Again, to use an example I have been made aware of.
Cataphrak will not get banned if people in a server mention him and then slur about others in the same sentence.
If you go onto 4chan and notice a bunch of posters like your game and then slur or stay stupid things. Nothing will happen to you.
Same with Reddit or Discord.
But if you as an author make a server or subreddit then it is on you to moderate it and police it. If, someone goes and slurs and you and the team misses it nobody on the mod-team is going to permaban you.
We’ll reach out and say so and so said this. Or let it go.
It’s when it becomes a pattern. When it becomes pervasive and you don’t take ownership and people get harassed or slurred that actions can start to be considered.
There’s a lot I’d love to say but I’ve seen multiple people being banned or piled on for anything even resembling a defense for Aura Clash, so I won’t. All I’ll say is there are some major hypocrites.
This ban however isn’t going to really do anything about that problem, is it? It doesn’t affect the discord and that particular community, so if people from over there cause moderators here problems in threads of various games, and if members of the “larger community” keep complaining to CoG staff about what’s happening over there… well, neither the author getting banned nor the thread for his game being removed is really going to change any of that.
I’m not saying it’s something you can’t do; it is the company’s forum and they can run it as they see fit of course. It’s just hard not to see it as anything more than a dramatic gesture with little practical effect*, if it doesn’t make the author shut down his discord, and i doubt it will.
*) or practical effect that’s reverse to intended effect, seeing how it only generated a high-volume thread for the moderators to sit and comb through)
I don’t really remember much of moderation happening in that thread (although maybe even some moderation already is more than the norm, only mods would really know that) but from the justifications provided for the ban, it sounded more to me like the members of the discord were causing problems mostly elsewhere on this forums, given mentions how other authors and their games were subject to harassment.
Bummer, easily one of the best WIPs currently. I can understand creating the rule, but I don’t see good business sense in completely blasting Anon off the platform with all the known facts.
I found “being banned for taking up moderator time” reason for banning EXTREMELY disturbing.
Because:
a) dealing with such things is moderators’ job, forcing people to do their responsibility cannot be offense in itself. If something wrong and rule-breaking is done, it should be dealt with in response, but this act iself is something moderators are obliged to do, otherwise they should resign.
b) you can describe almost any activity as “taking out moderators time” essentially. Too many posts, too many threads, anything.
Perphaps act iself is something that shoud be done, but this explanation is incredibly disturbing and sound not like a slippery slope but a slippery ledge potentially.
No, it is not their job. They are unpaid volunteers who are spending their time trying to keep this community healthy.
As volunteers, they are not expected to be perfect. They’re not expected to have infinite patience, infinite grace, and be willing to endure infinite abuse.
Specifically, when a user’s actions provoke a conversation involving more than two moderators, or worse, starts to involve staff, that user is heading towards expulsion.
In other news, Bryce has tagged out of moderating this thread, and I’m stepping in to moderate it.
Yes, that’d be nice.
Yes. We’ve gone through cycles like this before. It’s hard to say what the best course of action is, but based on experience, attempting to just silence a conversation ends up being more of a problem than letting people vent for a while. So, we stated very explicitly that we’re leaving this thread open for a period of time, and at a set time we’ll be closing it. We’ll see how this strategy goes this time, and either maintain or iterate for the next go-round.
Wow bombshell of a thing to see in your notifications
I would say a lot of things people have already said (mainly the “he can’t control his fans”)but being it’s apparently Ben a problem for over a year I imagine the guy probably was asked numerous times to do so and imagine that he actively refused to even try to control being that I’ve read pretty much the entire forum to this point and not a single person from what i saw had proof or even claimed he tried to control his fans yea that’s bad especially if he was asked to numerous time however if he did have a pinned comment or heading (I have never Ben on discord so I have no idea how it works I mean like a thing you see every time you go onto the discord is that a thing?)if he had something like that up (something along the lines of “do not bring this language back to the cog forums it is not allowed nor encouraged by me”type of deal)and was still banned yea I wouldn’t get that he was still banned
But being no one has claimed he has and the screenshots from recent discord activity I’ve seen yea probably didn’t do that…….shame I liked the game and didn’t get any of the apparent underlining things (being I don’t code dive never played a human character nor did I ever connect the oni and lunghthrop (probably spelled wrong)because I don’t know why you would unless your reading knowing this)
And now I know people might be wondering why I typed this out being I killed all my augments myself simply so people would have my thought on the matter when I ask this
So if I’m understanding the rule correctly it’s only if you link it however anon was banned for his community causing to many problems even after the link was removed what happens if a author makes a forum says their is a discord but doesn’t link it but the same thing happens would the same punishment happen? (I’m imagining so just want confirmation)
And if so what if the author didn’t create the forum someone else did but the author still advertises it not thru a link just saying their is another forum and was active in it would they still be punished in the same ways?
And lastly a lot of people have mentioned other authors having community created discords and that they never interacted with it being one of the reasons that nothing happens from those discords (if I understood correctly)what happens if they had interacted on that discord and had done similar things to anon but didn’t advertise it at all would they still be punished if the fans did the same thing?
(And I figure some people might wonder this yes I am not an author so these things shouldn’t really be a concern for me however I have Ben thinking of making a game so I figured I should ask now)
I would not be immune to prosecution for setting fires on the basis that it is firefighter’s job to put fires out and I’m just making them do their job.
Moderators are not professional hatesinks put here on this earth to put up with abuse. The opposite, really. They are there to stamp that shit out.
Is how it is, makes no sense to hold people liable for other people joining the forum. It’d make sense if he himself promoted obscene and crude humor here by actively telling people to do so on COG.
Based on the screenshots, considering he’s seemingly encouraged harassment of Cataphrak, Leekyo, and Bryce using old screenshots and comments of theirs, I think that there’s enough evidence to suspect that he actually is doing so.
The fact that he’s threatening to file a lawsuit for “defamation” in the same messages where he’s also committing “defamation” of his own is genuinely hilarious
Edit: and he actually seems to be serious about it, there’s a whole “evidence folder” and everything that he’s collecting from users.
I am posting this publicly. This was said about me because I decided to reaffirm my commitment to supporting the LGBTQIA+ community and say I’ll always do my best to keep this a safe place for everyone who loves these games.
I feel that people need to understand they haven’t learned or feel contrite.
In fact they immediately tarred me as a pedophile as all their ilk does.
It’s abso-fucking-lutely wild to me that people are going “well, you don’t know him, you can’t know that the dude who fomented a community of people who spew racial and homophobic slurs and shares alliance-with-Hitler memes is pro-Nazi”. Chat reflects the streamer, as it were.
OTOH, Musk did the salute TWICE IN A ROW on international TV and people kept going “oh, he’s just throwing his heart out to the audience”, so maybe it isn’t wild at all. And now there’s MechaHitler the chatbot.
To be absolutely clear I don’t care if those people were honestly Nazi’ing or edgelord Nazi’ing: the thing about being an ironic pigfucker is that you’re still actually fucking a pig.
And to top it off, as someone who runs afoul of mods with some frequency and has the DMs to prove it, I can’t even IMAGINE the level of shitshow you have to create to be banned over causing too much trouble for the mods to handle.
“They called me a Nazi for sharing pro-Hitler images, how dare they, I’m gonna sue” proves we’re in the dumbest timeline.
Please refer to my earlier statement:
This notion that evil people don’t have families is absolutely disproved by reality at every turn.
Hope this doesn’t come off as weird, but I want to make sure you know what you do is appreciated, by me and I’m sure by many others. This forum has always been a joy to be on, and I’m glad you and the other mods are keeping that way.
Ok, I’m perfectly aware this is a completely stupid and pointless thing to complain about, considering… well everything, but can we please stop calling that Naruto meme a “Pro-Hitler” meme or a “Nazi” meme?
It’s a meme about how Naruto uses Talk-no-Jutsu to convince all his villains to repent, and they add a bunch of unreedemable villains, from Eren to Cell, and yes, some real life figures like Hitler or Stalin, to the page replacing the original villain, even from what little context I see he is essentially using it to say “Dude, cut it out already” in a non-serious way.
Now, I’m not in any way defending literally anything else he did, there was plenty of stuff that is absolutely ban worthy that goes beyond letting his discord go unmoderated, like defaming people or encouragement of harassment, hell, the fact that he could have easily just said “Behave outside the discord” or “Don’t go into CoG just to cause trouble” to avoid all this in the first place and didn’t bother to even do that much despite apparently the mods discussing this with him for a year shows that he just doesn’t care.
It’s just that, considering all the good reasons for this decision, using an edgy meme, and not a “Let’s say the N-Word” edgy, but just really tame black comedy, as proof, to the point is used as one of the primary screenshots with a warning, feels off, and might seem like the mods are overtly sensitive when there is PLENTY of other stuff that is much worse.
Their openness about it is honestly comical, like are they really that dumb? Like I use reclamatory slurs (obviously directed towards myself and other in-group people comfortable with it) and otherwise don’t speak in a fashion appropriate for all communities, but I do this crazy thing where I code switch and will generally act in the ways a place would find more acceptable if I want to stay there. Like it ain’t hard to just shut up. Just as it ain’t hard for the dude to have gone “hey drop the slurs and fash talking points on the discord, keep it on the board where there’s plausible deniability”. Considering how much leeway they’ve been clearly given up to this point, I’m sure that would’ve been enough to keep their thread up and running.
And they’re sure as hell aren’t doing themselves any favors by doubling down hard on it now. But they got plenty of either allies or at least useful idiots running interference so guess they got that going for them. Having been banned from a community because the mods dislike me, I know what that’s like and just from the evidence presented in this thread alone it’s clear it’s not overreach here, just as it’s clear the new rule is to try and nip this shit in the bud if it comes up again.
The mods here haven’t always been flawless by any means, but especially after the last kerfuffle I recall regarding moderation practices, from what I’ve seen they’ve done really well at being fair, and I think I am up for trusting them to not abuse that rule. Don’t really think there would be much to gain by doing so.
It’s such a funny thing to use to defend him, like that absolves him of all problems. Like yeah, sure, family man, big fan on the number 14 for some of reason, never did anything wrong, being a family man is clearly a saintly action and no family man has ever been a shitty person.
Same honestly. At this point I’m really just a rando who lurks nowadays but there’s a lot of people in this community I recognize and it’s been pretty bothersome to see people I think of as like long time regulars out here defending that shit in some fashion or another. At least the people I know for sure I’m on the same page as haven’t negatively surprised me, but still kinda sucks seeing people I recognize over my years of being here siding with this dude and his community. Get not everyone will agree on shit but I dunno, I think I had better expectations for the average person here (though, the average person here does seem to be agreeing with the decision, based on like counts, that’s definitely something positive)
Okay, I get that you all in the mod and staff team didnt like the handful and a half people from the discord showing up and being their usual self that is obviously uncaring about how their words affect this site.
But, anon isnt a nazi. He uses very dark and sarcastic humor 99% of the time and tries to not be too serious about things. Which for a man his age is just normal. He isnt a nazi for finding humor in something just because someone else hates what he found funny.
And again, he is a family man. A wife and kids. He isnt some evil person or a monster. He is just a guy that doesnt really care what other people say unless its the wall of bugs for the game he gets sent occasionally.
So, can we drop the falsely accusing attitude? Some of the people are very out of line, but anon isnt one just because he doesnt care to get in the middle of rants from them.
That user has the nickname “Emperor” and he regularly goes on insane rants that no one, even in that discord, takes seriously and actively say he is crashing out again. So, that isnt a good reason to conclude Anon should be banned and his game removed. He is literally 1 among hundreds that is actually bat-shit insane and everyone treats him as a joke
