I have spent a long time thinking about the many complaints and problems and the few suggestions and ideas on how to make things better. Things have gotten so out of hand and so ugly that changes must be made. Now before we go into all that I would to explain a few things so everyone knows where I'm coming from. Fuck it, I've been sitting here for an hour trying to think of a polite and friendly way to say all of this and I'm not getting anywhere. New Rules: There will be no new rules. I'm not seeing problems in the main section of the forum and with the vast majority of members who post here. The problems what we're having are primarily with the same handful of people over and over. Yes, there are some that slip up but those are easily handled and not a continuing problem. I'm also not seeing problems that we've never had before that would require new rules. The problem is Personal Insults. Grey area: Holy fucking hell I am so sorry I ever posted that in passing. Some of you have latched on to that not as a problem but as a justification to insult others. If "grey area" was truly the problem it would pretty much be the only forum of personal insults we see on here. It's not. Baiting: HAHAHAHAHAH! Baiting? Really? We're all adults here, if you're actually saying that you can be "baited" into insulting someone then that is on you. Can someone bait you into posting you're credit card number in the forum? Can someone bait into posting child porn here? Of course not, that's silly. Just like it's silly to say that someone has baited you posting personal insults. Baiting is just excuse. Mods/Staff: I have doubled the amount of staff in the forum in the last 6 months. They are people who understand that this is a community and want to make it better. They are good guys. All of the complaints about them I have taken seriously and have looked into them. I have not found examples or proof of what some of you have been accusing them of. I will always listen to your complaints and concerns but let's be honest, the people complaining the most about the staff are the ones breaking the rules. Mods/Staff Part 2: This forum has limited resources and our greatest resource are the people who have volunteered to help run this community. The amount of staff/resources that are going to handle the petty bullshit in the OT has to stop. It is hurting other areas of the forum, it isn't fun and it wasn't what they signed up. Now before I say where I'm going with all of this I want give you a bit of an example of what some of the problems are. Orion Bailey, I first want to say I truly like you. I'm not picking on you. I'm only using this as an example as to what some of the problems are here and hopefully by doing so it will help everyone. So today, OB brought up some complaints and accusations about the staff and our bias. When he made them he was nice enough to provide a link to an example of what he was talking about. When I clicked on the link sure as shit it was a personal insult from HCP to him from Oct 18th. Sitting there completely unedited, right out in the open. I immediately deleted it. That is not acceptable. Now his complaint was we as a staff are biased against him and allowing HCP to get away with things that others are not. And at first glance, he was right. But then I started reading through the rest of the thread. And for whatever reason, the thread was full of personal insults including some by OB that were completely unedited or deleted. So that kind of kills the bias thing doesn't it? I mean you can't claim that because we didn't edit HCP's personal insult that means we're favoring him when the insults you posted also went unedited. It doesn't prove bias, it proves we're human and that thread got missed. So then I started digging further, pulling up flagged messages logs, Private Messages from that date, and if any of the staff were tagged in that thread in order to draw their attention to the insults in the thread. No. No attempt was made on that date or afterwards until today to get staff to address the problem. Instead this really feels like it was saved as a way to prove how bad the staff is. Now I'm not trying to pick on OB or embarrass him. I'm truly trying to use this as an example of how dysfunctional this has become for everyone involved. As soon as OB brought this to our attention I immediately removed HCPs insult and Chris Craig cleaned up the rest of the thread. In other words, we did what OB really wanted us to do but it didn't happen until OB took the time to bring it to our attention. It's impossible to read every post in this forum. There are 5 of us and 100s of you. To assume that we are playing favorites or don't like you because we don't edit a personal insult is just factually wrong. I'm not telling you this, I'm asking to help us and let us show you that is true. Instead of waiting over a month to say, "You missed one, this is proof you're bias!" How about telling us when you first saw it instead of immediately insulting them back. And if you were just too pissed off to tell anyone at the time then how about going back and cleaning up your own personal insults and then tell us and we'll clean up the ones that were made against you. Another example, as I was sitting here trying to figure out how to say all this I start getting notifications... ping...ping... So I leave a half finished paragraph and open up notifications. I'm being tagged in the game thread. I click on it and sure enough there is a problem. I removed the person who was having a bit of a meltdown from the game thread, thanked the person who tagged me, and the sent a Private Message to the person I removed from the game thread to try and find out if there is an additional problem that I was not aware of or maybe he's just having a bad day. Someone was having a problem, someone else brought it to the staff's attention, staff dealt with it quickly, fairly, and respectfully. ... Now where am I going with all this? As I said before, I don't think the continued problem with personal insults is because we don't have enough rules. I also don't think it's a problem with staff. After much consideration I think the problem is there are no real penalties for continually making personal insults. Having your post edited or deleted is not a deterrent. I mean to hear some of you freak the fuck out over it you would think that for every one your posts that are edited or deleted a giant cattle prod is being shoved up your ass and fired off but honestly, having your insult removed doesn't harm you at all. And getting all pissed that your post was edited but someone else's earlier in another thread wasn't really a valid argument. I invite you to look at it this way, there are speed limits and speed signs posted everywhere. And you know it's against the law to speed. But many of us still drive over the speed limit and we all see others driving over it. But if you get pulled over I invite you to get all pissy with the cop and tell him he's biased against whatever type of car you're driving, or color of shirt you're wearing, or whatever excuse you can think of as justification of complaining that you were caught speeding while others were not. Moderating this forum is similar, we don't catch all the speeders but if we catch you it's not personal, we're just trying to stop as many speeders as we can. And to continue this shitty simile, if the only punishment the cop gave you was to wag his finger at you and tell you to stop I think all of us would be speeding all the time. In other words, we don't need more rules in this forum, we need real penalties for continually breaking them. Now a few months back I publicly announced that I would be trying out banning people from individual threads when they repeatedly insulted people. I'll be the first to admit, that didn't do much to stop the personal insults. So now were going to try something more severe. 3 strikes and you get the rest of the year off! That's right, 3 personal insults against anyone but me and you'll be banned until Jan 1st, 2019. Now I'm very hopeful that this will not only get you to reduce your personal insults but I'm also hoping this will encourage you to use one of the many ways there are to bring personal insults to our attention so we can take care of them quicker. But wait... there's more! As an added bonus, next week I'm picking up a dozen shirts from the Blazers to give away on the forum. The first one banned for personal insults for the rest of the year will win a FREE SHIRT! This is being done to show that I truly love all of you and to allow you to save face by saying you wanted to get banned for the shirt. "And may the odds be ever in your favor!"
If I may...one thing I learned after having gotten into trouble at wotk by letting mouth get ahead of brain, unless someone is having a heart attack in front of you, there are few things that can't wait 10 minutes. So, if angry, upset, stressed, before making the phone call or sending the ey, wait 10 minutes to cool down. I admit T don't always follow this rule but on the whole it's useful
riverman sucks riverman is an idiot riverman doesn't have a clue ok....contest entered...where's my shirt?
Joking aside...you guys do good work around here … and I for one am glad to see the ban hammer return...it's overdue sadly
Wow. Dumbest shit I've read here in a long time. Singling specific posters out? Making one poster edit his own posts or he's gone? Yeah. Good job.
So let me get this right. I have 2 free insults till December 31st and at 11:55pm I can make my 3rd insult before midnight and be banned for 5 minutes. Cool.
Free shirt for telling 3 people they are jerks, or one really deserving person 3 times. Awesome! Or December 31st, I can tell 3 people to kick rocks with basically no penalty. Talk about a holiday gift!
How the fuck am I not mentioned in your novel, Sly? I must be slipping To me, it's not the insults that are the issue. To me it's the snowflake coming bnb out in some. You mention something about race, innocent as it may be, and some freak the fuck out and then start insulting. Instead, maybe go after that
This is where I think many of us would prefer a change. No more editing. I think the new penalty is fine, but let it be stated so when someone is being penalized. Let the guilty party own their shit and others read it for what it is. Editing a post makes it look like someone wasn't being an ass when they were, at times and that stuff should be there for the public to see. If they don't like how they are being read, they can edit it themselves. If a warning is given, then edit the post with a disclaimer at the bottom so all can see that post has been warned about the post, but don't edit. It leads to confusion and sinners looking like saints. I wanted to go back and read that thread to see the insults you say I did. I'm pretty sure I was trying not to and i'm almost certain I was having an up and up conversation until I was put on blast from out of no where. After that, maybe I did insult, but I didn't think so. I would have liked to have gone back and read my own posts as is and edit if deemed needed. No point in doing so an no way to learn from my supposed errors now. The thing is, what you guys did, I didn't want. I didn't want his post edited. I didn't want my post edited. I want other forum members, mods or not, who have his back all the time to speak up and acknowledge that was not cool. I want other forum members and/or mods to speak up and say it isn't cool to bring up details of a private conversation with mods in public and try to ridicule someone about it even when that person has not been around. Like talking behind someones back. I want those who seem to want to make it out like all this is my fault, to acknowledge the crap he flings out and not have some double standard. I want people to hold each other accountable in an even manner, including him. Again I applaud your efforts, however this will not stop those who like to instigate from instigating. And like I said before I don't think there is an answer and I don't blame the mods. Again, my issue of late with this place is how some members defend other members even when they are in the wrong. There is a clique, gang, whatever of friends that go back and they will defend each other even in the face of ...and yes I do believe some mods are a part of this group, whether they all or some participate in that favoritism or not. I've seen it first hand over the years and have been victim of it. These people get on my case for certain things , but not one word about their friend who does the same thing. In my years here I have never seen a mod or poster call out the individual I have the main issue with here unless someone points it out and makes a big deal of it, yet over the years, I've seen many people get called out by mods without anyone else saying anything. Publicly, that is. And then when he is called out it seems to be in a begrudgingly way, with some sort of verbal eye roll or something aimed at the person calling him out. Again, the mod job is near impossible to please everyone. I just think you guys make it harder on yourselves with the editing and perception of what is a joke and what is an insult. Baiting and instigating is a very real thing here that is a regular happening. Of course the responder has a choice. Remember that one of the choices is to move on from this place because there are just too many people on here who it seems their main goal is to ruffle feathers rather than have mature intelligent conversations. I even gave up and tried joining in by creating a couple fake monikers of which both were ridiculed. It is very much a do as I say and not as I do with some posters here and it hasn't and will not change. This isn't about liking someone or not liking someone. Its about being mature enough to allow some people here to have mature conversations without letting the grade school playground antics infiltrate every corner of the forum. Again, I don't expect you to have an answer because I don't think there is one, short of people simply owning there own shit and everyone on the forum acknowledging wrongs and rights regardless of relationships. You know I am not the only one who has cited forum favoritism for this individual and i'm not the only one who feels this way. I will apologize for not using the report option though. It just always seemed like some lame tattle tail thing for those that cant deal with whatever on their own. I thought it would just be a hassle for mods. I see now not using it can be a bigger hassle for the mods, so for that I apologize. I honestly thought I was doing you guys a favor by NOT using it. One less report to have to deal with, was my thought.
And @SlyPokerDog for the record, I don't think you are singling me out or picking on me at all and I doubt you could have found a better reference than my posts, as to why there is a report option.
Unfortunately, you are one of those I consider to be biased...though, you did delete a few of those posts that formed my opinion, so maybe you saw it in your posts as well. Just providing full disclose. You wanna divulge who you are? Regardless of possibly having a different IP address, it was noted you are a long time forum member. I know I was informed of the rules and called out to divulge who I was. I already have a good idea, but am curious, as i'm sure some others are as well. I do find it interesting that you were included in our private conversation though so the mods know about you and who you are, but you haven't been called out to let the forum know who you are, like I was. I wont claim any favoritism though, because I've been told there isn't any and that could very well be right. However from this viewpoint, it surely looks like more of the same i'm being told doesn't exist within the longtime members.
Before I decide what kinda poster I want to be moving forward, can you please post a picture of the shirts to see if it’s worth the effort.....???
