Editorial: Reconciling the Greatest Mistake of My Administration

KLONDIKE, CPA Central Headquarters — Many members of this community have expressed recent frustration over the repetitiveness with which events in this community transpire, over our feigned shock as the exact same thing happens for the tenth time, and over our failure to deal with it due to fear of overstepping the regulations or diverging a path from the one commonly embarked upon. After wrestling with this topic and with whether or not I, in retirement, wanted to alienate a coalition that supported me throughout most of my administration, I have become resigned to the fact that this is too important; that not to say it, and say it myself, would be failing the ideals to which I constantly aspired and encouraged my readers to do the same. 

For those of you who are not used to seeing my name on this site, I’m Bluesockwa1. I worked as Head Reporter for Woton’s second administration, Secondary Head of Site for the Kingfunks4 and Bluesockwa2 administration, and finally assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer from 2012 until 2014, when I retired from CP Armies. Upon my retirement, I took over as CPAWM President, a role which I continue to hold even now, advising members of CPA Central and SMA Central on various topics whenever they seek my advice. In addition to this, upon Boomer20’s final leave of the community, I assumed the role of Legends Committee Chairman, where I work in partnership with the acting CEO of CPAC and all army legends with which I retain some level of contact to ensure the integrity of the Legends Elections.

While I handled all facets of army media during my time as CEO, the one which I pioneered, and in which I have always believed the most, is the idea of editorials. Unfortunately, the commonality of these has dwindled with subsequent administrations, and when they are published, I find that they are largely not in the spirit of what was pioneered over three years ago by myself and my Executive Producer, Splasher99. Though this is simply a choice made by the CEOs of what they want this site to be a certainly not a necessity, I sometimes choose to address the community on issues which I think will play a great role in defining warfare history.

A Brief History of the Legends Process

The existence of the Legends Page came to be in 2010, under the Sklooperis administration. In its earliest days, the page was very basic: it contained under ten names, and the readers (nor anyone else) were awarded any voting privileges of any kind. At the time, Albaro Lord held the rank of Page Maintainer; the influence of this rank has dwindled in recent years and essentially become a rank for a staff member to edit the Armies, Leaders and History pages, but in 2011, it was one of the most powerful ranks in CPAC, third only to Head of Site and Secondary Head of Site. And, as the new Legends section was a page, updating it fell to Albaro Lord, who simply selected army legends with the advice of other CPAC administrators.

The democratization of the Legends Page came as the Sklooperis administration ended and the summer of Woton began, soon followed by the first joint CEOs of CPAC, Kingfunks4 and Bluesockwa2. However, this system of complete viewer democracy soon became an impossibility, as the only legends that could be agreed upon were a golden few who had been on the page since 2010. Many on the page were being challenged, and the suggestions for replacing them were legends of singular armies who had hardly affected the warfare community as a whole. It is important to remember that at this time, single armies kept much more to themselves than the armies of today do, and most of the warfare-wide interactions came in the form of war between armies. Towards the end of 2011, this issue reached a boiling point, and many of the period’s great philosophers began to propose ways that the page could be reformed. Below is an excerpt from a private post by Boomer20, who briefly held the position of Secondary Head during this time.

I was reading through the comments of nominees for the legends page, and I’ve honestly never heard of about 80% of them, which was mentioned by other people in their comments as well. My concern with this process is that it is going to be largely a popularity contest. As you can tell, a lot of people were nominated by upwards of 5+ people, but realistically should have no feasible chance of becoming a legend. We may be devaluing what it means to be a legend if some of these people get nominated because of popularity rather than qualification.

I understand there will likely be two categories for legends now, which is fine, but I would strongly suggest we not let the general public nominate the Army Community legends.

If you ask me, the best way to do this is to have an army historian (someone who has been around for long enough to know and make the right judgments), or just to have the heads of the site decide who will be nominated. After we’ve picked only people who could legitimately qualify to be a legend, we announce these to the viewers who can then vote “Yes” or “No”. If they receive 75% or so, they’re in, if not they’ll have to try again on the next vote (like how the sports hall of fames work). This would avoid people trying to force their way in by bribing people to nominate and vote for them.

This proposition led to Flipper7706 and Oberst being hired as, essentially, moderators of the Legends Page. They stripped the page of all names that were even somewhat contested, and introduced a two-pronged system by which candidates could be considered: (1) by deliberation among the CPAC staff, active legends and major army leaders, or (2) by continuing the democratic vote, but introducing a question where the person nominating a candidate must justify their choices. All those who commented, but did not justify, would be ignored.

This lasted for some eight months, until the Legends Page was divided up by Funks and Blue2 into four categories: Warfare Pioneers, Revolutionaries, Greatest Leaders and Strategic Masters. The introduction of these four categories (which heavily limited who could and could not become legendary) was followed by a more systemic process, where names were proposed by the staff and voting was done by the viewers. However, around this time, candidates for Legend Status simply stopped winning the vote.

This led to a convening among the warfare community to discuss multiple issues, including the lack of winners, and to hear a coalition of former Dark Warriors Leaders who purported that the recognition of SaW and Unknown as “hackers” disenfranchised them, in the public eye, from becoming legends. This coalition argued that a more informed group should have a say, along with the public, on who could become a CP Army Legend. This became the consensus late in 2012, and the CP Army Legends Committee was established. For those wishing to read up on the original outline of the meeting, this can be found here.

The committee established in late 2012 exists to this day, and operates under a few basic rules: (1) inductions happen four times every year, (2) nominations are proposed by members of the committee, the administration of CPAC, and by viewers, (3) a candidate with a positive margin is inducted to Legend Status, (4) a candidate with a very close margin can be waived by the Committee Chair, especially if they are no longer active, (5) a candidate being declined Legend Status by anywhere between one and four votes can still win if they have support among the public, namely in increments of fifteen, thirty, fifty or seventy percent, (5) the Legend Status of anyone on the page can be reconsidered by the committee if something previously unknown about their career is discovered, or if the public petitions for their reconsideration, (6) if a candidate remains on the page after being reconsidered twice, they are no longer eligible for reconsideration.

Analyzing the Evolution of Army Legend

Members of the staff have asked me, in recent days, to consider this new instance of Waterkid attempting to RAT members of the army community. Unfortunately, while this is certainly a new instance, it is far from a surprising instance. For as many accolades as Waterkid has collected as a leader and as an instigator of war, the amount of times he has defaced, DOX’d, DDOs’d, or RAT’d members of this community is that for which he is most known. In 2010 and 2011, when the Anti-Hacking Bill was a prominent part of this community, Waterkid was suspended on many occasions for threatening the general well-being of the people who play this game.

While I am far from a fervent supporter of the Anti-Hacking Bill, and while I do not believe one should expect to go through this community without becoming acquainted with practices of this sort, I have been profoundly affected by the routine lack of surprise with which readers greeted this new offense of Water’s. Truly, no one is surprised, especially those who have been involved with warfare for many years and known its history well.

Trader, in warning the community against this new RAT, asserted that “someone who purposely tries to RAT and DDoS loyal troops and fellow members of this community, is no legend. CPAC shouldn’t have to make posts like this, protecting troops and others from their own leader and CPA Legend.” And though I do not disagree, I also realize that is a very basic understanding of warfare, of CPAC’s role in warfare, and what one can expect from this community. For all that the early years were, they were surely not ones of regulation and consideration for the general well-being, and we are now forced to contend with a community that pushes against such ideas.

One thing I want to highlight from the history of the Legends Page is that it was my administration who met with the Dark Warriors coalition, and considered the fact that great leaders like SaW would never receive Legend Status because of their infamy. At this time, I had even been a target of SaW and xiUnknown’s attacks, but I did not feel that was important. And while I could attribute that to some sense of greater objectivity that I am lucky to have, I don’t think that’s it. It seems to me that the reason I did not send the Dark Warriors away with the explanation that anyone who attacked me should not come to me for a favor is because I was never personally affected by having CPAC knocked offline. Allow me to explain.

We can become very invested in this game, and that can be a good thing; but, however invested we become, there still remains a sense of this bubble that is the warfare community. However bad a given day is leading an army or a news site or anything of that sort, we eventually turn off the computer for the day and return to our outside lives. While defacing a site, or knocking a site offline, or multilogging are all usually bad things, they are within the context of this community. By signing up to play this game, we are aware that we could lose our work or be defeated in battle by unfair play to which some choose to resort.

For a long time I struggled with distinguishing how I could oppose Water’s Legend Status while still affirming the Legends Committee that Boomer and I created, in the most basic sense, to allow people like SaW and xiUnknown to achieve army legend. Boomer20 was one of the greatest people I met during my time in warfare; I served under him in the Army of Club Penguin, later worked with him on uniting projects like this committee and the CPA Council, worked with him to revitalize the Top Ten Armies, and often debated with him different principles of ideas of army warfare. We were two of the greatest thinkers of the community — granted, of different eras, but he commonly advised me on many of my most important decisions as CPAC CEO. We agreed on almost everything, but one thing we did not agreed on was Waterkid100 and whether or not he should be an Army Legend. 

Boomer was fervently against the idea that Water should be legend, while supporting the theory that people like SaW deserved a committee because they were being disenfranchised. While I struggled with my belief throughout my time as CEO, I came to feel that Waterkid did deserve Legend, and voted for him the cycle in which he achieved it. I now have realized that Boomer was right about this one final thing, and though I never understood why, I do now.

People like SaW and xiUnknown use tactics to which some of us would never be willing to resort. However, while we do not need to espouse what they did, we do need to go to great lengths to differentiate. All of the people that were targeted by their tactics had done something or another; had engaged in some war with their army or attempted to target them. While I do not agree with what SaW did in his years here, I have noticed that rarely did it go further than defacing a site, or knocking a site offline. When it did go further, when it turned to DOXing, there was often a much more complicated fight that I wished not to interpolate myself into.

The point I’m trying to make is that these people did what they did for a reason, and rarely did anything that was out of the scope of the warfare bubble. And while not everyone who falls into the category of hacker or cheater should be legend, some of them have done enough, have led armies well enough, and have done enough to better their ways and affect armies in a potent and palpable fashion. However, while we should never draw a line in who can be Person of the Year, or who makes it onto the CPAC 25, we should draw a line on who can and cannot be CP Army Legend.

It seems to me that those who cannot be Legend should be those who purposely and without reason target swaths of innocent troops, with which they have had little contact, and by which they have not been attacked. Even more profoundly, those who destroy the sacred trust that we have with one another — that what happens in this bubble, created as a refuge for many, remains in this bubble — do not deserve our respect. The reason that I am able to say Waterkid100 has never deserved army legend and should never be army legend is that he breaks both of these sacred trusts: he targets the troops that attempt to fight for his innate causes, and he targets peoples’ lives; by RATing computers, he removes us from a discussion on the morality of the warfare game and brings us into a discussion on the lives of every person who chooses to be part of warfare.

I knew xiUnknown very well in my last few years as CEO, and I can guarantee he would not have approved of this practice. So perhaps it is not enough for us here at CPA Central to warn you against downloading a script; perhaps it is not enough to talk about hacking in general terms in hopes that someone will get the hidden message. Perhaps it is finally time for this site to take a side again, because truthfully, we have rarely been wrong. Surpassing any obligations I have to objectivity, I refuse to attempt to tell you that both arguments deserve equal time, that both arguments are as sound, that both arguments deserve to be on this site.

In the end, we can do little to stop malicious behavior like this, other than being careful ourselves, and helping others to be careful. One of the greatest mistakes I made as CPA Central CEO was to support, and give continued chances to, one who never respected the lives of every person who plays this game. By all means, indulge in whatever tactics you find necessary to win in warfare, though it seems to be seriously hindering the experience for those that remain in this community. However, no matter what state the warfare community is in, every person who plays this game has a responsibility. And regardless if people like Water, and others, who get some sort of sick satisfaction from galvanizing this bubble as a way to ruin others’ lives, regardless if they will care about this title of Legend that we bestow upon each other, let us, at the very least, send a signal: if you break that sacred trust, you do not deserve to be upheld in our history.  

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