Author: popeofh October 31, 2016

VI) the attack helicopter they wont LET die.

A few hacks had popped up on RHDN. Someone had taken several games in the “Legend of Zelda” series and replaced all the gendered pronouns with neutral ones. I personally viewed these as “low effort” because in some cases it was changes amounting to less than 30 words in the games scripts. I decided to then edit link to reflect the well known internet meme “i sexually identify as an attack helicopter”, as a joke on the gender politicking going on with the “neutral” hacks. I released the patch to my personal site, and Baddesthacks, in April of 2016. I also submitted it to RHDN, where it was dismissed, and i left it at that. Later it had came up in a thread, and i proceeded to ask I.S.T. about it. They told me they didn’t see the problem and said i should resubmit. i did, and it passed submissions.

This began a storm on the forums. The news post, where the hack was released was instantly inundated with hate, ignoring all the other hacks added at the same time, accusing me of everything from homophobia, and attempts to tell my motivations without any input from me personally. Some users even acknowledge the issue of lacked and banned threads, stating this thread might be closed if they keep it up.

I then popped in, explaining my motives, and the joke, only to be ignored almost immediately. My explanation is not mentioned again for the rest of the thread. They literally ignore the words of the responsible party.

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And it ended with I.S.T. locking the thread, and joking about it.

A few days later i was informed via private message from I.S.T. that “Attack Helicopter” was removed due to being a “Single sprite hack” with “changes (not) more substantial than just a sprite and a tiiiiiiny but of text”.

At this point i replied that we should do something about the low effort hacks plaguing the site. I then proceeded to lose my cool, and go on a mass reporting spree, in order to point out the raw number of hacks in the database that did not meet the definitions and requirements forced onto “attack helicopter, which wound up with a few hack (including the “gender neutral” series) being removed.

This also led me to contact the sites head administrator, “Nightcrawler”. At that point i had had enough. I had sat there and watched posts disappear, threads getting locked, and even whole sets of pages being removed. It seems anytime a Baddesthacks user posted or was attacked, they would inevitably end up in trouble for defending themselves. This was especially bad in the “voting” thread, where the cry of “everyone who disagrees with me is a literally Hitler” seemed to be one of the most common types of phrases uttered.

I will present this conversation, with little comment on my site, and will leave it up to the editor on Baddesthackst, where these articles will ultimately reside, as to if he wishes to leave this in here. IT was an interesting conversation where we learn, between him and another admin, that the moderators, programmers, and submissions editors don’t talk to each other, and anyone not moderating the forum has no idea what happens on the forum. A few days after this conversation I.S.T. “Retired”, and now moderates the IRC chat.

this really didn’t stop all the problems from happening though, just removed one of many sources. At one point, a user even suggested a group project, a sort of laurel wreath, a translation of some of the many “adult” games available for the Famicom Disk system. He was thusly rewarded with a warning for his efforts for being “antagonistic”.

All this does sound like a bit much, and on the baddesthacks forum we were getting a bit salty, so one of the admins there, had asked if we were “just pricks with axes to grind”… and i posited that those axes had been handed to us. I guess all this writing is me, finally getting around to sharpening them.

http://archive.is/3h0aM
http://archive.is/dpTdm
http://archive.is/KlQHz