My story:

Having seen what happened to the RPGdouchetard, I'm here to say that this is my third account on the RPG Site. Somewhere along the line, I created an account called Olibarro. The confirmation email to activate my account never arrived, and I just sort of forgot about Olibarro for a while. Months later, I tried to reactivate that account. I requested a new password, and the emails to reset the password came through just fine, but then I still never got the activation email. Posting wasn't important for me, so I just sort of gave up. I still have the name and password, but I can't activate the account and never used it. It looks like it has been deleted.

Some other time (maybe before or after Olibarro, I don't know), I created an account called Animalball Mike. I know that account must have worked at some point, because it has a grand total of three posts. When I saw the whole RPGdouchetard thing start, I scrambled to get this account going again, because I had all sorts of things I wanted to say on the matter. I made a request to reset the password. I received the first email that says, "Your password has been reset, follow this link..." It promised a second email with the new password. I never received it. It's been more than 24 hours. I thought about contacting Pundit, but I decided I'd rather go by my real name anyway.

Olibarro used my animalball email. Animalball Mike used my home email. Based on RPGdouchetard's comments, I created this one with my Gmail account. Everything works just fine on this account.

Now, even though I am a long-time occasional reader of the RPG Site, until I saw RPGdouchetard get banned, I had no idea that "sockpuppeting" was a capital offense round these parts. A minimum of searching turned up the thread in this forum that explains it. Thus, I am creating this thread in the same forum in order to ask that Pundit recognize that this account is not intended as a sockpuppet and do whatever he feels he needs to to clean up or lock or delete my two previous accounts.

I would like to add though that something about the registration/password reset function has been consistently fuxxored for me personally. Though part of that is that I haven't ever cared enough to contact an administrator through all of this time.

And for the record, there is no "forgot your password?" link in any obvious place. I found it when I intentionally entered a wrong password, and there it was in the error message that came up, but it would also be handy to have a "forgot...?" link somewhere around the login box itself.

Thank you for your time. Hopefully, I am now free to post...

Exbaninate! Exbaninate!

How do we know you are who you say you are?

Oh, he's animalball Mike alright. He's also the RPGDouchetard. He's also banned.  I'm sick of playing these fucking games.

RPGPundit

Unless you have rock-solid evidence that he's the one (at very least, identical IP address or registration info), that's a bad move.

How can I tell if someone's been banned, by the way? Other than them not posting anymore, that is.

Good. Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;228152Unless you have rock-solid evidence that he's the one (at very least, identical IP address or registration info), that's a bad move.

How can I tell if someone's been banned, by the way? Other than them not posting anymore, that is.

Well, his signature (at least pre-edit) was 'Free RPGdouchetard.'

Not conclusive, but come on...Either way, it's a consequence of dickery that only Braskies boys can come up with.

Trust me, it was him. The IP gives it away.

This just shows you the type of people we're dealing with here: blatant liars who don't give a fuck about this site, and are just trying to get their jollies by fucking around and drawing attention to themselves.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;228152Unless you have rock-solid evidence that he's the one (at very least, identical IP address or registration info), that's a bad move.

Even identical IPs don't guarantee such a thing, and now that you mention it, if the IPs of Mike and RPGdouchetard are the same, I finally can guess who it actually is. One thing I can tell you for certain, having spent the last decade reading things Mike's written, from game supplements to debate topics: RPGdouchetard is absolutely not Animalball Mike, 100 percent guaranteed.

I'm no fan of things Animalball, and I don't doubt this whole thing got its start through their podcast, but I firmly do not believe this is some sort of elaborate prank on their part: to follow a metaphor, it's not vandalism, it's incitement to vandalism. In any case, however juvenile Mike and Brasky might be, it is arbitrary and capricious of RPGPundit to ban Mike, but in no way is it surprising. Something about their air of casualness really pokes a hole in Pundit's ludicrously self-important persona, as if their refusal to take him seriously makes him wonder if anyone else has noticed the Pundit has no clothes. His tolerance of people insulting his outdated rant-comic behavior is legendary, because we wants to be that person; his tolerance for not being taken seriously is pathetically dim.

Mike won't cry for being banned, and I won't cry for it, either: I would certainly rather the sort of people Animalball attracts not be welcome here, or else I'd be there rather than here. It's just another notch in the legend of how douchetarded RPGPundit is, and how impossibly simple it is to make him expose his shortcomings. On that grounds, Mike and Brasky have certainly "won" this exchange, and Pundit has, without doubt, been made to look the fool.

(EDIT: response to OHT, not the intervening posts.)

Not really strong enough, I'm afraid. I mean, it's pretty likely the Animalball people conspired or instigated the RPGdouchetard thing, but the "crime" is sockpuppeting and we don't know who exactly did that.

I agree in principle that if someone is clearly here just to disrupt the site, they should be banned. However, this sort of loose association risks extending to banning people just for saying things on other sites. In short only individuals should be banned for individual actions.

And by "disrupt the site", I would set a very high bar. I mean that a lot of people come here just to get on Pundit's case but it's nearly always substantive, referring broadly to the topic of conversation at hand. And further, most of them also engage in other RPG conversation that suggests they have a genuine interest in using the site instead of just screwing around.

I also agree with others who say that Pundit could significantly reduce the dickery by not quickly challenging people publicly about their intentions, as that inevitably turns into a pile-on about supposed hypocrisy and impending fascism. IMO it's those discussions, far more than any "war/swine" stuff and the direct responses to it, that tend to drag the site down.

:24[1]:

In response to Engine?

Otherwise ?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;228165In response to Engine?

Yeah.

Three people share my IP address, since I have a network with three peoples machines hooked up to it. All three of us have an account here. Soon there will be a fourth computer on the network, and as my group comes over as many as seven people accessing this site from my IP.

So if one them calls you a name Pundit, everyone gets banned?

Yup, I know that "same IP" ≠ same person but it would be a minimum level of proof from a technical standpoint.