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)
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Calling someone a terrorist is flaming.
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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
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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.
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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.