An open letter to /merit/

This is a formal complaint to /merit/ regarding our current commissioner King Lear, and why the signers of this complaint believe he has failed the fundamental requirement of impartiality that is required of a commissioner and is thus unfit for the role. We believe these complaints are not personal attacks, but rather an attempt to recount some of the events that led us to believe that he is not fit for the role he currently occupies, and therefore must step down. Let's get started.

Undue involvement with /w/

This is unfortunately the first point that must go out of the way in order to estabilish the lack of impartiality that Lear represents as a Commissioner.

During the 2017 Spring Babby Cup, /w/ was grouped with /a/, and had to face them in match 3 out of 3. Lear was then present in the public /a/ discord, and active. Goat, then manager of /w/, was absent.

Come gametime, then streamer Sou had to make substitutions for /w/'s team, and accidentally put a certain CB on the pitch despite being told not to do so in /w/'s pastebin. This promptly followed in /a/'s chat in the wake of the result:

[8:37 PM] Lear: Sorry it had to go down like this.
[8:37 PM] Lear: I wish Sou hadn't subbed on our smallest CB in the middle when the pastebin said specifically not to do that.
[8:39 PM] Lear: I'm too angry at Sou for costing the lead to be happy at this.

Already this raises a few questions: Why does the supposedly impartial commissioner know a pastebin of a team he was formerly manager of 2 years prior by heart? But most importantly, why would this matter when /w/ was coming into the match already relegated? I'll let him explain.

[8:44 PM] Lear: I'm angry because Sou just cost /w/ 17th place.

The Cull followed immediately afterwards and saw /w/ advance to summer until /w/'s nonexistent Proof of Interest posts came to light. The Commissioner had intended to use prior knowledge of the Cull to favor his own teams' chances of advancing, and was nearly stripped of the chance due to Sou's rigging. This is just the most egregious episode, but there's more. When /w/'s interest was put into the spotlight again in Autumn, Lear admitted to participating to /w/'s interest thread:

[12:02 AM] Two_Scoops: IIRC the reason he said he posted there to begin with was to put enough images in the thread to comply with /w/ rules
[12:02 AM] Two_Scoops: but that's not his job, it's the fucking manager's job
[12:06 AM] Lear: I posted in that thread because Goat asked me to get some pics of the team ingame as wallpapers. I figured it was easier to just post them myself then go through a broken telephone.

Why would the Commissioner need to fill in to post screenshots of PES, when /w/ had a manager that was supposedly active and in their fifth cup, and why would Goat need to ask him? I'll let him explain one more time, when talking about Spring 16:

[8:05 PM] Lear: Also I'm not the manager for /w/ anymore so I probably shouldn't sign them up for stuff.
[8:06 PM] Lear: Goat is real he just cannot into PES.
[8:10 PM] Lear: In Spring both teams that escaped the group were the ones that never tested.
[8:11 PM] Lear: Also the teams that had exports made by me. (note: the other is /trv/)

There is more, however, and this is where the rule about the commissioner not managing a team flies straight out of the window.

Lear has, on multiple occasions, admitted to testing for /w/, while the manager in charge was Anonymous Goat, more specifically during the 2017 Winter and 2017 Spring Cups:

[7:49 PM] Ramen: @CuriousAnon QD doesn't into tactics much
[7:50 PM] Ramen: its gw that does most of the dumb shit
[7:51 PM] Johnny: qd told me he wanted tight marking on the amfs and gw shot it down
[7:51 PM] Heavenly_Pond: Would that help
[7:51 PM] TheWorst: >GW
[7:51 PM] Johnny: Probably not
[7:51 PM] Ramen: qd said he wanted gw to not run hug the touchline and he never stopped(edited)
[7:52 PM] Johnny: /m/ outright manmarked them and still conceded 3
[7:52 PM] Lear: Yeah when I was testing against /vg/ they played better without their advanced instructions easily.

[5:59 AM] Lear: Everything about Welcrom (note: then an /a/ tester) I like.
[5:59 AM] Lear: He's even trying to help /w/.
[5:59 AM] rhs: except he doesn't go into pixel autism like NFR
[5:59 AM] rhs: >Welcrom is feeding tactics to both teams
[5:59 AM] rhs: genius
[5:59 AM] rhs: he will win an Elite
[6:00 AM] Lear: No I meant those tictacs would be a godsend for /w/.
[6:00 AM] Lear: If /a/ used them.
[6:00 AM] Johnny: damn lear with the mindgames
[6:00 AM] rhs: I bet Lear is just foxing
[6:00 AM] rhs: and he is SCARED
[6:00 AM] Ramen: Oh we tried them
[6:00 AM] Johnny: if i was playing /a/ with a three six fun theres very few /a/ setups that would worry me :sunglasses:
[6:00 AM] Ramen: For shits and giggles
[6:01 AM] Lear: I'll have you know I tested exclusively against that setup because I am in your heads.

So here we have a commissioner that has admitted to the following regarding his former team /w/:

- Posting in their PoI threads

- Judging said PoI thread's quality and without fail, deeming them good enough to compete

- Making exports for /w/, which retained the same tactics for a full year after his tenure as manager had ended (Autumn 2016 /w/ was the 4-4-1-1 it had always been under Lear)

- Following their games closely, having full knowledge of their tactical pastebin (enough to know which CB was shortest in a time frame of seconds)

- Most importantly, openly admitting to testing for the acting manager in spite of his position as Commissioner.

Not only does this unequivocally disqualify Lear from being an impartial party, it is also a de-facto violation of rule 3: The Commissioner may not manage a team during their tenure.

This is completely and utterly unacceptable, and the continued proxy managing of his former team alone should disqualify him from the role of commissioner, as it breaks the fundamental bond of trust managers are supposed to have towards the Commissioner, and there has already been at least one episode where Lear could have taken advantage:

On the 19th of May of 2017, f4r went missing in action after the deadline for matchday 4 of the Spring Babby.

Lear had to fill in for f4r's duties and made the EDIT file of a matchday where the team he was then proxy manager of played, and he got to handle a nightly export of the team /w/ was playing next. He then casually went on to comment in public on how his testing against /a/ went.

As an aside, I would also like to point out that this is now a renewed concern, as /w/'s Spring tactics will be made by someone that is not a "neutral party", by his own admission.

Moving the gay goalpost and lack of standards

The new autopilot format has had, to date, two successful users: /cm/ and /p/. You'd think these two teams would then have a very similar story with interest and polling, and you'd be so crucially wrong.

As you all know by now, /cm/'s autumn poll was ran and supervised by Dragonfag, and they were ultimately allowed to play, as their interest was deemed legitimate. When /merit/ called this into question, the burden of proof to disprove the interest was legitimate (and not votes for a collection of DF's husbandos) was squarely placed on them, something that, with obvious reasons, they couldn't do.

I ran a preliminary strawpoll for /p/, which was approved by /merit/ (as opposed to /cm/ just coming in with interest). Given the green light, I polled /p/, and some 48 hours into the Autumn poll, some wonderful person decided to leak it to /4ccg/. I had to rush close the poll, and was then pre-emptively asked to prove no votes came from /4ccg/, and I was happy to oblige. The burden of proof was placed on me.

This however left the music selection for /p/ so close that I wasn't prepared to call the will of the board, so I decided to run a second, tiebreaker poll. This saw no complaints, and people were happy to vote and decide a winner. 14 of the 17 initial votes came back in a comparable time frame, and nothing of note has happened since. /p/ keeps being mildly interested and I keep wanting to build them.

Why is this tiebreaker poll relevant? /cm/ was going to be asked to do the same, after /cm/'s roster was given the green light by a couple of /cm/ browsers, as a way to unequivocally verify their interest as legitimate (the second poll would have been run by /merit/, ruling out any ballot stuffing that is possible with google polls), and the arguments Lear had against it, I find truly baffling and nonsensical when /p/ was able to vote twice without any doomsday scenario of the sort occurring.

Refer to Appendix 1 for the log.

Again as you know, the situation was ultimately resolved with calls of "let /cm/ play" with little criticism coming from the crowd, despite lacking any amount of information other than "DF made the poll but it is legitimate". It was then agreed that a banned person could never run a poll again, giving /cm/ preferential treatment and authorization to break the rules "just this once" on account of strong interest.

After this point, the discussion about /w/ happened, and Lear stopped answering to my enquiries about /p/. I had asked him about keeping a couple of no-aesthetics players out, and never got a response. I decided to ask then-recently out of /merit/ DescendingBear and other /merit/ members about the autopilot rules. I was unofficially told by DB that autopilots ought to require a thread every single cup cycle, before or during. Or do they?

/cm/ had a single winter thread that was linked on the stream's chat by SDA at zero replies, and then continued seemingly normally. Nobody had to prove their interest was legitimate, despite the fact that it was leaked at the very start. No thread was made for Spring's preparation and the roster was not updated. Despite this, /cm/ get to play with Autumn's roster. This, to me, had the same coherence of a random number generator, so once again I asked about autopilot interest:

[11:07 PM] Free my nigga megababby: So are we ever gonna write some rules down about autopilot and PoI or is it just gonna be wing it lmao
[11:08 PM] Free my nigga megababby: Cause /cm/ as far as I see from the archive is competing on Autumn PoI and until 2 months ago it was one cycle
[11:08 PM] Lear: They had a Winter thread.
[11:09 PM] Lear: And yeah we'll write out 1 cycle and all that.

So you'd think that this means that rules for autopilots are more lax now and they don't need a proper thread every cup cycle, but no later than 24 hours pass before he goes out of his way to defend the leaked thread that nobody can prove the legitimacy of.

Refer to Appendix 2 for the log.

Again, consider what is being said for a second here, just because /cm/ cannot, for some obscure reason, poll their board like everyone else:

- It is perfectly fine to violate the rules twice in a row and, in both instances, only give a vague and non binding promise to be harsher in the future rather than take any sort of decision right now

- It is perfectly fine for a team to compete on a roster that is years old, relying only on matchday threads made by people without any sort of relation to the cup, banned or not, and that are completely unverifiable in any way

- Being linked on stream, a location that is several magnitudes more visible than /4ccg/, where interest has been leaked and denied before is not enough reason to at least require another thread 3 months later

- It is perfectly fine for the only beneficiary of these decisions to be /cm/, while the other autopilots that are getting interested in the cup have to bust their ass and abide by the ever-changing, implied but not codified rules.

We have already seen the result of this inconsistency for the benefit of one team: /t/'s thread is a complete mockery of the current standards for autopilots, particularly /cm/ since the OP of both threads remains unknown and both got leaked, and the fact that /t/'s thread has been reported and deleted suggests there's an escalation that is potentially cancerous for the cup.

I don't really want a bunch of cross boarders to link my threads to 4ccg to then have them reported and deleted. It's not conducive to any small market and it screams of concerted effort to straight up kill any up and coming team.

Not good enough for /u/

Lear went on First Bait, on the day after the round of 16 of the winter cup, and went on a completely unprompted huge, half hour long rant undermining /u/'s management ability and style of polling, while also slinging personal insults at him while being incredibly angry: https://www.smashcast.tv/firstbait/videos/1385699 - it starts at 35 minutes.

For context, this is the image Myuer posted in the chat: http://puu.sh/zYd1S/177ab33cb7.png - this is around the time of The Cull.

I will leave the footage to speak for himself, but do keep in mind that, as far as anybody I'm in contact with (/u/ management former and not) is concerned and going back as far as 2013, /u/ has always polled their meta thread, and has an agreement with the moderator to do so, while specifically being told not to create threads: https://4archive.org/board/u/thread/2001853#p2004050

Here's some choice quotes, just in case you can't watch the video:

"Maybe I'll be a bit kinder to them when they aren't filthy fucking casuals with garbage taste"

"...If you think you can justify the shit you pulled with that team, go ahead - [long rant about Citrus ensues] - no your garbage ass fucking general hates it, and you can't pull your dick out of your ass to see that!"

"I see only polling the general thread as basically rock bottom, because it's a fucking shithole"

"If you don't wanna take a 3 day, you don't give a shit!"

I honestly want to ask a question here, would you appreciate being under a magnifying scope for how you run the team you manage because the Commissioner doesn't like the general you have been confined in by the moderation, and ultimately questions your poll because of personal preference? Neither would I, but this blatant bias toward these teams seems like it's a repeated and well documented behaviour that shows no signs of ever getting better:

- His unwillingness to take /adv/'s signup over /wg/ in the 2016 Summer Cup, despite the fact /wg/ missed theirs and should have been immediately disqualified. /wg/'s participation remained in contention until most of the cup IRC and /4ccg/ complained, and he was forced to back down.

- Without dwelling too much on it, because plenty has already been said, his behaviour during and after The Cull, and his comments on /c/ and /u/ in particular.

The most egregious thing is that this is something that seems to have to do entirely with his own tastes, and not any genuine concern, and that he is actively calling to upset the moderation in order to start a thread when /u/ has specifically been told not to do so. Because clearly, what we need is more boards that are even less open about 4CC threads and more hostility from the moderation, whether you think it's good moderation or bad moderation.

I would also like to point out that being part of the 4CC organization shouldn't in any circumstance give you a higher standing than a 4chan moderator, whether you like them or not.

Lock before, explain later

The discussion on Spring's format has been, to put it simply, non-existent. /merit/ was, up until this week, aware of these new\revived team attempts: /3/, /aco/, /bant/, /hm/ and /w/, or in other words, exactly 40.

Given that all of these except /hm/ look like they're going to succeed, the smartest thing to do would have been announcing that we were very close to making a megababby happen (and possibly reviving managers that needed a little push - for example, /gif/'s former manager) and then waiting until the weekend to wrap up team making by including all of the teams that were in the stages of gathering interest, since he was already well aware of 40 interested teams being a more than real possibility.

This was suggested in /merit/, and it was promptly ignored. Lear then told /merit/ the blame was "on him" if people weren't satisfied with the current megafetus / babby format, despite the fact that he now fails to address any questions regarding the new teams that have propped up as the Spring dates were announced.

What instead happened was Lear gave a 48 hour ultimatum to /hm/ and /aco/ to get a thread ready and gather interest, and then cut them off short of the 40 teams count despite there being a good chance /aco/ will in fact make it, without even considering the possibility that there may be wildcards (/t/, /gif/) or reviving an autopilot with none\partial interest (/hm/ has renewed aesthetics, and at least some interest despite the disappearance of their poller - which does not seem a problem for /cm/).

Despite the fact that the people voted for more teams, and for making a megababby happen if 40 teams were interested, despite the huge support this tournament format had in Autumn, Lear decided, on his own, to stick with a format that is unpopular and that saves absolutely no time for the streamers.

Conclusion and Signatures

In conclusion, due to the reasons listed and way more that you are all well aware of, we believe it is time for Lear to part with the role of Commissioner.

We are aware this is not the first time this discussion has come to a sticking point, and would therefore propose Shakes as the new Commissioner of the 4chan Cup, following a vote of no confidence.

Signed,

MarcoZ (talk) 18:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC) Ordinate (talk) 19:42, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Appendices

Appendix 1

[2017-08-23 01:36:21] Descending Bear: similiarly, if we wouldn't have a single trustworthy person on board to verify this poll, I'd still advocate for asking /cm/ fans to run it again (not whole thread with POI, just the poll, this one supervised by one of us)
[2017-08-23 01:37:18] Descending Bear: perhaps we'd reach the solution of seeking help among actual /cm/ fans on our own, perhaps we could achieve it by having a discussion with managers
[2017-08-23 01:38:34] Descending Bear: however, throwing half of us to the ptchforks without letting us know before we've reached any kind of agreement is disgusting, and defending that it was a right thing to do is equally disgusting
[2017-08-23 01:39:15] f4r !HanakoDlmg: the main schism seemed to be around running another poll or not
[2017-08-23 01:39:34] Descending Bear: I don;t particularily care about "reputation", but being thrown under the bus for things I haven't said or done is not what any of us is here for
[2017-08-23 01:39:34] King Lear: Running a second poll is voiding the first one.
[2017-08-23 01:39:56] Descending Bear: yes, and that would be required if we wouldn't find any proof of validity
[2017-08-23 01:39:57] King Lear: Bear you said that /cm/ should have their POI scrapped and another poll ran.
[2017-08-23 01:40:13] King Lear: Running a second poll is scrapping the POI.
[2017-08-23 01:40:49] Descending Bear: no, telling them to start a new thread would be scrapping POI
[2017-08-23 01:41:15] Descending Bear: or demanding that existence of this poll means nothing at all and /cm/ fans do not exist
[2017-08-23 01:41:56] King Lear: >hey you know that poll you voted in well it didn't count try again
I call that scrapping the POI.
[2017-08-23 01:42:57] Descending Bear: this is only according to your very specific definition of POI
[2017-08-23 01:43:35] Descending Bear: In case of small and slow boards, I often encourage manager candidates to ask for suggestions in thread rather than running the poll
[2017-08-23 01:44:08] Descending Bear: what I men is, poll is not technically required if there was discussion about players, music and whatnot, and manager/autopilot follows those advices
[2017-08-23 01:45:30] Descending Bear: while DF is perfectly capable of pretending to be several people, it;s pretty obvious that even if he would, thread like that still gathers some interests of /cm/ anons who stumbled upon it and might have posted in it
[2017-08-23 01:46:28] Descending Bear: I've never called for throwing /cm back to step zero, only to have a poll that is not run by the most banned person in this Cup
[2017-08-23 01:48:07] King Lear: Saying the poll didn't count is scrapping the POI.
[2017-08-23 01:48:55] Descending Bear: gaining proper board interest is actually pretty complex process that has several steps:
- attracting attention of board denizens;
- explaining to them on what the Cup is;
- explaining to them what does manager expect from them and waiting for their feedback;
- making sure that board stays interested and informed once the team plays in actual Cup
[2017-08-23 01:49:00] King Lear: That isn't even mentioning how dumb a second poll is as an idea.
[2017-08-23 01:49:30] King Lear: - attracting attention of board denizens;
- explaining to them on what the Cup is;
- explaining to them what does manager expect from them and waiting for their feedback;
- making sure that board stays interested and informed once the team plays in actual Cup
The poll did all but the last one which it could not have.
[2017-08-23 01:49:59] Descending Bear: if you're calling invalidating just one of those steps as being equal with scrapping POI, you really have no idea on what are you talking about
[2017-08-23 01:50:27] King Lear: Want me to ask the audience on this one? you're telling the fans their vote didn't count, that's scrapping the POI.
[2017-08-23 01:51:03] Descending Bear: because even when poll is redone, the fact is, some of /cm anons already know what the Cup is and might be curious enough to stick around, and that's a lot more than having nothing at all
[2017-08-23 01:51:19] King Lear: So you admit a second poll would drive people away.
[2017-08-23 01:51:44] Descending Bear: and now I have no idea what are you talking about
[2017-08-23 01:51:59] King Lear: Alright so what would a second poll do that the first one didn't?
[2017-08-23 01:52:11] Descending Bear: no, it wouldn't if we are not scaring /cm/ fans with drama, and we wouldn't have to
[2017-08-23 01:52:55] King Lear: No matter the approach if you tell people for any reason their vote did not count they will not be happy.
[2017-08-23 01:53:12] King Lear: And if I were one of those people I would feel that I had wasted my time for no reason.
[2017-08-23 01:53:37] Descending Bear: you don't need to give a valid reason, something along the lines of "oops, this formula did not gave us enquivocal results / we need some tiebreakers" or whatever you think of
[2017-08-23 01:53:57] King Lear: No matter what you say, if people have to vote a second time they'll be unhappy.
[2017-08-23 01:54:09] Descending Bear: yeah, spending 2 minutes on voting is such a chore, it can be done only once a year to not overextert oneself
[2017-08-23 01:54:10] King Lear: Especially if the poll is the same.
[2017-08-23 01:54:38] Descending Bear: then you change things in poll formula to make it look and work differently, there are endless possibilities
[2017-08-23 01:54:55] Descending Bear: more candidates in roster suggestions in new poll, basically anything
[2017-08-23 01:55:21] King Lear: So if we change the poll people who have their choices affected now feel as though they are being told to fuck off.
[2017-08-23 01:55:36] Descending Bear: this is null discussion though as we've agreed to accept /cm/ poll as it is, at leat for this one season
[2017-08-23 01:56:23] King Lear: Yup because it turns out that thinking the POI should be voided and a second poll ran is a bit of a minority opinion at large.
[2017-08-23 01:57:25] Descending Bear: and about your idea of bringing it to the public: sure tell them in all details how evil bear is plotting to kill /cm/ again. Nothing like a good walk of shame to bring fellow member back to order, isn't it
[2017-08-23 01:58:20] Descending Bear: I can't believe I really tried to maintain integrity of /merit/ by standing your side and defending you when you were the minority for the stunt you wanted to pull off with /w/
[2017-08-23 01:58:50] King Lear: Yup I said in public you wanted the POI scrapped.
[2017-08-23 01:59:24] Descending Bear: if you want to invoke the rule of majority whenever you need and ignore it when it does not suit your agenda, go ahead

Appendix 2

[6:58 PM] Lear: @Free my nigga megababby I told you yesterday that /cm/ have new poi, not sure why you are saying today they dont.
[6:59 PM] Free my nigga megababby: I said something specific: >without re-polling
[7:00 PM] Free my nigga megababby: Autumn poll, Spring cup, doesn't look like a cup cycle to me even though I guess that rule has been wiz'd away right about now.
[7:00 PM] Incoming: I mean /cm/'s current roster is bretty good aethstically
[7:00 PM] Free my nigga megababby: Without even getting into the legitimacy of that thread
[7:03 PM] Lear: That's pretty narrow if you think the p in poi can only stand for poll. If there is a thread that shows a team clearly wanting to play rejecting it because they were being interested and discussing the Cup in the wrong way would be stupid.
[7:05 PM] Free my nigga megababby: So you're saying that it is technically possible to keep a team unupdated for multiple cup cycles and potentially years without ever even updating the roster as long as they have a matchday thread of completely anonymous supporters
[7:05 PM] Free my nigga megababby: With one of the commentators announcing your thread on stream and still being legitimate
[7:06 PM] Lear: Have you read /cm/'s Winter thread?
[7:08 PM] Free my nigga megababby: It's in my history so I must have skimmed through it, the first post is literally "raid incoming" though, had an hearthy laugh
[7:11 PM] Lear: The thread went on for a while after it got brought up and had actual discussion in it so I feel it is better to give them the benefit of the doubt this once. As for the roster thing if the people on the board are happy with the roster and there is interest in the team then telling them their interest wasnt correct is being petty and shutting out a team with interest.
[7:15 PM] Free my nigga megababby: So the cup cycle thing hasn't been written out after all and you're only giving them a pass for a healthy thread, despite the fact that every other autopilot and post-cull team past and present had to get a reputable, non banned tripfag to drum up interest for them to return to the cup, and despite the fact that the thread was leaked in an incredibly visible location and that it literally starts with two 4ccg shitposts
[7:19 PM] Lear: >reputable, non banned tripfag
Only thing we care about is not banned. If we didnt let a team in because the person who made the thread wasnt a top lad that'd be fucked.

Yes their thread was leaked and we are going to be more harsh on that in the future but dont act like the thread has nothing but people shouting about raids.