Originally this page was written in Thai language in July-August 2005.
Then I realized some non-Thai people might stumble upon this page or want to know what happened between Zigfreed and us, Gamer's Gate webboard members. Therefore, this English-translated page was made on 19 Jan 2006. More update will be added as soon as I have enough time to.
*Update note* 21 Jan 06
Added 3 links to a chat log (in Thai, sorry).
Added some more details.
Added some rough translation of his statements.
It all started very, very long ago. Soooo long I can't remember how it set out to become this way. Just that some of his webboard (AntAnime, or shortened as AA)'s members dislike us, GG (Gamer's Gate) and the other way around. However, our webmaster and administrative staff decided to keep a distance from AA. We thought if the 2 webboards don't cross each other, it will be OK.
Unfortunately, some serious dispute occured. But since I can't translate all the messages, I'll just roughly summarize what happened.
Firstly, I believe, some people (one of those was Zigfreed) might become angry and annoyed at GG's fussy rules in sharing and requesting files. (We had problem of stealing link and making the host's file transfer or bandwidth exceed the limit, some uploader's space or host membership was deleted or charged exceed fees for several thousands Baht. So the measurement is, most uploader will set up a rule that anyone who wants the file must reply to his thread, and then he will send either the URL or the password for accessing the file through Private Message system. This way he could filter and control number of people to download file during specific period and therefore can control the bandwidth.) Then, as far as I know, Zigfreed enjoyed writing in his file-sharing thread something that gives hints that he dislike and despise us. Though he did not directly state or name our board in his obviously "stirring up something" threads, some person, whose "alignments" are very hard to identify, went to post messages in one of his threads and lead to a very long argument with soooooooo many participants. At that point, it is very difficult to say exactly who is on whose side, and who is not on any side but is just a passer-by who wants some fun or wants to make things worse. However, afterwards when we discussed the matter, he insisted upon blaming it all on us, GG members. Gee, I just want to ask him, if a person is a member of both websites, and maybe many other websites, then what will he call such person? "My web member" or "Your web member" or .... "other people's web member" ?????
After that incident, the two boards tried to stay away from and not mention about each other (well, or at least we, GG, did try.) However, something happened again, this time, I believe (I'm not so sure because I can't really remember which incident happened before or after which,) was because a mysterious person who CLAIMED TO BE FROM GG, went into their board and post offensive things. Zigfreed didn't hesitate to throw a fit and jump on us. A neutral-allignment person who wanted to make peace came to contact me and asked me to go to talk and sort things out with Zigfreed on an IRC channel. I joined the channel, we began to talk. But believe it or not, that talk wasn't meant for peace, I could of swear. Zigfreed wouldn't stop accusing GG as a whole (he thought that one person's fault is the whole community's responsibility.) He also blamed it on GG's staff for "letting your member go out and make f*cking trouble on my board"..... Yeah, his board, what could I have done? Forbidden all my board's members from going to other webboards? Tell them not to post message in other webboards? That's just impossible. Or he wants me to ban the person? No, I can't, it's beyond my power. Wants me to find out who he is in real life and go knocking on his door and then scold him for his misbehavior? Sorry, that's beyond both my power and my responsibility.
He also told me that "GG's members came to throw offensive threads and replies around on our board, it made our board crashed and made our website down, now our webspace is broken beyong repair" (can this kind of damage can really happen, technically? but well before this accusation was said, I saw someone among his group said that the webboard was down for maintenance.) Moreover, he kept saying that GG members went into his board and steal his files. He said we (GG) were malicious and download his file in mass number and made his webspace crashed. When I ask why did he believe it's people from GG who did that to him, he said something along the line of "I know it must be ghost peers (stealth downloaders) from GG because I posted my file on my board, one place only." When I asked for solid evidence, lke statictical data, he said he didn't have it. Meh, what could I do to prove it, then?
Not only did he insist upon me taking responsibility for what that-person-who-claimed-to-be-my-board's-member did (he said he didn't care if that person is an impersonator or not, he said "Whoever it is, is it a fake claim or not, I don't care, I just want you to know that GG hates AA and AA hates GG, get it?" - but who is he to put words into our mouths? bleh! Who said we hate you? We never!) and insist upon me taking responsibily for something no one could prove it's GG members' fault,
but he also continuously cursed at me, threw swearing words all over, while showing obvious hostility towards GG. Who am I to tolerate such disgraced manners? I asked him not to swear, and to pull back what he cussed at me. He denied it, and kept on swearing. Yes I told him to be more polite, told him that his speech doesn't sound very civilized, he answered something like "Be polite to you? Oh that's funny. Judging from what your member said on my board, it is ridiculous if I talk to you politely. GG's members don't deserved to be treated with manners and politeness. When I talk to you and the like of you, I must be aggressive like this." Mind you, I asked him politely to be polite, not just once, but twice. He waved aside my request and kept on being aggressive (and language-abusive.) Enough is enough....I thought. I said to him a farewell and "promised" him that if "nothing goes wrong" I'll launch a measure to end the dispute and prevent our members from going to make trouble in his board.
Next day our webmaster (admin) took the webboard down for maintenance and upgrade, so I technically couldn't take any visible action on the matter. He (Zigfreed) didn't even wait for one day before he sent a complaint to our webmaster's e-mail address. (Unfortunately it went into Yahoo's Junk Mail folder, and our webmaster discovered it like 1 week afterwards. So it practically became too late to react to his e-mail. Because he had already threw a fit on us high and low.) But of course, maintenance aside, everything had already gone wrong since he presented himself as a hostile negotiator. I told all GG staff and several close friends the content of the talk, they all agree we should just ignore him. They said it's useless to try to reasonate with a person who wouldn't listen to you. It is also useless to attempt to make peace with a person who always see you as a foe.
Then, again, there was an incident where one of namely our members downloaded Zigfreed's (or his friend's) file from Bit Torrent and then uploaded it in his website and posted the file on GG webboard. This time, though, the person was actually guilty, because he edited song information tag and deleted where it statde who's the song ripper. This time, as soon as we found out what's the problem, we acted immediately against the violator, since this action is not acceptable among decent internet community. However, before we knew about this trouble, Zigfreed had speedily went to many webboard and posted messaged which stated our name (Gamer's Gate.) He titled it something like "I, in the name of AntAnime's moderator, officially condemn those who are GG members" and blamed it on us as a whole (especially admin and staff). He also said in his message that he assumed that ALL GG MEMBERS are rude and do not have etiquettes. I couldn't do anything but blinking and thinking "Whoa, he's a specialist in stereotyping and generalization." This time, honestly, we received NO contact or information or complaint from him prior to the explosion of hatred. (Afterwards, he said that before he posted those discrediting things on other people's webboard, he gave us 3 days to correct what went wrong. How could that be possible when he gave us no contact, no plead, no complaint, no warning, but he just posted hating threads all of a sudden?)
Such action of his, of course, enraged many of GG members, including me. I do, however, know that the person (who acted as an individual, but was always seen by Zigfreed as a significant representative of GG's whole community) had indeed violated common etiquette and was guilty. But a peaceful solution was always available, why must Zigfreed ignored it? He, instead of trying to contact the person or any of our administrative members, chose to go to many other webboards and post hateful message directed at us. Why? Is that to call for attention? Or he wants a war with us? I still can't understand why he picked the choice that seemed to everyone more "asking for trouble" instead of a nice, peaceful, sensible and polite one.
Should he had picked a peaceful way to deal with that problem and just tell and ask us what he want to say and want to be done, we could have cooperated with him and make a happy solution.
That incident ended somehow, I can't remember. But at least we managed to bring the violator (and his team) to talk to Zigfreed on an IRC channel and make him apologize to him and remove the file. The person and many of his group members (yes, GG has a lot of subgroups) apologized to GG community and left the board.
However, recently, it seemed like only "not removing the info tag of the song you downloaded via BT and uploaded it for other people"is not a good manner enough to satisfy this fellow, Zigfreed. One of our members (a different person this time) downloaded something from Bit Torrent source, and the files happened to be ripped by Zigfreed. The person then uploaded files to his space, and posted them on GG's webboard. He stated in his thread roughly like this "I heard that someone was looking for this file, so I uploaded it." But Zigfreed became mad at that. He accused this person something along the line of... "That person tried to make other people think he ripped it on his own. OMFG That's so rude, that's a rip-off I can't accept this." and he went to our neighbouring website's IRC room and vented his rage. At that time I wasn't home, as well as 2 other staffs, so some other people jumped in and sorted things out for us. I didn't hear about it until the dispute was over already. So, I don't have enough insight of the story to share with you.
During the latest incident above, one of our members who was in the neighbour's chat channel asked Zigfreed about etiquette, and mentioned something that happened a few weeks ago. It was the fact that one of Zigfreed's friend, who either does not have access to our membership or does not desire to mingle with us whom they see as lowly ranked people, secretly asked someone among them to come to GG's board and fetch a file for him. This happened not once, but twice. At first we decided that we didn't want war or to stir things up, so we turned a blind eye on it. However, when things came to a boiling, one of us directed this question about his friend's act towards him. Yeah I know when a person share a file to others, there should not be any discrimation about whom to give or not to give. But frankly, would you feel happy to give something to a person who had always swear and curse at you? Would you think it is honest to be hostile to someone but then secretly take adventage from his belongings? I wouldn't.
Afterwards, he became violently angry and set up his IRC channel's topic something that could be translated as "GG are jerks, GG are assholes, damn you! Got guts to copy this message and publicize it? This room is for GG haters, you got problem?"
Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's up with this guy? What's the problem? When one of us did something wrong, he kept pestering us about it. Then when one of his friends did something wrong and we pointed it out, he suddenly became angry at us? Why? We're not allow to make any mistake but his friend can make as many mistakes as they want? This is wayyyyyyyyy too unfair.
Yeah, I can't put up with this anymore...and since he had dared me to do it, I publicized it for him, when time comes. The next issue....
This is what triggered all this explosion (of hatred and information); one of our members stumbled on a Bit Torrent sharing website, with a Torrent info page that stated something about Gamer's Gate (our website's name is Gamer's Gate, but the URL is gamer-gate.) It is here : http://tracker.datorrents.com:6969/torrents-details.asp?id=6122 The said file detail was written :
-------------------QUOTE------------------------
File Details
We apologize to tell everybody that Antanime Team will not seed any files any more, this file is the last file we seed. Reason is some board gave us no credit not once but twice times. We ask them to gave us some credit but we seen no respond from them. So , we consider that we will share in irc only. You can find us at #antanime@irc.rizon.net
"Not For Gamer-Gate members"
-------------------END OF QUOTE------------------------
After reading the question, I and many others decided that such incident MUST NOT happen again. So, in order to prevent our-members-who-did-not-know-about-AA-and-GG-dispute from taking Zigfreed or his group's files to upload on our webboard, which therefore will make Zigfreed and his friends angry again, we MUST reveal what had happened and what's happening. So I had to publicize whatever hostility he had towards us. That is to warn everyone in our community not to piss him off again. So that we can live peacefully.
Mind you, I have no intention to blame or discredit anyone. I only want to make myself clear and to describe what really happened.
I hope everyone is satisfied with my explanation. If you have any further question, please contact me at vally_moonATyahooDOTcom.
Thank you.
So that you'll understand I'm not exaggerating it. Honestly.