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At 6/1/09 02:01 AM, DirtySyko wrote:

At 6/1/09 01:51 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 6/1/09 01:31 AM, Clock-Ninja wrote:

I think when any user users the word faggot, it needs to be taken by the context in which it was used and not just banned because the word was dropped. I believe that for all words.

If a user is repeatedly calling other users "faggots," then they should probably get a 3 day vacation. But if you subtly drop in a Fag-bomb during casual conversation, I don't see the issue.

You might not, but believe me, homosexuals do find it offensive, no matter the context.

I used it in every day conversation too, until I met my friend Mike, who has lesbian parents. I dropped it a few times during conversation and he was offended and told me not to say it. But it was a habit and it took him decking me one day at a party to get the message through.

But my point is, it can be offensive to gay people, no matter the context.

Using the word "faggot" Shouldn't be a ban, Right away. Yes, it is offensive, BUT, it should be just deleted, and if the user in question continues, then ban. Mods in this thread have said if users get trolled, or are trolling others, you just delete the posts. Well, when trolls do there trolling, there are being offensive, and yet, they don't get banned right away, rather then posts deleted. they get banned after they become a consistent problem. if a user says "faggot" once, it should just add into a post deletion, how ever, if they continue, then ban

At 6/1/09 02:05 AM, WeHaveFreshCookies wrote:

You might not, but believe me, homosexuals do find it offensive, no matter the context.

I used it in every day conversation too, until I met my friend Mike, who has lesbian parents. I dropped it a few times during conversation and he was offended and told me not to say it. But it was a habit and it took him decking me one day at a party to get the message through.

But my point is, it can be offensive to gay people, no matter the context.

You know, that's all well and good, but honestly, and I may be a dickhead for saying this, but I don't really give a shit if it's offensive to some people. The word cunt and bitch might be offensive to women, but those words haven't become as taboo as the word faggot. Some users might take the word bastard as offensive because they were actually abandoned by their fathers, but people are still going to use that word.

Most of the time the people being offended by a word are the problem, not the people using the word. There are times when a user may be calling another known gay user a faggot, and that's not acceptable. But if a user says something like I mentioned above, like "work being faggy," and another user PMs me and says, "Hi, I'm a homosexual and this really offends me." I'll just say, "Sorry it offended you."

At 6/1/09 01:58 AM, Gagsy wrote: Well if you get banned for saying fag/faggot, why not go the way of the N word and just have it banned on here, so if you attempt to make a post with that word you get an error message instead?

That would be like, the worst day ever.

It would be like waking up and finding you slept on a nest of ants.
Really pissed off ants that you've been showering with ant killer in the backyard for weeks.
And they know, they know.

At 6/1/09 01:58 AM, Malachy wrote:

* Using racist, sexist, homophobic or hateful language.

Call me crazy or edgy or crazy, but I'm stuck with the mindset that words are merely words and those who are too weak to put themselves above the given meaning a certain few have labeled the word with don't have the right to complain about the manner in which it is used in the first place.

I don't connect so called racist or homophobic meanings with the words that apparently embody them. Perhaps my upbringing has something to do with this. My father used to beat me with a belt shouting the evils of word censorship at me when I was younger. Then again I came up as a True Neutral alignment for my Facebook Alignment test on Facebook. Han Solo was a True Neutral too and everybody seems to agree that hes a pretty swell guy.

But I can't change the way minds of old view such vulgaraties and it's not my intention to. Just thought it might be cute to throw the idea out there and maybe deter some of the moralfags that plague my morning ritual with chants and banter as to why I'm a awful person for using such hateful language.

I listened to Sharon's "I'm in the Mood for Dancing" during the entirety to composing this post. Thats got to tell you something.

At 6/1/09 02:10 AM, DirtySyko wrote:

At 6/1/09 02:05 AM, WeHaveFreshCookies wrote:

You might not, but believe me, homosexuals do find it offensive, no matter the context.

I used it in every day conversation too, until I met my friend Mike, who has lesbian parents. I dropped it a few times during conversation and he was offended and told me not to say it. But it was a habit and it took him decking me one day at a party to get the message through.

But my point is, it can be offensive to gay people, no matter the context.

You know, that's all well and good, but honestly, and I may be a dickhead for saying this, but I don't really give a shit if it's offensive to some people. The word cunt and bitch might be offensive to women, but those words haven't become as taboo as the word faggot. Some users might take the word bastard as offensive because they were actually abandoned by their fathers, but people are still going to use that word.

Most of the time the people being offended by a word are the problem, not the people using the word.

And I'm in the gray with that. I don't agree nor disagree. The word faggot is only tabboo because everybody wants to jump on the 'gay rights' bandwagon. It's a rather hot political issue right now. I'm sure in the feminist revolution, cunt and bitch were taboo as well.

My personal opinion is, try your best not to offend anybody, and if somebody is offended anyway, forget them. The topic is pretty hot right now, so it has potential to start some major flame wars.

I actually have no idea where I'm going with this, but whatever. Anyway, I was just pointing out the view of the gays. Whether you agree or heed them is your choice and I wont really care either way. I'm one of the hardest people to offend that you'll ever meet.

At 6/1/09 01:45 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: "the mods are just like us...cept with more buttons"

for the first 4 or 5 years i was on the bbs that how i felt twords mods in general. If i got banned it was cause i ither earned it or jsut pissed off a certain mod at the wrong time. meh it happens. but then one day i came on and all of a sudden everyone one was stuck up for somereason
and i dont mean jsut mods there was a time where most users were douchbags going everyhwhere citing rules and and pming everythng people did to mods...like how things got to bad in the ASM so instead of asking a forum reg to if they were willing to take the time to clean it up they kill it. the reason things like that were happening then was because the useres were all on uber crack. The site was undergoing huge changes and getting huge influxes of users not really seen before. Cause most of use were used ot noobs...but not to the sheer amout of em we had pouring in.
Then at the same time a lot of the old users were dwindling out cause the real life was calling cause mos tof us had jobs and or families ot take care now and couldnt be on NG all dam day anymore. So in the wake of all the fun the new users saw a lot of old shit that made no sense and giving the classic newgorunds way most didnt want to explain it ither. Ive adopted a few noobs in my time here and hell if i would know em today but i like ot think i let em know what was up before they were 100+ posters. Shit allmost everyone on the mod list now ive seen from the beging of their bbs unlife.
so when the BBS had a good ratio of old and new users it worked out in a very funny way...but when that ratio took a huge turn for the assend things had to change drasticaly lest the BBs go away.
if you get nothing from this abominationof the english language i call a post jsut know i have come and gone many times and i still love the bbs cause i know it has its good and its bad. And its all our fault

"the mods are just like us...cept with more buttons" its hard to think that for the newer folk cause of all the propaganda and shit everyone talks about the huge list of current mods...and the fact that you tend to only see a mod post last in a thread...lets loose guys try testing the boundries one day and get banned yourself jsut for the fun of being a user again

The number one problem with the BBS is that I can't spend enough time here.

I mean, let's face it guys, comparing me to the rest of you is like comparing Plato to a woman, or Hercules to a cripple. Now, I know most of you won't understand what I mean by that, so I'll simplify it.

I am better than you.

If I could spend more hours of every day browsing and posting on the BBS the average quality of post would rise hugely, along with the average humour levels. The more idiotic users would, eventually, leave and then we'd form a beautiful intellectual utopia right here.

Let's face it, I am loved unanimously, assuming we discount shit people.

You shouldn't get a insta-ban for posting in a spam thread. Just a warning, because some of us cant tell the difference. However if a user keeps on posting in spam threads, then yes, ban-stick.

I've noticed that some mods have worse ban penalites than others. For example, I get banned by one mod for accidently breaking a rule. A couple months later I break the same rule again by accident, a different mod bans me, but with a higher penalty. It would be better if all mods had the same consequences.

A lot of interesting topics get locked and the OP is told to put it in their blog. Why would anyone do something like that? NO ONE LOOKS AT BLOGS! This isn't a social networking site. We get more opinions, faster, on the BBS. So even stupid shit like "new haircutz, likey?" belongs on the BBS. It's for the good of the community that any user can post just about anything and get decent opinions on it, provided it's done with a certain degree of scarcity. Sure, if someone posts shit like that all the time, then it's annoying, but I see no reason why someone shouldn't be allowed to post about something that they just want some quick opinions on.

I think that there should be a function where any user can create a self-deleting topic. Like, they set a time for the topic to lock(6 hours, a day, etc), and then when the time comes, the topic locks, and an hour later, blams itself. It would be useful for moderating the kinds of threads I discussed above.

I want us to be able to say faggot and nig ger. Sure, the terms are inherently hateful, but so fucking what? It's the internet. Not only that, but people who use those terms inappropriately just do themselves a disservice, and make themselves look like imbeciles. It's just a matter of censorship being unnecessary.

Why don't Mods ever make good topics? Seriously. The only topics I see from them are based around NG policy. You guys don't seem to be a part of the community, more like overseers. Mingle MOAR!

Also, make me a mod. Seriously. Do it.

Warning are great, and horrible things. They let new users know about rules, and learn that way, but they can also be abused. The fact that they can be abused is the reason why Mods don't really use them.

Also, it is a lot of work to issue out warnings for people, simply because there is no current system in place to look after them, each mod would have to care for each warning for each individual user, and they don't have the time to do so, and we don't have nearly enough mods to do so. This is why mods are quicker on the ban button, cause it is simply the easiest solution to the problem.

At 6/1/09 02:24 AM, BetaOrionis wrote: A lot of interesting topics get locked and the OP is told to put it in their blog. Why would anyone do something like that? NO ONE LOOKS AT BLOGS! This isn't a social networking site. We get more opinions, faster, on the BBS. So even stupid shit like "new haircutz, likey?" belongs on the BBS. It's for the good of the community that any user can post just about anything and get decent opinions on it, provided it's done with a certain degree of scarcity. Sure, if someone posts shit like that all the time, then it's annoying, but I see no reason why someone shouldn't be allowed to post about something that they just want some quick opinions on.

True that in all the time weve had "blogs" on our profile ive checked maybe two. And that sonly cause they were walkthroughs to a certain game i couldnt for life of me finish. I like the option of blogs but for the most part i never fel the need ot look at one

At 6/1/09 01:45 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: I also think it would do a lot more better towards that whole "the mods are just like us...cept with more buttons" kind of feel we should be aiming for.

I think a good way to start with that, and also put a bit of a limiter on all a mod would get spammed with, is to get rid of the mod aura. Because let's face it, that pretty picture on the side of someone's post is the first thing everyone looks at. If not, the second.

At 6/1/09 01:45 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: Maybe we could call it something like the "Hi! I'm new Lounge" or something similar so that it's nice and welcoming for new users, but has the structure needed to also keep the regs and mods coming in too. What does everyone think?

Usually forums have an entire sub forum for the Hi I'm New threads but I actually do see just a thread in General working as well and the reason why is because of threads like the Paltalk thread, and the Stickam thread, both of which are as close to a lounge as you're going to get on the General forum, and both of them work and have their own sub-communities. The only difference is that there's more fighting and arguing than in other forum lounges but in a Hi I'm New thread context, that would probably not be the case as much. As long as the thing is looked over constantly by mods, it'll work.

At 6/1/09 02:35 AM, 36Holla wrote:

At 6/1/09 01:45 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: Maybe we could call it something like the "Hi! I'm new Lounge" or something similar so that it's nice and welcoming for new users, but has the structure needed to also keep the regs and mods coming in too. What does everyone think?

Usually forums have an entire sub forum for the Hi I'm New threads but I actually do see just a thread in General working as well and the reason why is because of threads like the Paltalk thread, and the Stickam thread, both of which are as close to a lounge as you're going to get on the General forum, and both of them work and have their own sub-communities. The only difference is that there's more fighting and arguing than in other forum lounges but in a Hi I'm New thread context, that would probably not be the case as much. As long as the thing is looked over constantly by mods, it'll work.

The only thing about the "Hi, I am new" thing is that it is the shittiest way for people to get a +1 post. in other forums i have seen that have this, 1 person will make a thread, and it will be a 2-3 page of just "hello", "welcome", etc.

At 6/1/09 02:39 AM, jmalouin7 wrote:

At 6/1/09 02:35 AM, 36Holla wrote: Usually forums have an entire sub forum for the Hi I'm New threads but I actually do see just a thread in General working as well and the reason why is because of threads like the Paltalk thread, and the Stickam thread, both of which are as close to a lounge as you're going to get on the General forum, and both of them work and have their own sub-communities. The only difference is that there's more fighting and arguing than in other forum lounges but in a Hi I'm New thread context, that would probably not be the case as much. As long as the thing is looked over constantly by mods, it'll work.

The only thing about the "Hi, I am new" thing is that it is the shittiest way for people to get a +1 post. in other forums i have seen that have this, 1 person will make a thread, and it will be a 2-3 page of just "hello", "welcome", etc.

This is true. The only way around this is to set higher standards for people's first post, such as making it a requirement that if they're going to post, that they provide some base details such as where they live, what kind of music they like, and other little things that can help get a conversation going. The Destructoid forums do this in the sense that they require you to have a good quality introduction post if you decide to post in their Hi I'm New forum. The one liners of others can easily be dealt with and if need be, it can be required that no post in such a thread can be a one word/liner post. If the aim is to breed conversation, then these things may be needed to get it going on the right track.

At 6/1/09 02:01 AM, DirtySyko wrote: I think when any user users the word faggot, it needs to be taken by the context in which it was used and not just banned because the word was dropped. I believe that for all words.

Like Mal said, as long as we still have rule 1, it needs to be banned. It's still at it's base a homophobic word. It's just that it's become socially acceptable among straight society to use it, the N bomb used to be too and then it wasn't. Long as we have rule one, we have to enforce it I think because when we start making these exceptions we shouldn't have rule 1. What's so important that people NEED to be able to say faggot to begin with?

If a user is repeatedly calling other users "faggots," then they should probably get a 3 day vacation. But if you subtly drop in a Fag-bomb during casual conversation, I don't see the issue.

The issue is it's still at it's base a word to slander a group of people just based on their orientation. Also Wade made a whole big crackdown thread to remind people not too long ago that it's not acceptable, so now you have somebody above us saying "no no" so I think you gotta respect that since the admins are the one's paid to know what's best for the site.

Like, "Yeah I worked today and it was pretty faggy." Or "Lol, the people I work with are such faggots."

You're not directly calling anyone on the forum a faggot, so what's the harm? This is how I see it, however, I don't think all mods see it the same way.

Nope, because again, rule 1. At it's base it was designed as a word to offend and denigrate homosexuals. We don't use the N word, or jewish or latin slurs in casual conversation because it's prejudice and we know it and we know it's wrong. Homophobic slurs should get the same treatment I feel, and in the writing of the rules it seems the admins felt the same way so again, I think we should respect that and not use a word that they don't want used. Just because some people might want to use it isn't enough reason to me to say "oh, ok, sure it's prejudice and stuff...but as long as you make it clear that that's not how you mean it...it's all good"

At 6/1/09 02:39 AM, jmalouin7 wrote: The only thing about the "Hi, I am new" thing is that it is the shittiest way for people to get a +1 post. in other forums i have seen that have this, 1 person will make a thread, and it will be a 2-3 page of just "hello", "welcome", etc.

This got me thinking:

We need an average-post-length stat. Just the existence of such a stat would decrease a lot of people's desire to post one liners, and one worders. We could squeeze it in under the post count stat. Another great thing about it would be that it lend additional weight to posts that deviate far from the poster's norm, like if someone like Lost-Chances posts something three lines long. Even if no one knew his posting style, they would see that 500 characters is 490 characters higher than his average post length, thereby adding weight to his post, which I would assume is longer for a reason. Conversely, if I were to find someone completely inane, I could post "you suck," and it would have added weight because my average post is pretty long.

At 6/1/09 02:14 AM, Minion777 wrote: stuff

Dude, can you stop slipping the word fag into your posts in a neutral way like you did here? Because it really wasn't germane to discussing word usage, it's used in the way that's being discouraged. Just a polite request to refrain from doing so. Thank you.

At 6/1/09 02:53 AM, BetaOrionis wrote: We need an average-post-length stat. Just the existence of such a stat would decrease a lot of people's desire to post one liners, and one worders. We could squeeze it in under the post count stat. Another great thing about it would be that it lend additional weight to posts that deviate far from the poster's norm, like if someone like Lost-Chances posts something three lines long. Even if no one knew his posting style, they would see that 500 characters is 490 characters higher than his average post length, thereby adding weight to his post, which I would assume is longer for a reason. Conversely, if I were to find someone completely inane, I could post "you suck," and it would have added weight because my average post is pretty long.

I disagree. I think it's about quality, not quantity. Sometimes, one line of text does the trick. I think we're fine without having a stat like that. We are already required to enter a minimum amount of text, and I think that is enough. I'd say it's working well. And I think you can figure out someone's posting style and all that by browsing the forums, it doesn't need to be broken down further. :)

At 6/1/09 02:53 AM, BetaOrionis wrote: This got me thinking:

We need an average-post-length stat. Just the existence of such a stat would decrease a lot of people's desire to post one liners, and one worders. We could squeeze it in under the post count stat. Another great thing about it would be that it lend additional weight to posts that deviate far from the poster's norm, like if someone like Lost-Chances posts something three lines long. Even if no one knew his posting style, they would see that 500 characters is 490 characters higher than his average post length, thereby adding weight to his post, which I would assume is longer for a reason. Conversely, if I were to find someone completely inane, I could post "you suck," and it would have added weight because my average post is pretty long.

A stat is just a stat though, if you choose to follow it, then you do, if not, then no harm done. If stats were 100% important and necessary, then everyone on this site would have to deposit each day, each member would have to go get every medal in every game, review, flag, etc.

in the end, Stats are just stats.

I got an idea for a feature. For fist time accounts, for people first starting the BBS, there should be the rules page, before you click general. with instructions. And pictures. Maybe it can be a flash movie. It will outline every rule, and name some mods, and how their deposition is. Then it will outline what pictures are photoshop thread worthy, and which ones fail. Basically something like that. And it's mandatory, you cant skip the first time. Otherwise, you can.

At 6/1/09 03:04 AM, jmalouin7 wrote: A stat is just a stat though, if you choose to follow it, then you do, if not, then no harm done. If stats were 100% important and necessary, then everyone on this site would have to deposit each day, each member would have to go get every medal in every game, review, flag, etc.

Even so, having extra info on a posters' posting habits would be useful in evaluating what they say.

in the end, Stats are just stats.

While I agree completely, and don't have a personal stake in my level or PC, a lot of people around here really seem to care. Since their minds probably won't be changed, I feel we should take their statwhoring into consideration and make it work for us.

At 6/1/09 02:47 AM, 36Holla wrote: This is true. The only way around this is to set higher standards for people's first post, such as making it a requirement that if they're going to post, that they provide some base details such as where they live, what kind of music they like, and other little things that can help get a conversation going. The Destructoid forums do this in the sense that they require you to have a good quality introduction post if you decide to post in their Hi I'm New forum. The one liners of others can easily be dealt with and if need be, it can be required that no post in such a thread can be a one word/liner post. If the aim is to breed conversation, then these things may be needed to get it going on the right track.

That was my thought, you would have to provide some details that could work for conversation, but as has been pointed out, mods need to be willing to use that thread too, which is why I think framing it as sort of a very general lounge thread that EVERYONE could use would be the best way. Mods can best police threads if they're interested in said thread. If I have no real interest in a thread, well, sorry, but I probably won't be in it unless it looks from the get go like it's going to breed crap and then I'll give it at least a once over...or unless somebody specifically alerts me to tell me it's breeding crap. So I tend to think creating a thread like that in a way that would encourage regs on this forum, mods included, to mingle with the new users and give them a place to learn how to be good posters before they go out and potentially shit this forum up would be a good idea.

At 6/1/09 03:09 AM, theshadowwolf wrote: I got an idea for a feature. For fist time accounts, for people first starting the BBS, there should be the rules page, before you click general. with instructions. And pictures. Maybe it can be a flash movie. It will outline every rule, and name some mods, and how their deposition is. Then it will outline what pictures are photoshop thread worthy, and which ones fail. Basically something like that. And it's mandatory, you cant skip the first time. Otherwise, you can.

For everyone who has a suggestion of a change that could be made for the site, or for the BBS, Liljim made a thread where you could request it, so if you have posted it in here, throw it Here to.

What you said though is a good idea, cause it would help new users get along with the forums, in a simple and smooth way.

At 6/1/09 02:53 AM, BetaOrionis wrote:

This got me thinking:

We need an average-post-length stat. Just the existence of such a stat would decrease a lot of people's desire to post one liners, and one worders. We could squeeze it in under the post count stat. Another great thing about it would be that it lend additional weight to posts that deviate far from the poster's norm, like if someone like Lost-Chances posts something three lines long. Even if no one knew his posting style, they would see that 500 characters is 490 characters higher than his average post length, thereby adding weight to his post, which I would assume is longer for a reason. Conversely, if I were to find someone completely inane, I could post "you suck," and it would have added weight because my average post is pretty long.

The whole one liner thing bothers me. I DO post a lot of one liners, but not in any way because I'm looking to get an even bigger post count. I just LOVE posting. I don't think it's fair that some mods will ban/delete posts simply based on their length and not their content.

My one line posts are usually on topic, unless I fancy being cheeky in a thead which we all are prone to do every now and then. Besides, having an AVERAGE post length is just insane. There simply isn't such a thing, and post length of repliers usually relies on the topics they are posting in.

If a topic is a thoughtful one offering worthy discussion and such then the replies made will usually reflex that.

Shit topics get shit replies.

Good topics get good replies.

That's usually how it goes. So maybe it would be ideal to encourage better threads and then punishing the one liner people who don't add to that topic, instead of looking to punish people who give one liners in shit undeserving topics.

Spam thread bans.

I think I use the destroy feature too much myself and I bet other moderators are too. I get the feeling that a lot of users feel like they are playing a game of mine sweeper when they post on the forums and although when I use the feature now I make sure to only penalize those who are contributing to the spam and deleting the posts of those who aren't before I destroy it, I may as well take that time out write out personalized ban messages.

I also feel like there's a rush to be the first one to make a witty ban message or a witty lock or to delete a thread. It is frustrating to write out a detailed message only to get a warning that the user has already been banned and when I look at his ban message it is something like "fuck you lolol" from another moderator for a shorter/longer period of time than I was going to hand out. I don't feel it does the users any good to be fast and abrasive in order to be the first to get it rather than taking the few extra seconds to write out a polite message.

On the topic Warnings/explanations: Your ban message really should be the explanation of what you have done wrong, what rule you broke. If you are confused, you can PM the moderator in question in a POLITE manner. If I am not clear in my messages, I would rather be met with "hey, I'm a little confused" than with "fuck you, you didnt tell me what i did wrong, asshole" or "your wrong i didnt break any rules". As avie mentioned earlier, if you go into a conversation like that, you really can't be surprised if you get it back. Yes, we are supposed to be professional, but sometimes you will catch somebody on a bad day and if you can't handle bringing your grievances up in a mature and thought out manner, you don't deserve the time of day to get a reply.

Warnings are hard to deal with. Some other mods have mentioned this, but I sometimes feel a 1 day ban is a warning. In most cases, by the time I ban you it's late in the evening and the ban will only be 4-5 hours long to begin with, so instead of shitting around the BBS before bed, you watch the Simpsons or something instead and can post again the next day. With PMs it's hard to keep track of who you warned, if the next day a user acts up and his last ban was for the same thing the day before...well, that warrants a more general ban a bit longer. I think a little M-bot message stating that a post you made was deleted would suffice as a warning to you, it doesn't even have to be as complete a message as review deletions where it shows you the actual post, but a little "your post in the thread. _______ was deleted", if you can't remember what you said in that thread...chances are you're cruising for a ban anyway and may want to clean up your act or find something else to do.

I think the problem is that some moderators aren't that great at making judgments in the first place, or as they maintain their modship, they start becoming crappier mods. If they see something that they don't like, they just dish out the bans without thought, while other mods will find it perfectly fine.
The problem with this is probably that you guys don't demod for these reasons and pray that the said mod messes up to take away his gold aura.

Stop making the word "F****t" or the shortened "f*g" a bannable offense, or at least clarify the rules against it. I personally am gay and so are a large number of Newgrounds members, I can tell you that nobody cares when this word is used on the internet, and it makes me mad that Newgrounds is censoring us like this. It's like getting worked up over the word "stupid". The word can have very abusive uses, which are hurtful, but there is also a harmless usage of the word and the difference should be distinguished. It has lost a lot of the power it once had. The amount that I see this word still being used leads me to believe that a very large amount of people still don't know it's a bannable offense and are being banned even after using it casually.

The line should be drawn at how it is used, you should definitely ban anyone who uses it in a malicious way, or directed at anyone in particular. The first BBS rule is "Using racist, sexist, homophobic or hateful language." Yet newgrounds thrives on sexism for one. If you ban everyone who uses f****t, why do you not ban anyone who makes a joke at women's expense? Then you'd basically be banning nearly every newgrounds member, including most mods. Why the double standard? I respect freedom of speech.

And if you do continue to make it a bannable word, make a script so that it blocks you from typing it, like it does with the word N****r

At 6/1/09 03:47 AM, Fleshlight wrote: I think the problem is that some moderators aren't that great at making judgments in the first place, or as they maintain their modship, they start becoming crappier mods. If they see something that they don't like, they just dish out the bans without thought, while other mods will find it perfectly fine.
The problem with this is probably that you guys don't demod for these reasons and pray that the said mod messes up to take away his gold aura.

You know...I think users get the idea that we make decisions based on personal opinion, when in reality as time goes by our decisions become less and less personal. We ban countless users a day, from crappy spammers trying to "raid" to people who get into a flame war with each other. We delete untold number of posts and lock a half dozen threads. That's every day. We make our judgements based on the rules and on the quality of the posts we see.

To somehow say that somebody is taking your post personally is just not true. In fact, we probably have no opinion on you at all. It would be nice if I knew every single user personally and was able to get to know everyone, but with about 500 or so people posting on the BBS every day on a regular basis, it's difficult to create very many relationships with users, especially when half of your time is cleaning up messes from people who really don't frequent the site at all.

I know it's hard to believe since a lot of you guys are much younger than us and at a time in your life when everything is observed through an emotional magnifying glass with little nuances of behavior being interpreted to be either for you or against you, but the mod team as a whole is a bit beyond that kind of mentality. When you are a little older you let a lot of things slide as unimportant.

Recently some user thought I hated him because he was a sonic fan and that I was a fan of mario and that was why I had banned him. It may seem silly to you, but that is what I think when you tell me that what I did was because I didn't like the opinion you were stating.

In many cases it's not the opinion itself that gets you in trouble, it's how you present it. Just because you get banned for saying "I hate all democrats because they're socialist assholes" it doesn't mean the moderator is a democrat, it means you may have been posting off topic, or being unduly inflammatory in a thread about political affiliation.

Understanding where everyone is coming from is a big part of getting to know what people think. A 22 year old college student probably isn't going to hold a grudge against you because you posted something not so nice about the Xbox360.

As much as I dislike how you moderate Malachy (taking everything so seriously) I do have to agree with what you're saying.

At 6/1/09 03:31 AM, Malachy wrote: I also feel like there's a rush to be the first one to make a witty ban message or a witty lock or to delete a thread. It is frustrating to write out a detailed message only to get a warning that the user has already been banned and when I look at his ban message it is something like "fuck you lolol" from another moderator for a shorter/longer period of time than I was going to hand out. I don't feel it does the users any good to be fast and abrasive in order to be the first to get it rather than taking the few extra seconds to write out a polite message.

I don't mind being banned when I've broken the rules, or done something obviously wrong, I do however hate bans when either the lock message is worthless and doesn't explain my wrong doing, or the moderator doesn't sign it. It should be a requirement that the moderator who gives the ban signs it, whether it be by default or not, that doesn't matter.

Can a moderator explain why that this thread was locked without putting it down to +1 posts? I see no reason for the thread to be locked; It had discussion about DVDs and what to buy, it also had people listing what they owned for others to look at. I don't understand the reasoning behind that thread being locked when there is so much more worthless posting being let slide, it seems Poozy was just being a dick for the sake of it with that thread.