As I look through various threads, I will come across the famous "This user was warned/suspended/banned for this post" blue link.
When I open it and read it, sometimes, its blatantly obvious why the user was given a warning, really foul language, harassment, ect. This is good thing most of the time, and makes the Escapist forums a little more civil and less trolly than IGN, Kotaku and the rest.
However, here in the last 6 months, I've seen a significant amount of posts that were punished for no noticeable reason.
I'll take myself as an example. I've gotten 2 warnings on these forums. One is was in October 2013, and while I didn't do what the moderator claimed (insulted others), I did use foul language, and was fine with the warning. I was also more easily worked up back then.
However in July of this year, I got a warning for being "rude"... In the post, I called someone pretentious and said it didn't seem like they read my previous post. I didn't use any foul language or use any other generally accepted rude term. While it was a little sarcastic in town, I wasn't actually any less rude or sarcastic than the other poster. The world "pretentious" isn't actually a word that's rude, but a comment on how he was acting. I could have easily used other colorful metaphors but went with that because it was a politer way to express my view. They later took the warning off, but I had to explain why.
Also, while reading some of the more recent controversial threads, I've seen users banned for posting and image of a tweet MovieBob and someone named @devincf (I have no clue who this is, but apparently he think's he's something) calling gamers worse than a terrorist organization that has killed and displaced 200,000 people. I've seen others make points, not using any harsh language or the like, be punished for what seems like a decedenting opinion or language that would be used in any normal civilized debate among friends
I wish I could post all of these posts, but I don't have the time or the patience
What I would like to propose to the Escapist, is that under each post the moderator has to put their username and complete reason they punished the post. It would show what the mods actually expect in real terms other than ambiguous rules with no examples that could be used to censor thought instead of controlling trolls.
Also, the rule about not being able to criticize the site? Really guys, that needs to go.
When I open it and read it, sometimes, its blatantly obvious why the user was given a warning, really foul language, harassment, ect. This is good thing most of the time, and makes the Escapist forums a little more civil and less trolly than IGN, Kotaku and the rest.
However, here in the last 6 months, I've seen a significant amount of posts that were punished for no noticeable reason.
I'll take myself as an example. I've gotten 2 warnings on these forums. One is was in October 2013, and while I didn't do what the moderator claimed (insulted others), I did use foul language, and was fine with the warning. I was also more easily worked up back then.
However in July of this year, I got a warning for being "rude"... In the post, I called someone pretentious and said it didn't seem like they read my previous post. I didn't use any foul language or use any other generally accepted rude term. While it was a little sarcastic in town, I wasn't actually any less rude or sarcastic than the other poster. The world "pretentious" isn't actually a word that's rude, but a comment on how he was acting. I could have easily used other colorful metaphors but went with that because it was a politer way to express my view. They later took the warning off, but I had to explain why.
Also, while reading some of the more recent controversial threads, I've seen users banned for posting and image of a tweet MovieBob and someone named @devincf (I have no clue who this is, but apparently he think's he's something) calling gamers worse than a terrorist organization that has killed and displaced 200,000 people. I've seen others make points, not using any harsh language or the like, be punished for what seems like a decedenting opinion or language that would be used in any normal civilized debate among friends
I wish I could post all of these posts, but I don't have the time or the patience
What I would like to propose to the Escapist, is that under each post the moderator has to put their username and complete reason they punished the post. It would show what the mods actually expect in real terms other than ambiguous rules with no examples that could be used to censor thought instead of controlling trolls.
Also, the rule about not being able to criticize the site? Really guys, that needs to go.
