Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1055176Wow.

The fact Bailywolf has been so thoroughly indoctrinated breaks my heart though.



No. And that's exactly how they want it. Because that data might contradict what they claim their membership to be, which includes permabanned members because they "don't delete accounts". I would not be surprised if almost a quarter of their members cannot even participate on the forum.

A quarter of members with over a thousand posts maybe, but the total membership is heavily inflated with people who logged a single digit number of times or lurkers or various sorts who won't get banned for obvious reasons.

Still it's depressing reading old threads and seeing a lot of good posts by banned people. That's the biggest reason I barely post there anymore, I only ever got one warning there...

Quote from: Daztur;1055184Still it's depressing reading old threads and seeing a lot of good posts by banned people.

What's really depressing is how many banned members used to be mods. Why would anyone volunteer to work with others who so eagerly eat their own, or do they truly believe they'll never come for them?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1055186What's really depressing is how many banned members used to be mods. Why would anyone volunteer to work with others who so eagerly eat their own, or do they truly believe they'll never come for them?

No member of a mob has ever considered the possibility that they might be in the wrong or that their "allies" might turn on them. That's been true since there's been more than three people on earth.

Quote from: Daztur;1055184A quarter of members with over a thousand posts maybe, but the total membership is heavily inflated with people who logged a single digit number of times or lurkers or various sorts who won't get banned for obvious reasons.

Still it's depressing reading old threads and seeing a lot of good posts by banned people. That's the biggest reason I barely post there anymore, I only ever got one warning there...

One week several years ago, I was busy, and didn't read anything there for a week.  When the business ended, I realized I had been a lot happier lately, and wondered why that was.  Peeked into the current topics at the time, and realized what I hadn't been missing.  Never been back.  Didn't even log in to tell people bye.

Quote from: Claudius;1055154More or less, it's what happened to me. Tired of having to measure my words, I decided to quit. I still have an account there, but I don't write anymore. Will I ever go back? Perhaps, but things will have to change a LOT.

I haven't personally faced much censorship, but I have had to deal with people that were on the "correct side" of the argument berating me without any intervention by moderation. So its not so much censorship as hypocrisy that keeps me from more active involvement.

That, and now that ACKS has become verboten I just don't have much to talk about there. Like, I can't talk about any of the RPG stuff I actually do nowadays; I can't talk about Pundit's stuff, Zack S's stuff, I can't talk about ACKS, I'm pretty certain that Justin Alexander has a bad reputation over there (why?!).

It's like, Christ folks I just want to talk about my current elf games. They're just not having it though.

On the other hand, one of my biggest fans made a pretty rad thread asking about my kung-fu game, so it's not all bad. It just gets wearisome constantly watching your back for the next brand-new twentysomething mod with a political axe to grind. I can't even be reasonably sure that same mod isn't secret-policing this very post; it's a real Ingsoc situation.

Quote from: Azraele;1055225I'm pretty certain that Justin Alexander has a bad reputation over there (why?!).

Justin may be strongly left-wing politically, and of course very smart and the author of a bunch of great posts on playing RPGs - some of the greatest ever IMO. But he also has an abrasive personality and an obnoxious posting style, where RPGnet wants their posters meek and submissive.  So I'm hardly surprised if he got into trouble. Mike Monard (equally obnoxious, equally lefty, albeit a lot less on the great posts) got into trouble there too as I recall.

It's not surprising to see once moderate members joining the mob. Either they always secretly wanted to or worse they wanted or want to be part of the cool kids club. While throwing away and all self respect they once had. My ex-best friend from elementary went down that route. He suddenly stopped wanting to play rpgs, read comics because the so called "cool" kids thought it was boring. Out of high school and going to college I was having none of that bullshit. He tried to give me a ultimatum to do things his way or else. I almost caved then said fuck it. It stopped feeling like a friendship and felt like being friends with him was a job and I never looked back since.

The sad part is they think if the spout the same bullshit, phrases and slogans that somehow the mob will not turn on them. Guess again they can and will. The regressive left loves to devour it's own. They refuse to understand basic psychology imo. The more you tell a person not to read or buy a product the more a potential buyer interest grows. Then again from what I saw many of their members have some mental health issues and chips the size of two galaxies on their shoulders.

Quote from: S'mon;1055231Justin may be strongly left-wing politically, and of course very smart and the author of a bunch of great posts on playing RPGs - some of the greatest ever IMO. But he also has an abrasive personality and an obnoxious posting style, where RPGnet wants their posters meek and submissive.  So I'm hardly surprised if he got into trouble. Mike Monard (equally obnoxious, equally lefty, albeit a lot less on the great posts) got into trouble there too as I recall.

Then again, one of the mods is highly offensive and abrasive as well.  I made the following comment on FB after he was railing at people and cursing at them.

Quote from: me on fbHow can you come here and talk like you have been and consider yourself able to be a mod or admin for any site that isn't about your political beliefs? With the way you have gone on in this post, I cannot view any of your posts or adjudications on RPGnet as anything but directed specifically by your personal feelings toward people and your political leanings.

This meant I got targeted by him.  He made multiple attempts to post about how my head was up my ass, along with a lot of other inflammatory comments.  Summary is that I said that I could not view his moderating as anything but a factor of his personal beliefs the way he espoused and carried himself on facebook.  He went off saying he wasn't representing TBP on FB.  My counter was that he was, esp since his moderator name was his real name for a long time.  Anyway, essentially they have armed themselves with an echo-chamber of self-affirmation and bullying if you do not agree.  Of course, the secret to avoid that, is to just discuss games instead of anything non-gaming.

EDIT:  I removed the link to the specific post because he did not use my name after I said he could not.  But I will say this, he posted the following on his own personal page.  Which goes to show how much he wanted to color the truth of what happened so he looks like the hero instead of just another hypocritical bully.

Quote from: TBP moderator on his FB page talking about our discussionWell, X, I have had numerous people storm up to me and demand that I moderate the board in the way that they like and to live up to standards that I don't believe in, and the usual stoney-eyed bouncer death glare works nicely in communicating exactly what I think of their bullshit attempt to manipulate me. You may imagine me applying it now.

Second, when I am posting on Facebook, I may post in any goddamn way, shape or form I please. I don't even get paid for the work I do; restricting my freedom of action outside the board because of some imaginary standard that you pulled fresh and steaming out of your ass is, well, nonsense.

If you do have a problem with the way that I've been posting, feel free to report it to the admins at admin.rpgnet@gmail.com. I should also note that you have a wide variety of boards to pick from, including Stormfront, if you don't enjoy how I moderate RPGnet.

If you're unhappy about my opposition to the forcible removal of children from their parents and their placement in concentration camps, please find the nearest sharp or jagged object and just ram it way up your ass; like, don't stop until you hit the duodenum. Get it way up there, really explore that space.

I'm attaching a picture of the duodenum so you know what to look for.

Finally, would you mind terribly if I quoted you on my own feed and my response? I won't do it if you say no, but I will post my response and just let the audience infer what you said. If you say no, I will also not use your name

Quote from: Imaginos;1055260Then again, one of the mods is highly offensive and abrasive as well.  I made the following comment on FB after he was railing at people and cursing at them.



This meant I got targeted by him.  He made multiple attempts to post about how my head was up my ass, along with a lot of other inflammatory comments.  Summary is that I said that I could not view his moderating as anything but a factor of his personal beliefs the way he espoused and carried himself on facebook.  He went off saying he wasn't representing TBP on FB.  My counter was that he was, esp since his moderator name was his real name for a long time.  Anyway, essentially they have armed themselves with an echo-chamber of self-affirmation and bullying if you do not agree.  Of course, the secret to avoid that, is to just discuss games instead of anything non-gaming.

EDIT:  I removed the link to the specific post because he did not use my name after I said he could not.  But I will say this, he posted the following on his own personal page.  Which goes to show how much he wanted to color the truth of what happened so he looks like the hero instead of just another hypocritical bully.

Yeah see, his attitude isn't really one you can adopt when your site's rules have this gem in there:

QuoteValues/Rules & Off-Site Conduct: We draw a distinction between our site's values and rules. We infract based on rules violations if they occur on our site. If you call someone a shitbag in TRO, that is a rules violation on our site and you'll probably catch an infraction. If you call someone a shitbag on ENWorld, that's their problem. However, values matter regardless of where the conduct occurs, and social media now makes drawing distinct lines between identities across multiple online platforms impractical. If you are an alt-right racist, self-identified incel, white supremacist, Nazi, sexual predator, stalker, doxxer, or otherwise demonstrate offsite that you hold values incompatible with the RPGnet community, and we can identify you to a reasonable degree of certainty, we will ban you from RPGnet as based on the fact that you posting to RPGnet is a violation of our values.

TL;DR: We don't police off-site rules violations, but we will ban people over unbridgeable divides in values as demonstrated by off-site conduct.

It's that ever-deepening well of hypocrisy that bothers me much more than any moderation I've personally faced.

Quote from: ponta1010;1055168I must admit to being in an identical situation. Does anyone know of a reliable way of measuring what their active membership is? I go there every so often and look at what's 'changed' in the thread topics listing, and changes in this seem to have slowed to a crawl in the last year.

I don't even look anymore. I recently deleted all of my subscribed threads(just to ensure I didn't get email notifications from the site anymore), logged out, and that was that. Oh, and I removed the TRO feed from my feed reader, too. Interesting threads were fewer and farther between, and you never knew when one of them would go from pleasant discussion to political. They even have(or had) a rule about not injecting politics into threads that weren't already political, but if you said the "right things," that rule didn't apply to you.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1055176The fact Bailywolf has been so thoroughly indoctrinated breaks my heart though.

Yes, he was a pretty cool dude once upon a time. I got to play games run by him IRL in the Times Before. I also got to play with other mods like RandomNerd and Bethdrgyn back then. And a few other TBP regulars that I'm not sure if they ever were mods or not. There were a few years there that were full of actual gaming with quite a few of these people. To a lot of people on the forums, they're just random posters and faceless mods and stuff, but like . . . they're my old gaming buds! I have faces and memories to go with the screen names, and it's like . . . I don't even know where I was going, man. Just started rambling. Sorry. It just sucks.

Quote from: Imaginos;1055260...But I will say this, he posted the following on his own personal page.  Which goes to show how much he wanted to color the truth of what happened so he looks like the hero instead of just another hypocritical bully.

DAMN if his post doesn't look like a "press conference."

Quote from: Imaginos;1055260He went off saying he wasn't representing TBP on FB.  

Any mod from TBP lost the value of that card when they announced they were going to mod people for off-site behavior.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1055176Wow.

The fact Bailywolf has been so thoroughly indoctrinated breaks my heart though.

Bailywolf is a serious case of drinking the kool-aid. It's been a while, but as far as I remember he was not the most aggressive SJW (anybody remember Logicninja some years ago?), but rather one of those who seemed to have 'seen the light' of feminism and such. Bailywolf started a thread about his feeling of guilt for having a man's sexuality in a world that hates women. Seriously.

Quote from: Trond;1055309Bailywolf is a serious case of drinking the kool-aid. It's been a while, but as far as I remember he was not the most aggressive SJW (anybody remember Logicninja some years ago?), but rather one of those who seemed to have 'seen the light' of feminism and such. Bailywolf started a thread about his feeling of guilt for having a man's sexuality in a world that hates women. Seriously.

Not defending the person yet I think it's less drinking the kool-aid and more afraid of having the mob turning against him which they will if your not part of their mindless herd. I have a friend who acts the same way. Virtue signalling, denouncing his own sexuality. Bending over backwards to accommodate fellow SJWs.  Up until recently he never gave a crap about any of that. Suddenly to be part of the cool kids club he threw any shred of dignity he had left. Which is sad to see.

Quote from: sureshot;1055342Not defending the person yet I think it's less drinking the kool-aid and more afraid of having the mob turning against him which they will if your not part of their mindless herd. I have a friend who acts the same way. Virtue signalling, denouncing his own sexuality. Bending over backwards to accommodate fellow SJWs.  Up until recently he never gave a crap about any of that. Suddenly to be part of the cool kids club he threw any shred of dignity he had left. Which is sad to see.

It really is disheartening to discover how many people will go along with nonsense beliefs and behaviours they don't share in a desperate effort to earn some esteem in the eyes of people who don't genuinely care much about them.