DaMarsMan

I challenge you to come up with 5 issues in the entire history of the site that I've made a decision on without input or vote from staff, or input from the community. The 3800 posts in Staff Discussion and 5239 in Site Talk show me something entirely different. Even if you could come up with 5, which I really don't think you can, that's probably less than 1% of the total decisions made here. And you can't count decisions related to site code or server related items because I am directly in charge of those and nobody can help with that anyway.

Are we here to talk about Mother 3 or are we here to get into detail on how the site and the decision making process works in which I assure you I can pull enough information and evidence on to the contrary.

Perhaps if you had done more than literally 5 things in all of 2007 according to the logs and actually regularly participated in all of what is going on around here with staff in the past 2 years, you'd feel differently. Any staff that regularly participate care to comment? Kaioshin had this to say just yesterday. (Reference the mother 3 topic on the moderators board)


That's quite a contrast to what you're saying.

Tomato:

Respond to this from Mother3.org. Is this true? What has differed between the time that was written and today.


And definitely respond to this because you wrote it.


Is this true? Does this still stand today? It seems quit clear based on these passages that not only did you use the work from the original team, you also imported members from the original team. Is there any misunderstanding on this? Define specifically 'drama-type people' by name please.

There were three translations? Yours, harmony's, and the original?
Who started the original?
Who's work are you using that isn't yours?


I will be willing to reconsider if all the facts are laid out here and a misunderstanding has been made on my part.

And byuu confers that never before now have I ever made decision for this site of relevance without input and full consideration from staff at the very least. j/k I don't actually require that, but it would be nice.

My apologies if I gave the impression this sort of thing happened often.

I do not recall a single instance in the past where any other decision was made by you in opposition to majority opinion, and I've witnessed about a half-dozen such decisions in the past. Hence why I do not consider this place a dictatorship. Undoubtedly, there are many more decisions I did not participate in, and many more behind closed doors such as your moderator forum, which I cannot comment on. But I take your word for the fact that you did not override the majority opinion on any of those.

To be honest, I don't even remember the previous discussions we had where I mentioned that this was ultimately your site and that you should have the final say, but I assume those all ended in consensus. And for what it's worth, I still believe that you should ultimately decide on matters of grave importance to you. It's how I would run this site if I were in charge. And I mean, eventually you will have to draw the line again. What if, for instance, the community at large was in favor of hosting the fully-patched ROM images here? Sometimes a strong leader is needed in place of community rule.

But barring that, even one decision in opposition to community rule does invalidate an "all or nothing" approach to a democracy. You know the old saying, "You can't eat your cake, and have it, too." Philosophy is a bitch like that ;)

So, to sum up:

You merged with the harmony team, not the 0-day mother3.org team.
No members of the mother3.org team were brought in.
All tools and hacking were done from scratch after you started.
The scripts were redumped, again from scratch, by you guys.
All text in the finished product will be from your redumps.

Did I get it all right? I think the confusion (at least, what confused me) is that the blog seemed to indicate that you merged with the mother3.org team. I blame pronouns, and convoluted scene drama.  \

Okay, I have a solution that should make everyone happy. Let's purchase the rights to Mother 3 and release a fully legal translation. Not only will that eliminate all of the drama from all sides, it will likely gain news coverage from far outside of the ROM hacking scene.

I was once in negotiation with SNK to purchase the rights to Crystalis. Not just the rights to translate/hack the game, but the full rights, to where I would be the only person in the entire universe who had the legal right to make anything related to Crystalis. (The plan was to create a sequel.) SNK was actually quite willing to sell me the rights to the game at the minimum rate of which they had set for their intellectual property. Unfortunately, that rate was $100,000. To SNK's credit, however, they acknowledged that that was an extremely high rate for such an old game, so they offered to include two other NES games, three for the price of one. Of course, there's the fact that every other game SNK made for NES sucked ass. What they hell would I have picked? Baseball Stars & Guerilla War? Athena and Iron Tank? Two of the 3 Ikari Warriors? Now, had I known that Nintendo was going to obtain the rights to Crystalis and completely ruin the Gameboy version, I might have made a serious effort towards raising the $100,000. Of course, I would have blown the whole thing on hookers and cocaine, but they say it's the thought that counts.

So, my point is, let's trick some company with a lot of money into purchasing the rights to release an English translation of Mother 3. (Incidentally, I'm sure this has already been discussed by the people actually doing the hack, but I propose that the English version be called Earthbound 3, similar to how the third Rambo movie was called Rambo III even though there is no Rambo II. This, of course, before the fourth movie was titled simply Rambo, even though that's also the name of the second Rambo movie. I hope a lot of people get fucked over in the video store when they ask for Rambo and get the 2nd one, not the 4th one. (Incidentally, in the original book, Rambo goes insane, kills a bunch of innocent people and dies at the end. They left this part out of the first movie. The author also seems to have forgotten about it, since there's a sequel to the book that takes place after it, yet Rambo is still alive.)))

Anyway, I fully support Nightcrawler's decision to ban translations of Rambo from this site.

I must say that InVerse's entire post made me laugh, alot.  :laugh:

However, if Tomato/Byuu's Mother3 project is in fact different from the 0day one, I say go for it. It's a highly anticipated title, and it has some of the best in our hobby working on it. As long as they're not affiliated with the ones who broke the rules originally, I think it should be fine. That's only my 2 cents, though. >.>

~DS

byuu:

Thank you. I'll take that and run with it. I'm just ultimately sensitive to that kind of talk as it comes up a lot by people and I feel it is unjust accusation (probably strong word to use here, but that's all that came to mind). I pride myself in working very, very hard to balance everything done here. I work and deliberate with staff, and pass on to the community when no decision is reached there. And ultimately, not every issue has a clear consensus, or quite frankly nobody cares much either way in some cases. It is then, that I may have to act as judge to simply pick a side. But that's as burden and not as first choice.

As with anybody in a 'power' position, every action is subject to unflattering criticism. Make one unpopular one and out the window goes the other several hundred.

DaMarsMan

I apologize for the aggressiveness, but I also greatly took offense to your comments. I have invested blood, sweat, and tears for 2 years into maintaining the site to the opposite degree of what you claim. If I only faltered 5 times, I still have a 99.X% track record. Labeling me as a dictator is a personal attack to myself.

My role at ROMhacking.net is judge. Like any court system with with a jury, there's got a be a judge. That's me. They jury still makes most of the decisions, but the judge makes one once in awhile as well and maintains order.

YAY!

NC gets a  :cookie:

Tomato, et al gets  :cookie: :cookie: :cookie:

~DS