Quote from: rpg.netYou have been banned for the following reason:
Passive-aggressive trolling, being bad for the site as a whole.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

I wonder what I did. Oh well, I'll miss the place. Now to figure out the cookies thingo so I can at least look at Roleplaying Open while unregistered. The place can be interesting to read, even if I can't post.

On the one hand, it irritates me because They changed the rules rather than me changing my posting. On the other, well, you may have noticed I like to tell people what I think of them.

First thing I ever posted to RPG.net (in, er, 98? 99?) got me insulted by S. John Ross in return. It was The place to go if you fancied a ruck for a long time.

(Incidentally, if anyone wonders a lot of my Forge Rage comes from getting banned from my favorite site because I had the temerity to tell a burning wheel cultist that attempting to redefine anything that isn't like Burning Empires as a 'Coffee Table Book' and not really roleplaying material at all was dirty pool. Fucking Kasumi wanker. Fucking forge speak.














Well, that and some other stuff.)

As I've said before, a small site needs prescriptive moderation, and a large one, more proscriptive moderation. So it's natural that the rules will multiply and be more strongly enforced as time goes on.

But some of their rulings have puzzled me. I guess that's inevitable, too. As the rules multiply, the rulings will be more likely to puzzle someone-or-other. When tehre are just a few hundred members, the only bannings will be of real shitheads no-one will miss; when there are tens of thousands of members, whatever a person does to get banned, someone will think it's a bullshit ban, and sometimes that someone will be the poster themselves.

I'm quite disappointed, really. I do feel I contributed a lot to that site. I made lots of posts in which I tried to amuse people, pass on the little I know about gaming, running game groups (can't pass on any wisdom about playing because I'm a terrible player), learned a lot, etc.

I do think the centre of gravity of the site, the perception of where the "important" discussion is happening, has moved from Roleplaying Open to Tangency. Most of the rules have popped up from interactions in the non-gaming side of it. Which is a bit like your game sessions being four hours of talking shit, and only one hour of gaming. A pity, but it still leaves a lot of good gaming discussion. At least I can read that, still.

Edit: if it's any consolation, Erik, I've gamed with Kasumi, and I didn't enjoy it much. He told us that the session would be 50% Gamist, 30% Narrativist, and 20% Simulationist. As a result, it was 100% boring. In our little club we had for a while no-one seemed to like his GMing. He was a pretty good player, though, contributing well to the fun of the group.

I'm sure there's something in psych (or pop-psych) about passive-aggressiveness being a result of an environment that suppresses honest discussion.

uh... what thread? What account?

I hadn't realized that they have the list of accounts widget disabled.

Because of you I posted on Trouble Tickets - my first post ever there. Guess I wanted to do something productive before I said and did anything else (anywhere else) - that is if posting on TT is ever productive

BTW the last thread you started there was about how gamers talk about their games...got to admit JimBob, that's pretty funny, considering ....

Regards,
David R

I'm kinda shocked. You certaintly had moments that may have been a pain to them, but it's almost like they just decided to sit down a couple days ago and decide you had to go.

I really don't get that place anymore. It's like some bizarre Pleasantville where anything beyond numb politeness gets you in trouble. It's really kinda sad.

Dar, it was the "Jim Bob" account. David R is referring to this thread.

Elliot, I have never found anyone who knew me to accuse me of "passive aggression". Aggression, yes, passive, no.

Some French guy once said that a novel is like a deep well - if you peer into it long enough, you see something dimly reflected - yourself. I think that's true of many kinds of text, including forums. When we can't see people's faces and hear the tone of their voice, we attribute to it our own views, our own fears and desires. For example, Curt in his pre-modding-rpg.net days tended to think that everyone was homophobic. I don't think he can have been right all the time.

My banning email read,

QuoteAfter a long discussion backstage, we've decided that it would be better if you found another site to post to; your posting style tends to be incompatible with the function of the board. The latest offense involved you describing another poster who was only on Tangency and wondering why he was there, which is passive-aggressive trolling at best.

If you'd like to appeal this ban, then you can contact the admins at admin.rpgnet@gmail.com

I replied,

QuoteI should certainly like to appeal my ban. I believe that my posts and threads do in fact contribute a lot to the site, encouraging discussion of roleplaying, of how game groups work, and so on.

I was not aware it was an "offense" to wonder out loud why someone is on a site if they have no interest in the main topic of the site?

I am certainly open to suggestions of how I could alter the tone and content of my posts to better contribute to the main purpose of the site.

My experience is that the admins tend to fully back the moderators, usually in the form of not replying to appeals at all. So I am not hopeful. But I'm certainly disappointed.

Quote from: JamesVI really don't get that place anymore. It's like some bizarre Pleasantville where anything beyond numb politeness gets you in trouble. It's really kinda sad.

It is indeed a strange kind of Pleasantville. The "porn monday" and cosplayer threads are... not exactly 1950s-style good manners.

In the end, though, any forum is a really informal community. And if the people in charge of the community decide they don't like you, then you're out, whatever you do or don't do. If they like you but you go around calling people cunts (more or less), then you'll still be banned... but after a rather long time (see Amado G).

I guess someone just didn't like me.

*shrug*

Again, it's a pity. I think it's a fine site with many interesting discussions on it. I'm also saddened that this'll be more "evidence" for RPGPundit's mad ideas about Swine Conspiracies.

That is sad, JimBob, and I (like you) find it a bit inexplicable.

The idea that they're banning you forever based on how they read your tone is ... wacky.

Now I have to go over and check whether I can still post or not.  I certainly know that there are mods who don't like the tone they hear when they read my posts.

Quote from: TonyLBNow I have to go over and check whether I can still post or not.  I certainly know that there are mods who don't like the tone they hear when they read my posts.

That's the part that depresses me most of all. Over there it's not just about following the rules, it's slowly about making sure they have no reason to dislike you. No matter how nice you are or how hard you try to contribute to the discussion, you have to watch out, because if you phrase yourself poorly, you may just become someone they keep an eye on for being 'bad for the site'. That's how this banning is coming off to me, and it's just one more plain strange decision in a growing number of strange decisions.

As a friend of mine is so fond of saying, "Eh.  Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

I considered for a while trying to make a second attempt at appealing my own ban, but honestly, everything I read sounds like the site has devolved even more since I've gone away, and frankly, I've changed a fair lot myself since then.

I'm not RPGnet material anymore.  I'm too used to speaking my piece in all honesty and brutality, rather than playing the passive agressive games they encourage on RPGnet.  I like being able to call a spade a spade, and fuck anyone who can't deal with that.

Quote from: TonyLBThe idea that they're banning you forever based on how they read your tone is ... wacky.

I could be entirely wrong. We may never know!

Quote from: TonyLBNow I have to go over and check whether I can still post or not.  I certainly know that there are mods who don't like the tone they hear when they read my posts.

I think you'll be alright. I'd be very surprised were they to ban you. That said, life is unpredictable sometimes

A friend emailed me and was saying, why do they have Trouble Tickets if they shut down any discussion as soon as it starts? I think some of the mods are burned out and tired, which is why they shut down any Trouble Tickets discussion of bannings, etc. Essentially it's a backlash against years of discussing things down to the most minor detail of word or tone, combined with a bit of the old Moderator Burnout.

At one time, Cessna created a new structure of admins/mods, that the mods would make the banning decisions, but the admins wouldn't, they'd only be Courts of Appeal. At the same time, he created a subforum for Trouble Tickets, called the Cesspool, a forum which the moderators couldn't see, but admins and posters could see, the idea being that posters could bitch about - er, talk about moderator decisions, in case of fear of moderators taking it personally.

It was a major bitchfest, and Cessna got disgusted, closed it down, and it was from then on that threads started getting instantly locked in Trouble Tickets. It was a backlash, "fuck you guys, you got nothing useful to say, anyway."

That sort of jaded nature, assuming all criticism will be wrong, is usually an indicator that a person's been doing their job too long. Many of the moderators have had that tone for some time. They're just sick of us.

I just wonder who on Earth would hit the report button for a post where someone said, "why would someone be on this site if they don't like the site's topics?" I mean...

Quote from: J ArcaneI considered for a while trying to make a second attempt at appealing my own ban, but honestly, everything I read sounds like the site has devolved even more since I've gone away...

Here on therpgsite someone was saying that he didn't want to post here because he didn't like RPGPundit. And I've had the same from people privately. I'll answer you in the same way I answer them: a forum is nothing but the sum total of all its posts. The moderators are not the forum, the rules are not the forum, the colour scheme is not the forum - it's the posts to it.

If you find the posts to a forum interesting to read, and if some of them make you want to reply, even just to say, "me, too!" then that's a good and useful forum. So to me, rpg.net is a good and useful forum, and I'll miss being able to post to it.

It's funny, a while back they used to never note when someone had been banned, the first news we'd get would be someone's Trouble Tickets thread asking about the banning, and there'd be long arguments about it, etc - the funniest part was when the argument would go on so long, the banned poster would return from their suspension to contribute to it. I'm pretty sure I was the first person to suggest, "post a thread saying who, why and for how long the guy was banned, lock it, and refuse to discuss it publicly." Now it's happening to me, and (I'm told), the thread about my banning has been angrily locked. That's pretty ironic, eh? The moderation idea I contributed is now being used against me. PWNED!

JimBob, I've never found you anything but reasonable, but maybe I'm a bit of a bastard myself.