Messages

"The time is the father of the truth".
Starting from this sentence, and without using too much words, it's by now clear that this community needs Peter Varga onboard. And for me it's by now clear that this community doesn't reflect part of the values I consider fundamental in my life.
So it was time for me for a clear choice, "in" or "out". And I chose "out".

I loved Stunts. Even I have an intense life and various heavy responsibilities, I did all my best efforts in order to give my contribute to keep alive the wonderful game we know, as many of you have recognized. And I still would give my contribute, but simply I can't be part of a community which does not consider important what I retain essential to keep healthy whatever relationship, that is respect, estimate, trust.
From this point of view, the full rehabilitation of Peter Varga after what he did, the joyful welcome the community reserved him without there was not any sign of attitude changes (as his comments on the topic "The announcement" in August and September attest) is a clear evidence of what this community reputes important and what not.

I sure don't blame anyone, and sure I don't judge anyone for their choices. Everyone chooses the values he wants to pursue, the kind of person he wants to be. And this forces a natural aggregation or separation between persons. In other words, I feel I'm not like many of you. Not best or worst. Simply different. Deeply different. That's the reason I won't be part of this community anymore.

Will Stunts suffer for this? Not for sure.
Since the return of Peter Varga, the community seems alive and kicking (sorry for a last reference to one of my favourite groups...) and sure ZakStunts will continue to be the backbone for all Stunts races. There's not need for ISM or other SDR events (that you can by now consider as something belonging to the past), as there's not need for my low activity on the tracks (mainly due to lack of time and cervical pains) or my low activity in the forum. About this last item, I only have to say that in early September I was starting a new topic about my new ideas related to the new palimpsest of Stunts racing world for 2012. I wanted to push for quick decisions about when the next ISM edition had to be planned. But, just when I was pressing "Post", I decided to still stay at the window for some weeks, in order to see how the community would have approached the return of Peter Varga. You know the rest.


I could avoid to tell you all this, I could simply keep silently myself away from here. But I like to be limpid in my conduct and I don't like to let pending questions in my life, if only I can.

Someone sure won't be unhappy about my decision, someone will be displeased, someone simply won't care about, someone will contest (privately or publicly) my arguments, maybe replying on this topic. I only want to tell you in advance that I won't write other comments on this topic, whatever thoughts will be eventual posted here as replies.

One more time, my last thought is for all of you permitted me to spend time in joyful and exciting moments in the last 5 years, during my second youth, and for who shows me sincere friendship. Thank you.

Mark L. Rivers

Well, I'm not sure if qualification is finished or not, but if it is... 2nd place on 1240 participants is a quite good result... 

Sorry, I simply can't agree with you.

All that Peter Varga did in this forum, has been made for a unique goal: researching to shine over all others self-incensing himself. Maybe a certain number of us is here for the same reason. But to reach his objective, Peter Varga abused the trust of the community members, continuing to cover the others with insults, derision, deceptions, respectless. For years.
Sorry, but I could never have a good or fine relationship with a such person.

Sorry, but considering acceptable this sort of "contribute" to keep alive the little Stunts world is a vision light-years far from mine. If this vision is shared from the core of the actual community, well, I have to think a lot about. In a community, members have to partake much more than a passion for something. Someone can be more active and chattered than other one. But, as I said before, I consider estimate, respect and trust as pillars of a whatever community. We are not professional drivers paid to race in a championship. We are here because we are linked from something deeper. Something positive.

But if many members of this little world are ready to set aside their appreciation for respect and trust welcoming members as Peter Varga in order to keep alive the community finding is "contribute" very positive, well, I have to think a lot about.
For me, generating increased talking in the Forum with spam full of derisions and insult, or managing cheating races even with high number of drivers, is a poison for this world. Passion for the races and fairness is the sap. AS ZCT100 did. A race Peter Varga disregarded after the conclusion.

Anyway, the evidence is that this world was going to die with Peter Varga onboard. But maybe what we'll see from this moment will show that, without a similar person, this community can do much better. I only hope to be part of it. And this is what I have to think a lot.

Members of the Stunts Season could have an official worldranklist (like Bonzai Joe's), with each league's results taken into account with equal importance. This way the most active pipsqueaks also have a goal to reach, while those with less time can focus on one or a few events with rules to their liking. stunts.hu.

I also had thought this, I sure find it an important element to boost a constant engagement. 

We already have a huge selection of possible competitions. a possible mix could be (competition-manager-rules)
ISM - Mark - Classic cup, fast cars (should be open to all pipsqueaks instead of an invitational basis)

Well, about this...
ISM born beside SWR (Stunts World Ranking) to become something as Doha's Master is for ATP/WTA circuits in tennis world. This is the main reason because the number of participants was limited to the best Stunts driver of the moment (or of the year). But it's not the unique reason. Due to manage all manually, I simply can't manage a contest with more than a precise number of drivers (6-10).
So, in this moment, I can't image ISM as a completely free open contest (moreover I should change the name!  ). Anyway, according with the creation of a Stunts world rank, the idea of a contest placed at the end of the year able to gather the drivers who obtained the best results during the whole season just finished, could be another incentive to be constant over the year.
If this should be, if ISM will maintain is formula, you can be sure that I won't direct the things in this way to make more charming ISM rather than other ones. ZakStunts is and will be unquestionably the most prestigious and representative contest forever.

[STOP YEARLY CONTEST; ONLY EVENTS.]

I thought a lot about what could be done in order to keep alive what has been built in the past. And I want to express my thoughts. I will use a quite high number of words, but, even if I hope you will read until the end, what I have to say can be summary in this way: STOP YEARLY CONTEST; ONLY EVENTS.

As Zak clearly said, one of the main problems of our days is the lack of time. This can be one of the causes about the decreasing passion showed in the races. I try to explain better this concept.

The passion and the desire to race can go on only when there's a sane challenge, when we can measure each other, exulting for a fantastic replay and result. Our or from our opponents. Sure all this can be amplified when we all compete in a championship, where the challenge goes on for a whole year, where drivers can alternate in the podium and bad results can be reversed thanks to the next races.
But the engagement in a yearly contest demands a huge amount of time. And when a driver realizes that he won't be able to aim to the final win, maybe he will decide non to put himself since the first race. And even who will start a championship with high motivation, maybe will decide afterward not to maintain high his efforts when he will understand that he's by now too distant from the vertex to aim at the final win.

When I link this situation (generated by the lack of time) with the concept I expressed previously in other topics about the lack of passion, I think it's natural going towards a slow decline. No engagements in the races, no challenges, no talking about respective results and poor scoreboard mean decreasing passion. And all this leads the community to survive only speaking about other arguments, often not very meaningful. And, as Zak said, after many years and due to be part of an online community (instead of a no-online community) unavoidably the links among members become more and more fragile. But the things would be really different if there would be the passion for the races and for the challenge.

So, my formula to keep alive the community, better, to revive the community, passes through stopping yearly contest (even ZakStunts) creating instead events that can catalyze the attention of the members, concentrating, maybe in a month, all their passion and their desire to race, with results you can image.

Maybe there could be 4 ZakStunts' races in a year (one for season) or even less. In adding, there could be other events like ISM or SCST. Sure it would be great (not only to enact my won related to the 2007...) that special events came from Kalpen too.

Beside all this, forum could goes on in the same way it goes on now. After all, in the forum about the 95% of the words are related to something different than the races.

The only (apparent) negative side of this way, could be that more difficulty we will have newbie. But, frankly, it appears quite a lost battle attracting the new generations usually habituated to play with HD consoles and games light-years far from what Stunts is.

Anyway, my thoughts is that Stunts community have not to count on next young generations to keep itself live. The only true and costant "newbies" this community can attract, newbies which can stay here more than some months, are the old generations, who was a teen-ager in the eighties or nineties, who can feel the taste to retrieve the old toy he enjoyed a lot when he still was a "boy", who was a real passionate Stunts drivers. A person like me, for example who joined in 2006 when I was 37 years old. Or a person like AbuRaf70, with the sane desire to maintain alive the children inside him.

I really think that this community has to keep alive by his historical members, even who joined in last 4 years, members who showed to maintain unaltered his own passion through the years. Maybe only like a chess park club (as Zak said), where old men go there only in specific moments of the years to give life to a positive and galvanic events that make them satisfied and renew the passion through intense good feelings.
Yes, instead to drag on a complex machine as a yearly contest is, consuming and spreading day by day our passion, I think it's really better waiting for 3 or 4 months, with growing expectation, an event that can join all in a very intense short period, a period where we can really revive the intense emotions felt in the past, an injection of adrenaline that can makes satisfied and leading the community until the next event with new pleasant expectation.

Indeed, looking at the future, I don't see other way in order not to lose what has been built until here.

Just an innocent remark, but according to human psychology, those who are saying the hardest words on CTG are potential ghost creators. Many many people tend to shout the loudest on men having the same kind of bad features or commiting the same kind of mistakes.

I don't know if we have already talk in the past, Akoss, anyway I start to do it with the maximum respect due to your seniority in this community. Even if reading your posts in last years made me sure we are persons quite different, I think that a sane dialogue can be, at least about some arguments. And having in mind this one, I have to say that I'm only partially agree with your thoughts quoted above.

I appreciate the famous aphorism that says that the defects a man can't bear in the others are those he has in itself. But we are talking about a particular matter. We are talking about the trust. As I said privately to another member of this community, when you lose the trust by others for a single your deceptive act, you could chase it for a long time before you re-catch it. But if you abuse of the trust of your friends for years, when the thing comes up, maybe you can't re-catch it for many, many years. Maybe never. That's the nude truth about the trust.

And I'm absolutely sure that if a man appreciate the trust, he simply can't desire to become a callous liar decepting the others.

And for the community? It wasn't killed or damaged by CTG. The community was and is perishing itself.

I'm also sceptic about the reborn of the community. Some years ago, the pipsqueaks were much more communicative. They were commenting on the forum about the races, attended the chatroom each evening, the logs were also saved. There were live races. There were international Stunts meetings. But with this kind of pipsqueaks today we have, who are having only 10-20 posts per month (accumulated summary for all of the pipsqueaks), who rather just sit in front of the monitor, pushing the buttons without saying boo to the other, the case is very different... oh, let me just remember... the championship was much more exciting when we knew each other, talked to each other all night, commenting on each other's times and replays, there were also online results announcement by Zak... I seriously think that there's absolutely no possibility to resurrect the community to the 2002-05 level. The current generation are not as social and enthusiastic as we were.

Effectively, I didn't say that Peter Varga killed the Stunts community. I said only he risked to inflict a mortal shot to it.
I'm quite agree with you that the main cause of the slow decline is the poor comments about the races, the replays, the times. In a topic I started (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2443.0), never commented even if it has seen 220 times, I said more or less the same. I said:

"Too much rarely drivers express their impressions about the track (for example about its crucial passages) and the races (for example their feelings about the challenge in act or about their thoughts about the final results).
It's true, the members of this community, like any other community, talk about a quite large number of topics, but I think that the comments about the races are too poor. Everyone has logically different interests and sure there's the pleasure (someone more, someone a bit less) to talk about that. But, I mean, we are here because we are Stunts [r]acers. It's the passion towars the game and the races that lead us to join in this community. So I think that everyone should focus a bit more on the races, not to let that passing weeks before public own thought about a track or a race. Otherwise the members of this community will live only expecting special events (as ZCT100) or mainly replying when "spammers" write.
Real sports lives on comments, reactions, dazedness watching amazing challenge and fantastic results. The passion is supplied by that. Since we are mainly and fundamentally [r]acers, the thing should be the same things even for us and our little world.
It's strange these args come from a retired or, maybe better, an "occasional" driver as I am. But that's my thought. I only hope that my passion, so faced by lack of time, won't be higher than the passion of regular drivers.
When the passion decreases, it could be really dangerous because keeping high the desire to race becomes very difficult, with logical consequences even on other community's activities..."

I continue to think the same thing.
But I equally convinced that a community is based on the trust. And what Peter Varga did can really have a devastating effect, because what he did will lead everyone to watch the others, above all the future newbies, with a big caution, with a deleterious suspect. This is the big damage Peter Varga did at this community. And there's no way to repair it.

Continuous tracking of the community story is one of the best thing to do in order to make a cohesive whole. It's strongly necessary these gray days are linked with the bright past if we want to hope in a clear future.

A community is based on precise and irremovable pilasters: estimate, respect, trust.
Peter Varga was a fast Stunts driver. Stop here. No estimate for the others, except for some friends or,deceptively, in order to grab them to his sad self-incensing site. No respect for the others, in words and actions. About the trust I have not to say a word.
He deserves all our blame, because he USED this community to exalt himself, trampling all the members if they tried to shade his light. He deserves all our blame because he lied abusing enormously about our trust. He deserves all our blame because his behavior is not the result of a wicked moment: he has perseverate for years in USING others for his own egoistical intent.

Just think this one: if he will return one day saying " I'm back, I'm a new person, please reintegrate me in this community", who will welcome him trusting in his words? More, when we will see in the future a newbie that, even gradually, will climb the scoreboard with amazing results, who will be really sure he won't be Peter Varga under a new impostrously hat? Do you understand the damage he did in this community? Can really anyone underestimate the effect of his devastating actions? Can really anyone even only thinking to rehabilitate a such callous liar?

In every sport, for the highest illicitness the penalty is called "banishment". Often it's permanent, for life. Thinking to the voluntary and over-reiterated conduct full of insults, derisions, deceptions, lies perpetrated for years, and thinking to the damages he did at the community, I think that a permanent banishment from Stunts is what he deserves. And, please, no commiseration in order to encourage a reintegration. It would be really misplaced.

About CTG's results, I think it's good they remain. The name "CTG" will become a natural epigraph for all the future Stunts generations, a synonymous of "cheater", "liar", or "the driver who abused the trust of Stunts community members for years, risking to inflict a mortal shot to this pure and noble little world".

Finally, for the man Peter Varga I sincerly hope he will find in the future his right place in the real world, thinking to his errors and trying not to repeat them in order to avoid to rest alone as maybe he's now. But, about Stunts, there's not place anymore here for him.

My thought is that the hard job to keep alive this community also pass through adopting this firm and clear position.

I initially thought that the silence was the best reply. No words for a such person.

But then, I started to remember to all the times he lied and how he was false, double-faced in a very thin mode. For example when he (with the CTG' hat) privately speaking against "CTG" trying to convince me to participate at the last race of USC 2007/2008 (Zahony) after I abandoned USC when I was first before to start the last track (championship then won by Dottore). Happy to have repeated to "CTG" the same things I had said him.
I always thought that he was "Dottore" (and I even argued privately about this thing with someone) but I didn't think about a so large deception. So all the worst thoughts I had expressed about him (for example here http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2068.msg34616#msg34616) were right. Better, they were not bad enough.

Therefore I started to think that the silence would be almost like a gift for him, after all.

Let me say that this is really a pathetic end of a pathetic person. I hope he will soon deleted even from the memory of all of us.  

And this is what Gutix asked... 

This kind of words is the best reward for all the efforts spent for planning and executing the management: THANKS to all of you, guys! 

Hi all! The night is incoming (sure, in Europe...  ) and soon this 5th edition of ISM will tell us who will be the Stunts Master of the year!

Results will be probably published in early morning (GMT +1) but, never say never about a faster update...

Meanwhile, I will be glad to read your comments about this event. Let me express just a couple of my comments before.
I know that this edition probably has not encountered the same rating than past years. First of all for the track. With a bit more of attention, I had the possibility to make a more challenging race, diversyfying more the paths of the single cars. I had initiated to refine two or three passages just three days before the start, but a very bad flu forced me in bed until the go. Secondly, the Formula. It's sure less exciting (even if more tactic) a event that has only four updates in a month. But, due to my engagements, this the best effort I could do.

Here we are, about one day and half to the deadline!
Since two of the admitting drivers (Ayrton and Renato Biker) seem by now not to join at the event, the title should be assigned between current participants. Even if the outsiders are always behind the door, take a look to the replays sent until here, three pluri-medalist drivers seem accredited in particular: Bonzai Joe, Duplode and Gutix. I didn't sum their wins and titles got in the past, but sure there's enough material to fill a lot of pages. This will assure, jointly to their purposes expressed publicly and privately, a very hot final for this ISM edition. 
And I like to imagine they are living intense hours, with fingers and keyboards which are going to become very hot... 

[We have seen a real true battle between BJ and Duplode until here, but will this battle be really true until the end?]

While the days are passing and we are approaching the final, a question take form.

We have seen a real true battle between BJ and Duplode until here, but will this battle be really true until the end?

It's a fact that between the 2 teammates there's a good friendship. They made always a strong teamwork in every competition, even in absolutely individual competition. It's enough thinking to the last ISM edition, when BJ hardly braked with its Lancia in the very last part of the track B, so to favour (in vain, really) Duplode engaged in a tight duel with Gutix.
So, again, will we see a real true battle between BJ and Duplode? Will Duplode have to extract all his enormous skill to carve his name in the stone of ISM's Hall of Fame? Or maybe the generous and veteran BJ will leave his teammate conquering a title that the Danish legend has already conquered in 2008?

Sure the hope is to attend to a real final firework where the talent, the skill and the taste of the victory give life to a sane challenge until the last minute. That sure would be the best thing for Stunts world!

[3rd Checkpoint!]

3rd Checkpoint!

Another week of emotions!

Let's starting to say that the Gutix is still missing and, if he had not impeded to race, his tactic is by now clear: shocking us with alien times in the very final of the race as to say "I need only a shot..."
Anyway, just like we said last week, this could not be enough for him. Even because Bonzai Joe and Duplode got other PSP keeping hot the challenge this week thanks to a fantastic head to head!
While Zak McKracken conquered deservedly the provisional podium completing his set of times with a great Acura's race (very close to his teammates) and AbuRaf70 improved with all cars (big jump in advance with the NSX), BJ and Duplode are making amazing masterpieces with their 4 wheels fireballs! 
The Brazilian ace overtakes his main opponent with the P962 and the Acura, leading his Porsche to an apparently unreachable time: 1:05,00!  The Danish champion replies passing Duplode with an awesome time with the Audi: more than 3 seconds better than previous time!  Both the champions are under 3:30: what a wonderful challenge! 

What does all this mean in general classification?
Well, BJ conserves the best sum of times (and the whole bonus point related) for 0,55 seconds, but Duplode (who keeps his 0,5 points for the 2nd best sum of times) has now one race point more than his opponent (10 + 9 + 10 vs 9 + 10 + 10). Pairing the PSP (5 points got for each one), the Brazilian jumps on the provisional tallest step of the podium for 0,5 points, 34,5 vs 34 !
What can we say? Really great this very serried battle that deserves a big ovation from all of us! 

But it's still not ended. The last week has sure more to tell us.
Will we see a Gutix's tail strike able to subvert the general classification? 
Will SuperBrian gift us a new set of times confirming us that the title "young promise" is by now a thing of the past for him? 
Will Zak be able to show us his great skill, too often hidden by his Stunts manager role? 
Will we acclaim one more time the efforts of the extraordinarily evergreen AbuRaf70? 

Above all, last week will tell us who will be the 2011 Stunts Master. Will be able Bonzai Joe and Gutix to pair Ayrton conquering the title for the second time defeating the Duplode's endeavour aimed to inscribe his name for the first time on the gold-board of this competition?

What a great week waits for us!