A Message to the TORA Community - 23/6/14

[Standaman94]

Ladies and Gentlemen;

It has unfortunately been no secret that there have been issues with administration at TORA in recent months.

Last year we created the Community Team, a group of TORA members to help the Staff out with these duties as TORA expanded. The success of this team has been overwhelming, and we are ever thankful for their help.

TORA was founded about 7 years ago. The many of the current Staff members have been on the Staff team for many years, some since the very start. However, now the years have taken a toll, and said Staff are no longer as fresh-faced as they were before. These Staff are now 7 years older, with new jobs, families, and responsibilities; as such, you may notice a few Staff drop out from daily runnings every now and then. Everyone deserves and break and we are greatly appreciative for their work.

As TORA grows and expands, the work load increases for everyone. With more members, Marshals have to work together to get everyone in their lobbies and race, and Staff and CT have to help coordinate these events. Staff and CT also have to organise, arrange and coordinate new series throughout the year, which has been particularly difficult since November last year, when the community at TORA has been somewhat divided between Forza Motorsport 4 and 5. For myself, creating the work to promote these events has become more difficult, and again the divide has created a barrier, and as such the Media Team was created.

To aid us further, we have also brought on new Staff members. Recently we have selected members from the CT, who have proven themselves to be of great benefit to TORA, to help us further and also coordinate with the CT better.

We are not interested in politics or personal issues when it comes to selecting members for any of the administrative teams at TORA. Everyone has a personal history, and not everyone gets along, and politics are bound to be involved in when there is a hierarchical system similar to what we have to run TORA. Ultimately we are here to play a racing game together; if people are invested in politics or personal issues then unfortunately you're in the wrong place.

However, we do take complaints very seriously. Despite what it may look like externally, when we receive a complaint of any sort (outside of Steward Inquiries) we open a full investigation into the complaint and, as best as we can with our power, try to rectify the issue. Formal complaints are not sent to us very often, and when we are notified of them, the majority appear to be inter-team issues outside of TORA, and frankly, none of our business. We are not nannies, so if you have a quarrel with other people due to personal issues, then that's up to you to fix.

On occasions we have received complaints such as bullying, racism, cheating, and others. We try our best to avoid these issues occurring, as they are against our rules and regulations, but with the huge range of personalities at TORA these sorts of things are unfortunately inevitable. We have tried to sort these as best as we can, and generally it is the last we hear of it.

These past few weeks have been tough for us at TORA. Staff members have taken deserved breaks, meaning we have slightly less man-power on these occasions. The split between Forza 4 and Forza 5 on the forums has been particularly difficult, given that the reception for the latter didn't meet our expectations; while we endeavour to host great events on FM5, it is difficult with both the limitations of the game/console itself and the lack of members and team members who have it. Again, we're doing our best to get around these issues.

In the interest of the community, the following will be as transparent as possible; This past week, we have been notified of a few complaints from a member, about a particular individual on the Staff team. However, these complaints were not forwarded directly to us, but were instead posted on social media by the member in an attempt to slander the individual. The member is a long-standing member of TORA and we were surprised by these actions, and as such we contacted them to understand the situation.

Since the posts on social media were seen by others, news had spread about this issue, albeit somewhat misguided. The individual Staff member had previously used false accounts on social media and other forums to "spy" where guest members could not. This was not sanctioned by any of the Staff team, and in fact only came to light when the issue was raised. It is understood that the individual's intentions were not to be offensive or aggressive in any way, merely to passively observe members outside of TORA. These actions are not condoned by TORA at all and is a severe issue.

There were numerous requests for the individual to be removed from the Staff team; after consideration, the individual was removed. It is also understood that this individual had caused some tension between themselves and other members at TORA for other reasons. We're not totally sure on the reasons behind this, but as mentioned earlier, personal issues are not our concern.

TORA does not spy on any of our members, or anyone else, for that matter. We do try to keep up to date with affairs in public, through means of visiting websites, reading news articles, talking to members, etc, but not at all to the lengths to which the individual had gone. This is a breach of privacy for those concerned.

As such, LMR WARSPITE will not be returning to TORA.

It should be mentioned that any information that the individual had gained through means of spying was not knowingly received by TORA Staff. We do not hold any personal information that may have been retrieved by spying, and should we have any, we would not publicly release it.

With this, we are hoping to turn a new leaf at TORA. This has been an unfortunate turn of events, however we will not let this get in the way of our true purpose - to race!

If you don't play an active part of TORA, and only turn up to race, you probably won't even notice anything different. However over the coming months we will be improving TORA for the best; the website is being updated and should hopefully become a bigger part of TORA; we will be streamlining our processes as best as we can, as we get used to the changes with Forza 5; all of the teams at TORA will be refreshed, with new members and new purposes. Mistakes were made, and we're on the path to fix them for good.

If you have an issue with any of the above, feel free to contact me on the forum.

If you have a complaint about a particular member for breaching the T&Cs, PM any of the Staff members and it will be investigated.

If you have had an issue on the track with other members, you can submit a Steward Inquiry within 36 hours of the race at this link: http://bit.ly/1jJ7D5k

Many thanks to you all,
Stan

[HCR Bellmond]

Thank you Stan! The Warspite issue aside this has needed to be said for quite a while! When I first joined TORA the whole setup felt much more professional there was much more content i.e in depth reviews spotter guides etc. I think we all knew the reason deep down but for it to finally come from the staff is great and sets a real feeling that this is a fresh start that we can all get involved in.

Its a great community with great people run by staff with real passion and thats why we come back year after year. It is almost taken for granted what we have here but hopefully this will help us all realise that this site dosent come from nothing its hard work and dedication. We are all lucky we have this haven to race in!

If there is anything i can do to help jus give us a shout and i believe everyone else in the community would be happy to do the same ive applied for race marshal and stewards positions so hopefully i can start to help from there

[F4H Lotterer]

I knew I had to add someone to those groups

[CreamyTastey]

Thanks for clearing all that up Stan!

[RumbleBee 392]

Appreciate the in depth response. Definitely looking forward to the coming months as we all are now on the same page.

TORA is my virtual home for online racing for the past 4 years. I'm definitely in to see this community to keep growing and expanding.

[FSR Groves]

Excellent response! Hear Hear to a new age of TORA!   

[TheAngryPudding]

I'd like to echo Bellmonds statement. If there is anything I can do to help TORA I am more than happy to. My lack of free time means Marshalling isnt an option but apart from that you know where I am

[HCR Bellmond]

I knew I had to add someone to those groups

Yay

[Matt]

It's Sonic the Hedgehog's 23rd borthday today. So given everything stated above I thought this rather apt

[F4H Hakkinen]

I'm glad TORA have taken action on something like this and been transparent about it. Good job!

On a side note: The community is spread too thin with series. Maybe we could condense it a little?

[Zeta0085]

That explains better what was going on with Warpsite. Hopefully nothing bad will happen down the road..

[RW26 BLAZE]

very surprise bout this.........specially he's with a very good team with the LMR Team.....

does the TORA staff need help with lobbies sometimes, I been trying to practices with the game setups and I have both consoles so I wouldn't mind setting up maybe for the lower lobbies and for guys who actually can race but didn't due to problems in Q. Would the staff be happy for me to do that

[F4H Lotterer]

Help is always required blaze apply for a marshal position and go from there.

[LMR Deftone MX]

very surprise bout this.........specially he's with a very good team with the LMR Team.....

As of last week, Warspite is no longer with LMR. The reasons for our parting of ways was unrelated to anything involving what's happened here and I can assure you that we had no knowledge that any of this was happening until this past weekend; after we had gone our separate ways.

[Eycd]

Didn't speak to Warspite much due to my short life on here, but seemed like a good guy surprised by this   

[SFM Benedict]

If u want spotters i dont mind having a go i know aero was doing it but i dont mind helping out

[XPR Roadrunner]

Good to see everybody is moving on after this. Can't wait to see what comes of this.

[CTM AnonCaliga]

I'd like to say I'm surprised about this but I think many of the members and TORA team will have known for a long time that TORA's backstage troubles were being spoken about within other forums and several other places online, that said its a shame it had to come to this. Personally, I didn't have much to do with Warspite but the few instances I did have I can say it was rocky and I even seriously considered moving away from TORA just two weeks after joining due to how I was spoken to by Warspite in a few PM's regarding another matter, thankfully I stayed and simply kept my distance and dealings with him to zero. I know it probably sounds like some of us are bashing Warspite but that couldn't be further from the truth, quite simply the issue was raised and I have stated my issues with said person, enough said. Regarding this announcement from TORA I would like to congratulate the entire TORA Staff team for their transparency regarding this matter and hope that it continues to a certain extent as openness is key to establishing and maintaining a community of trust and it stamps out the rumours and third hand information passed around outside of TORA. Understandably not all "behind the scenes" goings on need to be or should be shared with the community though but transparency is key when viable.
Moving on from that, I did offer a certain TORA staff member my help before without receiving a reply but my offer remains, I can do graphics, have been known to do pretty well to secure outside sponsorship for websites and individuals, I have built many websites and maintain my own clientele websites and I have a sound knowledge of phpBB and similar therefore if ever I can help the TORA staff with anything within that scope then just ask as I'm not the kind to fill in staff application forms and so on guys sorry although I did recently consider filling in a form for the TORA Media Team positions.

TORA staff I think everyone here will agree when I say "Keep up the good work, you're all doing great!"

[XPR Forbidden]

I haven't been here long but it is surprising that something like this went on. I'm glad TORA brought it up and dealt with it and let everyone know what was going on. Now we can move forward an onto other things and hope to see great things in the future. As my experience here grows I will be happy to lend any services I can to help the staff as I have run several communities in the past.

[Ax4x Bandit]

He deserved the boot from Staff after what he did. Didn't expect him to be banned from the forums, but that's fine by me. Good job to the Staff!

Hopefully, the CT does a better job at running FM4 events than Warspite.

[CTM AnonCaliga]

He deserved the boot from Staff after what he did.  Didn't expect him to be banned from the forums, but that's fine by me.  Good job to the Staff!

Hopefully, the CT does a better job at running FM4 events than Warspite.

Yeah but he's still a member on a certain other race forum, lets hope there's no hassle over there from him!

[Matt]

Anon, help always appreciated. Do fill that form out, anyone able to help with media in particular is perfect.

[SFM Benedict]

Does everyone want a spotters for le mans

[HCR Bellmond]

That would be cool but tough to pull off so late on

[CTM AnonCaliga]

Anon, help always appreciated. Do fill that form out, anyone able to help with media in particular is perfect.

Applications closed as of 17th May according to the relevant thread. Never mind, I'm always around if needed anyway, but really, really not a form filler in sort   Cheers Matt.

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