Regarding NES Moderation

While admittedly many people on the NES board used "rebellion" first, it takes on a different tenor when the staff employs this as a blanket term to refer to the actions of frustrated site users. As has been pointed out, by necessity moderators and administrators are (at least theoretically) held to a higher, more impartial standard.
 
I could be misremembering, by wasn't the falsified PM by Wry[something]? I hope he got banned for a significant period of time as that was just terrible. Like honestly why would someone do that?
 
I could be misremembering, by wasn't the falsified PM by Wry[something]? I hope he got banned for a significant period of time as that was just terrible. Like honestly why would someone do that?

Yeah, it was by wry.
 
And I was probated for taking issue with hugbox culture. This is defined as flaming to the CFC moderation staff. Everything meaningful that I was trying to say was, of course, deleted.

Its fairly apparent that my words are falling on deaf ears and nobody is in any way interested in avoiding a hugbox, so I'm taking my ball and going home.

Best of luck, I guess. I earnestly hope that you guys never get a call from the FBI or the DHS.
 
I could be misremembering, by wasn't the falsified PM by Wry[something]? I hope he got banned for a significant period of time as that was just terrible. Like honestly why would someone do that?

Not to go off a tangent,

Yeah that was done independently by me as a terrible act of revenge/anger/whatever you want to call it, do not blame anybody but me. If the mods wish to ban me or reprimand me for such an action, then I support their decision to do so. I am very much ashamed as not only did I falsely defile a specific moderator (I'll be fair and follow the PDMA rule here even if I have my qualms with it), but I wrongfully set out a bad impression on the NES community as a whole as a non-credible source. Again, I have no idea what to say besides the fact that I am truly ashamed and very apologetic for my very wrong actions against the CFC community, I realize how hurtful they were and I can understand if people are puzzled or angry at that.

I also want to say sorry to that specific moderator I falsely accused of saying stuff they never said. I had taken a grudge personally and a certain action taken by said mod was, in my eyes, unacceptable. Unlike the normal thing I should have done and address my concerns with the moderators, I did an even worse thing and created a false pretense. It's a matter of me trying to get back into the good graces of the CFC community, as I hope in time that I can at some point be forgiven for my actions. Again, no excuses here are being made, what I did was wrong, and never brought any good conclusion or even sent stuff in the right direction with the NES issue. For me to say again that i'm sorry is just belaboring the point, but in time I hope many of you understand that I am truly ashamed of myself as a member of this community but also as a person. It's very much clear that personally I still need to understand that actions have consequences, and in this case it essentially almost caused a cataclysm, and for that I again apologize.

P.S: I understand some people have been kicked or banned from CFC temporarily from the NES crew. If ANYBODY should be that, it's me.
 
The NES community consensus seems to be as follows:

If the moderators are willing to consider the selection of an indigenous mod (and again, I continue to personally recommend Lord_Iggy or North King for the job), and consider reform of the PDMA policies, reconciliation is possible.

Real concessions need to be seen at this point. The discussion has been nice, but discussion alone isn't going to placate this crowd after everything that has happened. There is a genuine, persistent fear and dislike of perceived moderator arrogance and immunity to criticism, and that needs to stop.
 
Let me restate this in a more coherent way:

The community launched itself in fervent aggression against someone who justified taking violent action against innocent human beings. Those who were most aggressive in opposing this advocacy of violence were punished. Those who raised their voices in outrage that those opposing advocacy of violence had been punished, were themselves punished and admonished. Those who attempted to raise further awareness of the problem were punished. Those who sought to encourage discussion of the problem, even in this thread, were censored and punished because of an arbitrary PDMA rule that hurts more than it helps. Let us reform that rule now.

At no point has a moderator stepped forward to APOLOGIZE for this colossal mismanagement of what was, fundamentally, a natural human impulse to protect one's community from hateful actors.

I personally have been a victim of terrorism. My father's office in the North Tower was immolated on 9/11 when I was 11 years old, and for several hours, I did not know if he was alive or dead. Frankly, I think of anyone advocating violence in America under any ideological guise to be abhorrent, and I told Amon that his views were naive and stupid because I know what violence directed at the helpless with any justification looks like.

Frankly, if the moderators cannot simply apologize for failing to be sensitive to the natural human fear of violence in one's own society, I fear that they have fallen into a culture of self-protection. I do not want to believe that of the moderators, who are an intelligent group of individuals with the community's best interests at heart.

If they DO have our community's best interests at heart, I would like to see moderators come forward and apologize for their statements and actions. We would all like to see that. By all means, prove that the charges of arrogance leveled against the moderation staff are not correct. Act with dignity and the community will respond.
 
I have heard from my peer that one of us was banned for 1 week for, and I quote what is apparently the actual word used by one of the moderator, "spreading the revolt" into OT.

I would very much like to believe that the moderator of this site is reasonable authority and have not used those actual words, with it being a fabrication. This is an extremely poor choice of words on the part of the moderation. Even if NESers used it first, there is still a big difference between calling for the upheaval of government by violent or protests and expressing discontent against volunteer site moderation of a forum by breaking forum rules.

Ergo, the repetition of the r-word here greatly disturbs me and validates my peer's statements. One moderator can make mistakes, but two? That concerns me.

If the moderation could do all in its power to tone back their language by avoiding hostile or militaristic language, it would go a long way to avoid creating further grievances: we have enough. Do not give ammunition to the people.

I doubt, however, it will resolve the current issue.

To be fair, again, you wouldn't believe how many disaffected members casually talked about Nazism during this incident. Yes, I agree with you that moderators should strive to avoid hostile language, but what we get subjected to is far worse.

Let me restate this in a more coherent way:

The community launched itself in fervent aggression against someone who justified taking violent action against innocent human beings.

The view of the moderators - and these posts were discussed at the time - was that he didn't, really, do that. Yes, we've all seen the reports and the other commentaries arguing that he's a "terrorist" or that his posts advocate terrorist violence, and we all disagreed. We felt, moreover, that those attacking him were deliberately goading him to say things that were worse. I don't mind saying (since I make no secret of my political views around here) that personally I found much of what Amon said to be repellent or, at best, hopelessly naive. I regard most American libertarian discourse in the same way. However, we don't infract people for that.

Those who were most aggressive in opposing this advocacy of violence were punished. Those who raised their voices in outrage that those opposing advocacy of violence had been punished, were themselves punished and admonished. Those who attempted to raise further awareness of the problem were punished.

They weren't punished for "opposing" his views, though, they were punished for flaming and trolling him back, including making violent threats of their own. As you rightly say, they were "aggressive". It was a dogpile. And those who were infracted were infracted because they were breaking the rules, on all sides.

If you go back and read over that argument, you'll see that the number of posts that got infracted was relatively small. (Had it been in OT, more might have been.) There are plenty of posts criticising Amon, sometimes quite passionately, which are not infracted. Why? Because they did so within the rules. This includes posts by members who got infracted for other posts or for other actions they took relating to all of this. They were capable of expressing criticism, sometimes quite forcefully, in a way that respected the rules. And that was fine. Infractions only happened when they didn't do that and stepped over the line.

So it's not correct to say, as some have done, that people got infracted simply for "calling out" what they perceived to be dangerous views.

Those who sought to encourage discussion of the problem, even in this thread, were censored and punished because of an arbitrary PDMA rule that hurts more than it helps. Let us reform that rule now.

The rule isn't arbitrary, as long experience has shown, but yes, discussion of that belongs in SF, not here.

At no point has a moderator stepped forward to APOLOGIZE for this colossal mismanagement of what was, fundamentally, a natural human impulse to protect one's community from hateful actors.

That impulse can be expressed in ways that aren't aggressive and violent, and that don't break the rules. As I said above, it was expressed reasonably much of the time. The issue was with those who went beyond this.

I personally have been a victim of terrorism. My father's office in the North Tower was immolated on 9/11 when I was 11 years old, and for several hours, I did not know if he was alive or dead. Frankly, I think of anyone advocating violence in America under any ideological guise to be abhorrent, and I told Amon that his views were naive and stupid because I know what violence directed at the helpless with any justification looks like.

And you did it in a way that respected the rules. So that was fine. It can be done!

Frankly, if the moderators cannot simply apologize for failing to be sensitive to the natural human fear of violence in one's own society, I fear that they have fallen into a culture of self-protection. I do not want to believe that of the moderators, who are an intelligent group of individuals with the community's best interests at heart.

If they DO have our community's best interests at heart, I would like to see moderators come forward and apologize for their statements and actions. We would all like to see that. By all means, prove that the charges of arrogance leveled against the moderation staff are not correct. Act with dignity and the community will respond.

I hope we are acting with dignity, or doing our best, but that doesn't mean simply agreeing that our actions were wrong when we don't think they were. And we don't! We're here to keep things civil by enforcing the rules. That is not always easy, and sometimes there isn't a right or a wrong answer about a difficult or borderline post. But we do have means of checking what we do. Any member who disagrees with a moderator action can discuss it with the moderator in question and, if they're not satisfied, appeal it to the senior mods or admins. We have a good procedure in place now for assessing these quickly and getting back to people. In the case of this incident, not a single one of the people who attacked Amon appealed the infractions they got for doing so. Had they done so, we'd have assessed the infractions and, if upheld, have explained why. What they actually did was to simply declare that the infractions were unfair, and then conspire to flood the rest of the site with spam, trolling, and outright flames.

We want to find a way of moving forward on this, but it's not going to be by simply making out the moderators are all bad and the other members are all blameless victims. I'm glad that Wrymouth has had the stones to apologise in this thread for what he did - and that will be addressed too, though not here. But in the light of that kind of thing - and that's just the tip of the iceberg - I hope you'll understand if I say that I think the way you've portrayed the situation is a little unfair.
 
Plotinus said:
The view of the moderators - and these posts were discussed at the time - was that he didn't, really, do that. Yes, we've all seen the reports and the other commentaries arguing that he's a "terrorist", and we all disagreed.

This is insane. Amon's sole expressed point of difference between himself and Tim McVeigh was that "he would never kill children". That's it. As someone who works in a government building of the sort McVeigh blew up I just can't even parse how that sort of rhetoric is even close to acceptable. (Worryingly, my building doesn't have a creche to protect me). To put it bluntly, Amon expressed a willingness to kill people like me for carrying out our jobs.

I'd also like to note that Amon's rhetoric is consistent with the sort of stuff that Sovereign Citizens like to spout. Whether or not he's one is frankly neither here nor there, given his express willingness to murder me, but I thought I'd just quote what the FBI has to say about that lot and their ilk:

FBI said:
The FBI considers sovereign-citizen extremists as comprising a domestic terrorist movement, which, scattered across the United States, has existed for decades, with well-known members, such as Terry Nichols, who helped plan the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, bombing. Sovereign citizens do not represent an anarchist group, nor are they a militia, although they sometimes use or buy illegal weapons. Rather, they operate as individuals without established leadership and only come together in loosely affiliated groups to train, help each other with paperwork, or socialize and talk about their ideology. They may refer to themselves as “constitutionalists” or “freemen,” which is not necessarily a connection to a specific group, but, rather, an indication that they are free from government control. They follow their own set of laws. While the philosophies and conspiracy theories can vary from person to person, their core beliefs are the same: The government operates outside of its jurisdiction. Because of this belief, they do not recognize federal, state, or local laws, policies, or regulations.

I'd also like to note that had Amon been an Australian, I would have been obliged to report him and what he said as as credible terrorist threat because that's how I read it.

Plotinus said:
We felt, moreover, that those attacking him were deliberately goading him to say things that were worse.
Normal people don't get goaded into making terrorism threats.
 
Plotinus, while almost all of what you say may be factually correct, if no moderator can actually say "I am sorry," I do not personally see any reason why the majority of the community which has left will return.

The inability to admit ANY serious fault on the moderators' behalf in escalating and inflaming the community speaks to an INCREDIBLE level of self-protection and, if not arrogance, insensitivity to the community. Obviously I can't discuss specific incidents as that's a violation of forum rules. The moderators have a monopoly on the discourse right now which makes it entirely impossible to have a rational discussion of this issue, and furthermore simply inflames and frustrates those who have to couch their criticisms in non-specific terms.

No matter how clearly you justify yourself, it will take more than that to bring these people back. At the least, an apology from certain moderators for excessive and overzealous enforcement of the crackdown, and a concrete reform of the PDMA rules, is required to have any hope of getting people to return.

While I realize this is off topic, Plot, consider this thread! We have had a healthy discussion of the issues which has, like it or not, contained a lot of PDMA. In the course of that PDMA, these members have not flamed, trolled, or insulted the moderators. They have simply expressed their feelings. If you view that this thread has been constructive and has not devolved into the kind of chaos that defenders of the PDMA rule seem to expect the forum will have without a discussion ban, you have already seen that reform of this rule, allowing increased openness and discussion, works.

I speak not for myself, but for for those who have left. I don't think we want to upend CFC and dethrone every moderator and admin. We just want a recognition of humility and a move away from the current opaque and unaccountable grievance procedures.
 
So it's not correct to say, as some have done, that people got infracted simply for "calling out" what they perceived to be dangerous views.

So I figured having no investment in this drama I'd check out some of the posts, well those that haven't been deleted.

It took thirty seconds to find someone who got infracted for calling out perceived dangerous views.

My point I guess is the line between legitimate discussion and flaming/trolling can be very blurry. Particularly when extremist ideologies are involved. The main issue with moderation not just here but time and time again in other subforums I notice revolves around people being infracted for essentially calling extremist ideologies extremist.

The extremists themselves are generally careful to obey the letter of the law but not the spirit, so they are allowed free reign until they inevitably slip up a few weeks or months down the line. But the damage is already done.

What is extremism? It is something that people as individuals or communities find morally or emotionally egregious. Any discussion of extremism is bound to involve moral or emotional arguments. These are necessarily passionate arguments. And subjective. Is it flaming if to an average rational person and ten of their colleagues someone's post really does make them sound like a dangerous lunatic, and the person calls them out as such? The forum rules advise us to "behave as you would in a public location". I say such a response is totally in keeping with that.

Anyway, that's my $0.02 ZWD
 
I continue to encourage NESers to support reform. I have updated the first post with my proposed PDMA rule changes but I'd like to hear your thoughts as well.

The next step is repeatedly requesting a forum-wide poll or an upper-level admin discussion (hopefully both) on bringing these rules changes into effect.

We achieve change as a community in the institutions we wish to see change by negotiating, by failing to give up on those negotiations, and by applying pressure with dignity and with responsible, moral arguments.
 
Me so popular :3. While people are arguing for the violence of the state, I am being labeled a terrorist for arguing against it? I can quote LuckyMoose as stating that he is a thug, and asking for my real life information so that he wouldn't "Hit [me] in the head so hard". If Thlayli feels "unsafe" because I post my views, then I definitely feel unsafe with someone telling me they'll commit an act of violence against ME. I guess I should demand some sort of action too?

Those who are arguing to leave this forum just want free reign to troll as hard as they want. Go to reddit and get that out of your system, and leave this forum to NESing, please. I find it rather hilarious that people want to talk about controversial subjects in WWW until someone points out that they're all supporting systematic violence and oppression, and pointing out the fact that it's alright to protect yourself regardless of whether or not the person assaulting you has a badge.

The NESing community is way too cliqish to moderate itself. It's been proposed in the past and it's always been rejected because of this reason. I really think that people are blowing some nonsense that should have been left to the OT forum WAYYYYY out of proportion. This is a game forum, people. This is exactly the problem that has come over the NES forum in particular. It's too serious, and no fun.

The best thing would have been to send the WWW threads to OT, and leave the NESing forum for NESing. If the players want to have discussions between themselves, there are plenty of third party chat programs (And #nes). Go have your off-topic "be statist or you're a terrorist" conversations there. The mods here have been way TOO lenient on the content that they've allowed in the WWW thread, considering how ott-topic it is, and here you are whining about reform lol.

Oh and the part about racism... I guess it's ok as long as it's racism against whites? I guess to some people that makes sense, but to me it doesn't. And the moderator upheld that racism, is my only problem with the way the mods have handled themselves thus far.
 
Amon, your post is inflammatory and unhelpful. It's also unrelated to the discussion we've been having. There's even a case for it to be considered trolling.

Please go ahead and remove yourself from the thread if you can't contribute in a productive way.
 
Oh, I didn't know this thread was only for those people who agree with you Thlayli. I'll remove myself.
 
Just find it funny that you'd mention a guy so many times in the thread, then tell that guy to get out of the conversation when he chimes in to point out his side of the story. This is the sort of thing you think is fair, I imagine. Which is a solid reason why you should be furthest from anyone's mind when considering for a moderator position.
 
I hope you guys don't need a moderator to know to not go any further.

Amon can write in the thread as well, especially when so much people are saying is about him.

Now back to the subject.
 
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