WARNING: if you're a sensitive wallflower who flies off the handle because someone uses a swear word that might be even remotely headed in any direction but away from you, skip reading this post, or at least the first half of it. I'm not filtering or watering down my thoughts just for your virgin ears/eyes.
First things first: I've remained quiet on this thread thus far because I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy of "whine at Morwen when shit you think needs to be moderated doesn't get moderated (probably because
not a single fucking person sent in a single fucking report), then whine at/about Morwen again if he does moderate stuff" that happens here,
and elsewhere. You would not believe the number of complaints I get over Skype, MSN, forum PM or EVEmail about shit on this forum that are never accompanied by an actual clicking of the goddamn "Report to Moderator" button,
even when I tell people to go submit a report.
Neither I, nor any of the other moderators, have the time or patience to put on the Fascist Forum Moderator hat and read every single fucking post in every fucking thread on this forum, just to nuke that one post that
might piss someone off. If you do not report things that are problematic, we may not see or respond to them in a timely fashion.
We read EVERY report, whether or not we choose to act on it or not. The number of times we have to repeat this statement makes me sick.
In addition, since it isn't obvious to anyone who isn't a moderator, over the last year or so, I have been consistently going "to bat" for posts that are borderline and saying they don't need to be moderated. (It's the same fucking thing with the Summit ingame, for the record. Ask Ava or Esna how many times I've said "it's not worth stepping in over." Go ahead - I'll wait. Or you could go to that hilarious thread from Diana to see a good example. I'll still wait.) Just because I prefer to come down like a ton of bricks on people when it gets seriously out of hand does not mean that I am the trigger-happy, ban-all-the-things moderator people like to claim I am. So if you're one of
those people, seriously, go fuck yourself. Whether you know it or not, I have probably defended your actions or behavior to one or more moderators either ingame or on this forum, and I don't fucking appreciate being shit on just because I don't put up with bullshit from people.
In my opinion, we need to tweak the rules away from this pussyfooting wankfest of pampering. If someone is doing it wrong, let people voice their opinions provided that they give a well formed argument on the topic of why they feel this is so. Now you spend half your post trying to dance around bad rules to make a point to someone and even then there's a danger of getting the Catacombs if someone feels snowflake's feelings have been hurt. If your feelings are hurt from a well formed argument, then I suggest you take either door number one with 'Harden The Fuck Up' or door number two with 'Fuck Off'. If you feel it's your 15€ a month and you get to do as you want instead of trying to play nice with others, then do it, fuck off and stop bitching when people won't play ball with you. Roleplaying is a joint venture, community is a joint venture. Fresh ideas are welcome, but repeating bad cliches is not. People don't have easy time distinguishing unless you can go and say to them 'no, don't do that, it doesn't work and here's why'. What to some newer blood might seem an edgy cool choice can be worn-out droll to the ten year old community.
Pretty much full-on agreed here, but I would still argue that you would still need to tone it down a bit to remain within even relaxed YDIW rules, Vince.
Pointless Bittervetting, this should be moderated way more than doing it wrong. I am the first to admit that I have been and occasionally am guilty of this, but nothing kills new enthusiasm more than this. If your last time logging in is six months ago don't tell us EVE is dying or it's shit for this or that reason. You are unsubbed, let that be a testament of your disapproval instead of countless shitposts of 'bad game yo'. We don't really give two shits about it, some of us are having fun for their first time, some still after many years and some, like me, have found that joy once more in playing EVE Online.
Again, agreed. If you want to bittervet, you should do it on the official EVE forums or on FHC, not here - if you've been around long enough to consider yourself a bittervet, you've been here long enough to know that those are the correct places to do it.
And yes, most of the moderators do not play actively anymore, as far as I know. I suspect Silver and I are the only ones who are actually anything resembling active, though I figure he's only active in EVE to continue widening his SP lead over Ghost.
Regarding the Catacombs: I would not object to having a dual-combs setup where things that just go off the rails and are unsalvageable go and can be read, and posts that are flagrant violations that need immediate dealing-with go into a moderator-only area for our own records. We've already got areas that are only visible to us, it wouldn't be hard to do.
As a lesser note; There is also some dickwaving going on about their RP street cred everynow and then. Understand that it's ok to be proud of your achievements and immortalization into the game world, but after a while telling about them to everyone all the time gets trite and old. As a result people will find it - and you - annoying in the end. You are not the only one, and you will certainly be the last one to live on in Prime Fiction. While we commend you for your efforts please stop rubbing it in everyone's face in every goddamn discussion. Have a glass of humility.
See, this is one of those cases where you said something in a way that shouldn't get moderated, but had I said it my way, it would have been catacombed the instant Silver saw it.
(I agree fully, fwiw.)
In this case, you are confusing 'political correctness' (which rings the alarm-bells of nanny-statedom (to be fair a description Backstage might qualify for were it a state)) with politeness which is a tool that civil societies use to function and which online communities can use to have reasonable conversations.
The issue is that
most people are confusing the two. As far as Backstage being considered a "nanny-state", this would cease being an issue if people learned to HTFU and didn't get offended with indignant rage every time someone so much as suggested there was a better way to do something, no matter how politely it was done. Comments have been made about people being criticism-averse.
They are accurate.
Also, telling people to go back to Chatsubo violates Wheaton's Law regardless of how you phrase it. Seriously, not cool. Don't do it. (Not because Chatsubo is bad, but because there simply aren't enough people for it to even be a valid suggestion, as a few people have pointed out. TY to Dex for catching that immediately. Jade also said what I thought on this matter, just with more words. So predictable.
)
I might expand on this later when I get home from work.