For those of you who don't know, Mark the Administrator for Aionsource.com - the largest english speaking Aion fansite has been fired by Curse (basically the company that owns the site or something along those lines), over some leaked images of items that are avaliable in the Collector's Edition.

Not only was this information due to be released this week anyway, and only by the fact that the only day left is tommorow, so then, but many other fansites have started Beta Key contests for Aion as I am sure many of you are aware when they wern't really supposed to yet. Not only that but gamestop.com released full details of what is contained in the CE quite a while ago.

So, is it really fair that Mark, the guy who made Aionsource, and has been doing a brilliant job running it for three entire years has been fired over a few pictures? Discuss.

Its a pretty radical move by Cursed, I agree.

Mark started and ran Aionsource.com for years before even merging it to the Cursed website network. Its apalling how little they respect the ties the community have with this guy. Mark has given so much to the website and if it hadnt been for his hard work the first year and ahalf on Aionsource, it wouldnt be as successfull as it is today.

Cursed firing him seems very exagerated as far as responses go. Especially since the CE bonuses he leaked, were infact leaked originally by retailers online, where he could have just as easily gleaned the information from. Ergo, had Cursed truely been in an issue with NCsoft, they could have simply cited that as the source, and thereby supporting the guy while staying below the radar.

From the same perspective. Aionsource.com is a fansite. Not an official website. Mark worked for us, trying to get information to us that NCsoft is releasing next week, which has already been official for a while due to retailers indescretion, but keeping us all happy and informed. So what if he accidently stepped on NCsofts toes, his alliegance was to us, the fans of the game, practically gagging for news about it. And Cursed slapped him for that?

Exactly whose interests are Cursed protecting here. If you run a website and find a tidbit about a game of interest on a retailers website and put that on your own website, would you expect the product company to hold you responsible as the source of the leak? And why would Cursed be policing for NCsoft?

They chose to fire him, which speaks volumes of cursed and probably says alot about their intentions for some time, to perhaps incorporate Aionsource into a money gleaning website adjecent to the information part of the site, aka, mods,addons and the likes. Commercials etc. Stuff Mark might not have agreed with.

Underhanded and a blow to the community there.

Then again, Mark probably should have read the fine print before he handed the website over to Cursed. Im hopefull that they will realise the poor decission they made and reinstate him.

i heard the ce images was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

there is more to it than they've let on.

hopefully the moderation there will improve >.>

^

I gathered as much by now. Still, its a lot to take to have all your work taken away like that. Fansites are not official websites, and I guess Mark was still running it for the fans, and not perhaps looking to kiss up to NCsoft as much as Cursed wanted him to.

What a low thing to do. I understand how some mistakes you make get you fired especially if it brings shame or trouble to the company. But in marks case, it was hardly anything harmful at all. And on top of that, he has given so much to the community and basically made aion knowledge what it is today in the first place. Why should mark get fired over this? That is complete BS. Cursed obviously jumped out of their panties and fired him without even thinking about all he has done. "Pfft better to be safe then sorry eh?" Well done cursed.

"This is similar to a guy selflessly deticating his entire life to something only to end up having the cause he was striving for slapped in his face... By none other than the people who should be thaning him for all the help! Just because of a little slip?...

C'mon this isn't rocket science here, and NCsoft is sure as hell able to understand... Who is NCsoft more likely to tear up over this little misshap, aionsource which is a VERY deticated fanbase wanting to do no harm to the game and helps give word of mouth, or the retailers who spilt the VERY soon to be known beans??" Honestly how little greatfulness does cursed think NCsoft has. Let alone I doubt NCsoft even cares that this happened...

Honestly I would love one of the NCsoft reps on this site tell me what they think of all this. I know there are some really cool NCsoft guys on these forums, I would like to hear their 10 cents on the matter. Was this fair? Was it neccesary? Or do you think they where going overboard. I think cursed jumped the gun bigtime.

Maybe it was a deal where Curse could be held responsible for breaking some kind of agreement.  Vendors and such may have been told to not show images outside released screenshots, you never know.  There may be more to it than we get to see.

Z

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Originally posted by Neyon

So, is it really fair that Mark, the guy who made Aionsource, and has been doing a brilliant job running it for three entire years has been fired over a few pictures? Discuss.
 

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Sounds like he wasn't fired over a few pictures.

It sounds like he was fired for breaking company rules. As an Administrator, if anyone knows rules have to be followed, it should be him. I see nothing wrong with this. I'm sure he's banned a few people from the site for posting "a few comments".

NCSoft probably is just setting a precedent that they don't allow disloyalty by employees (?) and they don't want anyone stealing their thunder. After all, Press Releases and event notifications are VERY big deals to companies after they've spent thousands of dollars prepping for the announcements. If Administrators can just leak important news, why would NCSoft have a PR department they are paying good money to anyways?

To you it's just a few pictures. To NCSoft, it's a public relations coup.

lol Aionsource won't load anymore - said there was a database error.

AS is dead...man this sucks.

site is down

You just don't leak info, period. I feel bad for the guy but he should have known better.

It let me on for a few mins, but now its all locked up again.

Originally posted by dirtyklingon

i heard the ce images was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

there is more to it than they've let on.

 

 

hopefully the moderation there will improve >.>

This guy has the right of it. Don't jump to conclusions when you may not have the full picture people.

We will likely never know truely what happened.  What we do know is now the site is being ran by someone who has been a mod for a long time.

My hope is that the new admin will carry on the site as it was.  A place where fans can gather and share both positive AND negitive viewpoints. 

Taken from Aionsource front page:

Now, this last part might seem to you to make it seem like we're at the will and beckoning call of the publishers, I assure you, we are not. The fact remains however, if we're going to have an admin in place here, and that admin is openly making remarks that reflect poorly on the game and the decisions made by NCSoft it strongly affects OUR ability to work with those people to obtain information and products to help benefit OUR community. It is my STRONG belief that the job of a website administrator in this case is to report the news and remain neutral when presenting it. If the users want to banter and discuss the ups and downs of the latest news I think that's excellent and by all means I encourage it, but for the reasons listed above having an administrator openly talk bad about other websites or the game is arguebly bad for the community, damages relationships we work very hard to build, and in my opinion incredibly unprofessional.

Directly relating to the actions taken this morning, the release of data before its time was an unfortunate mistake - not something that would normally lead to releasing someone as a site manager. The actions taken AFTERWARDS however are what caused great concern for us - If you have specific questions about the events we can discuss it over IRC sometime - no problem.

sounds to me like it was alot more then just some CE pictures.  You guys make your own judgements on what is above.

"The actions taken AFTERWARDS however are what caused great concern for us - If you have specific questions about the events we can discuss it over IRC sometime - no problem."

This sounds ominous. I wonder what came "afterwards" of the release of pics? Must have been a humdinger, lol.

Originally posted by dirtyklingon

i heard the ce images was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

there is more to it than they've let on.

It had to have been something like that but at the same time, I can't believe they let him go after the amount of dedication he's had. Back when i was running InsideAION, AIONSource was one of the sites I used to regularly visit for all that extra info like translations of Korean news, cool images and such.

There's got to be a lot more to the story, but I'd be willing to bet that most of it was the result of benign indescretion and not anything bad or malicious.

Originally posted by leowyatt

Taken from Aionsource front page:

 

Now, this last part might seem to you to make it seem like we're at the will and beckoning call of the publishers, I assure you, we are not. The fact remains however, if we're going to have an admin in place here, and that admin is openly making remarks that reflect poorly on the game and the decisions made by NCSoft it strongly affects OUR ability to work with those people to obtain information and products to help benefit OUR community. It is my STRONG belief that the job of a website administrator in this case is to report the news and remain neutral when presenting it. If the users want to banter and discuss the ups and downs of the latest news I think that's excellent and by all means I encourage it, but for the reasons listed above having an administrator openly talk bad about other websites or the game is arguebly bad for the community, damages relationships we work very hard to build, and in my opinion incredibly unprofessional.

Directly relating to the actions taken this morning, the release of data before its time was an unfortunate mistake - not something that would normally lead to releasing someone as a site manager. The actions taken AFTERWARDS however are what caused great concern for us - If you have specific questions about the events we can discuss it over IRC sometime - no problem.

 

sounds to me like it was alot more then just some CE pictures.  You guys make your own judgements on what is above.

I just read this. This sounds like it has more to do than just the pictures. People gotta understand that if you get fired from being ADMIN, this means you did so much along the lines to mess up they let you go. No matter how much contribution you do, people must understand you can still get knocked off the boat by people higher than you. Sucks for him, but the aion community need to stop taking things so hard like, "AS will never be the same..." The site is community ran, meaning without the community there is nothing. The admin was just being an admin, so the site is still going to grow strong and furthermore.

Wow that really sucks, I wonder what happened behind the scenes. Aionsource is awesome so kudos to the work he put into it for the rest of us to enjoy. I hope he posts the whole story on a forum somewhere.

Originally posted by Mr.Midnight

We will likely never know truely what happened.  What we do know is now the site is being ran by someone who has been a mod for a long time.

My hope is that the new admin will carry on the site as it was.  A place where fans can gather and share both positive AND negitive viewpoints. 

The new admin is temporary we don't know if she or someone else will be admin yet. Lyan took the job only to keep things in order. I'm sure there will be an announcement later on.

Originally posted by dirtyklingon

i heard the ce images was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

there is more to it than they've let on. >.>

 

I asked Cynic what he had discussed with the Curse Admins about the issue and it sounds like Mark had been warned numerous times and had been ignoring them. The CE images were, as you said, the straw that broke the camel's back. It gave Curse the reason they needed to remove him.

As much as i admire Mark and the work hes done on AS it probably was the straw that broke the camels back.

With full instructions on how to buy the chinese retail version and pay for subs from 3rd party sites,  info on where to get illegal english language packs *client side modification* then theres been a lot going on recently for a *Professional* site that shouldnt have been.

Moderation should have been better all round and Mark's probably been used as a scapegoat.

Originally posted by Neyon

lol Aionsource won't load anymore - said there was a database error.

Honestly, if I was the administrator to a site I built, and had it taken from me for whatever reason, you can bet I'd have more than one backdoor in and I'd use them all. Not that that's what happened, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Originally posted by thamighty213

As much as i admire Mark and the work hes done on AS it probably was the straw that broke the camels back.

 

With full instructions on how to buy the chinese retail version and pay for subs from 3rd party sites,  info on where to get illegal english language packs *client side modification* then theres been a lot going on recently for a *Professional* site that shouldnt have been.

 

Moderation should have been better all round and Mark's probably been used as a scapegoat.

The english patch was lifted from the closed friends and family beta..... And yes you are right none of that stuff should have been there. As an ex moderator let me make something clear, it's very difficult to properly moderate a site when you don't know where to throw yourself and what is deemed acceptable by the site's creator and admin.

: /

edit: I was thinking about this again and also to keep in mind about the Source moderation, the site is HUGE. It is very, very active so it's not that easy to keep track of everything all the time especially when all the mods are volunteers with day jobs and a life. :)