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TailsPrower
HOW ABOUT A KISS, MY BOY?

Age 33, Male

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NOT HUHWAYIE!!

Joined on 1/9/05

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@TailsPrower

(I actually have alot of opinions about the double-standards, vague rules, loopholes, and moderator discretion vs by-the-book moderation.)
(Prepare for some nut-case theory wall shit here, because I have alot to say about this.)

Now, just a heads up.
Except for the very last section, almost none of the following rant is about you.
I have alot of bourbon in me, and I'm going to type this as blunt and non-personal as possible.
(SERIOUSLY. THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG AS FUCK RANT. YOU CAN SKIP IF YOU WANT.)

You wanna talk about the confusing moderation?
Take a look at this:

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"Warning: Engage in the Politics forum at your own risk. If you get banned in the politics forum, no one from NG will come to rescue you. Politics is a quarantine forum to keep political fighting out of the General forum and if you don't like how it's moderated, please leave and go somewhere else."

"Things that MIGHT get you banned"

"Backseat modding: pointing out what needs to be deleted, banned, locked or destroyed."

"Posting flashing or strobing images, or picture spamming: repeatedly posting the same picture or posting irrelevant / overused images such as the FAIL picture.
ALL CAPS posting."

"Trolling."

"Derailing a thread."

"Creating parody threads or posting with gimmick accounts."

"Posting lame chat conversations. No one cares. Seriously."

"Fixating on uncomfortable and divisive topics, theories, etc."

"Participating in / bumping a thread that breaks the rules."

"Attempting to smartass your way around these rules."
-----------------------

That right there is the confusing moderation.

Now let's talk about the confusing moderation.
Can we talk about the confusing moderation please, Tails?
Because I'VE BEEN DYING to talk about the confusing moderation!

"If you get banned in the politics forum, no one from NG will come to rescue you."
"...if you don't like how it's moderated, please leave and go somewhere else."

THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?

So the board has some sort of exemption from the main rules?
It's like some semi-lawless blacksite that's completlety up to the mod's discretion?
Only one forum mod even bothers with that board 80% of the time.
The bird you have an issue with. Turkey.

And between him being the only one there most of the time, and how the politics forum is some isolated board with it's own moderation, he effectively has free reign to mod how he wants.
So it seems as if Tom has accepted this as the way things are.
I don't think he has a problem with it, despite how fucking strange it is.

-------------------
Now let's talk about how half of the rules are optional:

"Things that MIGHT get you banned"

Oh that's nice, half of them are optional and completley up to any mod who comes across it.
But some of these activities are everywhere.
Absolutely EVERYWHERE sometimes.

Let's go through them:

"Backseat modding: pointing out what needs to be deleted, banned, locked or destroyed."

Who doesn't complain about the awdgamers and ngman7s?
Who doesn't call them out on their shit?

"Posting flashing or strobing images, or picture spamming: repeatedly posting the same picture or posting irrelevant / overused images such as the FAIL picture.
ALL CAPS posting."

Dude, some users have post histories that are mostly made up of overused memes and pictures.
But, it goes on. Over and over with no change.
It's so non-enforced that it's a tradition. Why is it still a rule?

God-damnit, mods.
*insert cat picture here.*

"Trolling."

What does that even mean though?
Can you even find 5 people who have the same definition or standard for trolling?
Let alone an entire moderation team?
And how do you even tell if somebody is trolling these days?
It's impossible, have you seen some of these people?
They might be serious.

"Derailing a thread."

...lmao...oh god, it hurts.

"Creating parody threads or posting with gimmick accounts."

Yeah, okay. Every other week the general forum if half filled with parody threads.

"Posting lame chat conversations. No one cares. Seriously."

I asked about this once, apparently people used to post screenshots of chatrooms.
It'd be nice IF THERE WAS SO MUCH AS A SENTENCE OF EXPLANATION.
You know, like all the rules should have.

"Fixating on uncomfortable and divisive topics, theories, etc."

Uhhmmm, okay then. The politics board has no real rules. It really is a blacksite.

"Participating in / bumping a thread that breaks the rules."

This is where you can get dozens of users being instabanned for daring to post in something like a spam thread.Even if they're not doing anything against the rules*.
-----------------------

Continued --->

Continued from above ^^^

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So things people have become accustomed to doing for fun, and have seen others do with no issue, can land them a ban if they post it on some mods bad day.
Because they're optional.

And the line is never really defined or elaborated on for some of these.
(This is an issue with the actual concrete rules* as-well.)
Rules should be elaborated on, so that people aren't left guessing what the word "trolling" means to each mod.

When you don't elaborate the rules, they're left to interpretation.
Mods will interperate things differently, meaning they might have a differn't list of rules based on how they interpret them.
They should atleast give a couple sentences of elaboration under the rule, as-well as examples of specific things that violate them.

Luckily most mods seem detached when it comes to modding, and seem to be on the same page.
But they don't have to be, because they can interprete the vague wording any way they want.
And that's how you get turkey.

There is no Carol in HR.
THERE ARE NO RULES.
IT'S ALL INTERPRETATION.

Holy-FUCK I hate inconsistencies, lack of elaboration, and confusing wording.
You wanna fix the turkey?
You haver to fix the rules.
And I honestly don't think Tommy-Boy has fixed the rules in years, besides turning politics into the wild-west with a single sheriff.

The rules should be rigid, and not optional.
They should be clearly explained and carefully worded to remove the interpretation factor.
And any handing out of a ban, or altering of a ban, should be clearly explained with screenshot context.

---------
Now, did you get fucked?
Yes.

Could some of your posts be considered rule breaking?
Yes. DID YOU SEE HOW VAGUE SOME OF THOSE RULES ARE?
And some of your opinions/stances are divisive, which can be against the rules if they happen to feel like it at the moment.

Was Turkey picking and choosing?
Of-course he was. The system is practically designed for that.
It's a MIRACLE the other mods seem to be on the same page when it comes to not doing that.

It's fucked.
It's completley fucked.
But how can you be surprised?

Unless you can get a crap-ton of users to protest the vague rules, this isn't going to be fixed.
I might think you're a dick, but I actually have issues with the weird moderation.
However, I'm not surprised.

I'm glad we're seeing eye to eye on this. I, too, find these discrepancies disagreeable and know that it will inevitably cause more problems between user-mod relations down the road. Early on in my correspondence with Tom I acknowledged that it is necessary for him to trust his appointed mods some degree of autonomy when enforcing the rules - but toas clearly oversteps boundaries when he takes moderative action against users for things that are clearly not against the rules or deliberately misinterpret things as to justify his actions. That and the fact that he picks and chooses who to penalize. I uphold that he is acting more out of his self interest than enforcing the rules - he's just become very practiced in passing it off as legitimate rulings thanks to the generous leeway afforded to him.

I just want to add that whoever added the "Warning: Engage in the Politics forum at your own risk" paragraph in the BBS Rules page (I'm guessing Tom) did so only recently, sometime between July 23 and Oct 26 this year according to Wayback Machine. This addendum lines up chronologically with when I was reaching out to Tom about my grievances. Either way, this must have had Tom's approval in some capacity and he is basically waiving moderators of restraint to ethic and impartiality as his response to my grievances.

Damn.

"I think serious matters can be joked about, yes. That's kind of a founding aspect of NG culture "

Sadly, I feel like NG culture is quickly moving away from that and at this rate it won't even be allowed in submitted works in some years time.

A big change from the times when NG's main attraction was the controversial, almost exclusively.

I get wanting to wash your hands of forum drama, especially when its not a big part of your site, but essentially saying "mods can do whatever they want there" is just...obviously wrong lol.

This policy sets such a shitty precedent, it's crazy how Tom himself penned it. And of course this is the only place I can spread the word without threat of being silenced. You're right, NG's been influenced by modern tides and turned away from its original ideals. This place is no longer "Everything by everyone"

Yup... anytime I reference my unfair bans on the forums and he wants to try and justify my complaint... He claims I misrepresent also... and goes aaaaall the way back to the last time I was "justly" banned (debatable) ... which was that time I shared a story in a thread about transgendered people... (which admittedly may have been in bad taste)

The story was about how myself and my coworkers (medical laboratory) laughed about a trans (male to) female patient that had a pap smear ordered when (s)he didn't even have a cervix on which to get cervical cancer.

Now, I'm the "transphobic guy" who gets banned all the time for his "transphobic remarks." According to TOAS.

I've been banned loads of times for talking shit about him... loads of times for defending myself too well against other users attacking me or my comments (*cough*EdyKel*cough)... loads of times for making him look stupid... loads of times for posting shit he doesn't agree with... but I got banned only once for the trans story a long time ago...

So who is misrepresenting?

The other day I got banned for some shit that happened LAST MONTH. The post had to have been on page 7 or 8 at that point... probably because he digs through my post history looking for any time I call someone any kind of name.

He's targeting people... and when said people develop a problem with that and stand up for themselves he targets them even more.

♥️♥️♥️

@TomFulp needs to remove Turkeyonastick as a mod as he is constantly abusing his power, I blocked him a long time ago as he has no sense of humor and doesn't like when we're having a good time in the bbs, seems he's not getting enough BBC