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Most recent change to the misconduct section

Is horribly POV. It conveniently omits facts, like the fact that the "whistleblower" was banned because he was a hacker, not because he had "blown the whistle" on anything. —Dark•Shikari[T] 16:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

If you feel changes should be made, feel free to make them and then we can discuss if they are good or not. I, personally, didn't play EVE during this time and don't know much about it, although I feel that the line about giving them an "unfair advantage" is a bit POV. Some context might make that more clear. TheCommodore7 (talk) 17:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Would a mention that the information was obtained via metagaming (as a replacement to one of the mentions of him as a "whistleblower") be satisfactory to illustrate that the information was obtained under less than ethical means? The word "whistleblower" usually entails someone raising moral, ethical, or professional objections to something that is going on but while the parties cheating were clearly breaking all kinds of rules, the people making accusations were hardly saints and were doing it for purely personal and propagandic (is that a word? :P ) reasons. I can't remember the name of the guy who found the info but I know he had dubious motives at best. Wasn't he bascially a metagamer/hacker for hire? --Wootonius (talk) 20:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Kugutsumen Alatari (talk) 14:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Ahh yes...that's the lark :) --Wootonius (talk) 23:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I authored the latest revision of the section, and I did not mean it to be 'horribly POV'. I was not aware that the whistleblower in question had obtained his informations by hacking. As far as I know, CCP refused to state a reason for his ban, simply saying that there had been a TOS violation, and referencing several articles of their Terms of Service, ranging from 'you may not violate any law' to 'we reserve the right to ban anyone'. Can you give me a specific source, regarding the use of hacking? If this is true, then I would certainly agree that we should incorporate this information somehow. Macondocontro (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2007 (GMT)

I did some more research on this, and as far as I can determine, Kugutsumen was not banned for hacking, but apparently simply for causing an uproar on EVE Online's message boards by revealing what he had uncovered. Seems to me that they indeed wanted to punish him for whistleblowing, which was a faux pas. CCP's image would have benefited greatly had they thanked him, instead of booting him. Macondocontro (talk) 15:48, 22 December 2007 (GMT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.11.248.88 (talk)

Ok...it seems that only one article regarding Kugutsumen has been produced multiple times as a clear statement of events without bias, or opinion and this is clearly not the case. The escapist article is an editorial piece, not a scholarly work. This is an important distinction as is an outlet for the opinion of the work's author...not necessarily the whole unbiased truth. If this article is to be sourced in this article, it seems to me that it opens the door for any editorial on the affair to be used which would be counter-productive. I think unless an article which cites more sources than goonswarm cronies, bob cronies or purely conjectural (e.g. unsourced) statements is produced, the section should be restored to its prior state of the brief description of the problem and the move towards the player council. Any objections? Btw - I am not a goon nor Bob crony - I have fought for both sides in 0.0 as well as neutral sides and just want this to be solved in an academic matter. Lets keep this calm and reasonable. Mmmkay? --Wootonius (talk) 05:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fair and reasonable, for the record I am a carebear I haven't fought for either side, from my perspective any 0.0 war drives the empire economy. -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 18:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
>> "it seems that only one article regarding Kugutsumen has been produced multiple times as a clear statement of events without bias, or opinion and this is clearly not the case"
That article is referenced simply because it collects the various statements of people involved in one conveniently formatted page. We do not need that article, its editorial content is irrelevant, and we can just as well simply quote Kungutsumen directly, and reference CCP's own forum messages and dev blog posts. Once we do that, nobody will be able to claim that there is any bias in our sources.
>> "I think unless an article which cites more sources than goonswarm cronies, bob cronies or purely conjectural (e.g. unsourced) statements is produced, the section should be restored to its prior state of the brief description of the problem and the move towards the player council. Any objections?"
I have a problem with the previous version of this section, as I feel it did not provide an accurate picture of what happened.
First of all, why give a sub-paragraph of the "criticism" section which is clearly about developer misconduct the title "Council of Stellar Management"? The Council enters the picture as a consequence of what happened, and is not what this paragraph is about. "Developer misconduct" is more accurate, more appropriate, and has a long history of use on this page.
Furthermore, if we simply state that "one EVE Online developer was found guilty of providing his in-game alliance with ten blueprints", we give Wikipedia readers no way of understanding the impact of this action, as there are both dirt cheap and extremely expensive blueprints in this game. I think it is both true and relevant to state that this action gave BoB an unfair advantage over competing corporations. Does anyone want to dispute this claim?
Finally, I do not think that the issue you brought up, namely the dubious neutrality of the currently referenced source (The Escapist), warrants reverting back to the previous version of this section, and if some of you do not accept that Escapist article as a valid source, I am willing to look up and reference the direct sources (Kungutsumen and CCP) themselves, in order to put this issue at rest.
Oh, and my own EVE Online history is the following: I played for about three months, in late 2006. I was never involved in any war nor did I ever pertake in any PvP. The corp I joined was very small (about 10 people), and had nothing to do with either BoB or Goonswarm. We just did some mining in very safe space. I eventually went on a hiatus due to RL issues (no time to play!), and so far I haven't made my come back. I plan to return some day, as I think EVE is the best MMORPG out there. But I have a moral issue with people trying to sweep the t20 scandal under a rug. I wish you would just all accept that history can not be changed, and that this thing will not go away, ever.
-- Macondocontro (talk) 14:31, 24 December 2007 (GMT)
I see what you are saying, Macondocontro. However, just stating "unfair advantage" sounds POV, whether it actually is or not. I have actually heard arguments on both sides. Perhaps, we should take out the "unfair" and add this sentence after that. "It is hotly debated within the EVE Online community whether these blueprints were an unfair advantage or not."
In an effort for full disclosure, I am a 4 month old character in EVE in an alliance in the Drone Regions. I spend 95% of my time in Empire space as a miner. My alliance is not officially allied with either BoB or the Goons, though we are currently assisting the Northern Coalition in attacks against BoB. Also, I am a member of the Something Awful forums (making me a goon), though I am not active in any of the Goon's dealings in EVE.
I neither want to advertise nor sweep this under the rug. I am only interested in making sure the article is factual, encyclopedic (er, wikipedic?), and verifiable. TheCommodore7 (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand (from a purely logical point of view), how someone could argue that those blueprints were NOT an unfair advantage. I mean, even getting 1 ISK more than a competitor would be, in theory, an unfair advantage, and in this case we are talking about extremely valuable blueprints, of which only few exist in the EvE world. It sounds obvious to me that there was an unfair advantage. Anyway, I am not married to that sentence, we can change it. I would just like to find a way for Wikipedia readers to understand the significance of what happened. If we just state that a developer provided his in-game alliance with 10 blueprints, a casual reader will have no idea what that means, and what consequences that had on the game. Doing as you suggest, and taking out 'unfair' while leaving in the rest of the sentence about getting an advantage may work. -- Macondocontro (talk) 09:22, 30 December 2007 (GMT)

Well, I'm not by any means seeking to sweep this under the rug but I see it like this. This case (much like legal cases) is not as important as the precedent that has been set. The Council of Stellar management is unprecedented in EvE history. Although many people are still furious about this months after it happened, what is really important is the watershed events which seem to be in progress as far as making developer interaction in game a much more transparent thing. I'm sure some sort of compromise version can be reached but since these events happened almost a year ago, I think we need to look for a longer term approach (compromise between both sides) rather than agonizing over this much longer. --Wootonius (talk) 22:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the Council of Stellar Management is unprecedented in MMORPG history, and it is potentially very interesting, but as of now it is little more than a blueprint. It remains to be seen when and how it will be implemented. Will the council have the power and the instruments to prevent any future developer misconduct? -- Macondocontro (talk) 09:16, 30 December 2007 (GMT)

As suggested by TheCommodore7, I took out 'unfair'. What does everybody think? What more needs to be done, in order to reach a consensus?

From my point of view the section still contains commentary such as "The impartiality of this remains disputed", and attempts to paint a negative POV - for example it mentions that the player base calling for t20 to be fired, yet it doesn't mention that an unspecified punishment had been enacted six months previously. This information was published by CCP at some point, I will see if I can find the URL, however I don't think that it warrants inclusion. Quite honestly I don't get it, if someone is so incensed by the actions of t20 and CCP why are they still playing EVE 10 months on, feeling the need on starting edit wars on Wikipedia? -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 21:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
I want to make an attempt at explaining you what motivates people like me to keep the memory of what happened alive, and not allow anyone to sweep the t20 scandal under a rug.
What this boils down to, ultimately, is that artificial worlds such as GuildWars, EvE or Second Life are private, and run by commercial entities that have a dictatorial approach. They are above the law, and nobody can hold them accountable, even when their actions are clearly immoral. This feels extremely unjust - even outrageous - to people who pay good money and invest as much as 4-5 hours of their time each day in order to build up something in one of those worlds.
So when injustice occurs, and is not fixed by the running entity, in our case CCP, the only option that players have is to remove themselves from this artificial world, which is sometimes extremely painful, because it involves leaving behind real people that you have become friends with, and it means throwing away all you have worked for. Once out, the player obviously calls bullshit, and tries to warn others, trying to keep alive the memory of what happened, so that there is at least the possibility of a moral sanction against the evil entity who acted immorally. I can relate with that.
I am lucky in that I never really got involved with EvE, but I can imagine how I would have been devastated by the t20 affair had I been an active player. And the point is not that a developer was found cheating, I mean, that can happen, it's no big deal to me. What is horrible is how CCP reacted: first they tried to conceal the whole thing, by furiously deleting forum messages, but the users fought back, and not just Goons, BoB members were equally active in reposting and cross referencing the allegations, until CCP decided to go as far as taking the EvE forums down entirely.
But this action backfired, as the allegations spread like a shockwave through external forums, IRC and blogs, and soon there were articles on Slashdot and Blue's, and Digg users clicked like crazy, and the whole thing blew up in CCP's face. At this point they were forced to issue a statement, conduct an investigation and concede that there had been misconduct. But how did they decide to 'fix' things? They simply removed the blueprints and banned the whistleblower (stating that he deserved the ban, because of the uproar he had caused on the forums!), while the developer retained his job.
This caused further outrage, because in the minds of most people the whistleblower should have been given a medal instead of ban, while the developer should have been sanctioned exemplarly. In the end, this whole affair left many people extremely upset, and wary of CCP.
Later on CCP realized that they had made a PR mistake, and that they had gotten themselves a log of negative press, so they decided to exercise some damage control, and they created the Internal Affairs division, which sounded like a joke to many, because how can you believe an evil entity's own internal investigations? Can players be sure that Arkanon would tell us, were he to uncover further instances of misconduct? Would he not rather bury anything he finds out in the sand, so as not to cause further damage to his own company?
CCP must have understood that Arkanon was not enough, so they published a blueprint for the Council of Stellar Management, finally giving in to calls for an independent supervising body, one elected by the user base, and not subjected to CCP's control. But alas, as of my writing, this Council is still just a vague idea. It remains to be seen when and how it will be established, and we'll have to verify whether the Council will receive both the power and the tools to properly exercise its function.
-- Macondocontro (talk) 11:06, 31 December 2007 (GMT)
Macondocontro, I'll refer to your questions from before Christmas. We were talking about how to get the allegations right in the article. I think you guys have reached a good compromise since I last checked the article. There have been allegations, one turned out to be true. I like it that way and think we should keep it. As for an objective description of how important the ten BPOs were, personally I don't think we need one. However, at the end of the day I don't resist if somebody comes up with something likable. In my opinion conveying the value of the blueprints wouldn't matter much. No matter the BPOs' value, giving them to your corporation would be wrong anyways. Knowing that t20 supplied his corp with something the value of one cubic meter of Veldspar wouldn't make a difference. He wasn't allowed to do it - neither give away blueprints nor give away something the value of one cubic meter of Veldpar. Doing so provided his corp with an advantage. That's the information we currently convey and I think that's perfectly well. But as I said, If you really really would like the article to further explain the BPOs' value, I won't resist.
About the reliabiliy of player posts on the EVE Online forums you said they were "the best possible source" if you wanted to describe another player's behavior. I tend to disagree. In my opinion a player's post in itself is not reliable. What I read on the forums I take with a grain of salt. Here's why. Literally every player can write anything he liked. You never know whether the person behind the monitor bothered to sleep his thoughts over for a night; whether he was actually being objective; whether he wanted to give the reader the mere impression of an objective post. Some kinds of content might get a post edited by a moderator. Or even deleted. But in general I can make something up, post it on the forums and rightfully use it as a source for a statement in this Wikipedia article. Or... can I really? Should I? Now if we really must include a post from a player we should always make sure that we put it in the right perspective. The reader needs to know that is was just a player writing this. And in this case I actually mean it in a pejorative way - anyone can voice his opinion. Whatever a player on the forums writes - he doesn't have to care for the consequences and doesn't have to prove a thing. The reader needs to know that we're presenting him with a source that might be objective. But it might as well be nonsense. To me it's part of our responsibility to make that clear to the reader.
"Council of Stellar Management" as the new headline of the Misconduct section. Simple question: Why did I change the headline to "Council of Stellar Management" when the section was mostly about misconduct? Answer: When TheCommodore, Martin, Alatari, Richard Slater and I were discussing this section back in November Martin asked rhetorically whether we shouldn't concentrate on the Council and what was going on now instead of dedicating most of the section to t20's misconduct. To me it sounded like a good idea. Nobody should forget what t20 did so that info needed to stay there. But the other bits? I dunno, it looked like we had been nitpicking the whole time. Like we hadn't been able to move on for a long time. I suggested a new version of the Misconduct section. TheCommodore improved it and after a few days without Martin, Alatari or Richard Slater protesting either I eventually posted it. It was basically about what is now and a minor part about how we got here. Now was the time of creating the Council of Stellar Managemenet. And how we got here was a sentence saying that t20 provided his corp with ten blueprints. Since that was merely what got the ball rolling I decided to rename the section to "Council of Stellar Management". That way it represented what it was actually about: not so much ballast from the past and more about how things developed. Now, about one month later I still think that it's the right way. While a misconduct was at the beginning there has happened so much more in the meantime.
What do you guys think about how much space t20's misconduct and the Council should take up? I think while we need to inform the reader about what t20 did we should put more emphasis on what happened in the ten months after that.
-- Aexus (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that someone else (Toxicmango, on Dec. 29th) modified the paragraph, adding the following sentence: "Follow up allegations revealed rigging of supposedly open ended RP events, and out of game private communication between developers and the in-game alliance Band of Brothers which was used to accomplish the termination of an ingame volunteer." I don't think there is enough proof to justify this sentence. -- Macondocontro (talk) 09:32, 30 December 2007 (GMT)

I agree with that, it is a sentence that is added to the sections in various forms and relating to various different allegations. -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 21:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree that there's not enough proof. Toxicmango wrote about "rigging of supposedly open ended RP events" - as if! The Escapist article specifically references kieron's thread about this allegation. Kieron writes that CCP was not able "to confirm nor deny the veracity of these allegations". Toxicmango shouldn't just go ahead and write that the roleplay events actually have been rigged as long as he doesn't provide proof to support the claim. Innocent until proven guilty. As for the other thing, "[...] out of game private communication" - I miss Toxicmango's proof for that, too. I have deleted one of the two sentences that Toxicmango wrote, namely the one about rigging roleplay events and using out-of-game communication. The other sentence about how the impartiality of the Internal Affairs division remains disputed doesn't belong there either. Although I've left it there for now. What do you think about it?
Aexus (talk) 13:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

A thought...if Macon thinks we need more information on the impact of these blueprints, let's just tell them the in-game effect they had. Something akin to: "At that time, these blueprints were handed out by a random lottery system. Therefore, these blueprints were rare and valuable in the game." Or something to that effect. TheCommodore7 (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

  • This change was made today and it's not vandalism if the user attempts to source it and made it in good faith. If the source doesn't support the statements then work with Toxicmango until he's convinced to either leave it out or compromise on the wording. It seems like mediation might be needed for this issue so that it stops haunting a page that is up for Class A status. Alatari (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

The New York Times article

The article by the NYT does support questioning CCP's impartiality by the player-base. This is most apparent on the second page of the article which also describes the proposed committee. This was a legitimate article written by a legitimate news agency to address legitimate concerns of thousands of consumers. To just not mention it at all in a supposedly neutral source of information is a total dereliction of duty for those who author it. And correct me if I'm wrong, but CCP has yet to establish this committee that they want so much to appease any feelings of player doubt. RyzenVH (talk) 10:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Ryzen, you're right! The article does support this claim. I was wrong. On Tuesday when you changed where the source was displayed I didn't read your change properly. I thought the source was still being used to "prove" that BoB had been using out-of-games communications and CCP had been rigging events. Two claims the article doesn't support. However, the way we use the New York Times article now is perfectly fine. I'm going to change a typo though. The <ref> tag is formatted incorrectly. You can see what I mean down in the References section. It's probably a < or > in the wrong place. Also, the article link contains PHP variables like r=2 and oref=slogin. I don't know what the second one does; the first one indicates a link to page two of the article. However, we're referencing the article as a whole. I'm going to remove these variables.
-- Aexus (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Done. I've fixed the <ref> tag. There was an unnecessary >. Also shortened the URL, fixed the retrieval date and deleted an unnecessary space character.
-- Aexus (talk) 18:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing that... I had no idea what was causing it since it looked the same as other refs. RyzenVH (talk) 09:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Why a source within the EVE Aurora forums in not appropriate

On Monday, January 14, Toxicmango has added a link to the EVE Aurora forums. Here's the link to the appropriate revision. As you may or may not know Aurora is a division of the Interstellar Services Department (ISD) - it's the event division. This page on the EVE Online website summarizes the jobs of Aurora and the other ISD divisions. Toxicmango referenced this topic within the Aurora forums. However, the forums require readers to be registered. To make this clear: as per WP:EL, "A site that requires registration or a subscription should not be linked unless the web site itself is the topic of the article." See this page for the complete text of this policy.
-- Aexus (talk) 00:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:External Links refers to the "External Links" sections of articles rather than citations, and as such I don't believe it applies to this situation. Wikipedia:Citing Sources does not place any restrictions on websites that require registration, if it did you would not be able to reference on-line editions of newspapers, journals and books. My concern about the link to the Aurora forums would be that it is "closed registration" and covered by a NDA, thus by anyone providing or corroborating the source would preclude their own access (assuming CCP could identify them and due process was followed). This isn't an issue I have run into on Wikipedia before. -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 12:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up. Had I read the guide's summary I would have seen this. It says: "The subject of this guideline is external links that are not citations of article sources." Silly me. But then even if the guideline doesn't apply to citations I still can't see Wikipedia allowing sources that some readers can neither access nor verify. I could literally open up my own protected website and name it as a source for whatever I like. Nobody would ever know if it were true. That shouldn't be possible.
-- Aexus (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
That I agree with. -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 22:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to poceed with the Aurora forum topic. Therefore I have asked the policy village pump. The five village pumps are a part of the Reference Desk that helps editors get answers to questions about everything Wikipedia. For the discussion see the appropriate question here: "Do we accept sources that cannot be publicly accessed (and thus verified)?"
The first opinions so far say that a source does not have to be publicly accessible. It just has to be accessible. From that point of view the Aurora forum topic is valid. But the true problem with the Aurora source seems to be that it's part of a forum. W.marsh pointed out that forums "used to be flatly barred from being acceptable sources in WP:RS." Another editor pointed to the self-published sources section - see here. It explains why forums fail verifiability and "are largely not acceptable."
-- Aexus (talk) 03:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I would argue that the Aurora forum link is not accessible, a member of the public would not be able to register to access the forums because they are not open to public membership, they are accessible only by virtue of membership of ISD Aurora. That said it would not be unreasonable for a Hewlett-Packard employee to cite an internal forum, wiki or intranet site for some obscure technical detail of one of HP's products. Interested to see the outcome of the pump discussion. -- RichardSlater (About) / (Talk) 16:08, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I've highlighted the source. I've also specifically asked whether it makes a difference in the source's acceptability that people had to apply for a position at Aurora to access the forums. I've found your HP remark quite appropriate; I've cited that. Hope it doesn't bother you. If it does I'll remove it from the dicussion.
-- Aexus (talk) 02:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

An update. During the discussion it became apparent that two aspects of the source had to be clarified. Not just the source's validity itself. One of these the two aspects is verifiabilty aka "Is it okay that the reader has to become an Aurora member to access and verify the source?" The other aspect is reliability. It's forums we're talking about. And they generally are not accepted. However, as Terlipressin rightfully said during the discussion: "There aren't going to be much if any paper sources." Or other forms of third-party publications for that matter. We lack alternatives. This forum is the source and not just a source.
To address both the aspects of verifiability and reliability in the correct context I've split the original discussion in two parts. Reliability goes on here on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. The verifiability aspect is now being discussed here on the WP:V Talk page. I've declared the original discussion closed and left pointers there to the appropriate new pages.
On a side note, I've asked the Aurora team via e-mail if they could point me to a publicly accessible web page that holds their Non-Disclosure Agreement. That might also help clear this up.
-- Aexus (talk) 08:18, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Until today 20 people have taken part in the discussions. I draw conclusions now. Regarding reliability, Terlipressin asked about forums that are likely the only source for a statement. Are they considered reliable? The discussions say they're not. Even if a forum post is the only source for a statement that doesn't make it less of a self-published source. One valid way to have the Aurora forums considered reliable, however, is to prove that the statement was made by a notable person. According to Septentrionalis for example an EVE Online developer would suffice. For now we consider the topic in question an unreliable source as it's self-published.
Regarding verifiability the forums do not meet Wikipedia's standard either. They fail at public accessibility. The definition that arose during the discussion is that it has to be up to the reader's discretion to access and verify the source for it to meet the verifiability standards. For the Aurora forums that's not the case. Readers cannot decide to verify the source on their own. If a reader did he'd have to apply for a position at Aurora and would have to be approved.
On a side note: I haven't received an answer to the e-mail I wrote to the Aurora team. I asked where I could find an online version of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) members accepted upon entering the organization. For the time being we don't know for sure if the NDA is currently part of the application process and where to find it in case it is. However, the two discussions about reliability and verifiability yielded results that let us proceed anyway.
I'm going to remove the link to the Aurora forums and the statement it was meant to support. I ask you to redirect authors who disagree to either this very section of the Talk page or the two discussions linked a few lines above.
-- Aexus (talk) 21:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Today Toxicmango reverted my change, Dark Shikari then reverted Toxic's change. I'll elaborate on this one. Dark said that, "It doesn't matter *who* said it--a statement on a private forum is not a reliable source for such an allegation." Generally that's correct. However, according to the discussion I had with the Reliable Sources Noticeboard (it can still be read here) one valid exception to this rule and in our case would be that the statement in question had been made a "notable person", for example a developer. That is if we, the authors of this article, agree that the person is notable.
A dev? Notable to me. A game master? Yeah, probably notable enough, too. The head of Aurora or his substitute? I'd say yes, too. A regular Aurora member? No in my opinion. I wouldn't call regular Aurora members notable. I assume that literally any resonably skilled and dedicated player can become an Aurora member. Being an Aurora member thus doesn't make a person notable. Otherwise literally all EVE players were notable since they'd all be able to become Aurora members. And since every human being above a certain age can start playing EVE to begin with - a fair percentage of mankind would suddenly become notable.
Which brings us back to the question by whom this statement has been made. To meet Wikipedia's reliability standards we have to prove that the topic in question was started by a notable person. However, we cannot do that. It's not that we don't want to. We technically can't because access to the Aurora forums is restricted to Aurora members. The forums are private. The discussion I had on the WP:V Talk page (you can still read it here) came to the conclusion that the Aurora forums do not meet Wikipedia's veriability standards, namely because they cannot be considered available to the public. Toxic claimed earlier today the statement was by a notable person. This still wouldn't change anything regarding verifiability. Access to the forums would still be restricted. The definition that arose during the discussion is that it has to be up to the reader's discretion to access and verify the source for it to meet the verifiability standards. As long as readers have to be approved the source doesn't meet the verifiability standards.
And as long as a source doesn't meet all of Wikipedia's standards it is invalid. As Blueboar pointed out during the discussion, since this source is controversial we are to take it out together with the statement and let those who want to include it find a new source. This quote was about dead links and applies to any kind of controversial source:
-- Aexus (talk) 09:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. There are plenty of books that are not available for public access and which attempts to get limited access may be rejected by your average reader but which are valid sources. Many libraries will not have available certain books, journals, or papers either due to limited supply/circulation or being out of print. That doesn't invalidate a source just because an average small town reader can't go check some scholarly, technical, or medical journal or paper. In the case of websites, sites go up and down or become passworded/fee paying all the time. That's why the access date in bibliographies. It's no different from a paper source going out of print, and out of print sources are still cited in papers and books.
In this case too we're talking about direct official forums from the company used for the actual game operation, not a random individual's chat forum. When it comes to a matter of a group or company being caught at misconduct or corruption, of course the primary documents aren't going to be nice official press releases. One side would have a vested interest in trying to make information inaccessible. This is tantamount to claiming for example Enron internal company documents or memos being invalid due to being "self published". This presents a distorted idea of the situation and is most definitely non-neutral POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terlipressin (talk • contribs) 05:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Rare books meet Wikipedia's verfiability standards because the reader may decide freely if he wants to access and verify the source or not. He may have to spend money on a bus ticket for example to access a book at a library in another city. Or a plane ticket if it's in another country or on another continent. He might even have to learn another language to read the book. But all that is up to him. He doesn't have to be approved to do any of this. Same goes for material that is in my own city but that the owner charges an access fee for. It's my own decision if I want to pay the fee. Rare books in theses cases meet Wikipedia's verifiability standards. As for the Aurora forums I personally can't decide that I want to access the source right now. If I wanted to read the forums I had to apply for a position at Aurora first. I had to be approved in order to access the source.
Toxic posted a forum topic on kugutsumen.com; supposedly a repost of what the original topic within the Aurora forums said. The kugutsumen.com forums addresses the verifiability problem of the Aurora forums. It's publicly accessible. However, it doesn't meet the reliability standards as Kugutsumen is a player. The source is invalid. If it wasn't I could register aexus.com, host my own forums there and write my own repost of what the Aurora members said. Both Kugutsumen and I can change the context and whole sentences as we wish. Kugutsumen.com is verifiable but not reliable.
As for the reliability of the Aurora forums I think you're partly right. The Aurora website is hosted by CCP. Technically it's operated by the company. However, if I'm correct it's Aurora members that do the work. They organize and execute events. It's relatively easy becoming an Aurora member compared to becoming a high-ranking member like Vice Admiral or Captain. We shouldn't consider forum posts by entry-level Aurora members equally reliable to those of high-ranking members. They are more likely to write whatever they want than higher-ups. It's like the EVE Online forums. We currently cite two posts by CCP employees because we consider them reliable. However, we don't cite players as we don't consider them reliable.
I'd have to agree that a post by an Aurora Senior Producer should be considered reliable. The kugutsumen.com forums say that bolonium and Senior Producer ckang were discussing how to make a predefined outcome of one of Aurora's story arcs believable. They were discussing a rigged event so to speak. That's what Kugutsumen says.
What really happened on the Aurora forums remains unknown. If you can prove it, Terlipressin, please do.
-- Aexus (talk) 11:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Sure, maybe you can try get to look at that rare book by going to a different city/country, but that doesn't mean you will necessarily be granted access to read or even look at the book. But I think Terlipressin meant were things like professional research journals that an average person can not subscribe to without credentials nor gain access to libraries that would catalog such journals. For example: a journal on neurosurgery put out by a professional society such as the college of neurosurgeons of which one needs to be a member to subscribe. Now, by what you just said, if someone wanted to verify this, all they'd have to do is become a neurosurgeon, have a neurosurgeon buddy that is a member, or somehow gain access to a hospital's staff-only library where a member donated their old issues. To me, that seems a rather unrealistic reasoning.
As far as a company's internal forum, I don't recall if you said how long or if you've even play EVE, but even becoming a base member of Aurora was not something we considered "easy" during my time playing, and if any Aurora member said anything where more than one person could hear it, it would most likely be easily obtained throughout the cluster the next day in one way or another. As for what the problem now is, we have a situation like this: a business firm is accused of some illegal practices, however they've shredded and burned all the proof, but the prosecutor has the middle-management guy who did the typing on the now destroyed proof willing to testify. If you were that business firm, how would you play it...RyzenVH (talk) 08:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
It is not Wikipedia's job to report "coverups." I suggest you go to Wikileaks instead, because by its very definition Wikipedia only republishes existing facts and knowledge. —Dark•Shikari[T] 17:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Ryzen, I think you're right with the neurosurgeons' journal. Becoming a neurosurgeon myself would be too high an obstacle to access and verify the source. I'd argue that it shouldn't be considered publicly accessible. Thus it wouldn't meet Wikipedia's verifiability standards and had to be considered invalid. If I decided to become a neurosurgeon I'd have to study for several years and in the end had to prove my worth with theoretical and practical tests. My test results would then be subject to the examiners' approval. In a similar way that's why we shouldn't consider the Aurora forums publicly accessible. Like with the neurosurgeons' journal there's too high an obstacle.
As for how difficult it is to become an Aurora member, do you know a publicly accessible source that lists the requirements? We can agree on which Aurora ranks have to be considered reliable. Maybe all Aurora members should be.
That CCP has shredded and burned the proof for its practices doesn't necessarily mean that there is no proof at all. It's our job as editors to add any and all notable sources that meet Wikipedia's standards. Once we find a source that does this we add it. Illegal practices or not. To answer your question: If I were that firm I'd hope that the middle-management guy didn't come up with concrete proof against me. If he did I could bet my butt that my customers would realize it. Probably Wikipedia editors would include it in the article about me. And in the long run there'd be nothing I could do about it because I'd know that Wiki editors settle differences sooner or later.
-- Aexus (talk) 16:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I think you missed the point. Ryzen was stating that despite those supposed obstacles, neurosurgery and other medical articles in professional journals ARE valid sources with respect to medical topics even though the "average" non medical person lacks the skills or means to access them.
The problem is people here seem to be consciously or not creating a double standard of evidence here. This is an online game where the vast majority of detailed information is going to come from player related sources. Without such sources, very little of any real note can be said about the game except for press releases. Company and magazine sources by themselves don't provide very much in depth detail and as shown by the first scandal, even these are of suspect reliability and viewpoint. That is why I disagree with this discarding of evidence as not evidence. People are basically constructing a situation analogous to a court that accepts only the defendant's testimony and disregards any witnesses by the prosecution as "unreliable" or "unverifiable", and bases its verdict purely on the defendant's plea. This is despite the fact that there has already been precedent set for reliability in the proving of the first scandal. Waiting and asking the company to provide the proof is naive at best. Think about the situation. "Please Mr. Company spokesperson, can you let us look at your internal communications for proof of your company's misconduct and corruption?" The party asked has every vested interest and incentive to refuse access or to destroy any evidence. The fact the company in question initially denied the first scandal only to subsequently backtrack after sufficient proof came up (all proof by the way that came via these same supposed "unreliable" sources) shows there is real possibility of such happening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terlipressin (talk • contribs) 02:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I really did miss that point, yeah. I couldn't imagine Wikipedia editors allowing such a source that not everybody can access if he so wishes. Though I didn't look for articles that actually do delete these sources as unverifiable. Could you point me to an article that has such a source?
I don't see editors creating a double standard for what is evidence and what is not. It is the standard that editors abide by. The in the sense of the Wikipedia standard. For example notability, reliability and verifiability. When t20 providing BoB with 10 blueprints was uncovered and proven in 2007 editors used the very same standard. The misconduct section first emerged in this article on February 7, 2007. Two days after that Joe Blancato posted his article in the Escapist magazine. However, I assume that weeks before these events the community was already hearing rumors and reading accusations regarding CCP's misconduct. Rumors that were probably exclusively written on forums. They didn't make it into this article. But they did increase the pressure on CCP and eventually helped to uncover the truth. There is a real possibility of unverifiable sources having this impact.
That doesn't make forums and player posts by themselves more reliable and it doesn't make publicly inaccessible sources more verifiable. Forums may very well trigger an avalanche of discoveries of CCP's misconducts. And what is proven will make its way into this article once the proof meets all of Wikipedia's standards. As it has happened one year ago and as it can happen again any day.
-- Aexus (talk) 12:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Try looking up the wiki article on for example Bone Healing. Citations there are from orthopedic surgical journals. Your average person is not going to be able to subscribe to them as they aren't orthopedic surgeons, nor are they going to be able to access hospital staff only libraries which may or may not store issues. Yet those are still perfectly acceptable sources. Furthermore, if a secondary source were to quote from those sources it is still acceptable to cite the secondary source as reference to primary source. That is a similar situation with respect to the Aurora forums and the verbatim repost of it on the kugutsumen. Terlipressin (talk) 05:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Does it matter? A forum is not a reliable source. End of story. —Dark•Shikari[T] 10:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Fixed the damn br tag for Terlipressin... Anyway... You're setting yourself up in a nice Catch 22 with the "not accepting any information unless it originated with the company" line... If these were paper memos instead of electronic memos, there would be no problem here, but as it is, the higher ups here are saying "forums are the devil" and promptly throwing holy water at whoever mentioned them. As per the first line on the Verifiability page states: verifiability, not truth. Which is why typically wiki is not considered a refereed source in academia (or at least the decade of academia that I've had to deal with). This is an atypical situation as just about everything that isn't system specs is from online sources and from the player community.
Though from what I understand and remember from the first misconduct event, the magazine article was just an after-effect; most, if not all, of the evidence was forum content - a rumor mill didn't get CCP to do anything, the posted facts and confession from their own developed is what made them admit the truth.
And in response to your question about the reqs for Aurora, Aexus, I don't believe they ever published a list on the web as there were many different jobs which one could possibly do and I think a lot of it hinged on your interviews with whoever was taking them. If one were to search the EVE website, something might come up from the archived stuff, but I doubt it.RyzenVH (talk) 06:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
No matter how important you think it is that information be included--no matter how important that the coverup be exposed--no matter how crucial to the article--if you cannot find a source that is verifiable according to Wikipedia rules, that information cannot be included, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. —Dark•Shikari[T] 07:38, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Terlipressin, Reisen, Aexus: You have all stated that medical/scientific journals are only accessible to those in the profession. This is totally untrue. All scientific journals are available to anyone, for an appropriate fee. Try googling 'pubmed', search for anything you want, then click on the result you are interested in. You will be invited to pay to view it. If it isn't published online, you will still be able to request a copy of the article from the publisher for a fee. The arguments based on your erroneous statements are completely without merit. Sorry if this sounds confrontational, but the idea that wikipedia policy is going to be decided on a basis of ignorance is quite worrying. Scientific journals do not operate behind closed doors. Johnhglen (talk) 22:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up, John. I wasn't aware of PubMed. -- Aexus (talk) 14:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
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