Poll: A Drastic Measure to Save the Escapist - Mass Unbanning

[Mikeybb]

Unbanning won't make anyone come back. It won't save the site. Nothing will.
But day goes by
The people who have moved on will stay moved on no matter what, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that. They have found new routines, new comforts, and new people. The old days are dead and will never return. You're better off finding new pastures. Hoping things return to how they were is wishful thinking. It's not optimistic, it's unrealistic.
And love goes by
Not a drastic measure, but a fantasy scenario.
And sooner or later
I've dropped in on the forums from time to time and it's weird to see names like Furburt, Hubilub, Neonbob dropped with such hushed reverence, even by users who weren't even active at the time of these people. It appears tragic from the outside, like some kind of community that only looks backwards. There was a time and place where there were these people here, and those times ended, just like how you don't see all your old school friends anymore. That's life. Find a new patch and settle in there.
We both must lie
I'm not saying that those looking to the past in nostalgia are the reason the site is dying and people left. That's more to do with the shifting way the internet works now, the various controversies that made forums unpleasant to be around, but probably most of all, upper management starving the place and gutting it like they did GameTrailers.
And sooner or later
I just want you all to realise there is no solution in looking to the past. You need to look forward, and to somewhere outside of the site.
We all must die
For your own good.
And sooner or later
Time's moved on.
We all live a lie.

That's weirdly poignant and, seeing as I was imagining the cute lil' feller in your avatar saying the whited out parts, slightly sinister.

I'll still be here, lurking, up until the lights go out.
Then it's party time.
It's a cockroach thing.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

As others have already stated, most of the banned(even excluding all of the bots that have been banned over the years) were banned for good reason and probably moved on years ago. Hell, I imagine that even most of those who banjumped have jumped ship anyway along with most of the other users. The only way to save the Escapist at this point would be to do something big to bring in both new and old users and then still have something to keep them coming back. Problem is that Defy most likely doesn't care enough about this site at this point to even try and thinking of something to bring more traffic here.

Just running the clock at this point. I have no idea why Defy runs the way it does but the cracks in the site were clear awhile ago. Like a user I haven't seen in literal years said:

I just want you all to realise there is no solution in looking to the past. You need to look forward, and to somewhere outside of the site.

I just made my peace with Discord, a chat program I dislike compared to the mechanics of the forum here. The point being, the suits with the money don't communicate with the remaining 'staff', wishing for 2011 to return ain't realistic and I'm getting too old for this shit. Just sit back and try not to lose hair over this place.

[sub][sub]I'd rather see everyone get a ban-hammer than bring back the banned. They say an armed society is a polite society, I wonder how many minutes it would take for the entirety of the population here to self-ban itself? Could make for a fun social experiment.[/sub][/sub]

 

[TrulyBritish]

"They were banned for good reasons tho!"

Yeah I recall the glory days of the banhappy mods (main reason I was so quiet when I could still remember the email address I used on this site), if you responded to a simple question with a simple answer that didn't meet arbitrary post size standards people got slapped with warnings.

Person 1:"Do you have a source on that?"
Person 2: *posted link*
Person 2 received warning for post length.

And thats before counting the passive aggressive dogpiles intended to get people banned when the person getting dogpiled finally snapped.

I am sure most people banned didn't actually do anything that bad that wouldn't be shrugged off by 99% of other forums, it was just due to the crappy system the escapist used which counted someone saying "lol" exactly the same as calling another user every crude name in the book.

I can understand the dog piling issue, but how can someone be so dumb as to actually get themselves banned over the low content rules? Surely you'd get the first warning and go "huh, that's a weird rule, I'll just be more careful in future".

 

[McMarbles]

A drastic measure to save a sinking ship: Take on four hundred tons of garbage.

 

[tippy2k2]

Not really no. The people banned were banned for a reason - personal insults like fag and kike, death threats, mass trolling, posting porn or links to illegal download sites, or they just requested a self ban.

I've never done anything like that. The reason for my two week ban that got lifted yesterday was ridiculous. Nobody even responded to the message I sent through the review system shortly after the ban. No wonder this site is nearly dead.

Did you send it to the correct spot? Cause the normal appeals function hasn't worked in months and there are no emails from you that we have seen...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.1027789-IMPORTANT-READ-THIS-ANNOUNCEMENT-LINK-TO-NEW-APPEALS-SYSTEM-REPAIR-YOUR-HEALTH-BAR-HERE