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Well, this is pretty cool.

On October 29th, Toumal informed Pi that he (Toumal) was angry about not being able to connect to "his" MUCK's #1. The reason for doing this was to install a new head wizard and an adjutant for him, culled from the chat room moderators and the forum moderators. All of this was in reaction to weekly e-mails that Razyn had been sending to Toumal informing him of the dire situation on the MUCK, and how terrible everyone was to each other, and that the MUCK needed to be brought more closely in line with the rest of the community.

This was stacked on top of a veritable pile of shitty behavior to start. MUCK wizards are not allowed to post outside the MUCK admin subforum, but everyone else can post in the MUCK admin subforum. The wizards are supposed to write up EVERYTHING they do for the forums, and new wizard postings MUST be approved by Toumal and the rest of the forums mod team.

Then, on October 30th... Well. We'll do it this way. Toumal posted a long, whining, tl;dr on the "down" page for Yiffstar Island MUCK. I'll be breaking in at points to rebut the more ridiculous stances.

==============================================
Yimu Muck has been closed until further notice
==============================================

I'm saddened to inform you that the decision was made to take Yimu Muck
down on October 30. This decision didn't come easy for me.
But with wizards ignoring the fact that I founded and paid for this server,
and all attempts to merely influence decisions made by the wizards on my behalf
being disregarded, blocked or plain out attacked, I saw no way to continue
like this. Many of the old-time players had long since abandoned the Muck,
citing the constant bickering and lack of wizard intervention.

-----
This shit right here is the core of the problem. Toumal claimed he OWNED the MUCK, and everything done on it. He suggested that it was the equivalent of being invited into his house, his minimal expenditure of a half-dozen cents a month on the necessary bandwidth.
-----

An attempt to revise the AUP in cooperation with the wizards was met with inaction.

-----
Never happened.
-----

In September 2008, Pi copied the entire Muck data, including all rooms, users and
passwords, to his own computer. Upon noticing this, he explained this as a safety
measure in case of a harddrive failure. Since we already had a near-fatal hardware
loss before, I reluctantly let this happen. I felt that maybe a sign of trust would
be met with the same feeling.

-----
Pi was doing the prudent thing. Lack of backups have destroyed these games before. He was insulating against hardware, software, and most importantly, wetware failure.
-----

I was wrong. After expressing my wish to have another user instated as wizard, himself
a veteran chat moderator with a long experience, information about this was met with
outright hostility. Said soon-to-be wizard was met with extreme prejudice, and the story
was spun to users as ''they want to replace wizzes with chat mods'' and ''they want
to make Yimu like YiffChat''. I tried to come to an amicable solution for an entire day,
discussing transition times and also alternate suggestions with the two head wizards.

-----
A veteran chat moderator whom clearly did not understand the community he was to be administrating. The mod in question DID in fact state that he wanted to "bring the MUCK in line". If that's not "it should be more like YiffChat," then I don't know what is.
-----

My decision to shut down Yimu came when, after having banned two long-known
abusive users for repeatedly attacking others under the guise of roleplay -something
they had already received multiple warnings about by the wizards themselves-,
I later saw said users online again, and the wizards not only NOT banning
them again, but actually talking about how I can't make decisions like that, how I can't
force policy changes, and that overall, I have no right to make decisions in the Muck.

-----
Yep. Because roleplay is abuse, donchaknow.
-----

The wizards of Yimu were appointed by me. They were given this position by me.
I value their long-time contributions to the Muck, but that does not give them ownership
of this Muck. I laid out the very structure of this Muck, including all major rooms,
their descriptions, principal locations as well as the streets of the inner city.
Just as with the chat, I appoint as moderator or wizard whom I see fit.
Anyone who's run their own server will understand my point that while one should treat
users with respect, the final decision comes from the guy who pays the bills and/or
created the service. It's akin to throwing a party with free beer in your house.
Just because one of your guests mixes the drinks for the night, doesn't make said house
his property. Coloring someone else's inked artwork doesn't give you the right to
call this one of your own original works. I acknowledge the contributions made by the
former wizards, but they don't acknowledge mine.

-----
"I own you," says Toumal. Again. "You owe me EVERYTHING you have. If not for me, you'd be NOTHING."
-----

Following the shutdown of Yimu, I stated in the forum announcement my hope that none of
the wizards would use the copy pulled by Pi to set up an exact copy on their server.

Exactly this has happened. An exact copy of this MUCK, only with a changed name, is
running on a server owned by a former wizard. Not even the street names or locations
have changed. Instead of creating their own MUCK, which would've been the right thing to do,
they chose the easy way and just used the entire copy they pulled from this server.

-----
Hey, funny. Considering we're building a new grid 'cause the old one had shitty organization and only one easily-reached focal point. We've also changed about the administration, purged some idle characters, and altered the policy documents so they aren't confusingly circular legalese that makes enforcing them impossible.

Hardly a direct copy.
-----

While it is true that the majority of MUF code was installed or even written by the
wizards, this doesn't change the fact that my trust in them was utterly misused, and that
any argument as to the percentage of contribution is moot the moment you talk about
something I thought up in the first place. You don't do a remix of a Michael Jackson song
without crediting the original creator. Alas, this is not the only worrying thing.

-----
The 'original creator' is credited. Fuzzball is an open-source project, which Toumal conveniently forgets. In less than two weeks, the last of his stuff will be purged and the new MUCK will be truly its own. We didn't copy the database to steal his shit, we copied it to make it more convenient for the playerbase to reassemble on the new MUCK.
----

===================================================================================
I urge all Yimu users who used their passwords here as well as somewhere else to
immediately change them. If you used the same password for paypal, ebay or any other
sensitive site, I strongly recommend you to do it right away.
Although your passwords were stored in hashed form in the muck's datafiles,
the former wizards also downloaded all command logs to their computer, giving them
access to your passwords in plain text.
===================================================================================

-----
That's devious. I wish I was paranoid enough to think of that. But I'm only paranoid enough to live in a giant house with a lot of guns and a gate at my driveway.
Further, the extra logs were a waste of space. We wouldn't have kept them even if we DID download them. Pi backed up the database. That's it. No old logs, no nothing. We don't want to keep that close an eye on our players. It's not like we're some raving mad Austrian who needs to maintain total micromanagement.

It's not OUR game anyway. It's yours.
-----

I'm sorry to shut down a place that was home to so many friendly furs.
The future in terms of MUCK is still undecided. Right now, we will concentrate on the
main site, which is going to undergo massive improvements in the coming months.
After this major piece of work is done, there may well be something new here.
That's the good thing about being creative vs. copying: You can always make something
new and original, whereas the copycat can't.

-----
Yep, all true. He's really sorry that we didn't love him so much for telling us he knows better than us. He probably won't start a new MUCK after this, and in any case he'll just use the old database... And the old logging scheme, which steals your passwords. I've always wondered how doublethink REALLY works. Now I know.
-----

If you need information from the muck retrieved, please email toumaltheorca at yiffstar
dot com with your character name.

-----
He's ignored my requests to remove my immorally-retained player information from his server. Pot to kettle.
-----

Remember that Yiffstar offers many services:

----
Remainder redacted. They're all bad services, run by a bad person. You don't need to see them.
-----

Maybe, when the time is right, there will be a rebirth of Yimu Muck.
Be safe, and don't be afraid to give me a (friendly) poke when you see me around.

-----
There won't ever be another MUCK. If there is, it'll be shit. We've got all the good people, and more are coming back every day.
Also, the only time anyone would want to poke Toumal is maybe with a sharp stick of some sort. It's a harpoon joke, get it?
-----

    Toumal
    ------

-----
Ein Reich, Ein Powertain, Ein Volkswagen. Heil Geshiftenklutchen.
-----

So that's what's really going on. Hope you enjoyed.

Furryne.ws'd.
http://furryne.ws/story/ct/MUCKs/YiffStar_MUCK_down_Toumal_lying_about_wizards--1/

As one of the wizards in question, I would also like to point out a few things.

Firstly, this chat moderator was to be installed as Head Wizard without a word to anyone - no staff, no community, no one.  Not even to Nubi, considered among the administration to be the Head Wizard to that point.  It was simply going to happen covertly.  The only reason it didn't happen that way was because Pi had changed One's password some time ago.  That was Problem 1.

Yimu MUCK was a roleplay hub in an overall system of furries with no interest in it.  YiffChat is not a roleplay-centric system as the MUCK was.  YiffChat is also a vastly larger system than the MUCK's tightly-knit community that had been largely together for a number of years.  Whereas the Chat moderators are heavy-handed in their decisions and not personally involved with the community, the MUCK's wizards often would speak with large numbers of their community outside of the game both casually and in regards to how the game could be improved. 

Essentially, Toumal and his two YiffChat moderator buddies hopped onto the MUCK.  By this time, the Community had learned of Toumal's plan, and there was severe backlash.  The staff and Community refused to have a new "leader" installed who had no clue and no experience with them.  Likewise, the Community was happy with the current administration there, which had largely been in place for a number of years.  In response to the backlash, Toumal shut down the server without warning.

A few things:

My decision to shut down Yimu came when, after having banned two long-known
abusive users for repeatedly attacking others under the guise of roleplay -something
they had already received multiple warnings about by the wizards themselves-,
I later saw said users online again, and the wizards not only NOT banning
them again, but actually talking about how I can't make decisions like that, how I can't
force policy changes, and that overall, I have no right to make decisions in the Muck.

Actually, Toumal @toaded the users, which is not anything close to a ban.  It's more like a more annoying boot than anything.  The users are fully able to come back and recreate themselves - which they did.  This is one of the many intricacies of the MUCK that is different from YiffChat that our New YiffChat Overlords did not understand.  The wizards were discussing Toumal's ridiculousness in up and replacing his Head Wizard of some 3 years with someone who had never been on the MUCK - but was one of his flunkies.

Following this, Toumal describes his ownership of the MUCK.  Yes, he hosted it.  Yes, he installed the original (open source) software.  However, with the exception of a handful of programs and the original layout, all structures, programs, and characters were created by people who are not Toumal - and in fact are on the MUCK now in its new form.

As Fate mentioned above, the wizards were often ostracized by the rest of YiffStar's administration for not being "transparent" in what they did on the MUCK.  All bans and suspensions were posted for them as requested, but for some reason, this was not enough.  However, YS never was able to describe to the wizards what -else- they should be posting.  Likewise, when the wizards would post in the Administrative section asking a question or for policy clarification, inevitably what they got was one of these same two Chat moderator flunkies weighing in and volunteering that they don't even know why the MUCK exists.  Why should it exist if they cannot have a hand in it, after all?  The Chat moderators wanted the MUCK wizards to be more like them - Nubi once said that she had seen how the Chat moderators communicate and that she had no interest in constant bickering with her fellow admins.  They do not understand that in a smaller and more close-knit community such as the MUCK's, there are simply not as many problems as in a large, fragmented "community" such as the Chat, and that as a result there are far fewer disciplinary actions taken.  Unfortunately, the YiffChat moderators were unable to comprehend this, and constantly accused the wizards of keeping their actions from the rest of YS.

Following the shutdown of Yimu, I stated in the forum announcement my hope that none of
the wizards would use the copy pulled by Pi to set up an exact copy on their server.

Exactly this has happened. An exact copy of this MUCK, only with a changed name, is
running on a server owned by a former wizard. Not even the street names or locations
have changed. Instead of creating their own MUCK, which would've been the right thing to do,
they chose the easy way and just used the entire copy they pulled from this server.

Yes, a copy was hosted elsewhere.  After the MUCK was shut down with zero warning, we felt we owed it to our community (who had no fault in this matter other than to vocalize that they did not want new administration for no reason) to give them the opportunity to recover the characters, programs, and structures on which they'd spent vast amounts of time.  We did not do this because it was "easier" that way.  In fact, we did install a new copy of FB at the time, a much more up-to-date copy than was running on the YS server.  It would have been easier to set up a clean install than it was to do what we did - but we didn't do it to copy.  We did it out of consideration for the dedicated playerbase.

We want a unique identity for the new MUCK and are in the process of creating one.  We have no interest in "Stealing" Yimu's island word for word.  However, as we are all also real human beings with lives, this is a process that will take a few weeks.  It is unfortunate that we could not meet Toumal's generous 18 hour deadline for doing so.

The password thing is ridiculous.  Toumal is harping on this to help perpetuate the image of us as criminals - the files containing this information were not downloaded by Pi.  Not only is that information no less secure than it ever was, it's now actually more secure on our server, as the files currently only exist on Toumal's.

[I don't give a shit about your passwords.]

On October 29th, Toumal informed Pi that he (Toumal) was angry about not being able to connect to "his" MUCK's #1. The reason for doing this was to install a new head wizard and an adjutant for him, culled from the chat room moderators and the forum moderators.

He wasn't really "angry" so much as "Did I forget the password or..?". Still, had he access to #1, he would have slipped these people in without our knowledge or consent. Considering that I made every effort to abide by the "one rule" he claimed to hold me to ("ask me before assigning new wizards"), I expected the same courtesy.

This was stacked on top of a veritable pile of shitty behavior to start. MUCK wizards are not allowed to post outside the MUCK admin subforum, but everyone else can post in the MUCK admin subforum. The wizards are supposed to write up EVERYTHING they do for the forums, and new wizard postings MUST be approved by Toumal and the rest of the forums mod team.

I'm not certain if we weren't allowed. I definitely didn't give a shit about the other forums because it wasn't my job to worry about the chat or the forums, it was my job to run a MUCK. (run amok, hurrrr)

Then, on October 30th... Well. We'll do it this way. Toumal posted a long, whining, tl;dr on the "down" page for Yiffstar Island MUCK. I'll be breaking in at points to rebut the more ridiculous stances.

==============================================
Yimu Muck has been closed until further notice
==============================================

I'm saddened to inform you that the decision was made to take Yimu Muck
down on October 30. This decision didn't come easy for me.
But with wizards ignoring the fact that I founded and paid for this server,
and all attempts to merely influence decisions made by the wizards on my behalf
being disregarded, blocked or plain out attacked, I saw no way to continue
like this. Many of the old-time players had long since abandoned the Muck,
citing the constant bickering and lack of wizard intervention.

Dear Toumal: I realize you paid for the hardware. I've paid for hardware myself, y'know. However, that doesn't make it any more "right" for me to up and give my users the finger just because I paid for the hardware. It's "morally and ethically" wrong.

-----
This shit right here is the core of the problem. Toumal claimed he OWNED the MUCK, and everything done on it. He suggested that it was the equivalent of being invited into his house, his minimal expenditure of a half-dozen cents a month on the necessary bandwidth.
-----

QFT.

An attempt to revise the AUP in cooperation with the wizards was met with inaction.

False to an incredible degree.

In September 2008, Pi copied the entire Muck data, including all rooms, users and
passwords, to his own computer. Upon noticing this, he explained this as a safety
measure in case of a harddrive failure. Since we already had a near-fatal hardware
loss before, I reluctantly let this happen. I felt that maybe a sign of trust would
be met with the same feeling.

So, exercising due diligence, protecting data I am entrusted with, and overall being a competent administrator of an online game is bad? Check.

As for the whole "trust" thing:

Considering that I made every effort to abide by the "one rule" he claimed to hold me to ("ask me before assigning new wizards"), I expected the same courtesy.

I was wrong. After expressing my wish to have another user instated as wizard, himself
a veteran chat moderator with a long experience, information about this was met with
outright hostility. Said soon-to-be wizard was met with extreme prejudice, and the story
was spun to users as ''they want to replace wizzes with chat mods'' and ''they want
to make Yimu like YiffChat''. I tried to come to an amicable solution for an entire day,
discussing transition times and also alternate suggestions with the two head wizards.

No, Toumal. You refused to accept anything other than "He goes in if not now then soon." Handing someone whose creation date was "earlier this year" is the epitome of stupid MUCK decisions.

Christ, when everyone on the MUCK thinks you're making a bad decision, you'd think it might sink in that you were making a... bad decision.

My decision to shut down Yimu came when, after having banned two long-known
abusive users for repeatedly attacking others under the guise of roleplay -something
they had already received multiple warnings about by the wizards themselves-,
I later saw said users online again, and the wizards not only NOT banning
them again, but actually talking about how I can't make decisions like that, how I can't
force policy changes, and that overall, I have no right to make decisions in the Muck.

And this is exactly why chat mods should not be anywhere near a wizbit. They all have this overwhelming "Ban that guy in exchange for netsex or because I don't like him" attitude. You do not show up after a 9 month idle period and start whacking @toad around because someone pisses you off.

The wizards of Yimu were appointed by me. They were given this position by me.
I value their long-time contributions to the Muck, but that does not give them ownership
of this Muck. I laid out the very structure of this Muck, including all major rooms,
their descriptions, principal locations as well as the streets of the inner city.

And we're throwing that crap away because it sucks.

Just as with the chat, I appoint as moderator or wizard whom I see fit.
Anyone who's run their own server will understand my point that while one should treat
users with respect, the final decision comes from the guy who pays the bills and/or
created the service.

RARGH I RUN THIS PLACE WITH AN IRON FIST. HEIL TOUMAL LONG LIVE THE ORCA REICH.

I worked under a manager who had this attitude once. He was also a micromanaging fuckbag who couldn't be talked out of making a bad decision, like rebooting the entire server room every 30 days for no reason. He was eventually run out of town for making shitty managerial choices.

It's akin to throwing a party with free beer in your house.  Just because one
of your guests mixes the drinks for the night, doesn't make said house his
property. Coloring someone else's inked artwork doesn't give you the right to
call this one of your own original works. I acknowledge the contributions made
by the former wizards, but they don't acknowledge mine.

This analogy is like someone took real words and then spoke them after breathing dead orangutan farts out of the finest chemistry pipettes.

By the by, we acknowledged your contributions... as being shit and needing to be replaced.

Following the shutdown of Yimu, I stated in the forum announcement my hope that none of
the wizards would use the copy pulled by Pi to set up an exact copy on their server.

Exactly this has happened. An exact copy of this MUCK, only with a changed name, is
running on a server owned by a former wizard. Not even the street names or locations
have changed. Instead of creating their own MUCK, which would've been the right thing to do,
they chose the easy way and just used the entire copy they pulled from this server.

Funny, I've had exactly 4 negative reactions to this out of the 70 unique CLASS-C NETBLOCKS (given some of our players have a zillion alts), and they're all from Toumal's butt buddies. Who he's threatening to send to see if we changed things. (Yawn) Anyway, everyone ELSE is thanking me ceaselessly for the apparently daunting task of doing my job.

While it is true that the majority of MUF code was installed or even written by the
wizards, this doesn't change the fact that my trust in them was utterly misused, and that
any argument as to the percentage of contribution is moot the moment you talk about
something I thought up in the first place. You don't do a remix of a Michael Jackson song
without crediting the original creator. Alas, this is not the only worrying thing.

Again, here we go with the crappy analogies. I'm not going to bother responding to this.

===================================================================================
I urge all Yimu users who used their passwords here as well as somewhere else to
immediately change them. If you used the same password for paypal, ebay or any other
sensitive site, I strongly recommend you to do it right away.
Although your passwords were stored in hashed form in the muck's datafiles,
the former wizards also downloaded all command logs to their computer, giving them
access to your passwords in plain text.
===================================================================================

Yeah, I guess I can spend time decrypting a bunch of passwords (after patching John The Ripper to crack raw MD5 hashes and finding some hardware that isn't busy doing useful work). Toumal could just as easily set up a packet sniffer and try to steal passwords from people trying to connect.

What's stopping me? I don't give a shit about your passwords. I don't care, never have, never will.

What's stopping him? What's to say there's anything stopping him? He's willing to go on a smear campaign about passwords, who's to say he's not busy at work trying to decrypt mine?

The sort of person who would the same password for yiff-fucking-star as you use for a sensitive site would most likely pick a password like "12345" and reply to emails "from" their bank about how their account is going to be shut down unless you reply within 24 hours, and in that case I would have not a single bit of sympathy.

I'm sorry to shut down a place that was home to so many friendly furs.
The future in terms of MUCK is still undecided. Right now, we will concentrate on the
main site, which is going to undergo massive improvements in the coming months.
After this major piece of work is done, there may well be something new here.
That's the good thing about being creative vs. copying: You can always make something
new and original, whereas the copycat can't.

ahahahahahahaha

That's the good thing about being creative vs. copying: You can always make something
new and original, whereas the copycat can't.

ahahahahahahaha (once wasn't enough)

If you need information from the muck retrieved, please email toumaltheorca at yiffstar
dot com with your character name.

Sure thing. How are you going to authenticate that users are who they claim to be? I can create a Yahoo account yiffyfaggot81928691@yahoo.com and claim that I'm player YiffyFaggot and get someone else's data.

Or, you could just connect to library.7storm.org, port 8888, and have your creations magically restored.

That said, if any old Yimu people want me to totally destroy their data, in effect "unstealing" it, shoot me an email. After all, according to Toumal, "there are more than a just a handful of users who do not want their account information transferred anywhere without their consent". None of which have spoken up to me, nor any of which could he name when asked.

And since this wouldn't be furry without blustery legal threats:
Volley 1:

The fact remains that you downloaded all authentication information for the MUCK and put that up on your system. I have several
users who will, in some 17 hours, check if their passwords have been removed from your system. If I get a single report of a user
whose permission you do not have, I will report this as the felony it is. Whether that will have any effect or not, I can not say.
But after that the matter will be resolved for me, but it may well cause large amounts of trouble for you.

I strongly suggest you consider my advice and start over. Take all the stuff that you did, and import the accounts of users who want
that to happen. Delete the authentication data you took without permission.

This was responded to with a resounding "meh". I committed no crime by safeguarding data to which I was entrusted while I was authorized.

Volley 2:

Since their server is based in the US, the legal aspect of them downloading all authentication information of these users is not to be underestimated. I talked to my US lawyer, who advised against any civil litigation in this matter (and frankly, if they have to use a 1:1 copy of Yimu instead of being able to start up their own, that's rather pathetic of them) , but he also told me about the criminal offense aspect of stealing authentication information - he advised me to compile and forward my material to the local authorities there, which is the FBI. I will do so tomorrow if I find that they still haven't purged said account information from their system.

Yeah, that "theft of authentication information" is a staggering federal crime. It yields all of 4 google results. Oh, such blustery bullshit.

Fun Fact: In the 1980's, Clifford Stoll, an administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, was repeatedly root compromised by a West German hacker. The FBI told him to fuck off until he lost $500,000 dollars or any classified military information. No way am I going to believe that they're going to give a damn about 100-odd megabytes of furry bullshit

Volley 3 (the ultimatum!):

If you remove the passwords, I will not have any reason to do anything further. If you do not, I will send off the folder and then
get on with my life, which may or may not result in unpleasant consequences for you, personally. Why take your chances? Erase the
passwords and be done with it. I will wait until tomorrow, roughly 11am CET.

I see little sense in further debates. Obviously, anything I say is wrong in your eyes. Unless you come to realize that what you
have done is ethically and morally wrong, I will not continue this discussion. I give you time to at least remedy the criminal
aspect of your actions.

As of writing, it is 17:38 CET, on the "tomorrow" he stated. I'm sure shaking in my boots in fear of legal summons from "Orrick and partners", a law firm so prestigious that it shows NO results on Google, unless the quotes are removed. A legal summons for a crime that apparently doesn't exist.

The mere idea of an Austrian launching a federal criminal suit against an American whom he can only identify by "Pi", 2 email addresses, and an IP address is so totally laughable in reality that it makes me wonder just what's going on inside Toumal's mind. Fascinating stuff, really.

The password thing is ridiculous.  Toumal is harping on this to help perpetuate the image of us as criminals - the files containing this information were not downloaded by Pi.  Not only is that information no less secure than it ever was, it's now actually more secure on our server, as the files currently only exist on Toumal's.

Not exactly true. I started taking copies of the data after he bitched at me for using up all of his CPU time looking for events in the log files, in order to resolve a player dispute (because his shitty server is extremely underpowered). Grabbing the entire MUCK directory was the cheap and easy solution.

It is, however, worth noting that the old logs were not uploaded to my server. Even if they were, they were destroyed before Library entered the Time Machine retrieve cycle for Vault that evening.

Shutting the game down did not silence Toumal's detractors.

Claiming to be a lawyer did not silence them.  Claiming to hire a lawyer did not silence them.

Having the furry wiki entry whitewashed and locked sorta did.  (Hey, Larry, you notice this game isn't currently running, and will never run again with those staff?)  Though the new place has its own now.

Posting their own fantasy to Furry Digg (twice) did not, nor did burying this story, nor did leaving their own comments and voting ours down.

So what do they do now?

Capitulate.

Ryu_Wolf had a conversation on Skype with myself, Pi, and Nubi. He was surprisingly rational, and promised to forward our requests on to Toumal.

They include:

1) Apologize for calling us thieves, liars, and saying we have everyone's ebay and bank passwords. We don't, and we never did.
2) Provide us with a link-forward from muck.yiffstar.com.
3) Replace the tl;dr with something less biased. We have made our effort to do so.

I wish I'd noticed it before today, but if Toumal can refrain from searching through old MUCK logs to find users paging a wizard saying they (the non-staff user) want to see the MUCK moved (and, I noticed, not bothering to post the response, which was not in agreement) as though this was some grand conspiracy all along and then posting them in his locked threads on his forum, that would be nice too.

And what's more, if he could post accurate logs at the very least, without editing them first, that'd be nice too.

Wow.  Just...wow.  Toumal is an idiotic jackass.

Wow.  Just...wow.  Toumal is an idiotic jackass.

Would you expect anything less?

So I had this awesome chat with Toumal the other day.

[TL/DR starts here.]

Toumal changed status to Idle (11:09:05 AM)
Fate: Feel like being an adult and listening?
Fate: I have a concern that I need to address with you, and I would appreciate it if we could be civil about it.
Toumal changed status to Available (11:27:56 AM)
Fate: Are you present? Is it possible to have a simple, civil discussion?
Toumal: Hello, I assume you are Fate?
Fate: Distinctly.
Toumal: Let's make this brief. What is it you want to talk about
Fate: The command logs from yimu.
Fate: I would like an assurance. Not proof, but an assurance.
Toumal: Assurance of what?
Fate: You conceived of using them to steal player passwords. My playerbase would like you to assure us that you will not do so. Also, all of our active population would like their characters, owned items, programs, and rooms deleted from your database copy.
Fate: Would you please do that?
Toumal: Okay, I will tell you this once, and only once:
Toumal: You people downloaded a copy of the entire muck, including authentication data of all users (contained in plain text in the command logs).
Fate: We didn't download the command logs; Would you like to peruse the directory structure of the downloaded data to assure yourself of that?
Toumal: I will not use that data for anything like breaking into other people's accounts
Toumal: However, I can also not delete them, until I receive clearance to do so.
Toumal: I have not received clearance to delete this data from the authorities, so it's out of my hands.
Fate: Ah, right. Are we talking about my IC3 complaint with the FBI?
Fate: Or is Interpol involved somehow?
Toumal: Interpol??? IC3??
Fate: Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Fate: It's the Federal Bureau of Investigation's informational crimes clearinghouse.
Fate: They told me that unless $10,000 or more was stolen, or national security was threatened, that they couldn't do anything.
Toumal: I'm talking about a criminal matter here. I'm talking about a 30+ page statement filed with the FBI via my lawyer.
Fate: Have you gotten a reply?
Toumal: I should not even be talking to you.
Toumal: Let us sum it up in short:
Toumal: I am not using the command logs to break into anyone's account. These logs are now evidence and have been filed. They will remain unaltered. No user other than myself has access to them.
Fate: You will be interested to know that no remnants of your database yet exist on my server.
Toumal: That is good. However, that does not change the fact that what you people did was a felony.
Fate: Moreover, I was easily able to pass my last NICS/PICS check to renew my FFL. If there was an active complaint in which I was named, I would not have been able to do that.
Toumal: *shrugs* I consider the matter closed on my end. That is, unless I am being harassed, threatened, or have myself targeted by DOS attacks or other crap.
Fate: Interesting. You know that this is not how courts work in the United States, correct?
Toumal: I will also not file a civil lawsuit, although I definitely reserve the right to do so at any time, within the limits of your local law.
Fate: Which local law would that be?
Toumal: The server was based in the US, so US law applies
Fate: That's not local.
Fate: That's Federal.
Fate: Federal law does not specify civil suit litigation.
Toumal: I will not discuss matters of the law with you. I have a US lawyer for that.
Toumal: Are you done saying what you wanted to say, or is there something else?
Fate: Actually, I had a little more. Just a couple things our players asked me to pass on.
Fate: Largely, the players of The Library forgive you. Should you wish to come on our game and play once our setting documentation is complete, you are of course welcome to do so.
Fate: Hold, please. Nubi may have something to communicate.
Fate: Nubi says that he's sorry that things had to be like this. Pi and I agree.
Toumal: I'm sorry about that too. However, I find it extremely rude and distasteful that you mention "forgiving" me. Of course there's always two sides on a coin, but the fact is that you people debated moving the muck to a new server BEFORE anyone mentioned taking the muck down. And you lied to users, stating that you would never do such a thing. But you did.
Fate: Now, now.
Toumal: Of course it's good if you really removed all the old data and started your own muck
Fate: At that time, I wasn't part of the administration.
Toumal: If that is indeed the case, then I applaud that.
Fate: I advocated moving to a new MUCK, if that was necessary and proper.
Fate: It became so, eventually. But I wouldn't let another Longitude happen. So.
Fate: I volunteered my space and clock time. So far, it's been a worthwhile investment.
Toumal: You were involved in the discussion back then. And frankly... you guys owe an apology for that lie.
Toumal: i don't mind you starting your own muck in the slightest.
Fate: What, saying we wouldn't move? I never said that.
Toumal: Heck, if you had started a new muck right then and there, I would've linked to it.
Fate: The core idea was keeping the player base together.
Toumal: I would've put the link on the front page. I would not have had a problem with that.
Fate: The reason we used the old DB as a jump-off point was for all objects marked P, which are now the only "original currency" left.
Toumal: You don't need to violate laws to do that. You could've just let users register on your muck
Toumal: Okay fine... then why did you not ASK?
Fate: Because you were being intractible.
Fate: You wouldn't admit that while you were the one volunteering your space and clocktime, that did not mean that you *owned* the entire database.
Toumal: That is incorrect. I was open for talks right until the point when I noticed that people started discussing using a backup for just running the whole thing on their place.
Fate: The primary issue was the perception that you wanted to "dumb down" the MUCK by bringing in inexperienced new administration and arbitration layers.
Fate: To clamp down on any remaining fun being had.
Fate: At that point, most of the playerbase agreed that jumping ship was necessary.
Fate: So we did.
Toumal: The item about ownership is where your logical fallacy lies: I do own the old muck. It is my muck, I started it, I can end it.  What I can not do take people's rooms and descriptions and do something other than that particular muck .
Toumal: Let's end this here. We are not going to come to an agreement about that anyway.
Fate: True.
Toumal: Fact is, I was always open for discussion.
Toumal: The one thing I will not debate is administrative decisions.
Fate: Does that 'always' include the six page essay on why Pi, Nubi, and I are evil password-stealing monsters who would like nothing more than to drain your bank account dry?
Toumal: I'm going to relaunch Yiffstar.com in a few months under a new name, and I'm not going to have moderators just stand up and say no to that. It's my decision.
Toumal: What six page essay?
Fate: I think that everyone made a few mistakes on 1/11. We've redacted ours; You have yet to do the same. I'm referring to the six page essay on connect to the old MUCK.
Toumal: It's hard for you to *prove* that you've removed all old user account data from your servers. Also, the statement that you do not have the command logs is a lie - I have the old rsync script and the ftp logs telling a different story.
Toumal: So for all intents and purposes, the user's passwords are in the wild. I advise them to remove them.
Fate: I have the FTP logs on my side stating that Pi did a raw database upload, with no other supporting files.
Toumal: Besides, you have spread your own version of the story yourself... see furryne.ws...
Fate: Necessary PR counteraction.
Toumal: You can not have FTP logs that cover all transactions.
Fate: Then neither can you.
Toumal: I have the raw ftp logs of the server from which the downloads have been pulled
Toumal: Of course I do
Fate: Because my server happens to sit in my theater doesn't make it less capable.
Fate: Coincidentally, my sftpd takes logs, too.
Toumal: This defies logic. Pi downloaded this from god-knows-what machine some time ago. Your logs don't prove that you/he did NOT download. My logs prove that he did.
Fate: My directory structure proves that I retain no copy of anything but the database upload.
Toumal: Okay let's end this here. I'm not going to debate ftp logs with you either.
Toumal: I hope that you did the right thing and removed the downloaded data, and started your own muck. And I hope that one day, you people will come to understand what you did.
Toumal: Until then I bid you goodbye.
Fate: Technically, we kept the P objects and simply eliminated the old grid, affixing whatever people wanted kept to the new grid. We also instituted a new MOTD system, as well as requiring players to have pinfo set. Oh, that's all new, too, the decent pinfo system. New programs all around, really.
Fate: Oh, and you had a statue, but then someone pulled it down with a tank.
Fate: > END OF LINE.
Toumal changed status to Offline (11:58:57 AM)

[TL/DR ends here]

Toumal: This defies logic. Pi downloaded this from god-knows-what machine some time ago. Your logs don't prove that you/he did NOT download. My logs prove that he did.

Command logs do not contain every password in cleartext, only the @newpassword command. Which is kind of a fuckup on the fuzzball people's side, but whatev.

sshd does not log the names of files transfered by SFTP, unless you use a patch (coincidentally written by some asshole who managed my department for a few months).

Toumal knows exactly which machine I downloaded from, and I'd love to see logs proving exactly what I did. It'd be neat to see what bullshit he makes up.

All of this notwithstanding, I still have yet to receive legal summons, so I'm hard-pressed to believe that a crime was committed here.

I like to think that when furries say they hire lawyers for internet disputes, that the guy on the other side is a sleazy leisure suit Joe Pesci who keeps having to cover the receiver with his palm to mute the giggles...

There seems to be this weird sort of extension of the 'fandom as family' bit where if you give a furry (or really any die hard geek) enough influence (even in the smallest of settings) he takes the position extremely seriously and places himself in the hardnosed father role, forgetting most everyone is volunteering their time for one another's benefit, and not his.

The Dictatorship of the Pornetariat...

Flash-forward to today, and this is still flaring up. Still no legal summons, but plenty of people still giving me shit.

The gigantic wall of text is still up on the old port.

Up until November, I was still getting scheduled emails from a script that I wrote, complaining that it couldn't find the logfiles in order to rotate and compress them (log rotation is standard sysadmin practice; for that matter so is deleting all traces of a user when they are disabled. Monthly scripts are prime choices for "if i'm not present in the system, fuck things up"-type logic bombs).

Off as a consequence of that other thread, Luca Shoal sees fit to tell Freehaven why I'm not getting admin:

<lucashoal> @sagefreehaven Pi ain't gonna get admin cuz s/he already fucked up over at YS trying to steal the code for Toumal's (now defunct) MUCK thing

Really. Fucking seriously?

<two_pi_r> @lucashoal I really wish people would quit trotting out that bit of slander.
<lucashoal> well I don't remember the whole story, I just know ya did something to do with YS that would make anyone hesitate duder.
<two_pi_r> did you ever think to, oh, i dunno, ask me about the how/why/what? Or are you just spouting the official party line?
<lucashoal> I don't care much about the story from EITHER side, as much as that may shock you it seems :3. So no, there is no "party line"
<two_pi_r> then why so strong feelings about how I "fucked up"? Same forum has a refutation of whatever you may have heard from Toumal.
<lucashoal> you can debate it all you want with @alexconline because I really don't care what Toumal thinks about ya, or the internet at large
<two_pi_r> http://twitter.com/lucashoal/status/8284080779 <- then don't say shit like this. thanks.
<lucashoal> you think they're strong feelings? From a tweet? They're not duder, at all. I don't give a fuck about what happened.
<lucashoal> I. don't. care. about you or most any other random furry out there who I don't talk to.
<two_pi_r> then why is my reply window full of things?
<lucashoal> because I have nothing better to do at the moment. I'm stopping now though. Just don't send e-friends after me to be dicks plz.
<two_pi_r> *shrug* I can really only control my own actions; contrary to popular opinion I do not have a 'crew' or a 'possee'
<lucashoal> also my opinion and yours about you being an FA admin don't matter in the slightest. It's down to Dragoneer, so bitch at him.
<two_pi_r> All I ask: yall quit making uninformed and vaguely slanderous remarks wrt me and YS, especially if you're going to backpedal fast

He sure seems concerned enough about things to say that he doesn't care (three times!) and for me to please not send my crew after him to do meany internet things.

Meantime, I just want this to die, already. Apparently it won't.

[flying fuck]

I started taking copies of the data after he bitched at me for using up all of his CPU time looking for events in the log files, in order to resolve a player dispute (because his shitty server is extremely underpowered).

We are presently running The Library on a five-year-old Mac Mini, and before that we were on a "Sawtooth" G4. What the flying fuck was Toumal using as a server? A 486?