Was he calling out everyone being mean to him or something?
Has Houseman been banned?
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I watched about half of it out of curiosity; that far into it he drops a lot of names, shares lots of screenshot from the forums as "evidence," and goes in on Nick pretty directly in his typical, gaslight-y way.
Why the hell has he put this much effort, a 27 minute video, into basically admitting that he constantly pushed the boundaries (on a free forum, mind you; I don't recall seeing an "Escapist+" under his picture) and got burned for doing so? It's the equivalent of playing "I'm not touching you" with your finger in the face of a wild animal, then writing a dissertation about how "dangerous and unreasonable" wild animals are after you get bit. He wrote a script to scrape every page of the forums for posts flagged with warnings, and graphed out the results with the usernames, for Christ's sake.
There are lots of users in this forum who consistently conduct themselves with civility and decorum and never have an issue engaging in discourse, then there are those who like to enflame and disrupt; the latter tend to be the most vocal about "fairness" and "righteousness" when their behavior is held to account.
You pissed into the wind and got wet; both parties had an active role in the outcome, but only one of them is to blame.
Exactly why I refuse to give any type of sympathy for him. Let the baby cry. He's only incriminating himself further. If other official forum sites see this, they ain't going to let him in either. The only place is left for him to go are 4chan or reddit. Maybe GameFAQs.
I watched his video for about five minutes and got bored with it. I am kind of morbidly curious to see if I get name dropped as at least according to the Discord Peeps I know who are also in the Unofficial Escapist Discord, Houseman must have had some kind of bone to pick with me as he name dropped me as having "no friends" (well he did say that JoJo is the only person who would be my friend so I have JoJo going for me! 
). Though I'm not 100% sure why as I wasn't a Mod on V1 until after Houseman got banned and I have never been on a Mod on V2. However, his video is so God damn boring that it's not really worth the effort to see if my name comes up and to be blunt, I don't really give a flying fuck about what Houseman thinks of me so if I am dragged through the mud, I don't care enough about his opinion to waste 23 more minutes of my life watching it to see... (though in the spirit of Houseman's Devil's Advocate style of posting, I must have given at least a little bit of a flying fuck for going to the video in the first place to watch five minutes of it. I have pwned myself with FACTS and LOGIC)
Anyway, I think ultimately what people seem to forget is that The Escapist Dot Com is ultimately a privately run website. If users get more than three warnings, that's because the people in charge have decided that they're fine with letting them stick around even if "THE LETTER OF THE LAW" was met for them to be banned. People who were outright banned, the people in charge have decided that you're not welcome here.
). Though I'm not 100% sure why as I wasn't a Mod on V1 until after Houseman got banned and I have never been on a Mod on V2. However, his video is so God damn boring that it's not really worth the effort to see if my name comes up and to be blunt, I don't really give a flying fuck about what Houseman thinks of me so if I am dragged through the mud, I don't care enough about his opinion to waste 23 more minutes of my life watching it to see... (though in the spirit of Houseman's Devil's Advocate style of posting, I must have given at least a little bit of a flying fuck for going to the video in the first place to watch five minutes of it. I have pwned myself with FACTS and LOGIC)Anyway, I think ultimately what people seem to forget is that The Escapist Dot Com is ultimately a privately run website. If users get more than three warnings, that's because the people in charge have decided that they're fine with letting them stick around even if "THE LETTER OF THE LAW" was met for them to be banned. People who were outright banned, the people in charge have decided that you're not welcome here.
Took me 10 seconds to compose a Google search that brought it up first hit.
Yes, I had a quick look through. It's exactly the sort of thing I'd expect Houseman to produce: firstly, in that it even exists, secondly in the types of argument and rhetorical plays.
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- Mar 13, 2020
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Yes, I've seen the video. He made sure to directly tag me with it on Twitter. Interestingly he has the same name as Yoshi who last year went and dug up my personal Facebook account to start interacting with me there on my actual profile and not through DMs.
I'm not gonna get into it. As I've explained before, we're lax with the moderation rules here because we think most people can handle themselves decently enough. Since Houseman has been banned, reports on the forum have noticeably dropped. He also put way more effort in his video than we do when it comes to tracking warnings and such...I have a million things to do, it's not exactly high on my priority list I'll be honest.
Like I said before, the mod team and I agreed he was arguing in bad-faith more often than not, just playing devil's advocate to get a rise out of people, and it's not like you guys didn't see right through that in most cases, even more so when it became unavoidable after he admitted he doesn't even vote...
Very FEW people have been banned since the restarting of the forums, and those that have often make it clear not long after why we have banned them ie. Yoshi going out of his way to invade my personal privacy on Facebook which is an account that isn't public like my Twitter.
I'm not gonna get into it. As I've explained before, we're lax with the moderation rules here because we think most people can handle themselves decently enough. Since Houseman has been banned, reports on the forum have noticeably dropped. He also put way more effort in his video than we do when it comes to tracking warnings and such...I have a million things to do, it's not exactly high on my priority list I'll be honest.
Like I said before, the mod team and I agreed he was arguing in bad-faith more often than not, just playing devil's advocate to get a rise out of people, and it's not like you guys didn't see right through that in most cases, even more so when it became unavoidable after he admitted he doesn't even vote...
Very FEW people have been banned since the restarting of the forums, and those that have often make it clear not long after why we have banned them ie. Yoshi going out of his way to invade my personal privacy on Facebook which is an account that isn't public like my Twitter.
- Sep 8, 2014
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There is only 1 proper response to Houseman's "video" (I haven't watched it, nor do I plan to, as I have better things to do with my life).
Nah, he only talked about people who have gotten warnings and didn't really drag anybody through the mud. Not even the mods, surprisingly.
I watched it on double speed. Most videos on Youtube are improved by that feature.
I'm just gonna say there isn't a violin small enough and leave it at that.
I used to moderate a forum (~20 years back) and it had a completely informal system. The mod's job was to exercise fair and reasonable judgement; there were site admin to handle appeals if they were out of order, and beyond that the site owner. And it was fine. There don't need to be strict rules and formal procedures having to meet the letter of the law, as long as the mods and admin are responsible about their business.
I was watching a recording of a stream last week, and alongside the game preview was a chat. There was guy in the chat being rude and aggressive. The mods told him nicely and reasonably to pack it in or get booted. He raged about not being allowed to have an opinion, that he was doing nothing wrong, etc. And herein lies the problem with many people banned. It's not that they did nothing wrong, it's that they don't understand what they are doing wrong or think they should be allowed to do as they please.
I finished the video because why not, and apparently, he just wants the rules applied "objectively," no regard for each individual user's track record; one infraction/warning is such, and three is a ban. So, in his world, someone who has the occasional slip up between dozens of posts/interactions should be treated the same as someone who logs on every day specifically to stress test the rules.
Oh, and he finishes, after dragging Nick and his moderation standards through the mud, saying how he respects and appreciates what Nick does and how he [Nick] is risking the integrity and fate of the site by holding relentless, perpetual offenders to different standards than those users who have the occasional, minor infraction, because we all know it's the former that are the backbone of this site's existence, right?
Oh, and he finishes, after dragging Nick and his moderation standards through the mud, saying how he respects and appreciates what Nick does and how he [Nick] is risking the integrity and fate of the site by holding relentless, perpetual offenders to different standards than those users who have the occasional, minor infraction, because we all know it's the former that are the backbone of this site's existence, right?
For him to go to that much effort, were we really his peer-group after all?
I assumed his peers were on the alt-right forums he got his talking points from and we were just the target of his mission to own the lefties/libs.
I assumed his peers were on the alt-right forums he got his talking points from and we were just the target of his mission to own the lefties/libs.
I diiiiiiiiiiiiiiid (Though not directly by name, but through showing a couple of my posts front and center in his video). The points he showed my posts were more in the inquisitive parts of his video mostly. One of them was when I asked Nick about people going back to posts months or years down the line and reporting them, wondering if they'd be treated the same as new ones... and another being when I mentioned I was surprised Drath got a ban extremely fast for doing said reporting of old posts, rather than just a warning for it. Both of these posts are in this thread. Another one was also has me quoted in response to Yoshi, saying most people left their passive aggressiveness at the door of the V1 forum and Yoshi had himself to blame for not following suit himself.
Can't say I'm pleased with being shown in his video at all, honestly. But it's whatever I guess
- Mar 13, 2020
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Lol. I've spent the last two years cleaning up the website's socials, including even YouTube, to the point that we hardly have to moderate anymore on both the website and YouTube. It's actually become such a positive experience that I enjoy being involved with the community and interacting with it, rather than dreading it and I'm not sure how many other websites in gaming can say that.
That line is just straight up concern trolling at this point. Our moderation obviously isn't perfect, but considering I don't have to put a whole lot of thought into it anymore, and I don't spend sleepless nights worrying that someone from the community is gonna get us in trouble, I think we're doing just fine.
I can't speak for everyone, but personally, I don't have any issue with moderation around these parts. I keep it tidy, don't [intentionally] start shit, respect others and engage with only those I wish to engage with, and to my knowledge, have never received so much as a warning (not bragging if true, just a statement of fact that I've never found myself with a moderator's proverbial forearm against my neck.) I don't understand how anyone takes issue with the reasonable expectation of basic courtesies, least of all putting in the effort to make a nigh 30 minute video about how it's not fair they can't operate otherwise or that everyone should be equally "guilty" despite the vast gulf of difference between the extremes of individual behaviors.
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