Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

From over on gamingreport.com - http://gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=13727&mode=thread&order=0
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Ryan Dancey tendered his resignation as Treasurer of the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Thursday. Dancey, who was elected at the Annual Membership Meeting a month ago, disclosed to the board shortly after his election that he had penetrated the GAMA Board of Directors e-mail list and had been reading board e-mails for some time. He certified to the board that

no one else knew about this breach and that information gleaned from the action was not disseminated to any third party.

Last week, the board of directors informed members of the former board. Wednesday, the board informed the Full-Voting Membership at large. In the wake of discussion on the FVM e-mail list, Dancey decided it was best to resign.

"Over the past several weeks it has become obvious to me that the important work the Board was elected to undertake has taken a back seat to dealing with the issue of my access to GAMA's internal communications prior to the election," he wrote in his letter of resignation. "As I am aware of the number and nature of the immediate issues confronting the Board, and as I believe that the Board needs to address those issues as fast as possible, I believe that my continued service as GAMA Treasurer has become an impediment to that work, which must be removed."

"I hope that Ryan's resignation will aid us in moving forward," GAMA President Don Perrin said.

Dancey's resignation became effective at midnight PDT on the 29th. A successor has not yet been selected. Perrin indicated that further information on that subject would be forthcoming soon.
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Now THAT's interesting. I'm not sure what the full ramifications of this are, other than some privacy violations occurring. I am glad to see him do the honorable thing, though.

Rasyr said:

From over on gamingreport.com - http://gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=13727&mode=thread&order=0
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Ryan Dancey tendered his resignation as Treasurer of the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Thursday.

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Wasn't Ryan involved in some kind of disagreement with the rest of the Board on the direction GAMA was going in? I vaguely remember hearing about some unpleasantness on some message board or another, but I don't remember the details...

It seems everyone at GAMA is always in disagreement with someone else. It should be interesting to see if it goes in a new direction with Don Perrin as president now and a lot of the older members leaving.

I'm really curious about the email list thing, as I generally have a lot of respect for Dancey. This sound kind of unscrupulous, though. I'd love to hear more facts.

Here is a link to a discussion about it on rpg.net

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=137710

I am going to reserve my opinion for the moment but on person mentioned that his actions are obviously unethical, and quite possibly they were illegal as well.

Personally, I don't know. But, I thought that it was interesting enough (especially considering how Dancey repeatedly attacked the old board, and is now resigning for the types of actions that he accused them of) to post over here as well.

F5 said:

Wasn't Ryan involved in some kind of disagreement with the rest of the Board on the direction GAMA was going in? I vaguely remember hearing about some unpleasantness on some message board or another, but I don't remember the details...

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He was treasurer of a group called FixGAMA (http://www.fixgama.org) who I believe were campaigning (successfully, as it turned out) to replace the then leadership of GAMA with their own slate of candidates.

Henry said:

Now THAT's interesting. I'm not sure what the full ramifications of this are, other than some privacy violations occurring. I am glad to see him do the honorable thing, though.

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Immediate ramifications are the Dancey lost any credibility in the industry, I bet. He essentially made himself a non-entity moving forward with this stunt.

Correction - he started the fixGAMA group cause he did not like the way the old board was doing things (and was not even a member of GAMA in any form at the time that he did so). Most of the current board are persons who supported his plans and proposals on the fixGAMA site.

He was then elected to Treasurer of the GAMA board at Origins (the "slate" arrived with a LOT of proxies that they then used to vote themselves into office).

One of the things that I find missing from the press release is specifics.

How long had he been reading their emails?
How did he gain access to them (it was a private list server).
Why did he not tell the old board (the press release says "for some time", which I take to mean several months)?
Why did he wait until after HE and HIS friends were elected?
Did he use the information in his campaign against the old board?
Did he use it during the election process?
If the board found out last month, why is he only resigning now? Why the month long delay?

There are a lot of unanswered questions revolving around this. What he did was most certainly unethical, and has very likely ruined his professional reputation. The only question remains is whether or not it was illegal?

Rasyr said:

What he did was most certainly unethical, and has very likely ruined his professional reputation.

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I think "damaged" is more appropriate a word than "ruined" since certainly many of the current d20/OGL companies may not even be in existance if it wasn't for Ryan's professional accomplishments. (And yes, GAMA is much greater than just the OGL/d20 industry, but there are certainly those who have benefited from Ryan's ability.)

This mistake doesn't destroy all of Ryan's past accomplishments.