I get a couple of PMs every now and then from people who work on or want to work on Munin's code or want to use Munin for their alliance. I don't get many, but I do get enough of these that I have to relay information that could be better spread through a channel. That way people who are interested could see discussions I now have to keep in PM.
Thus begins my journey to register #munin. Part 2 is more relevant to Planetarion, since CService are independent and not a part of the Planetarion infrastructure. I've included it because there's obviously a dissonance going on here. I've left IRC quotes inline for context, if mods want I'll cut out pastebin the longer ones.
Part 1: Trying to register a channel
CService limits the number of channels a person can own to 3. I used to own 4 due to being around when an expiring channel needed a new owner and some lazy CService person gave it to me. I thought it was a bit of fun. Some mean CService person hunted me down a year or two later and took the extra channel away. Boohoo.
Fast-forward to today. I knew alliances could get multiple channels registered somehow, because it was getting difficult for alliances to keep all the channels they wanted with just 3 to a head, especially when you count all the stupid anonymizing relay channels they want. I headed off to #cservice to ask.
Since I'd come under the impression that #cservice is a no-idling channel, I figured that the first person to help me was actually CService. He was a twat. Turned out he wasn't CService. So perhaps they should enforce the no-idling policy for 'friends' or whatever status Nightmare has in #cservice.
The question I asked was:
21:44:39 < jesterina> hi, I need to reg a PA related channel, but I'm at the ownership limit, is it possible to get an exception?
When a CService supervisor answered my question, the answer was:
21:48:44 < Speh> jesterina, I'm sorry to say that we can't make exceptions for alliance channels owned by individuals
21:48:51 < Speh> you can register an alliance nick and own them that way
I asked where to get information about registering an alliance nick:
21:51:31 < jesterina> ah, so who should I speak with?
21:51:35 < Speh> if you're a PA rep for an alliance, you should have access to the relevant forum
Unfortunately, I have absolutely no interest in being a "PA rep" for Ascendancy. We generally pass around who gets to be PA rep for rounds arbitrarily. This is because the private forum and channel being a "PA rep" for an alliance give you access to are shitty elitist hellholes filled with cliquey wannabe people who think their opinion is valuable. While I neatly fall into that category, I don't have a planet, haven't had one since round 26 and have little interest in jockeying for position on behalf of my alliance.
So I don't have access to the forum.
21:51:44 < jesterina> we don't take that pa rep stuff seriously
21:51:54 < jesterina> so we just send whatever good feels like dealing with that pack of idiots
21:52:06 < jesterina> I have more important things to do
21:52:09 < jesterina> like register channels
21:53:14 < Speh> then we can't help you
Doh. CService don't care much about service do they?
(For completeness, after this I enquired about getting official status for #pawiki, which wasn't taken very seriously because Speh had "never heard of it". He kept dismissing my line of questioning here despite reassurances that I was not trying to score rhetorical points or game the system.)
Part 2: Getting an alliance nick registered
As CService suggested I headed off to #support to get information about this 'alliance nick' stuff. It really is quite unfortunate that the information about this isn't available somewhere public. If anyone reading this has access, could you mirror the text to the wiki or something? I'd really appreciate it.
In #support, I was immediately told to contact #cservice:
21:52:26 < jesterina> hello planetarion support people!
21:52:39 < jesterina> I have a question about registering channels
21:52:47 < jesterina> I need to register an alliance related channel
21:52:55 < jesterina> CSC tell me you can help
21:55:46 <+Monroe> jesterina #cservices for channel registration questions
Doh!
21:56:34 < jesterina> Monroe: I need to register an alliance related channel
21:56:38 <+Monroe> ok?
21:56:39 < jesterina> but I'm at my limit
21:56:51 <+Cin[Away]> jesterina, for the ally pnick and ally channels you need to have your alliance rep contact ace
Fantastic. I need to have someone else contact a third party who will contact CService. Except it turns out that:
22:04:50 [netgamers] [Ace(
[email protected])] you reg a nick with the same name as the alliance
22:05:04 [netgamers] [msg(Ace)] you are not serious :|
22:05:09 [netgamers] [msg(Ace)] can't we just use Munin?
Ace was very helpful, he's pretty much excepted from any criticism in this post.
22:07:21 [netgamers] [Ace(
[email protected])] if you only want 1 or 2 channels its not worth it imo
22:07:31 [netgamers] [Ace(
[email protected])] as the channels will be #mumin.xxx
22:07:41 [netgamers] [msg(Ace)] well, the channel I'm trying to reg is #munin
At this point I eyed hope. If we could register our alliance nick as Munin, things would work out! To do that, I just need to get PAteam to accept that Ascendancy is actually named Munin. I checked if people in #ascendancy were ok with that:
22:06:37 <@jesterina> does anyone mind if I change the name of the ingame tag to Munin?
22:06:46 < Achi> you can do that?
22:06:48 <@elevator> please do jester
22:06:51 <@Game> jesterina they allow that?
22:06:57 < Achi> if you can do
22:07:01 <@Game> sounds good
Good so far, now to convince PAteam to go along with it:
22:09:29 < jesterina> Cin[Away]: could you change the ingame tag name of Ascendancy to Munin please?
22:11:53 <+Cin[Away]> not really no
22:12:56 < jesterina> why not?
22:13:14 < jesterina> I'll get the ingame HCs to message you ingame asking for it if necessary
22:14:15 <+Cin[Away]> it's not something we should be doing
Not so good. To be fair to Cin (and eventually Appocomaster), I've whined about them doing stuff like that quite often so I'm fine with them not changing the tag name. Would've been cool though
22:34:27 < jesterina> then will you accept that I need an alliance nick registered as Munin?
22:34:54 <+Appocomaster> jesterina: I don't mind what you register the alliance as
22:35:03 < jesterina> oh, Ace told me it had to be the name of the alliance
22:35:18 < jesterina> how do I change what the alliance is 'registered as'?
22:35:19 <+[ND]Spritfire> and Ace is right
And it goes on:
22:36:11 <+[ND]Spritfire> jesterina: register your alliance nick as Ascendancy. Or is there ap roblem with that ?
22:36:12 <+Appocomaster> jesterina: you can probably talk to Ace / [ND]Spritfire :/
22:36:34 < jesterina> [ND]Spritfire: yes
22:36:44 < jesterina> the channel I want to register is not called #ascendancy.something
22:36:56 <+[ND]Spritfire> then we can't help you basically
Terrible words to come from customer support.
I basically can not get the channel #munin registered for the alliance Ascendancy.
PAteam have an agreement with CService to allow exceptions to the 3 channel rule, but only for ingame registered alliances. I went on a rant at this point:
22:37:00 < jesterina> argh
22:37:04 < jesterina> you're all
22:37:04 < jesterina> real
22:37:06 < jesterina> really
22:37:08 < jesterina> really
22:37:09 < jesterina> unhelpful
22:37:13 < jesterina> and it's quite annoying
22:37:22 < jesterina> and frankly, I find it hostile
22:37:24 < jesterina> and offputting
22:37:25 <+Ace> its not our rules m8
22:37:29 < jesterina> yes it is!
22:37:36 < jesterina> you can let me reg Munin as our alliance nick
22:37:38 <+Ace> nope IRC is csc
22:37:44 < jesterina> I already own the ****ing botnick
22:37:46 < jesterina> or heartless does
22:37:49 < jesterina> one of us anyway
22:37:53 < jesterina> ****sake
22:38:01 < jesterina> where's the ****ing problem?
22:39:04 <+[ND]Spritfire> jesterina: rules are rules. This has nothing to do in here. So please leave. If you want a #ascendancy.something regged and have a ascendancy nick regged. please contact Ace or me
22:39:19 < jesterina> you're going to have to ban me to get me to shut up about this
22:39:22 < jesterina> you're being petty
22:39:26 < jesterina> and hostile
22:39:32 < jesterina> and abusing your power
22:39:37 < jesterina> what the **** is the point
22:39:43 < jesterina> this is a game with about 1000 people
22:39:57 < jesterina> it's not like letting us use Munin would change anything
22:40:10 < jesterina> and the stupid score rule limit prevents us from doing this swap ingame ourselves
22:40:19 < jesterina> you guys put us this situation
22:40:38 <+Appocomaster> jesterina: please just wait a minute ok?
22:40:49 < jesterina> sure thing
22:40:53 < jesterina> I can wait
At this point Appocomaster explains that one of the #support helpers is a member of CService and he was willing to try to get them to waive it. Sanity!
By the timestamps you can see that it has now taken me an hour to get my channel registered. Yes, CService have
helpfully offered to delete one of my existing channels. If push comes to shove, I might. But I like my channels. I don't think I should need to give one of them up just to get an alliance channel registered.
22:44:10 [netgamers] [msg(Appocomaster)] THE BUREAUCRACY HERE IS RETARDED
CService turn out to be convinced I'm doing this to get around the channel limit. I guess I am. I don't even know.
That said, the #support people kept the discussion going, which I really appreciate.
23:15:14 <+[ND]Spritfire> jesterina: We have discussed it over
23:16:12 <+[ND]Spritfire> ah just a last minut thing. so soonish
23:16:36 < jesterina> ok
23:23:28 <+[ND]Spritfire> The rules will stay as they are jesterina. So you can register the p-nick ascendancy.
23:23:34 < jesterina> well, in the mean time
23:23:40 < jesterina> I've signed up to planetarion
23:23:44 < jesterina> and registered an alliance
23:23:46 < jesterina> called Munin
23:23:52 < jesterina> I would like to register the p-nick Munin for my alliance
23:23:56 < jesterina> can you help me with that?
23:24:10 <+[ND]Spritfire> No I can't.
23:24:25 <+[ND]Spritfire> The alliance p-nick needs to get registred with the reps from #alliances.
23:24:26 < jesterina> why not?
23:24:36 < jesterina> I can be a rep for my alliance
23:24:46 <+[ND]Spritfire> And therefor your alliance need to follow the rules for being let into #alliances
23:25:09 < jesterina> what are the rules to be let into #alliances?
23:25:38 < jesterina> where's all this documented?
23:26:40 <+[ND]Spritfire> No place. We are working on getting it documented.
23:26:50 <+[ND]Spritfire> I am finding the rules atm.
23:26:54 < jesterina> sweet
Apparently this isn't public information either. Remember when I told you this whole alliance reps thing was a cliquey elitist shit hole? I wasn't kidding.
In the interest of full disclosure:
23:27:01 < jesterina> this is all going up on PD btw
Then, the bombshell:
23:29:38 <+[ND]Spritfire> Your alliance need to prove itself, ie it can stick around. It needs to be in the top15 and around 20-25ish members
23:30:14 <+[ND]Spritfire> and with stick around we mean above 1 round.
What a ****ing joke. Great way to greet new players. Good job.
In conclusion
It took me almost two hours to find out that I couldn't get #munin registered. I've donated all the code to the Planetarion community. I've helped people set the bot up, but I can't register a channel for the continued development of it because CService and PAteam have a draconian agreement that only lets elitist shit bags register unlimited channels.
a) CService need to be able to drop the 3 channel rule for exceptions. Sure it's liable to stink of nepotism eventually, but can't we all just get along?
b) Access to #alliances is a terrible criteria for support.
c) Access to #alliances is way too limited anyway. I've held before that it should at the very least be a public viewable, but moderated channel where alliance reps were voiced. This should be a minimum.
d) The inane bureaucracy has to go. Having rules is fine, but having rules for the sake of having rules is stupid.
Basically, if you have a new alliance. You can't get access to 'senior alliance' features. You're ****ed. Keep in mind Ascendancy has had representatives in rounds when we've had has few as 5-10 people in the tag, barely inside the top30. And on the flip side, in our first round, when the rules were changed mid-game, we didn't have any.
I understand that it's easier to gauge who has a proven need for the automated assistance mechanisms CService provides through name recognition, but is it really that important to prevent the occasional abuse of this feature? How on earth would it be abused? God forbid someone registers channels! This is a game with barely a thousand players, do we really need to be this asinine?
Edit: I'd mistakenly thought that #cservice was a no idling channel. It's not, it's just got a no idle chat policy, which means that helpful people can hang around and be helpful. The person who was unhelpful to me was asked to leave after being rude to the next person who asked a question.
Jumping through hoops
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