Threatening legal action has been a banable offense since the Pultny Plastic Collective incident where a user (Ross N IRRC) created a sock puppet who was supposedly a porn star and sent people pictures by PM.  Anyhow, given that the threat is about defamation, I can see banning discussion of their products as somewhat reasonable.  It makes me wonder why they haven't banned discussion of Palladium's products years ago, but perhaps Kevin hasn't heard that people discuss his games on rpgnet and thus hasn't sent a C&D letter.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1047582Apparently Shannon A. interpreted some letter sent by Macris as a legal threat, and yada yada yada, now ACKS is a banned topic at RPGNet.

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?830945-ACKS-amp-Autarch-Added-to-Forbidden-Topics-List

QuoteThere's at least one ACKS PbP game going on the site currently.

Soon, RPGs will be a forbidden topic.

Quote from: David Johansen;1047624Threatening legal action has been a banable offense since the Pultny Plastic Collective incident where a user (Ross N IRRC) created a sock puppet who was supposedly a porn star and sent people pictures by PM.  Anyhow, given that the threat is about defamation, I can see banning discussion of their products as somewhat reasonable.  It makes me wonder why they haven't banned discussion of Palladium's products years ago, but perhaps Kevin hasn't heard that people discuss his games on rpgnet and thus hasn't sent a C&D letter.

Maybe.  But I'm sure this wouldn't have happened if they hadn't allowed people to threadcrap* over threads where people just wanted to discuss or find out about the game.

(*In fact IIRC they encouraged it by threadbanning people who actually tried to call out the threadcrapping).

The worst thing about TBP may just be the boot-licking posts from the peons on Trouble Tickets threads telling mods how amazing they are.

Quote from: Franky;1047619Making today different from the other 364 days of the year, how? :rolleyes:

Normally, it is just stupid. This is an example of an all-out explosion of stupid. A higher level of stupid. An increase in magnitude of stupid. Stupid with not just height and width, but depth (and digging deeper).

Quote from: The_Shadow;1047630The worst thing about TBP may just be the boot-licking posts from the peons on Trouble Tickets threads telling mods how amazing they are.

Right? I understand and loathe brown nosing in real world scenarios but what exactly do you get for ass sniffing in the virtual world on a forum about make believe games?

If they think Macris' letters were a legal threat, wait until they cross someone living in a jurisdiction where defamation is a criminal offense.

Quote from: TJS;1047618Because it would have been so hard to just ban political threadcrapping in discussions about the game.

It was against the rules before the recent rules changes(which are being rolled out in bits and pieces instead of as a whole because . . . ), but who knows now.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1047630The worst thing about TBP may just be the boot-licking posts from the peons on Trouble Tickets threads telling mods how amazing they are.

That's definitely dumb. But the part I find the worst is all of the "our job is so hard/stressful/time-consuming" posts made by the mods themselves. I was once a moderator(left on good terms) at a large, non-gaming forum. As membership grew, and/or subforums were added, we added more mods. Not everyone we asked wanted the "job," but we always had a sizable list of posters in good standing who were known to meaningfully contribute to discussions that we kept in consideration for modship, just in case. And enough agreed that each moderator's individual "work" load was perhaps a few minutes a day except in certain rare circumstances. It's not rocket science.

Well, it seems that they've done an unannounced ban of sorts of my products too, given that a review of Lion & Dragon was submitted to the site but never published (presumably because it was too favorable and didn't talk about how I'm Evil Incarnate).

Yeah, it's like they just shut down threads will nilly cos it's their site.

What a shitty thing to do.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1047653Well, it seems that they've done an unannounced ban of sorts of my products too, given that a review of Lion & Dragon was submitted to the site but never published (presumably because it was too favorable and didn't talk about how I'm Evil Incarnate).

Another one or that one from a few months ago? Ive lost track.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1047630The worst thing about TBP may just be the boot-licking posts from the peons on Trouble Tickets threads telling mods how amazing they are.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. It's nauseating.

RPG Site peoples -

What I sent to RPG.net was a polite letter complaining that an official moderator was calling me a "Neo-Nazi" and urging people not to buy my game. I said that this was defamation and was causing harm to both me and to my co-writers who were being accused of collaborating with Nazis. I explained that I was not any type of Nazi and that I was an Ayn Rand libertarian. I pointed out that my co-writers included a black Hispanic vet married to an Asian immigrant and an Israeli disabled with PTSD, so their behavior was literally harming the very people they claimed to defend. I then asked them to remove the post and stop lying about me.

That's it. No deadlines, no threat of legal action, no threats to call my lawyers. I stated the facts and asked for post to be removed. And after RPG.net's new policy was put in place, I emailed Shannon to say I thought it was a fair solution and that I simply wanted to live and let live. I got a polite response back agreeing to that.  

I also didn't work for Milo for "years" or "until the company went bankrupt". I worked as CEO from May 1 2017 to April 30 2018; I resigned when my one-year employment agreement ended in order to work on Autarch full-time. As far as I know, Milo is not bankrupt. Before Milo I worked as SVP of Defy Media from 2012 to 2017 (5 years) and before that I worked as CEO of Themis Media from 2000 to 2012 (12 years). I co-founded Autarch in 2010 while I was at Themis Media (owner/publisher of Escapist).

Any other questions you'd like to ask, I will do my best to answer. Keep in mind that like all ex-executives these days I am bound by confidentiality and non-disparagement.

Alexander Macris

Thanks for taking the time.

Sites a joke.

I had the temerity to suggest they ban talk of politics not games in the gaming forum, a point I made in their TT thread, and a mod jumped on me like a member of some secret police force.

I'm just glad there's a forum you can actually talk about *games without worrying about bloody politics.