Banned Escapists To Be Granted Amnesty On New Forums.

[Marik2]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

Saelune showed up briefly, but I think she deleted her account

That was an imposter. Or at least, the first one was. We banned and deleted the account.

---

Speaking of... if anyone else here sees an imposter, that isn't them, posting under their name on the new forum, please let us know on this forum (since your identity is essentially verified on this forum). We'll deal with the intruder. And don't worry, you'll still get to use your username, it won't be stolen forever.

That was fast. I thought it would take days to fix that. Now I am waiting for them to have animated gifs.

 

[Agema]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

I guess you've never had to moderate or run a forum.

I did back in the 90s. And a Counter-Strike server in the 2000s, which isn't so different. I preferred a light touch, but there's a point where disagreements explode to a point you absolutely have to shut it down. And if you have a repeat offender, kick them out. These days, if forums are there to make money (advertising, building community and membership) and you have users who piss too many people off to the point they exit, you kick them out or they cost you dear.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

I guess you've never had to moderate or run a forum.

I did back in the 90s. And a Counter-Strike server in the 2000s, which isn't so different. I preferred a light touch, but there's a point where disagreements explode to a point you absolutely have to shut it down. And if you have a repeat offender, kick them out. These days, if forums are there to make money (advertising, building community and membership) and you have users who piss too many people off to the point they exit, you kick them out or they cost you dear.

I mod a discord with over 10000 members which is not quite like a forum but it's similar when it comes to banning people. We only really ban people who don't listen to instruction and post things that can get the discord shut down or something to that effect but not just because there's disagreement, the approach there is to tell the person who is put out by the disagreement to block the other person, rather than taking sides and banning someone because someone else was feeling hurt. Pissing people off is part of free speech and I believe that if someone is truly behaving in an unbecoming way they effectively make the argument against their stances by themselves, so everyone else will end up disagreeing with them anyhow.

At some point, a topic can be deemed finished and if someone keeps annoying people it is within their power to ignore it and talk about something else. When someone is giving in to the annoyance they feel and prolongs an unproductive conversation that is just as much a willing act as the act of being annoying and since it's arbitrary to define what is or isn't annoying (and a popularity contest is not a fair way to decide this) banning someone over something like that is definitely unfair.

 

[TopazFusion]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

That was fast. I thought it would take days to fix that. Now I am waiting for them to have animated gifs.

This is what it's like having a tech team again.

Animated gif avatars are now live.

 

[Marik2]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

That was fast. I thought it would take days to fix that. Now I am waiting for them to have animated gifs.

This is what it's like having a tech team again.

Animated gif avatars are now live.

I'm now waiting for forum games. And to see if user groups will be a thing.

 

[Marik2]

From what I've seen, the new site is way better than what Arnox made.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Great, more threads about ponies and Max Payne 3.

 

[Trunkage]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

I guess you've never had to moderate or run a forum.

I did back in the 90s. And a Counter-Strike server in the 2000s, which isn't so different. I preferred a light touch, but there's a point where disagreements explode to a point you absolutely have to shut it down. And if you have a repeat offender, kick them out. These days, if forums are there to make money (advertising, building community and membership) and you have users who piss too many people off to the point they exit, you kick them out or they cost you dear.

I mod a discord with over 10000 members which is not quite like a forum but it's similar when it comes to banning people. We only really ban people who don't listen to instruction and post things that can get the discord shut down or something to that effect but not just because there's disagreement, the approach there is to tell the person who is put out by the disagreement to block the other person, rather than taking sides and banning someone because someone else was feeling hurt. Pissing people off is part of free speech and I believe that if someone is truly behaving in an unbecoming way they effectively make the argument against their stances by themselves, so everyone else will end up disagreeing with them anyhow.

At some point, a topic can be deemed finished and if someone keeps annoying people it is within their power to ignore it and talk about something else. When someone is giving in to the annoyance they feel and prolongs an unproductive conversation that is just as much a willing act as the act of being annoying and since it's arbitrary to define what is or isn't annoying (and a popularity contest is not a fair way to decide this) banning someone over something like that is definitely unfair.

When you say annoyance, do you mean insult?

 

[Drathnoxis]

From what I've seen, the new site is way better than what Arnox made.

To be fair, Arnox doesn't have a Tech Team or professional web designers.

 

[bluegate]

From what I've seen, the new site is way better than what Arnox made.

To be fair, Arnox doesn't have a Tech Team or professional web designers.

To be doubly fair, functionality-wise nothing seems to have been added (yet?) that isn't a simple settings tweak in XenForo's settings or something that could be found in its add-on library.

So "Tech Team" ( which seems to be a contracted company in the Escapist's case? ) or not, nothing has been done that would be beyond Arnox' reach at the moment.


In terms of design, though, I'd agree that the new Escapist Forums are a step up from the themes on Sanctuary. It probably isn't a coincidence that the theme I enjoy the most on there is basically the default XenForo theme with a different logo.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

I guess you've never had to moderate or run a forum.

I did back in the 90s. And a Counter-Strike server in the 2000s, which isn't so different. I preferred a light touch, but there's a point where disagreements explode to a point you absolutely have to shut it down. And if you have a repeat offender, kick them out. These days, if forums are there to make money (advertising, building community and membership) and you have users who piss too many people off to the point they exit, you kick them out or they cost you dear.

I mod a discord with over 10000 members which is not quite like a forum but it's similar when it comes to banning people. We only really ban people who don't listen to instruction and post things that can get the discord shut down or something to that effect but not just because there's disagreement, the approach there is to tell the person who is put out by the disagreement to block the other person, rather than taking sides and banning someone because someone else was feeling hurt. Pissing people off is part of free speech and I believe that if someone is truly behaving in an unbecoming way they effectively make the argument against their stances by themselves, so everyone else will end up disagreeing with them anyhow.

At some point, a topic can be deemed finished and if someone keeps annoying people it is within their power to ignore it and talk about something else. When someone is giving in to the annoyance they feel and prolongs an unproductive conversation that is just as much a willing act as the act of being annoying and since it's arbitrary to define what is or isn't annoying (and a popularity contest is not a fair way to decide this) banning someone over something like that is definitely unfair.

When you say annoyance, do you mean insult?

It includes insults but isn't exclusively limited to them. You can be annoying by making valid points to the face of ignorance, because someone ignorant will be annoyed by or even insulted from being corrected about something, so you wouldn't wanna validate ignorance simply because someone ignorant is also sensitive.

Insults are largely the same thing. The suggested approach to insults is to ignore them. Sticks and stones and all that stuff. The inability to not be offended by an insult and to not just wave it off as someone having issues is not something to be celebrated. It's something to be ironed out. Because you can actually iron that out but you can't iron out idiots, they'll always exist.


To give you a specific example, I deal with a lot of gameplay mechanics that are mathematical in nature (counted by frames per second) so when a disagreement arises out of someone not understanding these mechanics and someone else insulting them over being ignorant, the approach is to tell the person insulting the other person to be nicer and to also agree with them and explain what they were trying to say with more precision and less N words. Sometimes, the person won't accept that they were wrong even when you explain it to them fully rationally, since at that point they've engaged their lizard brain and are not responding to new information. At that point, banning the other guy because someone is annoyed is definitely unfair.

Usually, if you agree with someone, they tend to stop insulting people, since they feel validated. Insults come from insecurity so if you provide security people have no need to be aggressive.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

Literally every forum has bans, even those with the laxest standards imaginable. Because guess what, private communities - which is what the Escapist forums and your discord are - can determine the limit of speech. You have chosen a fairly high limit, good for you. The Escapist has chosen a high-medium. Congratulations you have both used your liberty to determine rules for your private domain. And the world continues to turn with most of us not giving a fuck.

 

[Agema]

Pissing people off is part of free speech...

Firstly, free speech rights don't trump a person's rights over what goes on in his or her property. Secondly, free speech stops at the point it degrades orderly society too much.

Some societies - or perhaps we should say communities with regard to a forum - will need different levels of strictness.

I believe that if someone is truly behaving in an unbecoming way they effectively make the argument against their stances by themselves, so everyone else will end up disagreeing with them anyhow.

That the US president has an approval rating over 40% should suggest some major caveats to that notion at minimum.

At some point, a topic can be deemed finished and if someone keeps annoying people it is within their power to ignore it and talk about something else. When someone is giving in to the annoyance they feel and prolongs an unproductive conversation that is just as much a willing act as the act of being annoying and since it's arbitrary to define what is or isn't annoying.

No, it's not arbitrary to decide what's annoying. It's subjective: if someone has been annoyed by something, it is necessarily annoying. But people aren't banned for "being annoying": there are criteria for behaviour likely to annoy other people, and they get slapped for carrying out that behaviour.

And let's face it, we can all see shit that we know is likely to be annoying to enough people, or is designed to induce annoyance.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

Literally every forum has bans, even those with the laxest standards imaginable. Because guess what, private communities - which is what the Escapist forums and your discord are - can determine the limit of speech. You have chosen a fairly high limit, good for you. The Escapist has chosen a high-medium. Congratulations you have both used your liberty to determine rules for your private domain. And the world continues to turn with most of us not giving a fuck.

Yeah so like I said, this applies to things that aren't outright trolling out of someone who isn't a contributing member. It's fine to ban those people since they aren't seeking to engage. Just being controversial or something is not the same thing.

And I never said the escapist had to change, this is a topic about them listing a thing they already decided and I just agreed with that decision based on the above reasoning. I didn't go out of my way to make a topic about this, I didn't advocate for my standards to be applied here. I just agreed heartily.

Pissing people off is part of free speech...

Firstly, free speech rights don't trump a person's rights over what goes on in his or her property. Secondly, free speech stops at the point it degrades orderly society too much.

Some societies - or perhaps we should say communities with regard to a forum - will need different levels of strictness.

Nobody ought to get to decide what is "too much". Such power is too corrupting and dangerous to be allowed to be wielded by any single entity.

That the US president has an approval rating over 40% should suggest some major caveats to that notion at minimum.

Or it suggests the things he's doing aren't as unbecoming to a bunch of people as others would like to think.

No, it's not arbitrary to decide what's annoying. It's subjective: if someone has been annoyed by something, it is necessarily annoying. But people aren't banned for "being annoying": there are criteria for behaviour likely to annoy other people, and they get slapped for carrying out that behaviour.

And let's face it, we can all see shit that we know is likely to be annoying to enough people, or is designed to induce annoyance.

Being annoyed by something is a trait of the person, not of the thing, because the thing is also not annoying to a ton of people too. Why should the fact that it annoys one get to label it as annoying when the fact that it doesn't annoy someone else doesn't get to define it as not-annoying. Clearly, the choice to validate one person's feelings of annoyance over the other person's feelings of non-annoyance is arbitrary.

 

[Trunkage]

I'm generally not a fan of banning people outright unless they were never a contributing member and joined just to troll or post porn or something like that so this is a good step. Only a very insecure forum would need to rely on bans to solve disagreements.

I guess you've never had to moderate or run a forum.

I did back in the 90s. And a Counter-Strike server in the 2000s, which isn't so different. I preferred a light touch, but there's a point where disagreements explode to a point you absolutely have to shut it down. And if you have a repeat offender, kick them out. These days, if forums are there to make money (advertising, building community and membership) and you have users who piss too many people off to the point they exit, you kick them out or they cost you dear.

I mod a discord with over 10000 members which is not quite like a forum but it's similar when it comes to banning people. We only really ban people who don't listen to instruction and post things that can get the discord shut down or something to that effect but not just because there's disagreement, the approach there is to tell the person who is put out by the disagreement to block the other person, rather than taking sides and banning someone because someone else was feeling hurt. Pissing people off is part of free speech and I believe that if someone is truly behaving in an unbecoming way they effectively make the argument against their stances by themselves, so everyone else will end up disagreeing with them anyhow.

At some point, a topic can be deemed finished and if someone keeps annoying people it is within their power to ignore it and talk about something else. When someone is giving in to the annoyance they feel and prolongs an unproductive conversation that is just as much a willing act as the act of being annoying and since it's arbitrary to define what is or isn't annoying (and a popularity contest is not a fair way to decide this) banning someone over something like that is definitely unfair.

When you say annoyance, do you mean insult?

It includes insults but isn't exclusively limited to them. You can be annoying by making valid points to the face of ignorance, because someone ignorant will be annoyed by or even insulted from being corrected about something, so you wouldn't wanna validate ignorance simply because someone ignorant is also sensitive.

Insults are largely the same thing. The suggested approach to insults is to ignore them. Sticks and stones and all that stuff. The inability to not be offended by an insult and to not just wave it off as someone having issues is not something to be celebrated. It's something to be ironed out. Because you can actually iron that out but you can't iron out idiots, they'll always exist.


To give you a specific example, I deal with a lot of gameplay mechanics that are mathematical in nature (counted by frames per second) so when a disagreement arises out of someone not understanding these mechanics and someone else insulting them over being ignorant, the approach is to tell the person insulting the other person to be nicer and to also agree with them and explain what they were trying to say with more precision and less N words. Sometimes, the person won't accept that they were wrong even when you explain it to them fully rationally, since at that point they've engaged their lizard brain and are not responding to new information. At that point, banning the other guy because someone is annoyed is definitely unfair.

Usually, if you agree with someone, they tend to stop insulting people, since they feel validated. Insults come from insecurity so if you provide security people have no need to be aggressive.

You wouldnt be banning someone for being right. You would be banning someone for being an asshole. Just becuase you are right, doesn't make you being an asshole okay.

Why would you get so offended at someone who is wrong that you need to insult? How is that helping anyone? It certainly doesn't make you right. Also, doesnt that fly in the face of your presumption of why people insult? The insecurity is the fact that you cant let someone else think the way they do, it's hasn't got much to with being right. It's about controlling others

 

[Elfgore]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

Saelune showed up briefly, but I think she deleted her account

That was an imposter. Or at least, the first one was. We banned and deleted the account.

---

Speaking of... if anyone else here sees an imposter, that isn't them, posting under their name on the new forum, please let us know on this forum (since your identity is essentially verified on this forum). We'll deal with the intruder. And don't worry, you'll still get to use your username, it won't be stolen forever.

Imagine being so obsessed with someone you impersonate them on an internet forum. Christ. Good thing you all caught that!

 

[IceForce]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

Saelune showed up briefly, but I think she deleted her account

That was an imposter. Or at least, the first one was. We banned and deleted the account.

---

Speaking of... if anyone else here sees an imposter, that isn't them, posting under their name on the new forum, please let us know on this forum (since your identity is essentially verified on this forum). We'll deal with the intruder. And don't worry, you'll still get to use your username, it won't be stolen forever.

Imagine being so obsessed with someone you impersonate them on an internet forum. Christ. Good thing you all caught that!

You can still see the impostor being quoted here:
https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/.20/post-90

And yeah, reading over it again, something definitely seems 'off' about that post. Like someone was trying their best impersonation routine, but not getting it quite right. (Does Saelune even play Minecraft? First I've heard of that)

 

[Marik2]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

Saelune showed up briefly, but I think she deleted her account

That was an imposter. Or at least, the first one was. We banned and deleted the account.

---

Speaking of... if anyone else here sees an imposter, that isn't them, posting under their name on the new forum, please let us know on this forum (since your identity is essentially verified on this forum). We'll deal with the intruder. And don't worry, you'll still get to use your username, it won't be stolen forever.

Imagine being so obsessed with someone you impersonate them on an internet forum. Christ. Good thing you all caught that!

You can still see the impostor being quoted here:
https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/.20/post-90

And yeah, reading over it again, something definitely seems 'off' about that post. Like someone was trying their best impersonation routine, but not getting it quite right. (Does Saelune even play Minecraft? First I've heard of that)

It was probably a right winger who tried to smear Saelune in being associated with a bad game.

 

[Elfgore]

I'm not gonna join until they make avatars big.

Avatars are big now.

Saelune showed up briefly, but I think she deleted her account

That was an imposter. Or at least, the first one was. We banned and deleted the account.

---

Speaking of... if anyone else here sees an imposter, that isn't them, posting under their name on the new forum, please let us know on this forum (since your identity is essentially verified on this forum). We'll deal with the intruder. And don't worry, you'll still get to use your username, it won't be stolen forever.

Imagine being so obsessed with someone you impersonate them on an internet forum. Christ. Good thing you all caught that!

You can still see the impostor being quoted here:
https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/.20/post-90

And yeah, reading over it again, something definitely seems 'off' about that post. Like someone was trying their best impersonation routine, but not getting it quite right. (Does Saelune even play Minecraft? First I've heard of that)

Holy shit, that sounds like a shitty AI wrote it.