Regarding NES Moderation

Moderator approachability is one of the underlying reasons for this event. I believe that very few NESers bothered to contact moderations out of fear that their concerns will not be handled fairly.

Even if NESers were the ones in the wrong, that this sentiment is widespread over much of community is a significant problem.
 
Moderator approachability is one of the underlying reasons for this event. I believe that very few NESers bothered to contact moderations out of fear that their concerns will not be handled fairly.

Even if NESers were the ones in the wrong, that this sentiment is widespread over much of community is a significant problem.
So they went on by themselves and broke as many forum rules as they can, because that is so very fair to the moderators. You are aware that the moderators have never done anything to cause such unbelievable fear of them? The only times moderators appeared on our forum with infractions and bans were when rules were being broken. The only other times were when they were players in NESes.
 
Moderator approachability is one of the underlying reasons for this event. I believe that very few NESers bothered to contact moderations out of fear that their concerns will not be handled fairly.
I'm not sure where this comes from because several years ago, before BJ became the moderator here, I had several game managers contact me asking for help with certain of their participants. While I am not a NES'er, I responded to them and asked what they needed and how they wanted me to handle it and did pretty much what they asked.

Agree that if forum members have had issues with moderators and a fear of contacting them that it is unhealthy. But things can never improve if they do not try it and see what happens.
 
Agree that if forum members have had issues with moderators and a fear of contacting them that it is unhealthy. But things can never improve if they do not try it and see what happens.

I've repeatedly read statements from my fellow NESers saying that they did repeatedly PM moderators on various issues - Amon's posts and the aftermath - over the course of a week or so, and that essentially there was no feedback or nothing happened as a result.

It was only, I believe, when an anonymous NESer informed the mods about the imminent 'exodus' and directed them to the social group, and some NESers made public announcements of quitting, that we ended up getting this thread.

I'm very grateful for this thread. But aside from the fact I worry we're hitting a brick wall, we should remember it was apparently not a result of outreach to the mods, but rather their reaction to something already in progress and what appears to be a fait accompli at this point.

Thus illustrating the benefits of openness and communication before stuff like this blows up.

Again, I'd stress the point that all this had been building up for years, and dismissing it as a one-off by a bunch of troublemakers is not healthy for CFC forums as a whole.
 
Not sure who they PM'ed as I did not received anything.

I come from and, mostly, moderate in GOTM. I do not know NES'ers and seldom come here unless asked or there is a major problem. Each forum has a personality and each moderator is allowed to operate that forum in their own way. So it is not surprising I had heard little about what was going on here.
 
Personally, I like BSmith, and I think he was just trying to do his job. But like he said, he's just extremely busy and has a family, and his responsibilities mean that things can get out of hand when he's not around to monitor them.
 
Partially as a result of this discussion and the realities of the way the WWW thread is used in practice (if not by initial intent) I have opened two new WWW threads. One for NES related discussions only, and one for anything else you want to talk about:

- NES only thread

- OT thread

I have closed the old WWW thread.
 
I have been on holiday for the past few weeks, and I should like to say that the moderation of this issue has obviously been unnecessarily interventionist. It seems clear to me that there are a few particularly loopy and trigger-happy mods, and some slightly saner ones; whenever the trigger-happy ones decide to infract, they do so, and so the harshest and most unreasonable denominator among the staff always comes out on top, and the mods come down quite unnecessarily hard - except that they seem to be biased in favour of people who report, even when those very people are being vitriolic and unreasonable. Even Birdjaguar has infuriated the NESing community at times, and we have been annoyed with good reason - so much the worse when the really infuriating mods get going.

At any rate, I am very disappointed that my hobby seems to be put in jeopardy repeatedly for no good reason. I gain some amount of enjoyment from this. Why, on what legitimate principle, is it justified that the forum mods should repeatedly and continually hinder the continuance of my fun and the enjoyment all other NESers derive from doing this? Few of these problems would arise, and none of the NES forum's problems would develop into a serious impediment to its continued running, if the staff ceased to create havoc and behave ridiculously harshly (and moreover unevenly). What real necessity means that the staff have to impose things on us? We do no harm to anyone, and the staff should not try to prevent non-serious problems.

I also agree that the NES forum should have a NESer mod, such as Lord Iggy or Thlayli.
 
Please Spry, that is totally not true. The moderators have not intervened in any NES, except for telling us we need to accept everyone in our games, in years. How exactly did they hurt NESing?

If someone breaks the rules, he should be punished according to the rules. People who signed into this forum agreed on that. If someone is unhappy with the rules, he can try to ask to have them change (and most likely fail with the rule change requested here) or he can search for a place with rules more to his liking.

Seeing as the moderation here have done nothing wrong, and that the rules are good, why would those change?
 
I should add as a rider the fact that I may be barking up the wrong tree, since I was after all on holiday. If I have the facts of the matter more or less right, though, what I say holds - and in any case, I still maintain that the principle and general contention of what I say is valid.
 
Well, considering the moderators have done nothing wrong, and your complains is mainly against the moderators, and if the facts you were given are in any way close to the image that was removed from the beginning of the thread because it was a fake... You might be barking up the wrong tree.
 
Well, now you're starting from the premise that the moderators have done nothing wrong. Since my conclusion is the opposite of that premise, you may not be surprised to hear that an argument based on that premise is not very convincing in my view. Anyway, the mods can read my original post and see if they think, in good conscience, there's anything in it.
 
It is time for me to do something that I probably should have done a long time ago, but refrained from since I was attempting to stay above the fray and not engage in much public PDMA on my own behalf. Unfortunately with recent events both here and on the Frontier as well as a continuing dialogue that is happening off site from CFC among the community – a dialogue that has been extremely derogatory and one sided – I feel compelled to tell the full story from my perspective.

First, let's take a step back and discuss why I am even here as a moderator of NES. Back in May I noticed that BJ was not able to be as active as he had been, and that he was planning on taking some time off. I had participated in several NESes in the few years prior to this, and was currently the moderator for IOT as well as NOTW/Mafia. I reached out to BJ to volunteer to assist him with moderating NES. NES was a community that I was a part of and that I, for the most part, understood. Aside from the standard derision of IOT from some NESers the reality is that both forums are very similar in their intent and reason for existence.

I thought that it would be better for the community for someone with NES experience to be their moderator instead of another site moderator that didn't have any experience or real knowledge of NESes and how they are run. Unfortunately some of the immediate feedback was not that welcoming:

Mr Smith will be assuming duties as the offical NES moderator. I am taking a six month sabbatical from moderating CFC. My RL work has added several new dimensions that cut into my time here substantially. So, rather than be a halfassed moderator who is not around enough, I have decided to step away from those responsibilities and pass them along to BSmith. I will be around from time to time, but you cannot count on me to fix problems in a timely manner, if at all.

So we're being handed off without a say in the matter to a moderator that isn't active in the community and has no understanding of it? Sounds like the death of NESing incoming.

I also probably didn't make many friends shortly after becoming the moderator by enquiring about the whole "arya" incident. I reviewed all of the material regarding this incident – both public as well as deleted posts and staff discussions – and came to the conclusion that I agreed 100% with BJ on the inclusiveness requirements for the forum. Out of the discussion I had regarding this issue, I decided that it was necessary to post in a more prominent fashion the guidelines that BJ had previously written and published in the WWW thread. I didn't make any new rules, I just made them more visible.

Beyond this, I recognized that the NES community is very insular and somewhat unique. There is a strong culture and desire to manage things among the community. It was expressed in no uncertain terms that things usually ran well and that much moderation was not really needed. I found this to be true as I pretty much left the forum alone for several months over the summer. I issued no warnings or infractions between the middle of June and the middle of August anywhere in the NES forum.

Ironically this lax supervision and light moderating style was ultimately harmful to the community because when things started getting heated in late August and I had to step in, I was suddenly viewed as being over bearing and heavy handed.

So let's talk about what happened at the end of August and into September in some detail, because I think this is the crux of the matter at hand and that there has been a lot of misinformation and in some cases down right lies about what happened which has led to a not insubstantial amount of abuse directed towards the CFC staff in general and me in particular.

As we all know there was an ongoing off-topic discussion in the WWW thread between Amon and several other posters. Amon happens to have some fairly controversial opinions and in turn has not exactly made that many friends in the community.

I viewed the conversation in the WWW thread at the end of August as mainly a political one. While Amon was expressing some very controversial opinions I did not see them as direct threats on anyone or any thing. I viewed them as expressions of an extreme libertarian viewpoint. Overall I thought that the community handled the discussion fairly well, with many members challenging his statements with counter arguments of their own. Things mainly ran their course, but started to devolve around 8/28 when I stepped in and said it was time to cool it.

For the most part things did cool down until on 9/1 Symphony D. posted a link to an article about perceived threats to the United States. This by itself is not a problem, but I perceived this as a direct attempt to restart the conversation that had already ended. Sure enough Amon took the bait and replied with what seemed like a sarcastic comment, to which Symphony immediately replied with this troll:

Are you mad that the government you treat as an enemy considers you one in return?

What then followed was a concentrated and concerted effort by Symphony and a few others to directly flame and troll amon. This continued despite my issuing infractions in thread and asking to stop being personal. Indeed, I received the following responses from Symphony and Lucky regarding their infraction notices:

Symphony D. said:
I'm pretty okay with trolling avowed terrorists whose literal stated goal is the destruction of my country's government so I'll wear the two points with pride, thanks.

Luckymoose said:
It's okay. I reported him with Symphony. I won't support a person who promotes the murder of United States citizens for his anarchist ideology.

BSmith1068 said:
Dear Luckymoose,

You have received an infraction at Civilization Fanatics' Forums.

Reason: Flaming Other Member(s)
-------
Calling someone a terrorist is flaming.
-------

This infraction is worth 2 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

Original Post:
[post]13429838[/post]
You're right, the cop was completely justified killing an unarmed civilian. I often kill people over cigars, too! Start a fundraiser for me when I get caught and see if it reaches 400k?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_the_United_States

But I guess government officials have a different set of morals they get to follow that don't apply to the rest of us I guess is what you're saying.

Cop goes and kills innocents, big deal. Innocent advocates self defense against anyone infringing on his rights (including but not limited to cops!), he's a terrorist. 2 sets of rules and it's completely fine I guess, because Luckymoose wants more taxes.

A person who commits strong-armed robbery, blocks traffics, and then (as the autopsy shows) potentially charged an on duty police officer is not innocent by any means. Second, I would see people like you (domestic terrorists seeking the destruction of my government) thrown in prison if I could. You renounced your citizenship? Where do you live, then? A former marine renouncing citizenship and speaking up for violence against government employees (which include soldiers) shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets. We don't need another Timothy McVeigh.

All the best,
Civilization Fanatics' Forums

When I gave Symphony his last infraction, which earned him an automatic 1 week ban due to accumulated points I received this message:

Symphony D. said:
BSmith1068 said:
Dear Symphony D.,

You have received an infraction at Civilization Fanatics' Forums.

Reason: (Major) Trolling
-------
Still trolling. I asked that we stop being personal in this thread. I get that you are making a stand here, but you'll also have to suffer the consequences.
-------

This infraction is worth 3 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.
Ironically, I'm pretty onboard with Thoreau's willingness to accept consequences, and I would rather be principled and make a stand for decency than be polite. As someone with a previous association with the United States Air Force, as far as I'm concerned trolling Amon is now my patriotic duty. I'll be sure to put the week to good use. Later.

As can be seen by these PMs they explicitly acknowledgement that what they had done was breaking the rules, and that they accepted accountability for their actions and were not disputing the infractions. As we all know, Symphony did put his week to good use and posted his now infamous post almost exactly when his ban was over. I might also note that the first line of his post was, and I quote:

I freely acknowledge that the consequence of what I am about to say is that I will no longer be welcome by the people that run this forum, and I both gladly and preemptively accept that. Yes, this is "PDMA" and "trolling," you may apply infraction points or ban me if you want, I don't care, this account will be inoperable after I post this. I've set up a disposable e-mail account with a random password, redirected this account to it, and randomized its password as well. Once I log out of both after making this post I will never be able to retrieve this account's login and I damn sure won't make another.

The subsequent reactions to this post and the perceived organized actions of "civil disobedience" then escalated the issue and naturally CFC staff cracked down on this blatant violation of the rules.

So why do I post this now? It is clear to me that small subset of the NES community actively and premeditatively acted in a manner that was guaranteed to draw negative moderator actions and that then those actions were used to paint a picture of moderator overreach and abuse. In off site channels like #nes and The Frontier an active dialogue was created whereby the CFC staff didn't care about the community and only wanted to be oppressive and one sided. Misinformation was rampant, and continued actions by staff were increasingly viewed through a skeptical and somewhat conspiratorial manner.

Statements to the effect that I was taking sides on the original discussion with Amon do not stand up to the facts, yet that perception has become the common narrative. This ignores the evidence, both given above, and in the infraction history I will outline below of 3 of the major players in all of this. Between mid-August and mid-September I issued the following infractions for the following posters:

Amon:
19-Aug trolling
19-Aug trolling
22-Aug trolling (warning)
28-Aug Flaming
2-Sep trolling
2-Sep Flaming
16-Sep Flaming

Lucky:
14-Aug Flaming
3-Sep Flaming
10-Sep Flaming

Symphony:
19-Aug trolling
2-Sep trolling
2-Sep PDMA
2-Sep trolling

Over that period I infracted Amon the same number of times as I infracted Symphony and Lucky combined, yet somehow I gave Amon a pass? I don't think so. If anything I was too lenient on those that were intentionally breaking the rules to get a reaction.

So let's fast forward a little bit here. Now that the rebellion had happened (and let's not mince words here, that is exactly what it was and exactly what many members were calling it) I wanted to try to mend fences as best I could. I strongly advocated for this thread to be created within our staff discussion. I wanted a place where the normal rules would be relaxed a little and the community could blow off some steam and have a discussion on the issues they perceived with moderation of this forum. Some staff members were naturally uncomfortable with this approach, but I stood up for it.

Almost immediately after posting this thread the ground rules for it were broken, specifically with a blatant PDMA discussion based entirely on a forged infraction PM. I discouraged infracting/banning the poster as would have been normal procedure since I wanted this to be an open discussion and even though the stated rules for the thread were broken, I felt that pressure had to be released. The boundaries of the thread – already a fairly open environment, something that is not normally permitted – continued to be pressed, but I insisted that it say open and that we have the dialogue that we needed. Indeed I have never closed it, even though discussion here ended a little while ago.

Out of this thread came two major changes to the way moderation is handled in this forum. First I made the decision to enshrine the ability to discuss off-topic things in this forum while at the same time protecting the ability to have uncluttered discussions about things that are NES related by creating the two new WWW threads.

Second, after much deliberation among staff, we granted the community's wish to have a new moderator for this section that was himself a NESer and long time member of this community. Not only did we feel that this was a good idea on its own merits, but frankly I do not have the time with RL commitments to be as engaged and ever present in this community as I should be. I certainly can't manage everything on my own.

Lastly, there is now an ongoing discussion of the PDMA rules in Site Feedback – a discussion that stemmed from this thread.

I also will note that the conversation regarding a potential merger between IOT and NES was beginning to take hold in the IOT forum. I felt that this was something that needed to be discussed by everyone and not be relegated to one subset of the potentially affected community. I brought the topic up in the WWW thread at the time, but in response to a NESer's PM decided that it was better to have the conversation in one central (and neutral) place so that all voices could be heard. Unfortunately the underlying narrative that began to take hold was that staff wanted to eliminate NES and merge it with IOT. This was despite many forthright statements by myself and the admins that that certainly wasn't the case.

Despite all of these things that I actively had done to try to foster a conversation and solve the root problems with the community, despite all that I had done to try to be as inclusive in the discussions on any potential merger, the ongoing narrative (especially on the Frontier) was one where we were nothing more than oppressive overlords forcing the community out.

Speaking of the Frontier – let's have a little discussion about recent events over there as well. As many of you know I have been permanently banned on the Frontier. Last week I made an account over there in an attempt to do two things: First to defend myself from false accusations and from literally being compared to Hitler and other Nazis. Second to open another avenue of communication where I wouldn't be as restricted as I am here.

In my approval request thread, some members decided to get personal and literally tell me to go F myself. In this post and one other in the (now old) WWW thread on the Frontier this poster personally insulted me, claimed I did things that simply were not true, and attempted to tarnish my reputation as a moderator here on CFC.

I reported these two posts to the administration of The Frontier. The report in the approval thread was met with derision publicly by the administrator that he couldn't remember the last time anyone had reported a post. The second report earned me an instant permaban for making "threats".

Thing is that I certainly didn't make any threats. Here is the entire text of my report:

"This and the other post I reported are technically libel and should probably be removed from your site..."

So how did I find out about my ban? By logging into the site to attempt to read a PM from Secretariat regarding the report. Thing is that once you have been banned, you can't read any of your messages. I sent an e-mail to the admin asking for clarification and have yet to receive any response. I sent ChiefDeisgner a PM here on CFC inquiring as to what the PM said and asking why I was banned. I just received the following PM from him this morning:

ChiefDesigner said:
This and the other post I reported are technically libel and should probably be removed from your site...

My understanding is that you have not spoken to a lawyer about this, so here is the relevant statute and case law regarding defamatory claims on the Internet.

The Frontier, as a site, is headquartered in the United States. The servers are located in the state of Arizona; The Frontier is thus subject to both Arizona and federal law.

Specifically, the Frontier is subject to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which states:

47 U.S.C.§230 (c)(1) said:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

I do not know if you are familiar with the relevant case law. The statute has been construed to provide absolute immunity against defamatory claims, so long as the defendant (in this case, The Frontier) meets the following criteria:

  • The defendant must be a "provider or user" of an "interactive computer service."
  • The cause of action asserted by the plaintiff must "treat" the defendant "as the publisher or speaker" of the harmful information at issue.
  • The information must be "provided by another information content provider," i.e., the defendant must not be the "information content provider" of the harmful information at issue.

As the Frontier meets all of these criteria -- Luckymoose is not associated with the content provision service of the Frontier -- there would be no grounds for a lawsuit. US courts consider the service provider completely immune to defamatory claims (Zeran v. AOL, Carofano vs. Metrosplash.com), and any claim that the Frontier is in any way liable for the statement made by Luckymoose will be subject to Section 230 dismissal at the pretrial hearing. If you intend to file suit against the Frontier, please keep this law in mind.

Are you intending to file suit against Luckymoose?


No where in my report did I even mention anything related to a lawsuit or any legal action. No where. I was stating a simple fact that I thought the posts I reported were libelous and that they should be removed. Full stop. I never got a message requesting clarification, or even a decision on action/no action. Just the permaban.

On top of all that, the only way I really knew why I was banned was from other members of the community, which tells me that there was an active discussion regarding my ban and the claimed reasons for it. All the while I had no official recognition of why I was banned or any way to challenge/redress it in any way. And let's not forget the first post of the new WWW thread – how Secretariat has "exorcised the demons" – a reference directly referring to me.

So you want to talk about oppressive moderation and personal biases affecting moderation actions? Here is a prime example of it.

I have done everything I can to be as open and fair to everyone in this community. I have done my best to allow for an open discussion of the needs of the community, and have actively sheltered members of the community from enforcement of the rules that they have blatantly broken so that we could have that discussion. I have championed changes that the community has asked for and have pushed for their implementation.

What do I get for it? I get called Hitler and a demon and every action – every action – that I now do as a moderator is second guessed and viewed through some twisted conspiratorial lens. Even something as simple as explaining a rule on the site. I have experienced posters that I have had a good relationship with for literally years questioning me and my actions. I have had every word I write literally taken apart and twisted and contorted to make me out as some kind of monster. Above all that I have tried to remain above the fray, and to try to not let my emotions get in the way of my moderation. Am I perfect? No. Nobody is. But I am damn well trying.

So from now on I would appreciate some respect and understanding for my point of view, and some trust that I do indeed have what is best for the community in mind with all of my actions.

If you want to leave CFC, then go. But that is your choice. Make that choice and stick with it. Don't keep coming back here to snipe or whine. If you want to be part of both communities – go for it! I think that there is plenty of room for everyone in both places. I have said it before and I'll say it again. I am glad that NESing and IOTs have moved beyond the CFC borders. I truly wish the community well and hope that it will be successful wherever NESes/IOTs/STGs/WBGs/Whatever are played.

/rant. please be respectful and read everything before commenting.
 
1. By mentioning libel you did what Lefty did in a PM to one of our members, by saying that libel on the internet could be brought forth as a lawsuit. I did not tell them to delete your posts or ban you, and I even said I hoped you enjoyed yourself in spite of what you did to us. But when you said libel, everyone thought you meant lawsuit. So, I told them to let you do it, if you wanted, because I know the law well enough to know I'd never in a million years ever see the inside of a courtroom.

2. If you'd actually engaged with the community at any point in this instead of pretending to, which is again explained in your post, then none of this would have happened. The Arya incident pissed everyone off for obvious reasons. We still hate how that was handled. The Amon incidents were in direct violation of the rules of this forum, yet you blamed us for wanting him out of our community for his beliefs? The rules specifically say:

What is not allowed: posting about illegal activities said:
We also, obviously, do not permit people to post things in violation of the law, particularly US law. We do not allow people to advocate for the death of anybody.

To say we don't know the rules is insulting. Obviously we know and enforce them better than the staff assigned to us.

3. We never voted for EQ, and he knows that. He's nearly as removed from our community as you are, though we've actually had interactions with him. He doesn't frequent our chat or talk to many of us outside of the forums or the occasional IM. Appointing him instead of one of the better options, such as Lord Iggy, really gave us the sense that none in the staff knew a damn thing about the community or who in it would do the best job. We aren't looking for a new boss. We're looking to be left alone. And for the most part nothing happens worthy of infraction, but when someone is breaking the rules and insulting our community with their views we do expect them to be removed instead of supported.

4. In the WWW thread, I had to call in Birdjaguar to conduct moderator action against Erez for directly linking images to another forum and flaming various users. I had, among others, reported those incidents to you, BSmith. You ignored them. We know you ignored them because the people being flamed were people you didn't agree with. That's not how you make friends here. That's not how rules are applied. Everything must be applied to everyone equally, based on their actions. No one ever disagreed with this. We weren't the ones willfully ignoring reports, PMs, and community outcry.

5. To try and turn this against us is to assume we're collectively idiots. We've all seen the same things (and no, we were not happy about wry's forged PM and never condoned that sort of behavior), and we all know the story as it unfolded. We've heard from Birdjaguar and EQ. We've heard from other former moderators on this site. We've heard from people who have never been part of this community but also understand what is going on. I am on the brink of being permanently banned from a website I devoted nearly nine years to all because of the escalation of force used by the moderators against our "rebellion." You post this thing here because you don't think anyone is going to reply to it, or you'll want to delete this post of mine or ban me for doing so. We're not dumb. We're not ignorant of the system. We're not easily suckered. Don't play us for fools, man.

And especially don't call me insane. That's libel, brother.
 
A very one-sided view, BSmith.

I'd respond, but I'd get banned, because here you control the dialogue and can simply expunge any posts or commentary that hurts your feelings.

This and the other post I reported are technically libel and should probably be removed from your site...

is plainly read as threatening a lawsuit.


The only remedy for libel is filing suit in a court of law. The threat of legal action is implicit, yes, but it is there in the text.

You may not have intended it. Fine. But don't claim it doesn't exist, and don't say that a forum is legally liable for the content it posts.
 
I'm taking over the discussion for the moderators' point of view here, and luckymoose, I encourage you to see things from both sides of the issue. I know you can be reasonable, and I trust you to do so when I present the arguments here. Change does not happen overnight, and there must be conversation before it takes place. You know the views I have expressed elsewhere, and allow me to respond on Bsmith's behalf to the points you have raised.

1. Libel was thrown around in haste, and will not be thrown around as such in the future.

2. Amon did receive infractions for his actions, despite earlier allegations that he had not. His statements do clearly represent those reflective of the sovereign citizen community, which are well known as threats to law enforcement in the United States. As both my wife and I are members of law enforcement, I find his views repugnant, unlawful, and disturbing, in this I agreed with you. I do not agree that he should be ejected from this community due to his views. By all means, block him from #nes or participation on the frontier. Don't join his NESes or refuse to take part in NESes he is in. That said, he is still an NESer, and even if he has a different view, he should still be allowed to be around to NES or run NESes. How well do you know the political views of all NESers? Probably not as much as you think. Amon Savag made no threats against any other NESer, though in my opinion, he did imply threats towards government employees. Still, unless you are a sanctioned employee of the government sent to enforce or investigate domestic terrorism, you have no right to inflict your own sort of justice upon him.

3. You've also never given me a fair chance. I did not ask to be moderator. I did not want to be moderator. The reason I chose to accept this spot was to try to bring reason and repair the relationship between both sides in the debate. I've barely been here, and I'm still learning the rules and ropes of being a moderator. Remember, it's been mere weeks since this whole thing took place. I made a promise, and that promise was to be an NESer first, and a moderator second. If I am ever asked to do something that compromises that, I will be done with being a moderator. Though I've never been active in #nes and have been actively opposed to an "exodus" I do in fact keep up with what goes on in the community and what people say. I further promised to help advance NESing interests and to preserve this community. You may not have voted for me, but don't write me off because you didn't. Try actually talking to me, I see you on Steam all the time, you and others. I can't do anything about what has happened in the past, but I can make sure that there's a future here.

4. BSmith will be taking over IOT moderation exclusively for a while, and I'll be watching NES, with Birdjaguar above both. I will not ignore NES, and if there is a blatant rule violation, I will enforce it. Beyond that, see #3.

5. In the recent unpleasantness, there was clearly two conflicting narratives. From my perspective, neither side was completely correct in its handling of affairs. Rampant paranoia and bad blood existed, once again on both sides, and frankly, things have been said and done that many will regret. All we can do now is move forward and try to establish new trust on both sides of the table. For any arrangement to work, you and others must be willing to meet halfway at least on occasion. That is the very essence of a compromise. As I've said, give things some time and a fair chance, and you may find that change could come. This isn't American politics, we can try to have at least some civility and compromise.
 
2. Amon is in direct violation of the rules, as quoted in my post, and is thus not allowed to express his views on CFC.

3. I'm sure you'll do a fine job moderating the people who are left. But I doubt we'll ever come back to a forum that censors our voices and rejects changes to rules and moderation, or doesn't let us have a say in them when they do change things, now that we have a forum that is much freer and full of the kinds of people we want to be associated with.

4. Good. BSmith should never have been brought here. To my knowledge, he was an IOTer first and associates more with their community than ours.

5. We've asked for changes, but were very efficiently put down when doing so. We left. Some members refused to stay or leave, walking away completely. The damage has been done and I see no apologies from the staff here, nor will they ever present one. We want to run our games, writer our stories, and hang out with our friends who we've had for a decade plus. There is no reason to compromise when we found somewhere to better suit our needs. The staff should be happy about that.
 

compromise

Why should we afford civility to people who are not having good-faith discussions?

At no point did any moderator step up and apologize, not even in a meaningless pro forma sense. If someone in a position of authority had stood up and said "We're sorry, this is obviously important to you, it is being taken seriously", this would have been a non-issue.

The fact that no such apology was offered, even when Thlayli directly asked for one, is a clear sign that the disrespect in the mod forum for the posters and the community here runs deep.

Respect is earned, not given. And at this point, I see very little in the culture of the moderator forum that is worth respecting.

This brings me to the topic of respect, and how blatantly charges of defamation were thrown around. If at any point the CFC staff had spoken with an actual lawyer familiar with the issues, they would know that CFC is not legally liable for defamatory content under 47 USC 230 (the 1996 Telecommunications Act).

You say that charges of libel will not be so easily used in the future. How do we know that this will be enforced, given that an earlier post was read by everyone except BSmith to be threatening legal action against either the Frontier, Luckymoose, or both?
 
@Luckymoose:
2. Violation of the rules is cause for infraction, not always immediate banning. What was done then happened, and is in the past. The best we can do is make a better future.

3 and 5. Then if you're gone, be gone. If there's no chance for reconciliation, then don't stay and argue. What would be the point? Yes, you could argue that you're defending yourself against Bsmith's accusations, but why should you care about what someone says on a forum you claim to have left?

Why should we afford civility to people who are not having good-faith discussions?

At no point did any moderator step up and apologize, not even in a meaningless pro forma sense. If someone in a position of authority had stood up and said "We're sorry, this is obviously important to you, it is being taken seriously", this would have been a non-issue.

The fact that no such apology was offered, even when Thlayli directly asked for one, is a clear sign that the disrespect in the mod forum for the posters and the community here runs deep.

Respect is earned, not given. And at this point, I see very little in the culture of the moderator forum that is worth respecting.

This brings me to the topic of respect, and how blatantly charges of defamation were thrown around. If at any point the CFC staff had spoken with an actual lawyer familiar with the issues, they would know that CFC is not legally liable for defamatory content under 47 USC 230 (the 1996 Telecommunications Act).

You say that charges of libel will not be so easily used in the future. How do we know that this will be enforced, given that an earlier post was read by everyone except BSmith to be threatening legal action against either the Frontier, Luckymoose, or both?

I'm sorry, this issue is obviously important to you, and it IS being taken seriously.

There were many points where this could have all be defused, by either side. At this point you have nothing but my assurance that things will be different. I am actively pursuing a number of changes and I will continue to do so until such day that it seems impossible. If the moderators here are truly as irredeemable and stubborn as you think they are, rest assured one day I will join you at the Frontier. I choose to believe otherwise.

Nothing happens overnight, and it's only been just over two weeks now since this started. As I said to luckymoose, if you believe things truly cannot be fixed, then stay at the frontier, let those of us who do think things can be fixed do what we need to do.

I in turn ask you, what indication are you and luckymoose giving to moderators that you can compromise in good faith? What reason to respect or indication have you given them that you will follow the rules that you would lay out?

There has been substantial bad blood between both sides, there is no doubt of that. I seek to only make sure that from here on out, a mutually agreeable relationship is built from ground up. I've made my promises, and if I cannot keep them, I will depart, but in the mean time I'll do my utmost to make sure that this forum is the best possible place for doing what we were all here to do: run and play in NESes.
 
A couple of points, though Chief has already made the ones I was going to make pretty efficiently:

1) "Libel" is more or less exclusively a legal term. It is around the 12000th most common word in the English language, somewhere below "paroxysm".* It is pretty clear that the usage of this term implies legal action. This is entirely in keeping with CFC's stance to this point, which has been to use bullying and intimidation to threaten the other side. Observe: all posts contrary to their point of view that were not in this thread have been deleted. Several individuals, not just BSmith, referred to NESers as a "rebellion", and used the term "libel" as well -- which implicitly threatens legal action. People who used, as an avatar, the original post of Symphony D. resized to the point of illegibility were infracted. That's not PDMA, it's iconoclasm.

This isn't ensuring civility, this is ensuring servility.

2) You're attacking Scott here, whose only exposure to you has been you telling him that the statements in WWW were "libelous", which, as established above, is a purely legal term. If you are surprised/hurt that he permabanned you, please note that it came across as you following our community for the sole purpose of perpetuating drama, not to start a dialogue.

3) By posting such a lengthy rant publicly, you are either being thoughtless or disingenuous; obviously no one can reply to you here without threat of the deletion of their posts. This isn't a two-sided discussion, it's one-sided with the narrow possibility of replies.

4) Since genuine dialogue is impossible here, then, there must be only one reason you're posting here: to discourage people from going to the "other forum" and try to stem the tide. For the record, that's "defamation", not "libel".

5) Since these appear to have been made in response to my (flippant) posts in WWW and the PM I sent (forgive me if this is coincidental), I'd like to note that I am not here purely to "snipe". I specifically preserved my account here in order to be able to participate in NESing** and other forums -- and note that, other than the discussion of this kerfuffle, all of my most recent posts have been in Sports. Hardly here to snipe. :p

6) I actually want to create a community which is vibrant on both boards, and has plenty of cross-pollination between the two; shared membership ought to be encouraged, and people should be allowed to advertise NESes that are taking place on the other site. This has been discouraged, unfortunately, on CFC, so don't go acting like you're the one trying to establish a reasonable dialogue.

*Project Gutenberg.
**You can't fault me for the fact that Thlayli decided to end his NES; I will continue to monitor this forum and would happily join any new NES that seizes my interest.

P.S.: I know you're only human, BSmith. So am I. Please note that I was one of your stronger advocates on #nes and on the-frontier, before you started slinging around "libel". If you think I haven't taken a lot of crap for this move, most of it unjustified, then you need to reevaluate things.
 
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