A WORD FROM BENTON

[Vertex]

Okay I was asked to post this for Benton because he felt compelled to say something.


"  I have been informed that this discussion is still going on, and what's more, still going on in the kind of destructive fashion that I took my mod down to counteract.  I feel compelled to take some measure, be it ever so indirect, to try and restore an element of peace to the community.  I am not willing to get engaged in this conversation while it is still taking this kind of form, but I will offer this statement in the hopes that the situation will be improved and the community spared more damage.

  First, let me ask all of you, on both sides of this debate, to stop personal attacks.  This is the kind of thing that makes people drop out of the community, and any loss diminishes us more than we can afford.  It does not matter who has done what, nor who has said what, we need each other, both creators and players.  Thank you all for caring so much about my work that you feel the need to keep the battle going, but it is not worth the health of the community to pursue it in this way.  I meant every word I typed in my thread, and I am and will be open to an arbitrated discussion.  However, I will not be releasing a mod to a divided community.  I have poured my heart and soul into this project to help the community, and not to hurt it.  I have every hope that this community can solve these problems, and I believe that we must if we are to survive AS a community.  That does not necessarily mean that I have every confidence that things will go 'my way.'  This should not be about me, nor my work, at least not entirely.

  If you wish to use my mod as a yardstick, to give you concretes to talk about, very well, but if we approach the questions at hand as merely an attempt to get my little project released, we are missing much larger issues.  These issues need to be addressed, and need to be addressed sooner rather than later, apparently, as the continuing uncertainty is, by all accounts I am hearing, producing even more strife.  While our entire community has a stake in this, I am afraid that the final decision cannot be made merely by a majority vote of said community.  In the end, the question of torrents, the definition thereof, and the rules concerning them need to be codified, and this needs to be done by the content creators.  I know this may seem like a strange thing for me to say, but in the end the question is 'how shall we treat THEIR work,' and only they have the right to decide that.

  I feel that I, myself, am not much of a creator, but to my everlasting pride, I am regarded as such.  Still, I feel like I am walking a line somewhere between the two, and therefore sympathetic to the concerns of both.  This does not mean that the rest of us have no right to speak on the matter, however, this decision is theirs and theirs alone.  Inversely, it cannot be made by one or two of the content creators, but must be discussed and decided upon by the content community as a whole.  Just as I have no right to tell a skinner how their work should be treated, they have no right to dictate to another artists how their respective work should be used.  I suggest that, for the good of the community, the skinners, meshers, FXers, and modders, the content creators that form our foundation, be invited to discuss the matter, but under the arbitration of some authority, be it elected or an admin or Titan, to make certain that things stay rational and unemotional.  This should be done in private, out of the eyes of the public, so that artists are not attacked for a view that they may or may not hold, and to avoid more strife while the issues are resolved.  I will not organzie this, as I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not trying to manipulate things in my interest, but I do want what is best for the community.  This is a suggestion on a way to resolve the matter, and for the good of us all, I hope that someone steps up to bring order here.  Now, I will continue my vacation from the boards, and I hope that in my absence, matters will improve."

[BWPS]

I missed the chance to get the only mod that I was anticipating at all and I'm still confused as to what the problem was and why Benton took it down? Would anyone sum up for me? I'm having trouble gleaning information from all these threads and I really don't understand. Also, does he have any plans to release it again? I really hope so for all the work he put into it.

[Spring Heeled Jack]

Benton was banned?

[Spring Heeled Jack]

Oh. Why is Vertex posting something on his behalf?

[House Quake]

Wow.... did I miss something...?

j/k

But I'll still say wow 

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

you can't really get a summary without getting someone else's version/opinion of it.

Not at all, and the original discussion is impossible to follow unless you were there at the time.  I had to pm several different people (who were also doing the same) to really understand what was going on fully.

So my very short summary is as follows.

Benton released his mod, which contains hundreds of DC characters meant to be a sort of sandbox.  Three campaigns are included, but most of the characters are not actually used in the mod.  IPS said that this was made the mod equivilant to a giant content torrent, which was clearly against community rules.  Others disagreed.  Big arguments commenced.  Benton then pulled the mod down and temporarily left the community, which IPS pulled down his skins.  Eventually the two reached an agreement whereby more campaigns would be added that would utilize all the currently unused characters.  When that is finished, the mod will be re-released.

[BentonGrey]

It should be noted that I agreed to release my mod in an expanded fashion, not in recognition of any complaints leveled against it, but to stop the community bloodshed.  The questions at hand have yet to be answered in a definitive way, although the community as a whole have made their views quite clear.  We still need to agree upon a set of rules, and solidify them in writing to prevent similar trouble in the future.

[Spring Heeled Jack]

Bundling only the skins and meshes needed for a mod seems like a good rule. But that just makes sense in general. I can only identify the most broadly defined concepts of good sense, you see.

[BentonGrey]

This isn't really the place to continue the discussion.  AA's poll would be more appropriate, but I still think that a private discussion would be best.

[Spring Heeled Jack]

Oh, I don't intend to spend a lot of time debating the matter. People are still pretty hot under the collar. Benton, you mentioned that a set of rules should be figured out, and so I spoke to that point.

[BentonGrey]

That's fine SHJ.  I wasn't really terribly worried about your response, but this thing has a habit of getting rapidly out of control.