Post an on topic picture, get a warning, answer a question with too few words, get a warning, disagree that it isn't the "best gaeming site evar", get permanently banned. I've seen some pricks flaunting power in my time on the web, but until I started posting on the Escapist I thought that gfaq mods took the cake.
It wouldn't be too bad if they had enough brains to take things on a case to case basis, but infracting someone because the rules told you to just shows what a mindless fucking robot you are.
Here's an excerpt from an email I got today after disputing a mod decision.
Pulled directly from our code of conduct:You know that whole "With absolute power com es absolute corruption." thing? Well, it holds true even in the lowliest of mod positions. People tend to lord whatever power they posses over whatever people they view as lower than themselves. Remember what your teachers were like back in school, or a boss that had it in for you for some totally arbitrary reason? Same thing here.
"Low Content Posts
This could be anything from *answering a question* to posting LOL. These forums are used for discussion and low content posts halts discussion."
If you had discussed it at all, or opened it up so that other people could, it would have been fine.
This might have been acceptable had the argument held even a drop of water, but 94 people posted directly after me, and some of their posts were only two words longer than mine. Halting discussion my ass...
Next time you trundle through their forums, take a moment to look for the greyed out posts. These are posts made by users that are currently on suspension, banned, or posts that have been deleted. You can follow the link at the bottom to see why they were banned or suspended in the first place. Chances are it was some totally absurd reason or just some mod gunning for someone he didn't like. Oh yeah, and mentioning software like noscript or adblockplus is an instant suspension. If you mention piracy in anything but a negative light you can kiss your account, no matter how well behaved you've been, goodbye.
You can almost see them sitting there shouting "Bow before me, you lowly fucking peasants!" from the comfort of their lazyboy recliner, trying not to rage too hard, lest they stand up and let all the Cheeto crumbs fall from their stained pokemon t-shirt.
Of course there is a percentage, a very small percentage, of mods who use their power responsibly, it's just that jading comes on prematurely when you're dealing with complete morons day in and day out.
I am willing to bet that 90 percent of the Escapist Mods live on welfare cheques which they are afraid to part so therefore they have no incentive to change or cater to the individual as what lost is it to them if you or anyone else is banned for disagreeing?
ReplyDeleteThe mods that are good I am convinced they are the ones that work 2 jobs to make ends meet and know the value of money and customers yet lack the time to take over the website so it's left to the welfare mods that have 24/7 to run the website.
And this goes for any large community that requires deep pockets to operate. Here is an interesting article about Google/Facebook being funded by the CIA which is how they become so big so fast. http://www.consciousape.com/2012/05/03/google-bankrolled-by-the-cia/
Go to the part of Robert Steele who mentions in 2006 as a former CIA case officer that Google is in bed with the CIA and I suspected it before I even read about it because of Google's priorities changed to imitate social networking inst3ead of providing open sourced products.
Google at one time catered towards the open sourced format and now not so much and it was 2006 Google changed.