Hey guys. This announcement is long overdue, and there are several things I wish to cover in it. So listen up.

The first and foremost is that we have some new Mods and some promotions.

I’d like you all too welcome Nynnja, Commander Lost, Sekh765 and Retro Armadillo to our moderator team. You guys know them, so congratulate ‘em. :3

We also have some promotions to Admins to announce, namely Pathia, Keller and Elrabin. I.E, they now have the power of Permaban and other fun admin gifts. Remember: Do not taunt happy fun admin.

Next, is the announcement of a new initiative I hinted at during VALVe’s Halo-gate.

The Furry Pound has always been meant to be a haven for friends….a place for friends to gather and play and have fun. And what started out as 30 or so friends a little over a year ago has blossomed (ballooned?) into 1800+.

I’m really happy that so many of you find TFP a great place to hang out. However, we are no longer as close, and therefore problems are cropping up. Namely, trolling in a variety of forms, as well as blatant and not so blatant rule breakers.

The number one rule of TFP is “Don’t be a douche”. Time and time again, the admin team has preferred to allow conflicts to play out on the servers, interfering only as needed.

This can no longer be the case, as it is seriously disrupting the intended purpose of TFP. Bear in mind, though anyone can invite in a friend (to keep this from being the “admin’s friends club”) this is a PRIVATE group, and we reserve the right to boot anyone out of the group, the chat, and the servers, for any reason.

Our reasons will be as follows:

Cheating: This one is truly self-explanatory; Hacking, aimbotting, and the like, anything to give one an unfair advantage past their skill in the game. Cheaters are given an instant permaban the moment we can verify that they are, in fact, cheating. No second chances.

To avoid being kicked out for Cheating: Don’t cheat.

Hard Trolling: These are your typical hardcore trolls, out to blatantly disrupt the gameplay and the players in a variety of ways. This includes (but is not limited to) people who micspam, and who come in to “troll the furries” fall into this group. Hardcore trolls are given one warning, and thereafter booted from the game. Further trolling results in their being banned in increasing increments depending on the number of offenses and the severity of the offense(s).

To avoid being kicked out for hard trolling: Don’t troll.

Soft Trolling: These are those whom most of you have been complaining about in the game. Less severe than the blatant trolls, these people are continually insulting to others, passive aggressively trying to get their way in a game, or even consistently putting others down. These people tend to think that everyone who doesn’t play their way or do what they say are idiots, and let them know, berating their team verbally and over text. These people are also continually and blatantly disrespectful of everyone, including the admin team. They generally make the game very unpleasant to play for one person or for many.

These people (unless they already have been given warnings prior to this) will be given two warnings….after the second; they will be kicked and given the exact reason why they were kicked. Further offenses will result in their being banned in increasing increments depending on the number of offenses and the severity of the offense(s).

To avoid being kicked out for soft trolling: Listen to the Admins when they give you warnings, and listen to the players when they tell you you’re being a jackass and stop being one. This is a place for everyone to have fun, not a place for you to vent whatever issue you have with someone else. This is something we will *not* be giving multiple chances on, as we have in the past, and even Mods now have the ability to temp ban. Don’t be a jackass.

Now, though we are (still) adding more Mods and Admins, this is not a job we can do on our own. We need *your* help, as the community. How?

First and foremost, especially in the case of trolls, tell/ask them to stop *respectfully* (no pouring fuel on the fire, in other words). That means no profanity, what means doing it calmly and in a collected manner. If they don’t, take a demo. (Directions on that available here )

Once you have your demo, you can go about it one of two ways: You can upload the demo to your file sharing client of choice and send the url to us via the forums, or you can e-mail it to: admin@thefurrypound.org Either option gets your demo to the Admins.

The other option is to call an admin into the server, but if you take this option make sure you have the name and Steam ID of the person causing the problem, a description of what’s going on and what server it happened in. If you can’t get the Steam ID, get their Steam Profile page, and we can extrapolate it from there and take the appropriate action.

Remember, this is not just our community, it’s yours too. The goal of TFP always has been, and continues to be to become a server for friends to play on. We’ve strayed from that goal and it’s time to get back to it. All we ask of anyone and everyone here is that they treat others with respect. Those who do not, will no longer be welcome as part of TFP. If there are those of you who feel like you cannot/do not want to be on the servers, or in the group due to these new rules, we’ll be sad to see you leave but if you want to, we’re not going to force you to stay.

To those of you who do stay, we’re glad to keep you, and hope to make this the kind of server it once was, and can be again.

Oh, and one more thing guys, please try to keep all drama restricted to this announcement. (I know it’s gonna spill over onto the chat/forums/server, but try to keep the majority of it here please.)

~Witchiebunny

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 4:30 am and is filed under Announcements, TFP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.