Appeal to the moderation

I had already started a discussion with them, and had been very patiently attempting to help them address the problems with their edits, in the face of unrelenting hostility, for some time. The outcome of that course of action was that they started making rapid-fire edits to a page that was still under active discussion, some of which were directly violating a policy that had already been explained to them at length.

From what I could see, discussion had broken down at that point.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 20th 2019 at 2:44:23 AM

If you're reading this HC, I asked you if you could just explain why their edits were poor. Literally, that's all I wanted. It's a moot point now, but remember that sometimes it's not a matter of whether you're right or if the other person was wrong. Sometimes it's just about coming to a compromise. I didn't want to know why you didn't continue the discussion with them. I wanted you to continue the discussion at the other thread for the sake of figuring things out. I had no interest in arguing over whether or not you were in the right. That's all I'll say.

Is the advertising and security issues thread being monitored at all? It feels like it’s been abandoned by the mod team and if it hasn’t then perhaps something should be done to correct that impression.

*sigh* I wish we could actually do something about these issues, but the admins are the only ones that have any control over the ad content. I'll make mention in our off-site channel to them but I can't promise anything's going to happen. Sorry.

Edited by Willbyr on Oct 14th 2019 at 8:07:19 AM

It’s fair if you guys don’t have direct control, but if things are being fed up the chain then it’d be good to have the occasional post saying “just letting everyone know that we are passing all this stuff onto the admins”, while if things aren’t being passed onto the admins there doesn’t seem to be any point in having the thread.

I really need to talk about something that's bothered me over the past few days. I wound up starting a Flame War on the "General Sonic the Hedgehog Thread" by admitting that I didn't like Sonic Mania. In hindsight, I regret a lot of the stuff I said in that thread, and I have apologised for it. However, I feel as though I'm getting mistreated by at least one of the mods as, even though most of the users in that thread were breaking several rules, I was the only one who seemed to be getting punished for anything - namely, by getting some of my comments Thumped. Now, I understand that those comments I made that were thumped were pretty rude, but I find it unfair that several other users who responded to my initial comment, that had been acting nasty to me for disliking it and broke the same rules that I would later, aren't getting any repercussion for their behaviour. One other, possibly bigger, problem, is that the mod whom Thumped one of my comments explained his reasons in a very unprofessional way, namely by calling me a dick and threatening to permanently ban me. I may not be a mod, but it's my knowledge that mods should explain their reasons in a more professional way ("we do not condone this behaviour and continued behaviour like this can result in a permanent ban", for example), rather than through verbal abuse. I really need some help.

Care to link to some of these supposed injustices?

While there are certainly things that mods can do to improve - we are entirely human - for the sake of a full perspective, here are the events leading up to the exchanges you are concerned about:

• Your very first post in the general Sonic the Hedgehog thread was to state that you hated a game. Having your own opinion is fine, but coming in to a thread for simply that sole purpose is extremely off-putting, and indicates more often than not that you're not in it to have a constructive or civil convo.
• Your follow-up posts didn't do much to dissuade that point. You even said outright that a game didn't "deserve to succeed, with some gripes about the fandom and thread you chose to participate in.
• Following up on that last point more, coming in to a thread just to complain about the thread is quite literally against the rules:

• You took a break for a while. There were some comments debating about whether or not you were a troll - and, speaking as a mod, yes, it did come across as troll-y. Even being unfamiliar with Sonic as a work, the behavior of coming into a thread for the first time to not only bluntly complain about a game without engaging on substance, but also to complain about posters in the thread and fandom in general, is very suspect. Re-reading the thread, the course-correction I would have given the others was to stop engaging with you earlier, when you started insulting the thread, and simply stop acknowledging your posts at all moving forward and just holler.
• When you did come back, it was to post a block of text asserting that you were being silenced, that mods who had deleted your entries on DMOS before were breaking the rules (I would point out that DMOS has rules, and if an entry violates them, it will be removed - interestingly, I don't even see in your recent edit history a post there, which seems like you may have made it on the work page itself, which is, yes, against the rules), that the Sonic fandom doesn't deserve happiness, again called posters in the thread stupid, and then had several lines complaining about how you held a minority opinion and it was unfair. This was thumped, deservedly.
• Then someone pointed out how your behavior looked, and you conceded that they were right.
• Then you said all another troper did was complain, which...is quite a moment of pot calling the kettle black, given the above.

When you went to PM's, the mod who thumped you accurately categorized your behavior as being dick-ish. We literally have "don't be a dick" encoded in our rules, so that's not an out-there use of language for us. Instead of responding to that, you complained about the moderation, which only then resulted in the ultimatum of either accepting the thumps and the message they entailed about your behavior, or being permanently banned. You then apologized, asked to be removed from the subforum, and was advised that you can remove yourself as you wish, and that you are responsible for your own behavior. You advised you would remove yourself from the thread voluntarily. After this, you posted here asking for an external review of the situation.

To be candid, I think I'm one of the less harsh mods, but, in light of the summary above, the thumps, discretionary actions of mods in the thread who did not thump anyone else, actual content of the PM's by said mod (which did not use any language that is not already part of our publicly posted rules), and eventual ultimatum does not seem out of line.

(Also, now that you are posting here, and I'm taking a closer look at the situation, I see during the course of this situation, you chose to make edits to work pages that smell like you were wonking about your own forum situation. Which is, I have to say, not a great look. The whole thing seems like you have a serious single issue wonk about this particular game, and are trying to bring it up everywhere you can.)

Edited by nombretomado on Nov 7th 2019 at 6:50:59 AM

Okay, you’ve convinced me. I do have a particular dislike for Sonic Mania, but I did overreact quite a bit. I’m officially swearing off posting in that thread, and you’re free to Thump all my posts in it. In fact, I won’t be talking about Mania again.

This may be one for the admins, but it's the closest thing we've got. Why, admins, have you ignored us for requests to "make the thumbs up/down icons transparent" and "replace theater with theatre". All of us want that, you haven't given them to us.

Oh. Sorry about that, I was a bit confused. Hopefully the admins will fix the issues.

I'll try and be less angry when asking about it, but is there any way you could at least mention these issues to the admins? They're things that should be really easy to fix, and would improve the quality of the site for a lot of people. These issues have been on the wishlist for over a year; the only reason it was taken here is because we're starting to get frustrated, and we're starting to feel like we're being ignored. So many major things have been added to the site in the past year by the admins and dev team, so why not just fix these small things?

I mean, serious question here: Do the admins and devs actually look at the wishlist and bugs list? Because there are a lot of bugs mentioned that haven't really been resolved, a lot of brilliant ideas mentioned on the wishlist that haven't been touched, despite overwhelming consensus that they're good ideas. I'm wondering if these areas of the site actually get looked at at all, or at least often enough to consider these ideas/fixes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 11th 2019 at 3:08:26 PM

Thanks for the response. I understand; and I sincerely appreciate ya'll doing what you can. We all do. Hopefully these things will happen, but I guess until then we just need to be patient.

It was bound to happen when it happened. Someone was going to complain. Might as well be me. I preface this by saying TV trope's staff and mods have been extremely good to me over the years. I've said some really dumb things in the past and they've always been prompt with responses and stuff. Which is why what happened with the locking of the Sword and Shield thread [1] sets me off so bad. Like I get that the topic that got the thread locked was a banned one but the thread was finally locked after only a singular person brought the topic back up, no one even engaged with them, and the conversation didn't even turn to the banned topic. I'd understand locking the topic if it had devolved into a three page circular argument again but when only one person brings something back up wouldn't it have been more appropriate to simply zap their post? This seems like a fairly draconian over-response from the outside and I'd just like some more clarity on the situation if at all possible.

We thumped a lot of people. The conversation did not stop. Regulars in the topic kept bringing it back up. You left us no choice.

Edited to add: The lock is not permanent, just a cool-down so you can all take a deep breath and calm down a bit.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 13th 2019 at 5:07:38 AM

Fair enough. Again thanks for the prompt response. Its always appreciated.

It was very much a case of straw breaking the camel's back. Hopefully when we unlock it (because there is no intention at this time of nuking/permalocking), the lesson of locking will have had its intended effect and we won't need to zap.

Also, I do appreciate what I've been seeing here and in the Pokemon General thread, which is even the people who don't agree with the locking steps, being civil about it.

I wonder... is there a way to pin a note to the header of each page so that the banned topic is spelled out as being banned so that anyone new who drops in doesn't accidentally mention it?

Yes. Were you going to ask it to be added to the Pokemon General Thread?

Probably should be added to Pokemon general and to the Sw Sh topic once its unlocked yeah.

Done to the general thread for now.

Appreciate it thanks.