The Joys of Overzealous Moderators

[Soyweiser]

The anti Calahan camp is right in one regard. The hive minded abuse of ghoul wasn't nice. In the end it became a bit of a running gag to make fun of ghouls style. The "your mom" joke of dom3mods.

People at dom3mods even acknowledged this. Calahan certainly wasn't the main heckler or the most verbose about it. Still, it wasn't a nice thing to do. (Sadly, I could not find a link).

[WraithLord]

This is my perspective. Calahan is consistently, over the years I know him, helping the community in many ways, like sharing knowledge, doing tests, balancing maps ( he did this once or a twice as a generous favor for games I hosted) & subbing.
He is given much more than, I'd say at least 90% of the forum members. You see, how many vets out there have the will, time or patience to correct disinformation spread to newbs?

If his sig. was over the top the mod should have talked to him about & ask him politely to moderate it.
Many forms of abusive behavior pass under the radar but that does not make them right or any less abusive. I'm talking about P/A, answering wrong answers w/o checking & w/o a simple "ÿes I was wrong" when called out, ditching games etc. Yet such are not banned. Instead a top contributor is out right banned when reported for his sig. (who actually reported violation of forum rules albeit not in a polite manner)

That's wrong. And the sooner it's acknowledged the better. He should be un-banned and if it were me who banned him I'd do two more things - apologize for the harsh & unjust measure and ask him to take it easy and try to moderate his responses. I'm sure he'll comply since he's basically a good guy and has good intentions. But at the very least he deserves a chance.

And Exec is absolutely right about:
"
A simple solution to this would have been to appoint several very active and appreciated members to supervise the forum they are active in, and leave those mods to handle internal matters regarding those forums. Help new members, organize new projects, intervene in situations like this where two members were pointlessly banned, etc. I'm sure many member would have been glad to help (people like Soy, WL, Frozen, Maer...) and those people would actually be able to promote harmony on the forums and help the company as well.
Is that really that hard to do? And yet imagine how much better this forum would be, how much more people would be here, how many more people would actively contribute and participate on the forums, and how many more people would actually buy this game?
"
Although it's not a trivial thing to ask of working, busy ppl I'm sure volunteers would be found.

[Edi]

Okay, listen up everyone!

I don't expect to be a very popular person after this post is through, but it's got to be made. Like it says in the reason for editing Executor's post and removing Calahan's sig contents out of there, this is about preventive damage control.

It was made known to me that posting the contents of the sig second hand, even if the intent was to inform me of what caused this ugly chain of events, is a violation of the terms and conditions of the forum. Fair enough, by reading the T&Cs, it is. So it got removed for that reason, in order to make sure that Executor does not find himself in hot water for no reason.

There is another thing that is relevant here, one which is not spelled out directly in the terms and conditions. However, it can be inferred/deduced from the terms and conditions, so please pay attention:

If and when a member is banned from the forums, it is done to remove them from the discussions for their perceived disruptive or otherwise negative influence, as judged by the forum moderators and/or administrators. The ban makes it clear that the person is no longer welcome and the inference is that they should no longer have a voice in the discussions here. This is not about Calahan specifically, it is the policy with regard to all banned members.

Therefore people should not be posting messages on behalf of banned members, because it can be seen as deliberately circumventing the ban by proxy. That would land the proxy poster in trouble.

If anyone wants to relay messages to anyone else from banned members, it should be done via PM. This way nobody gets in trouble and the message gets delivered. There is also the option to ask the intended recipient of the message to take a look at the message on another venue that is not on these forums, preferably via PM, which again avoids trouble for everyone concerned.

[Edi]

Now, all of that said, there are some other considerations that I wish to make clear, if they were not already so from my previous posts:


I personally agree that Calahan was a valued member of the community for exactly the reasons Wraithlord outlines above and what Executor and others have been saying since the beginning of the thread.

I also agree that the ideal situation would have been for a moderator, such as myself, to ask Calahan to remove or change the offending sig upon spotting it and perhaps issue a warning about such behavior in the future. The problem would have been solved and these events would not have happened.

However, due to the absence of both myself and llamabeast, the remaining active moderators, this did not happen and resolution of the issue was kicked directly to the forum administrators. They felt that Calahan was blatantly and intentionally in violation of the terms and conditions of the forum and out to stir trouble and therefore decided to ban him directly. The fact that offending sig was put up as early as May and stayed up as long as it did certainly did not alter their stance on the issue in Calahan's favor.

So the banishment is in all likelihood going to stick and that issue is not up for debate.


I also agree that it would be a good thing to have other active moderators, especially for the multiplayer subforum, which is the one that sees the most traffic. I and the administrators will certainly take this under advisement, but don't expect new moderators to be named tomorrow. After the recent events and the emotions running high on all sides, making rushed snap judgments not in anybody's interest.

[PriestyMan]

Boy are they mad that they are being made to look silly. lets just censor the discussion down so we don't look any worse.

[Edi]

You can hold the opinion that it is silly to edit out the sig contents from Executor's post, but you can't argue about the consistency of removing a negative statement that was removed from the sig of a member who also got banned for it.

The reason I edited it out is that Executor should not run the risk of being punished for relaying a message to me in good faith, especially since he (or anyone else for that matter) had never been made aware of the particulars explained in my the post where I laid the reasoning out. Removing part of that message accomplishes that purpose and now that the instructions about relaying messages from banned members are laid out, they should be followed. However, I did not feel that things posted before it was explicitly explained need to be removed.

I have discussed this incident with the administrators of the forum and I know exactly how it looks from both sides of it and I understand the why of it from both sides. I'm just trying to make damn sure this crap doesn't get any worse, so I would appreciate it if you refrained from pouring more gasoline on the flames.

[PriestyMan]

Okay, but my question is why does Exec get a warning about that, but Calahan didnt get any warning to edit his signature? i'm sure if someone had asked him he would have changed it immediatly

[rdonj]

Edi - thank you for making the situation a bit more transparent, and looking out for us. I can't take offense to what you've done, but I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated with and intolerant of shrapnel's backwards policies. I don't really expect the outcome of this banning to be changed and never did. Because shrapnel has a thing for sticking to their guns. But it is very gratifying to hear someone more or less on the inside saying that shrapnel is wrong. Hopefully one day they too will recognize that.

[Soyweiser]

Edi: I sometimes post irc logs that answer questions that get asked here. The people that answer the question are banned. Am I not allowed to do that?

(I leave the nicknames visible in the irc logs to provide proper attribution).

[shonuf]

But - the forum administrators are here for the players, right?

And if a majority of the active playerbase thinks that it was a bad decision to ban somebody over something as petty as a forum signature, it is pretty clear that the forum administrators are doing a **** job of looking after the interests of the people actually using the forum.

And what is putting "fuel on the fire" is not people posting about it, it is some administrator being a donkey and refusing to go back and change an obviously crappy decision.