My record isn't clean at all (at least, if you look at my ban history) but I now wonder if most of the bans I have received over the years were justified. I was banned in... 2011, I think? Until 2013. That's two hole years of a ban. (It may have been 2012 to 2014. I can't honestly remember but I definitely know it was two years.) And OK, let's face it: back then I was a bastard. Back then I was an immature spoiled brat. Byt obviously Dark guessed that. Anyone could've guessed that if you look at my earliest posts. They make it quite obvious that I was a preteen, if not downright a child, who was lacking in maturity. And so, because of the reporting of one person (yes, one person), I'm banned for two years. Two years! Granted, the forum was a very different place back then, and what I did to Dark definitely justified my ban thereafter, but before I had done nothing that I know of that deserved my ban. I mean, come on! I was only 11-12! And that was quite obvious in my writing style, the way I posted, the way I acted. And I've been banned quite a number of times since then. And I've matured a lot since then too. I've seen bans that were downright questionable on here. And this just makes me question not only the banning, but every other administrative and moderative decision that Dark has made. And I do agree with the blog post that there should only be one set of rules, not two. No other site I've browsed has had two sets of rules, one of them quite obscure and inaccessible until You've proven yourself as not being a bot. And all of the rules on this forum are downright ambiguous; hell, I'd even classify them as unenforceable. Take the one about Civility and "no personal attacks", for instance. That one is so hard to enforce its not even funny. The definition of "civil" is "courteous and polite," and the definition of "civility" is "formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech." What's the problem with these definitions though? I'll list the questions that these raise:
1. What does "courteous" and "polite" mean? Both of these terms mean very widely different things depending on what your doing, what community your in, who your talking to, etc. The definition of courteous clears this up: "polite, respectful, or considerate in manner." But again, the same question is asked -- what does that mean? Being courteous or polite varies by person and by community.
2. What is a "personal attack"? Wiktionary defines a personal attack as "Making of an abusive remark on or relating to somebody's person instead of providing evidence when examining another person's claims or comments." But a personal attack is different in each situation it occurs in.
So, the point of both points above is: none of the definitions I've provided above are conclusive and universal. They are not applicable in all situations.
Finally, before the forum went down we were talking about copyright violations in Site and Forum Feedback. I raised many valid points and yet nothing has been done about them. No rules have been altered, and its been quite a long time since we discussed that particular issue. The right thing to do would be to make any form of copyright violations illegal, and, if it is actually discovered (you cannot trust forum posts alone; you must gather actual evidence), you report that person to the DMCA, and ban them, or just let the DMCA handle them. In one of the topics the blog post mentioned, Dark also said multiple times that logs could not be trusted. The problem is that Sam was the Author of the game. Sam knows how the game works. Therefore, any form of "moderational" decision was not up to Dark -- he should've let Sam gather evidence and then taken Sam's advice, not attempted to perform forensic analysis without appropriate knowledge of how the game works. In that situation it is easy to determine that the log files were modified but not by whom. Lori could've done it, or it could've been modified in transit from the sending computer to the receiver. But the final decision rested with Sam, as he was, and is, the administrator of the game. Dark should not ban anyone who does something on a game, whether such events are brought to the attention of the forum community as a hole or not. The game is not within his jurisdiction, and, therefore, he has absolutely no right to interfere unless explicitly asked by one of the involved parties. That also means he has absoluely no right to ban someone from the forum for committing an action on a game since that game is not within his jurisdiction. The only time he has that right is when the offender actually does something on the forum. It does not matter if the offender is a "danger to the community". It does not matter if the offender broke a law on the game -- the game and the forum are entirely separate entities. Finally, I feel Dark most definitely over-exaggerated, since Walter was no danger to the community at all. Dark also brought up the possibility that the "danger" could be physical. Again, he has no right to ban Walter from the community just because he may consider Walter a "danger" to the community, since Dark neither knows the absolute mailing addresses or locations of the involved parties, nor does he need to know such information unless the offender has actually committed a crime on the forum (whereupon he should contact the offenders local authorities and report said offender once it has been verified that a law was actually violated in the offenders area of residence, either city, state, national or international). And, finally, I think that Dark needs to remember that he is not the Arbiter of all: he is not the jury, judge and executioner, whether he is the head moderator or not. He is apart of the jury, but the moderation team as a hole form the judge and the executioner. If Dark does not consolidate all (maximum emphasis on 'all') moderation decisions with the moderation team, it will cause issues like this one. And, last but not least, it should be impossible for a moderator with a personal involvement with the reporter/offender to be involved in a moteration decision because that moderator holds an invested interest, and therefore would create a conflict of interest. If a moderator has a personal relationship with the members of the forum in question, either within or without, that moderator should not be allowed to moderate for that decision.
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." — Charles Babbage.
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