Colleagues:
A few times in the past I've submitted postings to the list that more
address the policies and even philosophies I have with regards to
administering a HalfLife server, running the risk of going "off topic."
This morning I've sent a message to my administrators with regards to
maintaining the atmosphere of sportsmanship, team play, and camaraderie
that I am striving for on the server that I maintain. I feel this
important as we work to comprehend, address, and respond to the horrific
events of September 11. It offers a small island of relief in an otherwise
frightening world. Administering my server is also a small means by which
I can perform some mundane chores to continue a bit of normallacy in my
own life.
One of the problems that I continue to confront in administering my server
is cheating. Many of us see it regularly. The more extreme forms of
cheating we see have the sole purpose of selfishly distrupting the game or
bringing down a server (the "no name" cheat has the capability of doing
this). I've never quite understood the mindset of those individuals who do
it. Recent events have allowed me to look at it in a slightly different
way.
While in no way do I wish to diminish the horror and import of the
terrible events that have recently taken place, I am now starting to think
that the mindset of cheating does in a very small way share that of
terrorists. The cheaters wish to selfishly disrupt and destroy. While none
of them may ever aspire to perform such actions "in the real world," they
none the less are disrupting the servers we manage and destroying the
structure of the games we offer. Their reasons are beyond the
comprehension of the majority of players and administrators. The defense
of my server against such actions is a task that I'm not quite in the mood
to undertake now and feel that my efforts could be better used elsewhere.
Am I reading too much into this or being a bit too harsh? I'd appreciate
the thoughts of you veteran administrators out there.
"Insane" Husayn
