pain..) .. I kinda hope folks
choose the new forum. I *hate* censorship, and altering/deleting
others' posts is lame and rude.
Mrhide
geezz...
"K M Tanner" <kmta...@cyberspace.org> wrote in message
news:aabcf047.03010...@posting.google.com...
K M Tanner
I'm appreciated of that link Larry, and also your comments. Thank you
very much. Is it possible to make the link to our forums
*permanent* in your site?
By the way, you aren't related to that old bodybuilder
Larry Scott are you? Hehe just joking. Thanks again.
--
Today is different - And tomorrow the same
It's hard to take the world the way that it came
Too many rapids keep us sweeping along
Too many captains keep on steering us wrong...
--Rush
Doc
authors history aside, what place does this have here?
A simple announcement of the new forum is where it should have been left,
me thinks.
K M Tanner, if you started this esteemed group, you should see that
airing "dirty laundry" from a mostly unrelated forum is inappropriate.
This group is not alt.free.speech or alt.flame-wars, it is
alt.games.mame.
Visual pinball and pinmame work together, granted, but brining this here
is drawing a pretty long bow.
Fair and reasonable responses welcomed.
I am not trying to get into a flame war with anyone about this, I am not
trolling.
--
Cheers, Doc
This weeks sig:
Top 5 games of 1980 in no particular order:
Defender-Williams
Battlezone-Atari
Moon Cresta-Nichibutsu
Crazy Climber-Nichibutsu
Rally X-Namco
Pac Man-Namco
metallik
> very much. Is it possible to make the link to our forums
> *permanent* in your site?
Can't .. it's not my site.. it belongs to a Dutch fella named Atila. I and
many others just post news. I'll mention to atila next time I see him, but
considering he hasn't ever fixed some sidebar links that have been dead for
two years.. :) (He's a great guy.. the site is really just a hobby for him
and the news posters)
> By the way, you aren't related to that old bodybuilder
> Larry Scott are you? Hehe just joking. Thanks again.
Never heard of 'im :)
K M Tanner
> This will probably go over like a fart in a submarine, but the thread
> authors history aside, what place does this have here?
Well, talking about arcade cabinets, emulator frontends and
real arcade games are "unrelated" as well. But since Visual
Pinball runs with VpinMAME, I don't think it's is
"inappropriate" in any shape or form. Even if it didn't,
it's part of emulation scene, just like real machines
and arcade cabinets are "sources" to emulation scene.
And PinMAME is part of VP. For many people like me, VP
without VPM is like a car without an engine.
> A simple announcement of the new forum is where it should
> have been left, me thinks.
So you think that censorship issues from the emulation scene
posted to major emulation newsgroup are "inappropriate"? VPinMAME
uses MAME core and it's part of MAME family. It's like talking
about Ringo Starr's son on rec.music.beatles newsgroup.
Ringo Starr's son was never a member of the Beatles (obviously),
but of course you're talking about him on _that_ newsgroup. Hey, I'm
not 100% sure but I *think* Ringo Starr had a son. :) LOL.
Sure Visual Pinball program *itself* isn't part of MAME family.
But that's just "nitpicking", IMO.
Oh well...
> K M Tanner, if you started this esteemed group, you should see that
> airing "dirty laundry" from a mostly unrelated forum is inappropriate.
No it's not. The ugly things that have happened
(and are still happening) at VP Forums should
concern *everyone* on the Internet. And censorship
issues _anywhere_ in emulation scene should be posted
to ALL major emulation groups. Also to ALL major emulation
boards. Shutting up fine and creative people, censoring,
banning and humilating them publicly is unforgiveable. And when
things like that happen ANYWHERE in emulation scene, all people
who are somehow part of that community should be concerned.
If not for anything else but help other people to avoid making
similar mistakes. And if you buy a book on the Net, and read
everything about the birth of alt.* groups hierarchy (and its original
principles), you'd realize that your statement *itself* is erronous.
And it's not my dirty laundry. And I'm not even try to wash it
anymore.
> This group is not alt.free.speech or alt.flame-wars, it is
> alt.games.mame.
You probably didn't check the newsgroups string, and realize that you
crossposted this to 2 other groups as well. Looks pretty
funny to people who read alt.censorship don't you think?
Next time remove the "inappropriate" groups before you make
a statement considering only one newsgroup. :)
If you really want to stop all flame wars, negativity and other
bad things that happen on the Internet, why don't you start your
holy crusade from this newsgroup? Check those 2000 useless ROM threads
that constantly cause trouble here. Those threads are not
informative or useful to anyone. _Replying_ those threads is
even less constructive. Email to every single people who have replied
to those threads and tell them that they're "inappropriate".
(Sorry for being sarcastic). That sarcasm wasn't directed at you.
I just mean that these things just don't go away. We have to deal
with it. I can only tell my _opinion_ what *I* think the standard
procedure with those threads _should_ be. It's called "free speech".
My announcement was informative. Yes, it contains negative information
about one part of emulation scene. Yeah, life sucks sometimes, and
sometimes people are rude to eachother. But I think everyone
in the emulation scene should also be _aware_ of these facts.
You might disagree, but I personally don't think that anyone
can come and tell me about the _exact_ guidelines of ANY newsgroup
which belong to alt.* hierarchy. (I'm talking about a.g.m because
your post dealt with that ng only, sorry r.g.p and a.c.)
And it has nothing to do with the fact that I created
this particular one. Common sense among reasonable people is the
only real _exact_ guideline that we have here. I don't believe
your common sense is somehow "better" than mine. You're
entitled to your opinion, of course, but don't state it as
a "fact". ;)
And your comment about "inappropriate posting" itself in
alt.* hierarchy is so old (as a debate) that I don't
even want to start it. I've beaten that subject to death
with those old Cabal morons (may they rest in peace).
Posts like yours have caused probably *thousands* of
useless, fruitless and uninformative threads. :)
However, I can point you to several resources if you want.
Personally, I _never_ took those "rules" and "guidelines" as gospel.
I always used my common sense. And my common sense told me that
this post HAD to be made.
> Visual pinball and pinmame work together, granted, but brining
> this here is drawing a pretty long bow.
> Fair and reasonable responses welcomed.
I hope you consider this one.
> I am not trying to get into a flame war with anyone about this,
> I am not trolling.
I believe you were honest with your attempt. I also believe that
you're wrong and misinformed. And that statement is just another
opinion. Now check out the alt.* hierarchy guidelines again. :)
Email me if you want to continue this discussion. And I _respect_
your opinion and I hope my post didn't cause any hard feelings.
I like almost all people who are part of this scene.
Every once in a while I just have to disagree with them.
That fact is sometimes too difficult for certain people
to swallow. I want to say all those people one thing:
Welcome to Internet.
Thanks for your time.
--
When we are young, wandering the face of the earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal - for a limited time...
--Rush