Still there I see.
The general chat can be used for all sorts of questions and answers. Please respect fairplay in the chat. Insults and other offenses can lead to fines and bans.
Who had the idea to write this text there and why? There's so much wrong with it...
1) It's unnecessary. I doubt we had a user who didn't understand what the general chat was for. It says "chat" for god's sake, what the bloody hell could it be?
2) It's insulting. To users. It somehow assumes we're a bunch of idiots who didn't realize that the "general chat can be used for all sort of questions and answers"
3) It's potentially misleading. By specifically mentioning something for what the chat can be used for (all sort of questions and answers), you automatically raise the question if other, not mentioned uses (comment, congratulate, criticize, poetry for your own enjoyment) are permitted as well.
4) The second part of course isn't any better. It's a nebulous threat on fairplay matters. Completely unnecessary too, since yes, we actually don't have a general chat fairplay problem. Insults and other offenses can lead to fines and bans? Unnecessarily aggressive threats, bans.
Last and not least. (but also least) The
MANDATE. Yes yes, it's a stupid argument in this context, but not in general, we are already running into some mandate problems. And to me looks like they risk becoming big too in the future.
What can the programmers do, the official mandate from Luques is only change the flash version to react. Nothing else really. But common sense of course dictates, that if Luques is basically absent from the game and the forum (last time online in the forum on the 21st of June) and rather unresponsive when contacted by the programmers (which he seems to be) they do indeed have the right to implement some changes on their own initiative. They are not only slaves to program react exactly the way flash was. Lack of response, and historical precedent, the runner/programmer of the game even when not the owner (Luques situation for many years, but he had a mandate too) can and have certain rights to change things.
When/What/How can be discussed (IMO one way of getting a mandate is of course through the community as well, we are all stakeholders too in a way, if the official mandate for a certain change isn't there from the owner, going through the community could work too).
But what we have now is sort of a very unclear situation. On some things the programmers implement changes. Without mandate from Luques OR from the community. Informing the community of the changes in a race chat in at least one case if I remember correctly. Which is clearly not the way to do it either. On other issues stuff can't be done because of the lack of mandate. This situation where the programmers seemingly decide what to do and what not, not on the merits of the changes, not through arguments, but by invoking the lack on mandate on one hand and presenting the community with a fait accompli on the other hand is a sure receipt for disaster.
So here, even if the programmers don't realize how strange (idiotic really) that announcement is... where's the mandate? I don't remember such an unnecessary, insulting, partially misleading, passive aggressive text in the flash-version. So no mandate, take it off. Now. NOt interested in a discussion on this really, it just has to go. And the general mandate discussion will have to be had at some point, but probably not here, in some other thread.