Quote from: GetWrecked;552977That was so terrible that it crashed my iPad, thrice.

Yeah, it choked my craptop too.  It's because she has 50000 comments loading instead of keeping it to 10 and letting the user choose to load the rest.

Quote from: Laurel;552942New poster here. I've been reading RPGsite for a while, ever since it was mentioned in a Trouble Tickets thread on The Big Purple, and Benoist's posts in this thread finally made me decide to sign up. To hear people on TBP talk, you'd think this place was nothing but a bunch of sour grapes losers who couldn't fit in with the k00l kids over there.

Not so.

I still have a TBP account and sometimes read Media Other, TRO, and D20. Tangency? ::shudder:: Just...no. I'm an unabashed card-carrying liberal, but they get up to some stoopid shit in there.  If that's liberal, I better find something else to call myself.

One thing I've seen here is people can say what they really think, and if someone's being a dickhead or a liar, you can say so. That's healthy. When the community can't use normal, sane rules to police itself, that's when you get these thousand-message threads about gender in which you've got a shitload of bad faith arguments and people playing pretend.

The Desborough thread is one of the most extreme examples I've seen. I feel pity for any rape victim, and like Benoist said, I hope the woman gets the help she needs. That said, she's done herself no credit whatsoever throughout this entire episode, starting with deliberately misquoting Desborough in the petition. There was enough to disagree with in the article that she had no need to misrepresent him.

Amusing that the g00ns are trolling the hell out of TBP. Should've suspected.

Welcome to theRPGsite!

RPGPundit

Hi.

Thought I'd wander over from TBP. All the hypocrisy and hysteria going on is just making me angry - a well-trodden route to getting banned, which I'd prefer to avoid. I don't want to burn my bridges there but apparent moderator hypocrisy and Tangency spilling into the main site has made me think that I need a break from the place.

So, I've been lurking here over the last few days to see what was getting said about Operation Shitstorm. Some interesting perspectives upthread - especially the stuff about orchestrated trolling having a significant part in what's going on. Disgusting if it's true, but it seems to fit the facts as I've seen them.

By the way, getting rid of BT makes this place look a lot more appealing. Based on what he said in this thread, and what's been said about his overall demeanor, I don't think I could have joined a site that considered him fit company to keep.

Quote from: GetWrecked;552977That was so terrible that it crashed my iPad, thrice.

Sorry about that. It loaded fine on my laptop.

Welcome to the RPG Site though, GetWrecked.

Welcome to RPGSite Mr. Livingstone. And GetWrecked.
 
Yeah it was a good thing he got banned but I really think he did it on purpose for some reason.

Quote from: Al Livingstone;552983Hi.

Hi!  Welcome!

GetWrecked too.  

Welcome Al!

Quote from: Al Livingstone;552983Hi.

Thought I'd wander over from TBP. All the hypocrisy and hysteria going on is just making me angry - a well-trodden route to getting banned, which I'd prefer to avoid. I don't want to burn my bridges there but apparent moderator hypocrisy and Tangency spilling into the main site has made me think that I need a break from the place.

So, I've been lurking here over the last few days to see what was getting said about Operation Shitstorm. Some interesting perspectives upthread - especially the stuff about orchestrated trolling having a significant part in what's going on. Disgusting if it's true, but it seems to fit the facts as I've seen them.

By the way, getting rid of BT makes this place look a lot more appealing. Based on what he said in this thread, and what's been said about his overall demeanor, I don't think I could have joined a site that considered him fit company to keep.

Welcome to the RPG Site, Al. Glad you finally decided to join.

And yeah, that's definitely a sordid mess. No doubt about it.

Quote from: Al Livingstone;552983By the way, getting rid of BT makes this place look a lot more appealing. Based on what he said in this thread, and what's been said about his overall demeanor, I don't think I could have joined a site that considered him fit company to keep.

I haven't been here that long, so take this for what it's worth.  Despite places like SA where their posters like to say that BT is the "poster boy" or "favored son" of this board, I really don't think he was any of that, nor someone "fit to keep".

I looked at it like this.  If you are going to set yourself to uphold a principal (free speech), then often that principal must also apply to people you don't agree with, otherwise it no longer becomes a principal.  BT said a lot of things and wasn't banned, but that's not because anyone agreed with him.  In fact, every time he did say something stupid, he got dogpiled on for doing so.

But apparently according to some folks at TBP and SA, if you don't expressly ban someone for something, that means you support it, regardless if you've expressed explicit condemnation of such behavior anyway.  It's a weird way of thinking.

Welcome to theRPGsite Al.

For the record, I never considered BT "fit company to keep", but that's part of the price that comes with making sure this place isn't like Tangency.net; we have to give a broad amount of rope for someone to hang themselves with.

As for the "orchestrated trolling", I agree that its pretty despicable, but on the other hand it sure is paying off for us.  If the SA goons are playing the tangency modclique, the end result seems to be that theRPGsite gains new members.

You could almost say they're doing us a public service.

RPGPundit

Quote from: GMSkarka;552904I love the fact that even on a wiki definition of a saying I fucking coined, some twatwaffle has to try to take a shot at me.

LOL! I think you earn that with your shitty attitude 99% of the time, but I still can't help but agree with you.

No worries - I get that freedom of speech has its price. It's not always easy to pay it but the alternative isn't pretty either. BT was just a step too far for my tolerance at the moment.

I just wanted to give an idea of how toxic he came across to an outside perspective. Which isn't actually going to be news to anyone, I guess. No offence intended by the 'fit company' phrasing. I'm going to claim tiredness and not thinking properly before hitting 'submit reply'.

In any case, thanks for the warm welcome. However it's late here and I've got work in the morning, so time for bed methinks.

Quote from: Al Livingstone;553017I just wanted to give an idea of how toxic he came across to an outside perspective. Which isn't actually going to be news to anyone, I guess. No offence intended by the 'fit company' phrasing. I'm going to claim tiredness and not thinking properly before hitting 'submit reply'.

.

You have nothing to apologize for.

Quote from: RPGPundit;552829But instead, we got the nervous right-wingers concerned that somehow if I ban BT for being repeatedly expressive about how blacks are literally genetically inferior to whites, that'll somehow mean tomorrow they're going to get banned if they comment somewhere that they're opposed to public-option healthcare or something. I don't know what.  I just can't understand this mentality of "This utterly extreme piece of shit that is a stain on humanity self-identifies as my ideology so somehow that means I'm bound to defend him at all costs".

It would be retarded if that's what I was doing but it isn't

• .  As I already pointed out, I questioned the banning of Pseudoephedrine when that happened, despite the fact that he was diametrically opposed to me politically on just about everything and was less than cordial in many of his replies to me.  And had I been active here when he was banned, I might have spoken out against Walkerp's ban, too, despite the fact that he had some really asinine opinions about things and we had nothing in common politically.  With respect to B.T.'s politics, many of his opinions represented the worst side of the right and (here's a free clue about my motivations) some of the things he said are the types of things I've called in moderators on to pull from conservative message boards, so there are plenty of political opinions he expressed that I don't endorse and have no problem seeing pulled from message boards, when doing so is consistent with the moderation policy.  Heck, I've even gotten at least one person banned for expressing overt racism on a conservative message board.

My issues with the banning are, as I've already pretty clearly stated, are (A) the lack of specific and clear warning, (B) consistency with the free speech ideals of the site, (C) he actually contributed to role-playing discussions and did more than merely disrupt conversations, and (D) that you guys can't seem to give a clear and consistent reason for why he was banned for that particular infraction that doesn't rely on misrepresenting what he actually said.  I've been alternately told that he was banned for saying something he didn't actually say, for worse things he did in the past that should have gotten him banned, for making a mockery out of the free speech policies, for making the site look bad, for disrupting the site, and (this is a new one in this reply), for being racist.  

Why is it so difficult to clearly and consistently state why he was banned unless you either don't really know why he's banned or are embarrassed to explain the real reasons?  If it was because he was racist and overtly racist statement are not welcome here (which is what you now seem to be claiming), that makes sense and maybe he should have been banned back when he was making such statements.  In the case of Pseudoephedrine, you clearly explained why he was banned, and I dropped my opposition to his banning because of that.

My self-interest in this particular banning, if you insist on focusing on one, has less to do with any political similarity between B.T. and me and more to do with the vague, shifting, and unclear reasons for why he was banned.  Given that I've repeatedly been accused of "disrupting" threads (despite the fact that I don't engage in those debates by myself and the same sorts of digressions happen even when I'm not involved), given that some of the people who whine about that are people who have ban-hammers, and given that the guy wielding the ban-hammer in his case has accused me of doing more than B.T. to make him not like this site, yeah I think I have some reason to be concerned by getting whacked by a ban-hammer without warning by a moderator in the same sort of context that led to this particular ban.  And given the sheer volume of lawn crapping that goes on here, including from you, no, I really don't think it's all that clear what's considered acceptable or not.  What it all seems to boil down to is whether people are liked or not by the popular kids.

So there is my self-interest in wanting a more specific description of what constitutes "site disruption" than a Justice Potter "I know it when I see it", Judge Dredd "I am the Law", or a Ming the Merciless "until such time as I grow weary of it", and that frankly does put a real damper on the idea that I should feel free to speak my mind here without fear of being banned.  

And before One Horse Town takes this personally and accuses me of taking a whiz in his Cheerios and ruining the site for him, this is not directed at him personally, I'm not calling for him to be removed as a moderator, and I don't want him to leave this site.  I'd have the same concerns no matter who was assigned moderator duties because it's a concern about the nature of power, concern about subjective enforcement, and and a desire for regulatory transparency.

• Do you know what would really improve the quality of discourse on this site?  If everyone would stop pretending that the are Sigmund Freud, Jr. and can psychoanalyze people over the internet to determine their true secret motivations, which just happen to be convenient straw men to be knocked down.  How about addressing what people actually say instead of what you think they are really saying or wish they were saying?  Look at how much of this thread consists of people speculating on the psychology and true motives of various people that they've never met.  Look at the amount of text doing the same thing that appears in almost every other thread here.  It's an enormous amount of what people sling around here.

Are you a licensed mental health professional?  If not, what makes you think you are qualified to psychoanalyze people you've never met based on some comments on the Internet?  Did you get a Jr. Psychologist license in a box of Cracker Jacks as a kid and think that qualifies you to practice psychology over the Internet?  And if you are a licensed mental health professional, I think it's pretty obvious that you should know better than to try to remotely diagnose the psychology of someone you've never met.  This crap is right up there with people self-diagnosing themselves as having Asperger's syndrome and it all boils down to a pretentious ad hominem argument.  Another fine legacy of post-modernism, which encouraged people to spend more time navel-gazing about hidden motives rather than what people are actually writing or saying.

Quote from: Al Livingstone;553017No worries - I get that freedom of speech has its price. It's not always easy to pay it but the alternative isn't pretty either. BT was just a step too far for my tolerance at the moment.

I just wanted to give an idea of how toxic he came across to an outside perspective. Which isn't actually going to be news to anyone, I guess. No offence intended by the 'fit company' phrasing. I'm going to claim tiredness and not thinking properly before hitting 'submit reply'.

In any case, thanks for the warm welcome. However it's late here and I've got work in the morning, so time for bed methinks.

It's actually the reason I didn't post when I originally registered either.  I'd read through some threads and saw him just out of no where rip someone a new asshole (To be fair there was another guy that I saw doing that. Kolturp or something of that nature) and I thought, "Nope".
But this thread started and I thought "Fuck it".  Haven't regretted it.  
But BT is gone.  Rainbows and puppies for everyone!