"The true story of how DNA-Decay got Veteran Status at the AEDC."
18 Oct 2018DNA-Decay
Oo - Are we doing personal narrative back stories now?I've got one!
"The true story of how DNA-Decay got Veteran Status at the AEDC."
So I joined AEDC in July 3300 just after PowerPlay was implemented, while in my first sidewinder.
I sculled a beer on teamspeak and swore to abide by the AEDC charter and rules.
Much to the bemusement of the two guys there. It's not the sort of thing Diplomats do and it was kinda creepy, and overly earnest. I don't think the burp on comms was apreciated either.
Now in Cycle 11 of PowerPlay a single CMDR in an Anaconda was able to tip Mahon into Turmoil by prepping a toxic CC draining system: Wolf 412
Along with all the drama associated with digging the Alliance out of turmoil the CMDR in question posted a taunt that described exactly how he did it.
He created a "burner" Reddit account: BadWolf_412 to respond to the things that were said about him.
BadWolf_412 only posted 3 times, and one of those was deleted.
But the opinion was voiced at AEDC HQ that it was probably a senior Aisling PowerPlay organizer who had done the deed.
So I went back through the Reddit posts of the senior Asling folks, and matched the timestamps with roughly what they said, and collated it all in a spreadsheet.
And then I looked at all the public facing stuff from that group and matched up member names. And I wrote tiny BIOs that would fit in a spreadsheet, and I characterised people in certain ways:
"Has EVE avatar"; "PvP Griefer"; "Strategist"; "Forum Agressive"; "Nice guy"; "Publicist"; "Vain" and so on.
Eventually I was able to correlate certain things that were said at certain times, and find the origin and propagation of the idea of PP 5C, and its implementation.
Once I had my candidate specified, I took my tracking work and showed it "upstairs" at AEDC HQ.
"That's plausible" they said, "But you need to demonstrate the counter examples"
So I did basically the same kind of thing for the other PowerPlay groups.
Without infiltrating them, I would make notes of which groups they were in, using a tab for each power as there were often several groups supporting a power, and leadership tends to be in several of the groups. And match that up with examples of things they'd said publicly and so on and so on.
And always the original CMDR stood out as the best candidate by far.
Now in terms of "Standards of Proof" the evidence was weak.
You couldn't make a "Beyond All Reasonable Doubt" type criminal case.
But there is also a lesser Standard of Proof often used in civil procedings known as "Balance of Probability".
So even though my evidence is completely circumstanstial - I really do believe this guy is BadWolf_412.
Now before you go moderating me for "Naming and Shaming" his CMDR Name is NOT on the poster, and he stopped playing Elite in December 2015. And BaWolf_412 was a burner account on Reddit.
After I did that, I was nominated for promotion to AEDC Veteran and that's where I've been ever since.
Later there were some problems with UA Bombers and I took a survey of those guys, finding public admissions and self-confessions for many of them.
I won't reblog that poster, as after the Dove Enigma bombings, one of the guys listed got a bit of real life "discomfort"; but if you'e interested it's in my INARA gallery.
Again - no one in that poster was responsible for the Dove Enigma bombings (although that is known).
Anyway, after my intial characterisation of the PowerPlay leaders, the spreadsheet grew as Player Minor Factions were added to the game.
I kept up until there were about 400 PMFs in game, and then it got too unweildy.
Even major players leave the game, a lot of the groups are just, you know, two board-game buddies and an account for their cat. It got too much to handle and I gave up.
I really get how Brett C must have felt facing three hundred applications with weird lore and systems that you can't quite remember why they are significant.
I should note that all this was done WITHOUT infiltrating any groups.
AEDC have specific in-house rules against that, so I have got good at looking at the public face that people are happy to present.
So actually when we got the Discord Logs of the LRN supporters groups, my first concern was: "What is the provenance?"
And I've had this confirmed by senior LRN supporters:
When Lave Radio host [name-witheld] combat logged, it was "badly handled" and one of the other LRN CMDRs went to the AEDC with the Discord Logs.
An analysis was made before the last Lave War, and the executive summary was distributed among those with Veteran clearance or above.
If you haven't read the document - that's on you. It has been available on the Lave Radio Discord for some time, and has had a wide distribution among Alliance personnel.
I'm not the author by the way.
But timelines and connections are my thing.
Who knew what when, and who shares a a beer with whom.
So for example: In Lave Radio episode 205 Eid Le Weiss says: "If there is a proxy war I want to know . . . " whereas we had documentation of the groups he was a member of at the time, and who he knew was doing what. He knew which groups were going to be doing the heavy lifting in the Lave war. He knew the groups that the Lave war was a proxy for. This included Earth Defence Fleet. EDF had a treaty with AEDC when the two teams fought themselves to a standstill after the Ross-128 capture. DukeIronHand is senior Federation Earth Defence Fleet, which is why _Flin_ flew off the handle on the forums there.
So just remember folks -
Just because someone is a nice guy, doesn't mean they're a nice guy.