I don’t believe SG bailed due to the ban, I believe it happened to be the last straw in a long line of things that progressively made the game less and less fun for the way SG played.

As to the comment, it was posted on a day when Kaiser was spamming, Nailbomb was necro spamming his Kaiser impersonation, draginz and smiley spam were seeing a resurgence and I think the exciting new twist to the day was that the heron meme was running.

It may be beside the point if people are only supposed to make nice comments in the civil areas, but honestly, wall of pics and “no u” are what people are posting on Flamebate lately. I found SG’s description sadly accurate.

you people actually care about roleplaying?

MC Banhammer Posted:

Calling everyone on the site “idiots who are incapable of original thought”? Not so civil.

I took it as a joke, maybe my definition of civil is broader than yours. Just seems to me that being offended by his post would be somewhat thin-skinned.

If he was picking out one individual user and having a go at them in a malicious way, then yes, joking or not I could see your point, but a little mockery of Flamebaters as a group… eh, I’m not offended.

I had missed all this. I got a PM saying goodbye and 1 bp but I thought it was a random RP thing (as I do not read Flamebate anymore and if I do it’s only the green side which has been so so SO boring as of late I can’t be bothered to browse it and hence missed this whole SG thing in the first place) and just noticed due to an off site conversation.

Sad. Log in to see images! to be and how much common sense you want to use.

This becomes more relevant especially when it comes to banning people for “not being nice” which is an annoying enough rule to follow because some people RP or not, online or not, are just naturally sarcastic and kind of jerks.

In the grand scheme of things, SG was one of the few active posters left that represented how good FWZ used to be, and not to mention an OCD machine in the game, but because (some of) the mods here want to patronize people that are adults and force them to “act nice” via the use of mechanical moderation people just stop bothering.

Also this.

Hobart Bliggity Posted:

I’m going to actually seriouspost in GD here, so brace yourselves.

I’m sure it’s no secret that I, along with a few other posters, purposely get banned by doing grey-area things and then try to cause a ****storm because of said ban. In other limited cases, as the one stated by was, we latch on to someone elses ban and raise hell on their behalf. I’m aware that a good number of mods know this game, and play along accordingly. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the motive behind it though.

First and foremost, causing drama and arguements in CD is about the only ****ing entertaining thing left on these boards. CZs decision to advertise on a few select sites, make the RP boards basically unmoderated, and even create an anon forum has attracted the most boring of all personalities to this community. Sure, its a revolving door of ****ty posters, but the constant volume of crap keeps a lot of the people that actually contribute comedy here away. I realize that this is a business, and I can’t argue their decisions from a bottom-line perspective, but I don’t think anyone can say that the community is better off now than when it was a smaller.

But Im getting off topic. The consistently unfunny barrage in the RP forums, combined with the black-or-white enforcing of rules in CD leaves a lot of the intelligent-but-kind-of-an-bumhole type posters with literally nowhere to post. I know it’s personal preference, but I think all of the best posters in the history here have fallen into that category, and it was those types that really made this place take off in the beginning.

I used to post in full sentences and try to make sense in RP forums. I also used to avoid non-RP because it bored me. Now, I can’t be bothered to put any thought into anything in RP because it’ll just get buried under a steady stream of ****, and CD is so strictly enforced I could never get away with saying what I wanted to. So I’ve devolved into ****posting in RP and way over the top careposting in CD, because it’s really the only way left to get people to react.

I guess I don’t know how I would go about rectifying this, and I can’t imagine it changing anytime soon. Ep 3 is just going to bring in 10,000 new people, 3 of which I’ll probably like and want around. I know I’m an bumhole, and I know “good poster” is subjective, but I can’t help but to try to steer the forums away from the direction they’re headed.

in short Log in to see images!

TUBSWEETIE Posted:

i would very much like CZ to steal their system and apply it here.

– seperate flamebate bans from game bans

– flamebate bans turn off all the forums and leave a jail forum

– jail forum only shows the banned person’s posts. they can appeal in there.

– spamming jail extends your ban

– people who buy BP can see the jail maybe (perk of purchasing Log in to see images!)

– rules can be tweaked to fit the changes

– mods can be more ‘don’t **** up this place, jailtime’

– USER BANNED text can be automatically put on posts in red without having to mod edit

– BANEND will show up instead of custom titles.

That sounds amazing.

CaptainDDL edited this message on 07/12/2009 3:44PM

MC Banhammer Posted:

I’ve been a mod and even an admin on other sites. The difference IMO is just how FLEXIBLE this site really is — most of what’s allowed to be posted would be bannable on other sites. Hell, necro-ing threads is bannable on many sites :rolleyes:

That’s what makes this one so tough. People expect to get treated with kid gloves for things which on other sites might be allowed as a joke, but on this site could be seen as trolling in somewhere specifically excluded from trolling. I believe that’s why the rules have gotten so tight around here.

Are you saying that the moderators getting stricter is blowback from users that were trying to get banned? Did we need stricter enforcement?

This situation is that a good portion of this community will break the rules, for fun and protest. The moderators are tasked with enforcing the rules and would rather no one ever break them.

So you could become stricter and punish the rules breakers to the extent of your power, but you are also going to punish those that would have gotten a pbum with the laxer rules and have to deal with whatever that effect causes.

Or you could have stood the course and deal with the major rule breakers and the non rule breakers might think the moderators here are a joke.

I am sure its more complex than what I stated, but it seems to boil down to doing what the community would like versus trying to change the community.

You know I remember when the most disputed rule was the “No All Caps” one.

MC Banhammer Posted:

Not sure. Maybe.

What’s happened here, and is continuing to happen, is that people kept trying to push the few rules we had. Then they’d get banned for it, and there would be a community uproar that the ban was unfair because the rule wasn’t defined. So now we’ve gone overboard in defining the rules, so far that there’s a task force of something like 15 mods and players to overanalyze every possible rule and shut down whatever seems reasonable in the eyes of 15 people to shut down. And what we now have is a more complex ruleset than any site I’ve even been on, with really no end in sight, and a community which seems to want strictly defined rules and who then complains that the rules were enforced.

So what I’m saying is, either the community’s going to have to lighten up about mod discretion, or suffer increasingly tighter rules which they’ll keep trying to break and continue a cycle of ****ing about the rules.

tl;dr: This site has stupid rigid rules because it has a subset of players who keep trying to push the boundaries.

So you are staying with trying to change the user base?

It seemed to me that you guys got stricter with the rules, then the users asked for a defining. And the same way that we shouldn’t compare two different user bans, you shouldn’t generalize complaints over the bans. Some have no merits and are just done out of routine, but I don’t see how telling us that we need to stop complaining or you will just get stricter is idiotic.

Look, those of us who push the rule boundaries are probably going to keep doing it. It’s pretty fun. Most “community outcry” happens in rp – so is it even real? no Here’s the only bans I’ve gotten mad about in GD, despite the fact I’m considered in the minds of the mods (and apparently especially JB) to be one of the people doing this:

1. The 4/20 one where UC and I got banned for our queued ban lengths while Fingerz got off with a few hours. This ban was due to ET’s whims vs. Banhammer doing things fairly. And yes, I think Banhammer takes CD too seriously, but I know he tries hard to be fair about things. Since I’m being sincere I will say I actually have respect for his efforts and what he puts up with. Buuut that makes it more fun to mess with him.
2. FAIL’s milkbum ban. No one agreed it was shock, and that was the problem. I do have a problem with some of the oldest and best rp-ers getting banned for on-the-line things like that one and SG’s recent one.

You guys really did tighten up the rules after the new mods were appointed. We felt bans were happening that wouldn’t have in the past. That’s why we asked for clarification. There is a list of mods who will ban for certain things and a list of mods who will not ban for those same things. If a post is made that’s on the line, it depends on if one of the former mods will see it if you get banned.

I’d like if CD had a little leeway on being “nice” all the time, and I’d like the mods to be on the same page.
1337xxxxxxxxxlolololololololololxxxxxxxxx1337 edited this message on 07/13/2009 1:40AM

was Posted:

You know I remember when the most disputed rule was the “No All Caps” one.

The dispute I remember was when nana got banned for posting like “THAT WAS SO AWESOME” in a way that was meant to convey her feelings and not at all troll. The rule was technically broken, but it was clearly intended (to me) to stop people from trolling by means of hard-to-read text. I guess my thoughts are that the spirit of a rule should be enforced more than the letter, and I thought everyone felt the same way after the circus that was the “taskforce” trying to nail down specific rules while a bunch of us acted out in the gaps.

Hell, Oda and I got banned while trying to point out why completely rigid and objective (?) enforcement of rules was stupid through the use of mod reports. Incidentally, this was the ban of mine I got a little mad about. I should have gotten banned for “mod sbum”, but like I brought up recently the mods seem incredibly reluctant to use their discretion and hide behind the defined rules regardless of how nonsensical it makes their actions. So instead, I got banned for a post I’d made four days prior in a thread that was invisible to the public after getting a pbum on it from another mod.

Kaiser recently got banned with a completely trumped up reason because a mod didn’t like him and wanted to hide behind a rule.

I had a big thing written here about how I thought the modding process ought to work, but I deleted it because I don’t really know how it should work. I don’t have experience moderating a large community, and I’m not a great judge of what’s funny and what’s over the line. I feel like bans limited to portions of the site would ease things quite a bit, even if you don’t think so. It’ll give mods the freedom to toss out a “discretionary” ban without quite the ****storm, and so there won’t need to be a three day discussion before a borderline issue gets dealt with. Ban first, overturn later. If someone’s too banhappy, get on their bum for it. Rigid rules are **** because loopholes are immediately obvious to anyone that wants to keep ****ing with the mods.

I can’t claim to know SG94’s reasons, but I do remember how ****ed off he was over that 1 minute ban that ****ed up a forum visit back in the day. Considering that he took the game that seriously and a streak for Dom now takes WEEKS to build up, I can understand why ****ing up his game for a post that a decent number of people found a funny joke rather than offensive trolling would make him quit. I doubt he’d have left over just a forum ban, even if his interest was waning.

Also I understand that this is a ****ty post with very little point even after killing half of it and starting over. That’s why I don’t want to be a mod ever Log in to see images!

scully Posted:

I don’t know. I think some of the people howling to allow the mods to use their discretion are going to change their tune awfully fast when they realize that they and their buddies are also subject to whimsy.

If I was being genuinely detrimental to the community I would hope a mod would slap me with a ban. It’s not like we’re pushing this because we feel like we’re invincible. If there’s one thing I’ve figured out by now it’s exactly that.