TLR back online

That is good news indeed FD ^ _^

Letting the past go is all well and good, but wrongs still need to be righted.

However, I think we both (SWAT and TLR) have taken some steps to mend the wounds.

Here's hoping to a brighter future

According to a Google search TLR is the top active English-speaking Freelancer fansite site on the Internet. If you punch in a comparison of English Freelancer sites in Alexa TLR is leading even 3dactionplanet.com (GameSpy). A large number of people who know about Freelancer know about TLR as well. And we are linked by Microsoft, however cheap you think that is. What I said is true. We are the biggest name amongst English-speaking Freelancer websites, but saying that is not the same as saying we are the center of the Freelancer community. You are twisting my words and implying a sense of superiority when there isn't one. I was merely stating a fact.

There is a difference between TLR policy and the opinions expressed by TLR staff. As unfortunate and unfair as it sounds most of the staff do not even think about foreign language Freelancer communities, so their comments should be interpreted as only encompassing English-speaking communities. For the sake of avoiding any further complaints on this issue we will make sure to not make such statements anymore. We also hope to change our awareness of other communities so that we can work together with them for our common goals.

On the IRC issue, again you missed some things that were very important. It was a survey and not a planning session. I made the mistake of mentioning some possible ideas to go with and everyone, including yourself, took what I said as if that was the plan. I'm sorry I mentioned anything at that time because it has caused a lot of grief. Nothing mentioned at that meeting regarding plans for the TLR site or community were official and some were just thrown out there as a part of the conversation. Some of what I said was only a joke but some took it seriously. Again, I am sorry for the confusion. As far as people being muted, we made constant announcements that people should pm us if they were server admins/owners so we could voice them and we thought we had gotten everyone.

As for you being devoiced... one of our staff thought you were being divisive rather than constructive and that was why you were muted. The event had to do with TLR alone and whether or not it should remain open. We had lost our relations with the server communities (which was entirely our fault) and we felt there was no reason to continue the site under those conditions. The point of the meeting to was to re-establish those relations, or at least start the process. However, you were trying to turn it into a global Freelancer/future of Freelancer event, and that was innappropriate for what we were trying to do. My apologies if you were offended but it was about us, not Freelancer. It would have been a waste of money to rent a dedicated server and create a new site if there was not going to be any better cooperation between TLR and the server communities.

Again, the decision to limit news was never actually implemented. We simply hit a drought of active staff and we were still experiencing email problems. As Walter would say: 'bad timing.' I am sorry for that. And again, the community will be much more aware of what is going on with TLR from now on.

A lot of people have claimed abuse of powers but in my experience peoples' definitions of what an abuse of power is varies greatly. To one person an individual in authority calling someone not in authority an idiot is an abuse of power. To another the abuse of power has to do with actually using their authority to do things to people, like ban them for no reason. To me the first example is not an abuse of power, it is an abuse of a person and there is a huge difference. Regardless of what has happened the way our members will be treated will be very different from how things were in the past. We are committed to making this change.

Trust is earned as you say, but that goes both ways. You broke our trust and in a fit of anger bakedpotato had me remove all links to the SWAT website. The forum link is already back and the site links will be back as soon as you fix your domain problems. But just as we are once again sharing our trust for you we ask only the same in return. We are trying to turn over a new leaf. We are only asking for the chance to do so.

If TLR is truely trying to get back on the good side of the community, how about fixing a few other things as well?

1) From Havens: (condensed, author name removed)

Quote

I share the same comments and issues/worries and posted above by FF. As do many. And I know many will never speak them out of fear of being "cast out" by other server ops and Admins. But people need to start telling the TLR team these things, otherwise they will never be fixed, or the issue never properly addressed. If Louva and his team are serious in what they say, they would appreciate hearing these things now so they can take them on board and rectify them.

There is more than one site that has now sprung up to try and fill the void that TLR left when it went down. My question is, how will Louva and his team deal with those sites. These people didnt create these sites to spite TLR, they did them for the community. Louva, will you acknowledge this and work alongside those sites? Linking them to yours (and vice versa of course) cross sharing information between each other? After all, at the end of the day, all any of us here want is a safe and secure future for the game we all love to play.

You never came back to answer that question.

2) I have started the FreelancerCommunity.net site. You have posted there Louva. You have also had email conversations with me. Yet, TLR still refuses to post our banner. You also took one of my news stories and when I pointed that out you still have not given me or the site credit. Post a news blurb about us and host our banner. It would be appreciated. If you look on our site we have a link to TLR as well as front page and archived news of your posts from the very beginning of our site. We were there to fill the void that existed when TLR and the global went down. Instead of being promoted, we are being ignored, even vilified for 'daring' to create to new freelancer site. Prove your new intentions.

3) Three times now I have given you our server information (Descent Retirement Home 24/7). Still, you have not posted our banner or ever sent an email concerning a TLR update. Prove your new intentions and host our banner. Or will you shut everyone down that has displeased you?

I assume when our new mod is completed and ready to announce that it will also be shut out of TLR?

I dont think that OP-R8R or anyone else from SWAT is responsible for this trouble. The only thing that cause it are the words that we can see on the logs. No matter if they were meant this way or not they have been said.
That members of this community voiced their oppinions is just alone the problem of those which said those words. It is always easy to say that you didn't mean something in this way but it is very hard to prove.

I really hope that the difference can be solved but trust has been damaged heavily by LR in the past. It takes alot to gain trust back.

Google positions have absolutly nothing to say. You can push every site to be placed at the top. And what you can see at google now is just the result from a site cache, not the reality.

At first Louva thanks for your effort to bring some light into the darkness. But the thinks that were said by you - was like you mentioned a "joke" or at least not mentioned seriously. But before you should do those announcements you better have be aware of your words - Admins words are taken always seriously (thats the sence of beeing Admin^^)

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Originally posted by Louva-Deus
According to a Google search TLR is the top active English-speaking Freelancer fansite site on the Internet. If you punch in a comparison of English Freelancer sites in Alexa TLR is leading even 3dactionplanet.com (GameSpy). A large number of people who know about Freelancer know about TLR as well. And we are linked by Microsoft, however cheap you think that is. What I said is true. We are the biggest name amongst English-speaking Freelancer websites, but saying that is not the same as saying we are the center of the Freelancer community. You are twisting my words and implying a sense of superiority when there isn't one. I was merely stating a fact.

Hm...
If you are once in the link lists of google its harder to get disbanded of these lists. So easily said it will take some time as google recognize whats going on... So this is no real evidence for me...

Next would be your comparison "We are the biggest name amongst English-speaking Freelancer websites, but saying that is not the same as saying we are the center of the Freelancer community."

Well its the same like i would say. Tokio is has the most inhabitants but is not the biggest city... The saying of beeing the biggest name implies that it would be also the other part (center of the FL community). Thats what i think do the most people interpret by that saying...

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Originally posted by Louva-Deus
On the IRC issue, again you missed some things that were very important. It was a survey and not a planning session. I made the mistake of mentioning some possible ideas to go with and everyone, including yourself, took what I said as if that was the plan. I'm sorry I mentioned anything at that time because it has caused a lot of grief. Nothing mentioned at that meeting regarding plans for the TLR site or community were official and some were just thrown out there as a part of the conversation. Some of what I said was only a joke but some took it seriously. Again, I am sorry for the confusion. As far as people being muted, we made constant announcements that people should pm us if they were server admins/owners so we could voice them and we thought we had gotten everyone.

Well if it only was a survey and you did some jokes - maybe this was also a bad timing by yourself^^ Like i said before. As Admin you should always be aware of what you state and especially in such important topic for the meeting...

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Originally posted by Louva-Deus
A lot of people have claimed abuse of powers but in my experience peoples' definitions of what an abuse of power is varies greatly. To one person an individual in authority calling someone not in authority an idiot is an abuse of power. To another the abuse of power has to do with actually using their authority to do things to people, like ban them for no reason. To me the first example is not an abuse of power, it is an abuse of a person and there is a huge difference. Regardless of what has happened the way our members will be treated will be very different from how things were in the past. We are committed to making this change.

Well the abuse of power would be to limit/punish someone for his deeds althought his debt is not proven. That would be as an example if (dunno if this ever would have happend) TLR would have decided to ban FL servers from the GLS like it was stated here (e.g. if the Admins of the GLS dont like the "to banned" server/admin/community etc...).

Generally said like stated above, i welcome your water on the fire ;D But I also would mentioned that your sayings in the past was not very clear then and the people couldn't know that you just were joking. If the topic is to important (like the future of FL) then it would have been better to be serious instead of joking or doing surveys without announcing that it would be a survey...

i will only add that it will b quite interesting to observe what will happen to community and different sites in following three years, and who will show truthiness of tomorrow in their intentions of today. past has its stories to speak, that's for sure.

imho, this topic has been completely drained, since every bit of interesting info, thoughts, facts and statements had been seen, therefore, it should b closed and preserved as the proof of yesterday's facts for days to come.

but, ofc, i am encouraging all of u to use swat forum to deal with every single remaining open issue, and i hope u will address them adequately.

swat has proven by intentions of the past to b tool for things alike.

I will be more careful with my words. A lot of this comes from conflicting ideologies I suppose. To me everyone in the community is first and foremost a member of the community. The admins and staff have merely volunteered to take on more responsibilities, but that does not place them above any other user and they should not be treated any differently. To me setting up admins and staff as a different class held to a higher standard not only supports elitism but it fosters bad blood between the 'upper class' and the 'lower class'. I think everyone should be held to the same standard, whatever that is. This is how it works in all of my other communities, so it will be hard for me to remember TLR is a special case.

Having a high rank in Google doesn't say anything about the quality of a site, but it does say something about the visibility of it, and that was my only point. For whatever reason TLR is more visible than the majority of English-speaking Freelancer sites. All that means is we have more responsibility to get things right the first time.

DwnUndr, I'm sorry for not providing an answer sooner to your questions. We plan on having a link database to as many Freelancer sites as possible. We have nothing against your new website. The only thing I told you was that you created it prematurely. As for the news thing, I got that from multiple sources and not just your site. I will try to remember to update that post with the source info, but it will take me a while to find them all again. You need to send any news you want posted to bakedpotato. I will have to look to see if I can find your site's button for a link. If you have further questions feel free to email me.

It is my hope that this discussion can end now. Any further grievance's should be handled in private.

It doesn't open it