Quote from: Bunch;1088505There's been a few folks take the mods to task for snarky inappropriate behavior.

True, that was interesting to see. I think some are getting a little fed up and I'm honestly a little shocked it didn't lead to the thread being summarily closed though there was admonition to not raise arguments, if they didn't want discussion/question why start an open thread? Make the announcement and take questions PM or as they come up. Its true posters that did that would have gotten a mod finger wag at the very least. But the bulk of thread is more "Thank you, sirs! May we have another?" gratitude for being freed from the terrible responsibility  to just not read things they don't like.

Quote from: Bunch;1088505There's been a few folks take the mods to task for snarky inappropriate behavior.

Which has apparently been followed by permabans.

A wizard did it.

Frankly, this seems more like Mods needing a break from their self selected job of micromanaging and tone policing adults like toddlers more than anything resembling reasonable though to be fair some of the adults really appear to appreciate that treatment.

Gee, the Wyzard stepped in, acted like an even bigger dick and started handing out bans, there's a shock. A month for a mildly irate post about other Mods acting like assholes in ways that would have gotten 'regular' posters smacked down, Christ... if it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny to see much minuscule amounts of power turn so many into swagging jackasses so quickly.

Quote from: Estrecca;1088548Which has apparently been followed by permabans.

The past year has been sooo tough on them though... The Wyzard has no patience for people taking shots at them!!!!!!!111elven. Sad...

Quote from: CarlD.;1088554The past year has been sooo tough on them though... The Wyzard has no patience for people taking shots at them!!!!!!!111elven. Sad...

  Apparently Unwritten Rule #1 is now all but written.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1088556Apparently Unwritten Rule #1 is now all but written.

Oh, it gets better. This is rich.

Quote from: The Wyzard, post: 22603494, member: 22566I have recently banned something like half a dozen people from the forum, all of those bans occurring in the thread about a politics moratorium. It occurs to me that some of our users aren't going to be in that thread, and so I should say something about what's happening, because it is a larger thing.



I've largely stepped back from active, front-line moderation lately. I view my role as admin a little differently - my job is to step in as needed, most especially and particularly when the moderation team is working too hard, or burning out. Sometimes there is a call that should be relatively simple - this user really needs a permanent ban, this thread needs to be closed, we have to make a public comment about something that nobody really wants to talk about at all, ever. The staff likes getting things right, they are all very smart and capable of seeing things from multiple perspectives, they start to spin their wheels and exhaust themselves. I cut that gordian knot, make that call, relieve that burden. Or, well, that's what I do if I'm paying enough attention instead of slacking off and thinking about time travel.



I have not been doing my job enough lately and the mod team has suffered for it.



They have been working too hard. We live in an emotionally exhausting era. The particulars of any moderator's personal life are not up for public consumption unless they want to chat about it, but I can say definitively that some of us have it worse than others. Something specific I have not come down hard enough on is users taking shots, direct or slantways, at the moderation staff. I'm not allowing that any more. I'm not going to have the mods do the very best that can be done, and then burn themselves out even further stressing over whether some accusation of impropriety might, in fact, be correct, and in fact they've screwed up or been too snarky.



No. The mods are doing a great job. If someone has a complaint about them, bring it to me via the admin email, and by Goddess it had better be a real serious complaint, not just "they were a little short with me or posted a snarky meme." They aren't required to publicly defend themselves from every expression of user displeasure.



I am going to enforce this by removing users who make the job of moderation more emotionally exhausting than it already is. TL;DR: Go observe the bans in the thread re: the US politics moratorium.

Quote from: The Wyzard, post: 22603497, member: 22566The mods are, to be clear, allowed to be mildly snarky where warranted, in their sound discretion. Like, five out of ten on the snark scale without my prior written permission.



Oh, by the way, this thread is absolutely a honey trap. I'm really just waiting for people to reply, "But have you considered that the moderators are bad, actually, and I need to inform them of this?" Those are the people I need to go ahead and identify.

Modding a forum is "Emotionally exhausting"? Are you fucking kidding me...

Quote from: Zeea, post: 22603544, member: 436Speaking as an individual, I appreciate this, Wyzard. As a low-income transgender lesbian with an immigrant spouse, living in a place that voted for Trump, dealing with some serious diagnosed life-long depression and anxiety issues, it's been a bit hurtful and frankly infuriating to get hit with "silence = complicity" and things like that. I'm not always the greatest moderator and sometimes I mess up, and I'm very aware of that, but being accused of being some clueless person with nothing to lose is not okay.



I have been in constant fear that I will lose my meager benefits before I can get my income stabilized. And until very recently, I was in constant fear that I've never be able to live with my wife (who is pretty much vital for me having any sort of functionality and happiness), then in constant fear that her green card wouldn't be approved, then that it wouldn't get the two year conditions removed. In particular, it's only recently with the help of medicine that I don't feel like I'm in a life-or-death fight/flight/freeze panic whenever I see some politician advocating a policy that could ruin or endanger my life. And my problems are rather minor compared to what some of my friends and loved ones are dealing with.



So, basically, I understand why these discussions are important, I really do. We all do. Announcing a hiatus is not "fuck you, politics don't matter, lol" or something like that. And frankly, while we try to be as safe and welcoming as possible, these boards are never going to be suitable or reliable as someone's primary emotional support community or venting ground or activism platform. They're important to me, and they probably literally saved my life, and I met my wife here, and I met a lot of close friends here. But they're still primarily an elfgames forum and can't be someone's life.



EDIT: Ack, I forgot to include the other paragraph I was going to write. Basically, this stuff all sounds negative, but most people here are incredibly awesome people and I really, really appreciate you all. And I promise you, even though the staff mostly has to focus on infractions and such, we absolutely do appreciate and discuss the nice things that people say as well. Also, I just want to say that I'm not saying that everyone who has snapped at the mods with some of the hurtful stuff is an overall bad user or anything; I just think some of the statements have been unfair and/or uninformed.

The list of "street cred" in the first paragraph really puts it over the top.

Quote from: CarlD.;1088574Oh, it gets better. This is rich.

Modding a forum is "Emotionally exhausting"? Are you fucking kidding me...

Holy shit. They've finally built it; a literal hugbox safespace moderator pity zone. Now finally you can be banned for even an implication of looking at the moderation sideways, and it's been made explicit! The goosestepping has never been quite so cacophonous.

"It's not the end of the world, but I can see it from here."

Quote from: CarlD.;1088575The list of "street cred" in the first paragraph really puts it over the top.

I couldn't even believe my eyes reading this. To me it reads like blatant satire.

Very simple.   If you're burnt-out moderating a forum - quit.

Zero sympathy.  It's not like anyone's stuck moderating a forum in order to put their kids through school.  If you're not enjoying it, but insist on doing it anyway then you have some kind of fucked up martyr syndrome.

The world will not end because someone quits moderating a forum.
If you can't manage the same standard of behaviour you hold others too then you should quit.

I often get some weird Stanford prison experiment vibe from Rpgnet.  You've got the us against the world guards and the prisoners trying to show they're really model prisoners.

I can hardly wait for the next lifetime membership subscription drive.

That dude is a dude and married to a woman and he's calling himself a lesbian? White people be crazy!

Quote from: CarlD.;1088574Modding a forum is "Emotionally exhausting"? Are you fucking kidding me...

Of course it is emotionally exhausting!  Having to constantly think up new terminologies for banning people is not as easy as you think that it is.

I mean look at the posts by the Wysarse, its not even trying now.

Quote from: CarlD.;1088575The list of "street cred" in the first paragraph really puts it over the top.

I agree. Anyone who refers to themselves as a "transgender lesbian" is not actually a lesbian nor are they actually transgender.

As one of the few forum regulars on here who is openly LGBT, I would like to apologize for the losers at RPGnet and I want to publicly disassociate myself and any other sane LGBT folks from these degenerate freaks.

Sick fucks like Zeea, atamajakki, and David "Olivia" Hill are the reasons why we need at least some degree of gatekeeping in the LGBT community, especially in regards to the transgender community (as it is also a medical issue as well) and the communities of lesbians and bisexual women who are targets of the dangerhairs and the fake AGP trannies.

The former seek to prey on lesbians and bisexual women through their toxic ideologies (assuming they don't outright brand bisexuals as traitors off the bat) while the latter prey on women sexually.

AGP transtrenders often get pissed when an actual lesbian doesn't find their "girl dick" attractive or even bisexual women who would be otherwise okay with a partner who has a dick are ultimately turned off by either their political extremism or their disgusting perversity (seriously, most autogynephiles make me look like Pat Robertson)

Someone should tell the transtrenders and their radfem lesbian dangerhair enablers to get the fuck out of the LGBT community.

It's about time that gay men, bisexuals of both genders, and any lesbians who are sick of being hit on by fetishists but don't want to go down the rabbit hole of misandrist radical feminist nonsense told all of the SJW's, commies, dangerhairs, transtrender fakers, and "queer punks" to FUCK OFF AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR COMMUNITY!!!

Heck, I also strongly encourage actual transgender people (the so-called "truscum" that SJW's despise) to join in the fight.

Zeea is a disgusting straight male with an autogynephilla fetish and fakes being transgender to indulge his lesbian fetishism and move up the progressive stack.

Seriously. SJW's and transtrenders are going to do more damage to the LGBT community in the long run than AIDS did in the 1980's.

Leftist Identity Politics has replaced HIV as the new viral threat to the LGBT community.

Also, this video is about 4chan's janitors (their term for the moderation staff) but it is also eerily applicable to the mods at RPGnet. Just replace "anime image board" with "elf game forum" and "Hot Pockets and Pepsi" with "vegan ice cream and soy lattes"

[video=youtube;pEg2idsBew4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEg2idsBew4[/youtube]

Quote from: Lurtch;1088580That dude is a dude and married to a woman and he's calling himself a lesbian? White people be crazy!

As a bisexual man who deliberately kept himself in the closet until he was of drinking age because of bullshit that was fed to him by Protestant rednecks in Bible Belt Appalachia, it angers me to see obviously straight men like Zeea trying to LARP as queers.

I bet he never had to struggle with self-loathing because he couldn't help who he was attracted to.

I sure as fuck did, and I'm sure those before me suffered even worse.

I'm not trans, but I can't even imagine what it's like for those who actually are transgender, seeing as it's a recognized medical disorder in the DSM-V (Gender Dysphoria Disorder)

I'm sure that Zeea got the idea to LARP as a lesbian because he's a straight male who jacks off to lesbian porn and has an autogynephilia fetish, and he just happens to be lucky enough to live in a culture where claiming you're transgender can move you up the progressive stack and also allow him to openly display his fetish in a socially acceptable manner.

I highly doubt Zeea has Gender Dysphoria Disorder.

There's a reason why homosexuality and bisexuality were removed from the DSM while gender dysphoria wasn't.

You can be gay, lesbian, or bisexual and otherwise live a perfectly healthy life as a functional adult and it's fairly easy to do so nowadays because it's not stigmatized in broader Western society anymore.

Transgender people often suffer severe depression and tend to have suicidal tendencies due to the very nature of Gender Dysphoria Disorder, and said disorder also has co-morbidity with many other actual mental and neurological issues.