User:Amazing/Myths
If you haven't seen the infamous lists of Cracked.com - well, you're probably very lucky. They cover things like "Top 10 Toys You Didn't Know Gave You STDs" and "Five Real Life Global Conspiracies That Involved A Lubed Up Ocelot."
Note: If you want to propose an edit, please do so on the corresponding talk page.
Top 10 Amazing Myths You Probably Believe
Amazing! The name strikes fear and/or rage and/or boners into the hearts of all who hear it spoken. One of the UDWiki's greatest villains, he ran rampant until he was vanquished in an epic struggle. His corpse was dumped into Mt. Doom, where we can only assume he gave the very mountain itself a terrible case of diarrhea.
Can someone truly be that evil? Perhaps the strange events surrounding this user might be worth a second look...
10.) Amazing Was A Vandal
- What You Know: No mercy! No quarter! When Amazing vandalized pages, he lost any chance of being respected. You don't go around defacing stuff unless you're a total tool - and that's what Amazing was.
- Although... Amazing never committed actual "vandalism".
Amazing wasn't warned or banned for wantonly defacing, blanking, or "penis penis penis"ing a single page. The early warnings were for odd infractions such as re-adding deleted suggestions. Rules weren't clear about that back then.
Later, he was warned for moving comments to a talk page and for impersonation by writing comedic quotes attributed to fake usernames.
Actually, that's all pretty lame. It's probably better to think of him as a cruel, unholy despot.
He was also taken to task for things on his userpage or user talk page. That's like being arrested for writing dirty limricks on your bathroom wall. Which he totally doesn't spend hours doing...
09.) Amazing Took Everything Too Seriously
- What You Know: Amazing might've been a likable guy under other circumstances, but he took Urban Dead and the UDWiki waaaayyyy too seriously. The basement-dwelling man-child should've put on some pants, dropped the Doritos, and gone outside for once.
- Although... He was one of the least "serious" users on the wiki.
Before the drama, Amazing created several humorous suggestions. These included keeping zombies as pets and drawing on idle players' faces. (The latter nearly made it to "Peer Reviewed", if you can believe it.)
He also created McZed's, a group based on turning zombie meat into fast food. People actually joined and added to it for years after Amazing's departure.
Sure - Amazing didn't like when folks defaced his pages, accosted his friends, followed him around spewing insults, and even bothered him outside the site. However, he was also more than capable of seeing the humor in the situation.
Even after the drama was in full-force, he uploaded a photo of himself with "666" on his forehead. The purpose of that image was to create a template that was drowned in hot gobs of sarcasm.
 |
Amazing Fan Club Member |
| This User is officially a devoted fan of longtime Wiki contributor Amazing and his lovely beard! |
The only thing Amazing took seriously was the never-ending trolling that prevented him from contributing anything of value to the site.
08.) Everyone Hated/Hates Amazing
- What You Know: Amazing's ass-rage caused the entire UDWiki to unite against him. The man was universally hated. If his own mother played Urban Dead, her wiki name would've been "WishIAborted".
- Although... "Amazing Hate" was the passtime of a loud minority.
With tons of UDWiki users at the time, do you really believe the majority gave a hot crap about Amazing one way or another?
He ran one of the largest groups in the game, and did so without a single member voicing any problems with him or his methods. It sure didn't seem like he couldn't control himself.
There was not a single instance of Amazing starting trouble with other users. All disagreements can be traced back to someone disliking his group's rules, a griefer deciding to have "fun", someone taking suggestions too seriously, or people jumping into an argument that Amazing was already involved in.
One member of the group that first sought to grief Amazing later became a contact, and lent assistance in one of Amazing's games. With the griefing over, there was no reason for Amazing to hold a grudge.
Even after Amazing was banned, multiple users and SysOps still risked retribution by defending Amazing... and yes, some DID suffer. Users who defended Amazing were often labelled alts of Amazing and were given the same harsh treatment. Even new users brought up on vandalism charges were called "Amazing" in disguise.
A former SysOp came aboard as the official programmer of another one of Amazing's games, and soon after was banned from the UDWiki.
Someone as bad as Amazing was made out to be probably wouldn't have a friend in the world - much less ones willing to take a bullet for him.
07.) Amazing's Wiki Persona Ignited Drama
- What You Know: You see, if Amazing had not been such an asshole, people wouldn't have noticed him! He encouraged others to antagonize him by conducting himself poorly.
- Although... The largest targetting of Amazing was based on the fact that people saw him in-game and thought it would be funny to annoy him.
I'm exaggerating, right? Here's an abridged quote:
"A small group of us found a small guild/faction/whatever [...]. It was run by a particularly zealous leader named Amazing [...].
We spent about 2 months griefing the hell out of them, vandalizing their wiki page, etc. [...] They also fought back pretty hardcore against us on the wiki vandalization - and we got Amazing banned because of it."
(Source. Bolding supplied for this quotation.)
In actuality, a handful of people who grief others as a passtime saw Amazing trying to play the game effectively and figured he was "zealous".
Although the people bothering Amazing were being crude and obnoxious, it was supposedly because Amazing encouraged them to do it. The fact was that Amazing's part in the drama started out small and ramped up gradually when no one put an end to it.
What followed was bandwagon jumping from unrelated users. After all, Amazing had to be wrong if more than one person hated him. Right? On the contrary. A couple SysOps even apologized for making assumptions based on the number of people against Amazing.
In other instances, new users who were at first clamoring to help Amazing later joined in on the beating. Some of those folks were promoted to SysOp status after shifting positions.
When Amazing was banned, many of those griefing him immediately left the UDWiki. Their goal had been accomplished, and they no longer had any reason to use the site.
06.) All Amazing Contributed Was Drama
- What You Know: Like a fat and bearded tumor, Amazing had to be surgically removed. All he contributed was drama. Nothing of value was lost.
- Although... Amazing created the most popular user-created policy in the game, and other things you have benefited from.
Here are a few suggestions Amazing made that would later make their way into the game...
- Binoculars
- Feeding Groan
- Defile
- Hanging Crucifixes on walls (whaaaat?)
- And more...?
More suggestions sit in "Peer Approved".
Speaking of suggestions... did you know that Amazing started the numbered "For/Aganst" format for voting? Numbering votes and seperating them into "For" and "Against" was proposed by Amazing for clearer and easier Suggestion voting. It has since been applied to other processes as well.
(He can often be spotted wandering the highways in soiled, tattered clothing, shouting "They owe me for numbers!" at the passing cars.)
Have you heard of the Sacred Ground Policy? Amazing did that, too. You know, the page with the tremendous list of supporters that spawned other similar and opposing policies.
That's not even counting the reverting of vandalism, reporting vandals and spambots, correcting mistakes on pages, making graphics for others to use, maintaining multiple pages, and a bunch of other crap less interesting than Miscombitration.
All the contributions Amazing made were between December 2005 and very early June 2006. That's a window of about six months in which Amazing learned how to use a wiki, fended off abuse, and still created multiple concepts in use six years later.
05.) Amazing Filed False Vandalism, Arbitration, And Misconduct Cases
- What You Know: It takes a real idiot to file a bunch of meaningless cases on false grounds, or just because someone said something mean. Amazing should be ashamed!
- Although... He won a lot of those supposedly meritless cases, and always provided evidence.
Amazing gained a reputation for "absuing" the Vandalism, Misconduct, and Arbitration pages, which he used to solicit the assistance of SysOps.
In early wiki history, Amazing even posted reports about one user who was defacing his pages during the reporting process... and was rebuffed for reporting it.
Perhaps the most infamous report was when Amazing filed an arbitration case against a SysOp who personally insulted him. Weird, right? Well, no... one of the guidelines specifically stated that SysOps shouldn't do that.
Amazing didn't report that as Misconduct (the correct route) and took a the lighter approach of Arbitration. He also won that case... Then the SysOp violated the ruling and was banned.
This all proved shortsighted, however. It didn't make people abide by the guidelines, but instead caused some guidelines to be rewritten. It also didn't help when certain SysOps joined the bandwagon of griefing Amazing, one even going so far as to post where he lived.
Most of the vandalism cases were also decided in Amazing's favor. He never filed about something that didn't happen, be it judged vandalism or not.
The glut of vandalism, arbitration, and misconduct cases only really became a "problem" when the group of griefers decided to make it a point by continually referring to it.
Sort of like a Geico commerical, but annoying.
04.) Amazing Immediately Abused His SysOp Position
- What You Know: Amazing was promoted to SysOp status to prove he couldn't handle it. He immediately abused his abilities and was removed. Point proven.
- Although... The act was not against guidelines, and it had been done by another SysOp right beforehand.
During a disagreement with Amazing, a UDWiki user uploaded a photo and slapped it on a template questioning Amazing's sexuality.
Guffaw.
The image was immediately deleted by a SysOp since it was uploaded specifically to attack another user. At that point there was no process to elect images for removal, and no rules on the subject whatsoever.
Then Amazing was made a SysOp, and everyone was shitting squid. I'm not even kidding. They pooped fully formed, live squids with laser eyes and Sean Connery accents.
In the same manner as previous, a UDWiki user uploaded an image and slapped it on a template questioning Amazing's sexuality. (Because there are apparently no other insults out there.)
Amazing removed the image, and as a result was removed from SysOp status. Then everyone danced around the digital maypole singing songs of liberation.
The SysOp who removed Amazing's status reconsidered the situation and stated that if any other SysOps agreed with the image deletion, he'd restore Amazing's position.
A couple SysOps did just that, saying the deletion was wholly legitimate. Naturally, the promoting SysOp had been removed from his own position for the infraction of promoting Amazing. The promise of reverting the demotion could not be fulfilled.
During the debacle, Amazing cited an unwritten policy of deleting files that violated copyright law. Instead of "We should get on copyright infringement..." the reaction was "Holy crap, Amazing's gonna make us get on copyright infringement!"
Thusly, Amazing went down in UDWiki history as one of the only SysOps to never commit misconduct. :D
03.) Amazing Knew What He Was Getting Into
- What You Know: Nobody gets a permaban, or a year-long ban, unless the writing is on the wall. Amazing knew what he was doing, and by repeatedly breaking the rules he was asking for warning after warning, ban after ban! Tough noogies!
- Although... Amazing had no possible way to know what he was in for, because he was warned for non-existant "rules" and his ban record was cooked by a SysOp.
Note that in the early days of the wiki, Amazing was warned for re-adding deleted suggestions.
Well, that wasn't actually against the "suggestion re-adding rules", which didn't exist. You can't "know what you're getting into" if there's nothing to educate you, and common sense says that if it wasn't allowed, there would be a disclaimer.
The rule of the land for the wiki was: "If you do something wrong, we'll let you know with a blemish on your record that lasts forever."
Amazing actually got judgements against him for editing his own user and talk pages... which were clearly stated to be the user's personal space.
In one instance, Amazing moved chatter on a main page to the corresponding talk page. This was deemed vandlism because Amazing hadn't told people he was going to do it. A similar thing occurred when Amazing simply moved text on his own talk page to an archive. He had supposedly archived it "too soon".
If Amazing "knew what he was getting into" and didn't care, why not just go around defacing and blanking pages? Amazing clearly didn't want to get banned, since he was going out of his way to try to get SysOps involved in what was happening.
Hell, it would've been a lot less aggrivating to wantonly deface stuff... It sure would've saved all the trouble of making up stuff to ban him for.
Oh no he di-in't.
02.) Amazing Created WikiGate
- What You Know: The crowning jewel in Amazing's regal asshat is "WikiGate", when he filed seperate arbitration cases against everyone just because he was butthurt.
- Although... He filed one case. It was bloated by spam from the accused, and he won parts of it.
When Amazing was fed up with the grief, he filed a single arbitration case against a few people who were following him from page to page and preventing him from using the site.
In an effort to "help", a SysOp split the single case into many cases and created "WikiGate". Each new case addressed a single part of the overall complaint. This created an unmanagable mess.
The process was further muddied by those charged. Users edited Amazing's text, spammed the process with unrelated discussion, and in some cases refused every single arbitrator to make cases unresolvable. The last tactic stuck, and some of the cases to remain unarbitrated to this day.
What's worse, when the case was split, it erroniously included people Amazing hadn't even made the case against. This created more confusion and forced Amazing to "drop" cases he hadn't even started.
In the end, a few of the cases were indeed decided in Amazing's favor. Others weren't. When rulings were violated by others, Amazing had to file more reports about the violations... making nobody happy.
01.) Amazing Took Things Too Far
- What You Know: Even if the above points are true, Amazing took things way too far. What he did was so horrible that he violated the Terms of Service for Kevan's webhost! Poor Kevan could've gone to prison or the gallows or something.
- Although... Amazing repeated what was already said about him, in a condensed form, on his personal user page, in the form of satire... and in protest.
So...
- A SysOp told people how to find Amazing's home address.
- People reset his password hundreds of times, spamming his e-mail.
- Some claimed they'd only stop the harrassment if Amazing paid them.
- A user coded a script to log Amazing off of the site, using his IP address, and then posted it as an image. (At the time, the wiki supported showing off-site images.)
- And to top it off, none of the above was dealt with.
Instead of discussing those points, we have to focus on "Bike Riding".
It became common for Amazing's detractors to post vivid descriptions of "his" epic sexual activities. C*ck-sucking, child-f*cking, nothing was off-limits, and everything was allowed - sometimes encouraged - by SysOps.
If you missed that, they decided to call him a pedophile. (Pretending you have dirty pictures of Wiki users is worse?!)
The vulgarity was spread wherever possible, including Administration pages. It was acceptable to bash Amazing in the most vile, obscene, and hateful ways.
However, when Amazing tried a last ditch effort to force change, he was banned. (First infinitely, then for 365 days.) It didn't open the debate he expected or effect the positive policy change he specifically said he was going for at the time of the post.
Here is the quote. Replace references to bikes with references to sexual acts:
- "Expensive Offer:
Using Google and some know-how, I've found a secret caché of photographs taken recently depicting Rasher and Scinfaxi in a tropical bike riding tournament.
I am willing to send these photos to anyone interested for a large fee. I must warn you though - I could barely contain my disgust while sorting through these photos.
Rasher on a bike. Scinfaxi on a bike. Rasher and Scinfaxi on top of a bike. Rasher using his role volunteering to help bikes in order to brutally ride them. The list goes on. (At one point Rueful enters and rides both bikes at the same time without a proper wash-up.)
Also featured is the bizarre insertion of Rasher's entire bike into Scinfaxi's gaping, abused, bike-filled bike shop.
I've made one CD of these photos, then promptly set fire to my computer. The opening bid is 5,000 bikes - winning bidder may do what they wish with these graphic images, though I suggest launching this fleshy, pale, blur of bike riding into the sun.
Get this while it lasts! The rarity of this item will only increase over time, since Scinfaxi has recieved a leingthy prison sentence for riding a dozen small bikes and his Grandmother's bike... Which I believe was broken at the time, as well. At least we know that in prison, Scinfaxi will finally ride the bikes he has been missing. Perhaps the deep-seeded rejection that causes him to act out will finally be dissolved when he becomes the willing prison bike rider we all know him to be."
Let's look at a quote from the UDWiki's top moderator at the time, who was called "Second only to Kevan":
- "User pages are sacrosanct. Also; as long as no one sends him money for the pictures I don't see too much problem."
And a follow-up by another SysOp:
- "[...] that is his user page. He can do whatever he wants with it."
Almost immediately after posting the dirty version, Amazing decided not to sink to that level. Of his own volition, he took the profanity out and replaced it with bicycle references.
Still, users and SysOps alike seized the opportunity and began to figure out how to ban Amazing forever. They ended up with the Terms of Service for Kevan's webhost. Terms of Service that Wiki users had neither agreed to be bound by, nor even seen.
In the ToS was a guideline against posting and selling porn, along with using hatespeech, obscenity, etc.
(Posting copyrighted images, as per #4 on the list, would actually be more likely to get this site taken down.)
SysOps mulled it over and hashed it out for about three days as Amazing went about his merry business. Before a verdict was even reached, a SysOp who had long been gone was called in to ban Amazing. This was done because the SysOp had nothing to lose if the banning was ever deemed misconduct.
It's possible that no verdict was ever actually given, which renders the entire thing illegitimate. All's fair in love, war, and wiki editing.
Amazing's record was even altered by a SysOp after his ban. This was so he could retroactively support a lengthy banishment.
The main arguement was that Amazing legitimately tried to sell porn on the UDWiki - or that it would be seen that way - though it was clearly satire, and no worse than what others had said about him.
Summary
The moral of this story is that all it took was a handful of people to decide Amazing would be fun to mess with, and he was done. The only options were to go away, let them do whatever they wanted to his pages, or... stand his ground and get banned.
When it's ten people against one, it will always be easier to remove the single person. It's easier to keep one non-vandal banned than it is to watch out for several griefers and vandals who do this sort of thing all the time for fun.
Bonus List
Here's a short list of things not mentioned above.
- Amazing violated arbitration rulings.
- Not knowingly or maliciously. Mistakes are easy for anyone to make, and I don't even remember what the violation was about in the first place.
- Amazing was God.
- They shared a break room computer. Their IPs didn't match on the wiki, but did in-game - only from times when Amazing logged in there. He had multiple IPs due to logging in at home as well.
- Amazing was The Devil and many other vandal alts.
- The Devil was the 3 Page Wiki Vandal. All others just weren't me. Shrug.
- Amazing was just paranoid.
- Actually he disliked the inequal treatment and harsh behavior from SysOps at the time. On one occasion, Kevan attempted to judge SysOp behavior by making a secret account named "Thimble". A SysOp immediately checked Thimble's IP and outed him. Check out that link. The exchange is hilarious when you know who's talking.
