TSR: In Ur Accounts, Deletin Ur Stuffs!

[lorikay]

It's also the same intelligent bunch that keeps firing Atwa.  Apparently several times now, but somehow she just keeps sneakin' in without their knowledge.

I guess they must be very thankful to coconut for alerting them of her new identity, since they sacked her the day after coconut let carpediem out of the bag.

[WedgewoodBlue]

Johan, you can never completely know another person. You can fool yourself into believing that, but you are not inside their head. You see what that person wants you to see. Your values may not be the exact same as theirs, but they can lull you into believing what they want you to believe. Insofar as Atwa is concerned, no one here would ever be conned into taking her word as the absolute truth.
Your claim that she somehow managed to sneak back into TSR is simply not credible. If you want us to believe that you don't run background checks, you don't check ISP's, then what you give us to believe, is that you are incompetent as a businessman.
We have all heard or read on the news about people who commit horrendous crimes, and then friends, and sometimes even family members are completely shocked and taken aback. Never in their wildest dreams would they have considered the person to be capable of the very thing of which they are accused of doing.

Where did Atwa get that list? Who knows......but the likelihood that she shared it with Thomas is quite high. It is no secret that she has some kind of relationship with him, although I do find her version of that relationship extremely twisted. Given the history TSR has with Atwa, it would seem to me that one of TSR's priorities would be to be extra diligent in keeping a close eye on her ISP address and blocking it.
She has an agenda, she wants vengeance on those who she feels back stabbed her at TSR, and she is unstable enough to do damage to TSR, while believing that she is getting her just revenge. Your continued association with her is revolting, to say the least.

I agree with Pescado that it is much more likely that the person responsible for your troubles is within your own organization.
I  think that your stance on refusing to even consider that, is because you simply don't want to believe that you may have been duped by someone you trust. I think too, that your sense of family loyalty is admirable, although slightly misplaced. Thomas has, at least at this particular site a particularly foul reputation. He is your brother, that has to upset you.
All in all, you seem like a nice enough sort, but I believe that you have a serious case of tunnel vision.

Many of us have read Coconut's blog, we have seen the screencaps, and we find Coconut to be very credible. Given that your site has admitted to  sharing member's personal information with your Mods and FA's, you have to realize that once you cross that particular line, you give us no reason to believe that you will not also cross other inappropriate lines.

Many Sims fansites and forums regularly purge their database of inactive and dormant accounts. TSR does not, and the only reason for that is to bolster your membership numbers.

Maxoid Drea posted her response to clarify the problems being discussed with EA's EULA. All her statement really said was that what was wanted was co-operation between creators and the community. Odd.....any time a creator leaves TSR and requests that you remove their creations, that request is ignored, and TSR claims ownership of those items.
Other sites honour the creators request and remove the content.

Time and time again, TSR shows how little they respect the Sims community. Why then, should the Sims community respect TSR?
TSR got where they are by the creators contributions and the fans support, but somewhere along the line, the money started rolling in, and TSR forgot who they owe for their success. All that money made you think you are entitled to behave any way you want.

Because EA is simply too damn lazy, and doesn't give a shit about enforcing their EULA, does not make your take on said EULA to be correct. Probably the only reason TSR exists, is that this is the only gaming community that has allowed paysites.

And then there is my game computer......it has completely croaked for the fourth or fifth time. The ONLY thing on that computer is the Sims2. In fact, the only game I play is the Sims2. It is not hooked up to the internet, I don't have securom on it, but I do have TSR content, directly from TSR that I paid for with my subscription to TSR. Of all my friends who play, I am the only one who consistently has to get my computer repaired, then again, I am also the only one who has TSR content, from TSR. I find that very strange.
I have no conflicting content. I've run every available program for conflicts that I have found. I've been all over the net to resolve this problem once and for all, and I get the same advice from everywhere I go, get rid of the TSR content.
So yeah, when I get my game computer fixed, I am going to delete ALL TSR files. I'll let you know if that solves my problem.

[Pescado]

I'm pretty sure that "TSR CC breaks your computer" amounts to little more than coincidence and paranoid conspiracy theory. While I wouldn't trust a TSR *PROGRAM* any further than I could throw it, the CC itself is generally more shoddily made as opposed to malicious. Aside from the spyware thing.

[Henbane]

Johan, why does Atwa always "sneak under your radar"? You have many creators that are doing great work for free, yet whenever Atwa appears, she immediately gets SA status, with "promises". Tell me that isn't suspicious. It's happened too many times. She is far from a talented creator, she is sub-par, yet she always reappears and immediately gets sent to the top. Your radar evidently sucks.

You also always conveniently fail to mention a fact in the Buggybooz episode: Shakeshaft literally stole from her. She did it, pretended it was her own, and once it was found out, that was when the "hacking" began. You have never once acknowledged this, you've simply gone straight into the hacking crap and not what one of your own did. She stole from a free creator. Get your facts straight before you try to present an argument.

[Quorneater]

Johan, you have replied to my comments about divulging customers' personal data to your freelance artists/suppliers by asserting that you felt it was justified at the time.   Do you now accept, in hindsight, that this was an error of judgement, in the light of the fact that not all FAs and SAs have turned out to be of good character?   And do you think that in future this nature of data is better restricted to company owners and those staff you have on permanent contract as administrators with appropriate training in data protection?

[KatCat]

I'd also like to ask you, Johan, have you banned Atwat?  That would seem the logical approach, not to mention the most efficient for ensuring this "sneaking in" doesn't happen yet again.  It should have been done over a year ago. 

[johan]

Johan, you have replied to my comments about divulging customers' personal data to your freelance artists/suppliers by asserting that you felt it was justified at the time.   Do you now accept, in hindsight, that this was an error of judgement, in the light of the fact that not all FAs and SAs have turned out to be of good character?   And do you think that in future this nature of data is better restricted to company owners and those staff you have on permanent contract as administrators with appropriate training in data protection?

Yes i acknowledge that was an error in judgement. I'm currently reading up on the Swedish law regarding how personal data can be stored and handled to make sure that we are fully compliant with it.
We have also decided to get rid of unnecessary information in our member database such as home address.  

[johan]

I'd also like to ask you, Johan, have you banned Atwat?  That would seem the logical approach, not to mention the most efficient for ensuring this "sneaking in" doesn't happen yet again.  It should have been done over a year ago. 

I believe it was actually removed. She has reappeared using new accounts though.
We have taken steps to prevent that but it obviously didn't work.

[johan]

Johan, why does Atwa always "sneak under your radar"? You have many creators that are doing great work for free, yet whenever Atwa appears, she immediately gets SA status, with "promises". Tell me that isn't suspicious. It's happened too many times. She is far from a talented creator, she is sub-par, yet she always reappears and immediately gets sent to the top. Your radar evidently sucks.

You also always conveniently fail to mention a fact in the Buggybooz episode: Shakeshaft literally stole from her. She did it, pretended it was her own, and once it was found out, that was when the "hacking" began. You have never once acknowledged this, you've simply gone straight into the hacking crap and not what one of your own did. She stole from a free creator. Get your facts straight before you try to present an argument.

Artist nomination is not part of what i do on TSR so i don't really know. What i can say is that we have tried to make it clear that she can't be an artist on TSR anymore.
Out of normal human decency i don't want to go into a lot of detail regarding this, the whole thing is rather sad and i don't want to be part of it by adding more fuel to the fire.  

Edit: i forgot the second part:
Also not really my area so i don't have the facts (i got involved when we needed to investigate the hackings) but i would agree that stealing content from any creator, free or not, is wrong.

[johan]

Johan, you can never completely know another person. You can fool yourself into believing that, but you are not inside their head. You see what that person wants you to see. Your values may not be the exact same as theirs, but they can lull you into believing what they want you to believe. Insofar as Atwa is concerned, no one here would ever be conned into taking her word as the absolute truth.
Your claim that she somehow managed to sneak back into TSR is simply not credible. If you want us to believe that you don't run background checks, you don't check ISP's, then what you give us to believe, is that you are incompetent as a businessman.
We have all heard or read on the news about people who commit horrendous crimes, and then friends, and sometimes even family members are completely shocked and taken aback. Never in their wildest dreams would they have considered the person to be capable of the very thing of which they are accused of doing.

I know that and i have considered the possibility and i have ruled it out based on what in know about the people.
We don't run background checks on all artists simply because there's no need for it. Before someone becomes a FA i'm sure we have a pretty good picture of who they are. We also require additional personal information in that step.

[Moune]

Artist nomination is not part of what i do on TSR so i don't really know.

And there you have one very[/u] good reason why Pescasdo would be right in his analysis of your/the situation.

You deal in facts and technical stuff. Others – like your brother and every single FA and SA you have at TSR – deal in stuff like creativity and artistry. Things that are intangible and emotional and – especially – that can’t be controlled. And with intangibility and emotions come intrigue and political manipulation. But you would never get into that sort of thing, would you, because what you handle and is good at is all the practical, tangible and non-emotionally stuff.

Therefore, you would have a hard time imagining the manipulations and the desperate measures some people take because of sheer emotion. The manipulative ‘artist’ people around you know this, and therefore nobody would ever tell you that they had done such things as completely illogical hackings. Because they know you just wouldn’t understand.

Instead they leave you with only the factual, tangible knowledge – the one that can be proved by logs etc. – and they know you’ll go out into the world and defend that. Because you are loyal and you have integrity.

But they will never tell you or try to explain to you the games and intrigues that go on behind the scenes. Because they know you probably aren’t interested in it and because you most likely wouldn’t believe half of the stuff that people actually do to each other in the name of creative or artistic pride.

I didn’t have an awful lot of sympathy or respect for you up until now, but after that remark I understand a lot more. In real life I’ve always had one leg in the ‘technical’ camp and one in the ‘artist’ camp. Which means I’m good at neither one, but that I understand both. Feel free to PM me or send me an email if you want to know more. My email should be in my profile somewhere.

For one thing: Awta can’t slip under your radar. Never mind IP and background checks. There are plenty of other ways to recognize somebody. Language, artistic expression etc. Do you really believe that nobody in TSR knew they were dealing with Atwa when Carpediem showed up?

[johan]

And this it the last one i'm going to have time for tonight.
 

Around this time Atwa informed us that her webmail account had been logged in to for quite some time by someone else. In the list of IP's she got from the service provider we were able to match them to someone's unproxied IP, someone who was linked with the hacking. Unfortunately we didn't get the user agent from that list but i have a very strong suspicion that it would have matched the hackers signature.

Now, you'll understand if over here, we don't consider any claim by Atwa to be credible. Atwa has repeatedly proven to be dishonest and underhanded...even within YOUR circles. Do you really believe any claims she makes? It is not just us that considers her to be dishonest...she is dishonest on your site as well, and has repeatedly been sacked for it.

Yes i can definitely understand that.
The list looked genuine to me and i don't think she knew the "sherriesim" IP's when i got the list (i'm not 100% sure of that though).
This list was acquired by the service provider "Bredbandbolaget" and was submitted to the police for use in their investigation.
To fake something that could very easily be found out by the police should they investigate it makes me think it's likely genuine.

What the hacker did using buggyz account on MTS is also very strange, some pro-paysite propaganda was posted. I find it more likely that it was intentionally done to point fingers at TSR than any other explanation for it, there has to be some bounderies for what level of stupidity you can think is probable.

I have an alternate hypothesis: That the Buggybooz incident does not specifically represent an act perpetuated for the gain of TSR as a whole, or is even specifically related to the paysite/anti-paysite movement, but is actually an extension of a TSR internal political struggle, likely centering in some way around Atwa. Under this hypothesis, an objective need not fulfill the rational interests of TSR in order to be carried out, it merely needs to fill the perceived interests of a specific actor within TSR. I postulate this because, frankly, I find the idea that that antipaysite activitist is specifically targeting TSR using information that can ONLY have come from high-level TSR administration, to be preposterous. If we *HAD* such an operative, I would be putting them to far better use than false flag operations against other antipaysite and even essentially neutral actors. Similarly, you point out that these actions do not in any way benefit TSR. On the other hand, what if they happen to benefit some specific faction within TSR, and therefore, this is all part of an internal power struggle? You point out that you have no less than 6 people who have this access. Is it possible that one or more of them is being manipulated as part of a power play by one of TSR's artist factions, which we all know exists? I find this explanation to be extremely likely, whereas it is very UNLIKELY that it comes from anything on the antipaysite side of the fence, which has no such power plays, as we do not offer any power, privileges, or authority to anyone.

If you isolate things to just what happened to buggybooz then yeah that logic holds but there were other things connected to this which i listed before that complicates things and to me rules out the possibility that this was what happened.

Edit: fixed quoting error

[WedgewoodBlue]

Johan, you can never completely know another person. You can fool yourself into believing that, but you are not inside their head. You see what that person wants you to see. Your values may not be the exact same as theirs, but they can lull you into believing what they want you to believe. Insofar as Atwa is concerned, no one here would ever be conned into taking her word as the absolute truth.
Your claim that she somehow managed to sneak back into TSR is simply not credible. If you want us to believe that you don't run background checks, you don't check ISP's, then what you give us to believe, is that you are incompetent as a businessman.
We have all heard or read on the news about people who commit horrendous crimes, and then friends, and sometimes even family members are completely shocked and taken aback. Never in their wildest dreams would they have considered the person to be capable of the very thing of which they are accused of doing.

I know that and i have considered the possibility and i have ruled it out based on what in know about the people.
We don't run background checks on all artists simply because there's no need for it. Before someone becomes a FA i'm sure we have a pretty good picture of who they are. We also require additional personal information in that step.

I still maintain that to rule out such a possibility is irresponsible. I worked in the financial sector for 23 years. During that time I did see many employees come and go, but we did have some that had staying power. One such individual, a young man, married with 2 small children, was one that stayed for a long time. We all liked him, we all worked with him, some of us even signed documents when 2 signatures were required. He signed, and one of us signed. As a group we went out for dinners once a month. We all felt that we knew each other quite well, and we trusted each other. You can imagine how we felt when one day corporate security showed up and this man was led out the door in handcuffs. The next day at work as one by one we showed up, the first thing we all noticed was that each of us looked like hell. Not any of us got a good nights sleep the previous night. Some of us were extremely worried, after all we signed documents in conjunction with what he was accused of doing. All of us were terrified that we would be implicated in his forgery, even though we had no idea what he was doing.
The betrayal we all felt devastated us completely. For the longest time after that, many of us refused to sign documents unless those documents were reviewed first by the boss. Trust didn't exist anymore. What he did to each of us on a personal level is hard to explain, but I know that for me, I was very wary from that time on. I wouldn't sign anything with anyone at all, I referred every one who asked me to their immediate supervisor. Whatever documents I needed signed I took to my boss. I never wanted to be put in the position where I felt my integrity could be suspect. Neither did I want to associate with anyone who's integrity could be suspect.
So yeah, I can understand why you simply do not want to believe that someone, possibly someone close to you may be the guilty party. It really messes with your head when it happens to you.

You say before you give someone an FA status, you feel you have a pretty good picture of who they are. At some point, you had to have a damn good picture of what Atwa was, and yet she was allowed to continue on as an Artist Manager, even though it was way too obvious that she had become dangerously unstable. And you continue to put forth the claim that she some how managed to sneak back into TSR.  You aren't dealing with a bunch of 12 year olds here, you can't keep stringing us that line of bullshit.
Maybe YOU didn't know, but someone else sure did.

[EmilyTwitch]

*A whole lotte awesome...*
Maybe YOU didn't know, but someone else sure did.

Sorry, couldn't resist. 

[Pescado]

Whatever documents I needed signed I took to my boss. I never wanted to be put in the position where I felt my integrity could be suspect. Neither did I want to associate with anyone who's integrity could be suspect.

A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you go. I've had people TRY to backstab me countless times. But I don't really do the entire "trust" thing, I do cell structures and compartmentalization.