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RuneVillage - Removed as gold status because owner is a sex offender


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Not sure i agree with Jagex broadcasting that, should have just been Jagex sending that to runevillage, not to the community. Because no one honestly cares runevillage isn't a "gold" site. They now just care that there's a sex offender that owns it. Makes it look like Jagex just going the extra mile to diss on runevillage.

 

If jgaex didn't say anything theories would spread and jagex would get dissed for demoting a site for no reason.

Also they need to make it clear they are no associated with such people, it could effect investment given they are aimed at the teen market.

So you think if someone employed by jagex was found to be a sex offender jagex would send out a post "making clear" of the situation? Or do you think they'd quietly fire the person and internally deal with it? I'd imagine the later of scenarios to happen.

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I also found a recent newspaper article from 2010 about the specific person in question - it probably drew attention to the issue:http://nashvillecity...st-sex-offender

 

The byline in that story is dated February 16, 2010 - 18 months ago.

 

When did the fansite status program start?

Why did it take 18 months for Jagex to take this action?

Just how much research goes into the fansite status program?

Can we expect Jagex to be doing background checks on all fansite operators? Staff members?

 

While I don't disagree with what they did, it does open a can of worms.

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I also found a recent newspaper article from 2010 about the specific person in question - it probably drew attention to the issue:

http://nashvillecity...st-sex-offender

 

The byline in that story is dated February 16, 2010 - 18 months ago.

When did the fansite status program start?

Why did it take 18 months for Jagex to take this action?

Just how much research goes into the fansite status program?

Can we expect Jagex to be doing background checks on all fansite operators? Staff members?

While I don't disagree with what they did, it does open a can of worms.

 

Damn you have a point. I mean if this story was published 18 months ago dont you think Jagex was a little late to the program?

 

It also disappoints me that they, like previously said, didnt offer to go into quiet and private negotiations and they instantly went public with it. A bad move on their part.

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Not sure i agree with Jagex broadcasting that, should have just been Jagex sending that to runevillage, not to the community. Because no one honestly cares runevillage isn't a "gold" site. They now just care that there's a sex offender that owns it. Makes it look like Jagex just going the extra mile to diss on runevillage.

 

If jgaex didn't say anything theories would spread and jagex would get dissed for demoting a site for no reason.

Also they need to make it clear they are no associated with such people, it could effect investment given they are aimed at the teen market.

So you think if someone employed by jagex was found to be a sex offender jagex would send out a post "making clear" of the situation? Or do you think they'd quietly fire the person and internally deal with it? I'd imagine the later of scenarios to happen.

 

The difference is huge so comparing the two is nearly pointless, however I will humour you and explain them. A Jagex worker in their role as staff generally has no links with the public, bar the community management team. This means there is no need for them to know such details, as once somebody has served their time, unless in a role which brings them into contact with children, it should remain in the past. Staff are also not often know, again, bar community management and high profile developers. When one leaves, very few people outside of Jagex know. The Runevillage Admin on the other hand, in his role as administrator had very close contact, and a responsibility to have close contact with the public, of which a major portion could be children. The Admin also possibly has unrestricted access to personal details of users of the forum. Unlike Jagex staff leaving, when Runevillage loses it's gold status, it is very public and people notice. Due to this, Jagex had to either give reasons or be subject to wild speculation which could possibly give them very bad publicity.

 

I also found a recent newspaper article from 2010 about the specific person in question - it probably drew attention to the issue:

http://nashvillecity...st-sex-offender

 

The byline in that story is dated February 16, 2010 - 18 months ago.

When did the fansite status program start?

Why did it take 18 months for Jagex to take this action?

Just how much research goes into the fansite status program?

Can we expect Jagex to be doing background checks on all fansite operators? Staff members?

While I dont disagree with what they did, it does open a can of worms.

 

To answer this, The article is from a small, fairly local papers website. Jagex are not superheroes, they cannot possibly scour every nook and cranny of the internet. They probably do not know the full names of administrators (Which could change due to this, who knows), meaning unless somebody tells them, they have to rely on good faith.

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'Sexual offender' is such a broad term that it makes it difficult to gauge the severity of what was done. You can get labeled as a sexual offender from urinating on a tree.

 

What actually happened?

He distributed pics of teens.

 

 

Honestly? I don't give a flying [bleep], Jagex shouldn't judge people on their past mistakes, especially people who have paid for them already.

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To answer this, The article is from a small, fairly local papers website. Jagex are not superheroes, they cannot possibly scour every nook and cranny of the internet. They probably do not know the full names of administrators (Which could change due to this, who knows), meaning unless somebody tells them, they have to rely on good faith.
FWIW, the US Government does maintain a Federal level database which is not dependent on small local newspapers. I can't speak for other countries

 

http://www.nsopw.gov/Core/Portal.aspx

 

@ Crossed Body:

 

If you are a convicted sex offender, you are required by law to live a certain distance away from schools, bus stops, etc. In the broadest sense of the law, an offender is not supposed to go out of his way to attract children (such as putting toys in the yard, trick-or-treating candy on Halloween, etc.)

 

I guess it all depends on whether you think RuneVillage was targeted at minors or over-18 players. While it's quite likely that nothing at all improper was going on over there, the point is that the individual probably shouldn't have been running the site at all. He should have known better.

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@ Crossed Body:

 

If you are a convicted sex offender, you are required by law to live a certain distance away from schools, bus stops, etc. In the broadest sense of the law, an offender is not supposed to go out of his way to attract children (such as puting toys in the yard, trick-or-treating candy on Halloween, etc.)

 

I guess it all depends on whether you think RuneVillage was targeted at minors or over-18 players. While it's quite likely that nothing at all improper was going on over there, the point is that the individual probably shouldn't have been running the site at all. He should have known better.

At the time of the offense, what he did was not considered a "sex offense". And it does not work that way in many, many countries.

But this is not an issue of law, it's an issue of Jagex digging around skeletons in people's closets when they have no right to do so.

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But this is not an issue of law, it's an issue of Jagex digging around skeletons in people's closets when they have no right to do so.

They have every right to do so. This guy's name is clearly on the site (so it's not like they honestly had to search that hard)

 

RuneVillage and this web site are © 2002-2011 by Thomas Watson (hiker).

 

and IMO they have every right to check out the fan sites that they are officially recognizing and supporting.

 

Besides, we don't even know how Jagex found this information. Maybe they decided to do background checks on all the fan sites, which is a little weird, but they're fully within their rights to do that. Or maybe they received a tip from someone? We just don't know.

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@ Crossed Body:

 

If you are a convicted sex offender, you are required by law to live a certain distance away from schools, bus stops, etc. In the broadest sense of the law, an offender is not supposed to go out of his way to attract children (such as puting toys in the yard, trick-or-treating candy on Halloween, etc.)

 

I guess it all depends on whether you think RuneVillage was targeted at minors or over-18 players. While it's quite likely that nothing at all improper was going on over there, the point is that the individual probably shouldn't have been running the site at all. He should have known better.

At the time of the offense, what he did was not considered a "sex offense". And it does not work that way in many, many countries.

But this is not an issue of law, it's an issue of Jagex digging around skeletons in people's closets when they have no right to do so.

 

They have every right to do so. When they are actively supporting a fansite, they are actively sending users to it. If the owner and admin of said forum is a convicted sex offender, no matter what their offence, you do not under any circumstances send children to that site. Had they not done so, there would be many more questions to be asked and Jagex would seriously lose support from parents of younger players.

 

Lordkafei makes a good point, he will have been actively told not to be involved in anything bringing him in contact with children, he really should have known better.

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So why didn't they give the site a chance at retaining their status instead of making the site look like they supported, let alone condoned this from their admin?

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Child pornography? He should be shot.

"child" is anyone under 18. Plenty of 14-17 year olds are having sex...sometimes with adults, and sending nude pictures, etc. Not condoning it, but your lack of understanding all this makes your wild claim ludicrous.

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Well, Jagex is a company, not a government. That means they can judge anyone for anything past or present. And frankly, I don't care if thise guy is humiliated. I don't care about the legality of it. It was and still is an immoral thing to do and Jagex clearly said they must follow what they consider moral obligations.

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Well, Jagex is a company, not a government. That means they can judge anyone for anything past or present. And frankly, I don't care if thise guy is humiliated. I don't care about the legality of it. It was and still is an immoral thing to do and Jagex clearly said they must follow what they consider moral obligations.

Even companies should behave responsibly with information like this. Though Jagex following moral obligations is a bit funny considering what's gone on for the last year or so.

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At what point do we stop chastising people convicted of sex offenses, and allow them to integrate back into the community, albeit with controls. I mean, if we are going to go out and say "well he's set up a website based around a game that children play, thus is attracting teens..." is there anything we can't apply a round-a-bout logic to, in order to pull the same argument? Lagex have every right to protect their interests, but to publicly out him - again - after doing his time, well, I don't see that to be a moral action at all.

 

All they had to do was say "we have removed Gold status from RV for a breach of terms" or some legally vague pile of rubbish like that. Instead they have unleashed a lynch-mob.

 

Hmmm.

 

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I feel sorry for the little community. They all seem like a fairly good bunch of people, and now people are using this news to go and harass them. :-? As if they don't have enough problems already, yeesh. I think Jagex could've done a better job about handling this with the methods mentioned by Tripsis, and that hopefully would have prevented the backlash on the community itself.

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Wow, I used RuneVillage forums for several years before using the Tip.It forums. The decision was made purely on the fact that their forums were not as active and I grew bored of updating them, hoping somone had commented after me. I always used Tip.It for game update information though because it took way too long on RV.

 

To learn that Hiker is a registered sex offender is somewhat disturbing. Although his explanation shows how little it takes to get on that list, he does not seem very sincere in moving beyond his actions. He seems to still be on the defensive and attempting to bargain with himself and others about how bad "the system" makes things seem.

 

Sad to see that a 62-year-old could have such an attitude.

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Wow, I used RuneVillage forums for several years before using the Tip.It forums. The decision was made purely on the fact that their forums were not as active and I grew bored of updating them, hoping somone had commented after me. I always used Tip.It for game update information though because it took way too long on RV.

 

To learn that Hiker is a registered sex offender is somewhat disturbing. Although his explanation shows how little it takes to get on that list, he does not seem very sincere in moving beyond his actions. He seems to still be on the defensive and attempting to bargain with himself and others about how bad "the system" makes things seem.

 

Sad to see that a 62-year-old could have such an attitude.

 

Surely you can understand being on the defensive though, I mean, he has had his work thrown to hell because of his past actions, although they had no bearing on the website itself. Look at all the stuff people are saying about him without knowing the full facts of the case, just seeing that he is a RSO and thus public enemy number 1. How could anyone approach such a situation without a defensiveness?

 

[bleep] OFF HOW ARE U SO [bleep]ING LUCKY U PIECE OF [bleep]ING SHIT [bleep] [bleep] [wagon] MUNCHER

 

 

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I understand being on the defensive for the current situation of finding out et cetera, but my comment on his defensiveness springs from the way he explains his previous actions when he speaks of the pornography and other past offenses.

 

He says (and I paraphrase) that he sent it through email because he figured it was not going to be such a harsh crime even though he knew it to be illegal. That is something you should no longer be defensive about. You should accept your fault and not focus on it at all, but he spends several paragraphs defending such actions.

 

Now, do I think he should be defensive about his time at RV and that his actions there have shown no threat or even inclination towards "sexual offense"? Yes, he should be defensive there. I put "sexual offense" in quotes because to call him a sex offender, I contend, is pretty harsh. Did he distribute pictures of teens, yes, but did he go out of his way to defile children by taking the photos or actively seek them out? Not to my knowledge, nor anyone else's from his accounts or the news article. (With that said, I am not condoning child pornography. It is reprehensible and should not be tolerated.)

 

I do not defend what he did and will not say it is not a crime, but to end up on a registered sex offender list because of it is harsh; however, he still should be able to accept that the state has taken action, he agreed to the terms, and be able to move on from attempting to place all the blame on the state.

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If it were up to me, SteveW would be out on his ass tomorrow heading to the unemployment line. This is what Jagex has come to? Publicly shaming people in stickied threads on their forums? I have a hard time explaining to people at my job that their credit card was declined, what kind of a thuggish [wagon] does SteveW have to be to condemn an entire fansite to endless harassment for the sake of making some kind of [cabbage] statement about protecting the children, a disproportionate response to an imaginary threat.

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All they had to do was say "we have removed Gold status from RV for a breach of terms" or some legally vague pile of rubbish like that. Instead they have unleashed a lynch-mob.

 

Hmmm.

 

That's a sentiment I can definitely agree with, especially since it seems like they (Jagex) were just sitting on this information until it appeared as if it might bite them in the ass.

 

All this fanfare and mud slinging is a bit much.

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Child pornography? He should be shot.

"child" is anyone under 18. Plenty of 14-17 year olds are having sex...sometimes with adults, and sending nude pictures, etc. Not condoning it, but your lack of understanding all this makes your wild claim ludicrous.

 

This. Assuming his story is true, which makes sense because of the sentence he got, I find it wrong to label him a sex offender, along with rapists and the like. There's a big difference between abusive images and self shots of 17 year olds.

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According to the article he distributed child porn. Maybe for money. He might not even be into that stuff. That's a whole different thing than say, being caught feeling up children. Jag is overreacting. Funny anyhow :lol:

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The problem with sex offender registries is that everyone from rapists to the guy who had sex with his 17 year old girlfriend can end up on them. That said, this guy surely must have been aware of the restrictions, fair or otherwise, placed upon people in such a position and should have known better than to start up a fan site for an online game at a point when the majority of it's player base was underage. I'll agree that sometimes people make mistakes, and sometimes they go to prison simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and once you've done your time you deserve a second chance but this is one of those crimes that follows you for the rest of your days.

 

As for how Jagex handled it, I agree that it may not have been the best way of doing things but we don't know how this information was brought to their attention or if they had been receiving complaints about it. Publicly stating that they were distancing themselves from RuneVillage and it's founder may have been the only way of silencing the complainants.

 

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