@endurancefun: See the thing is you're not a very good word smith.

If I wanted someone to choke on a dick I'd say, "Sir snack on this baguette and please try not to choke."

It's interesting to me that people in the community of a site that not only perpetuates but also sells merchandise of a meme saying "Fuck Ryan Davis" are unable to understand how much context matters to a phrase, and how just saying people should be banned for saying certain things is extremely hypocritical. You could just as well say I should be banned for disrespecting staff if I wear buy the shirt.

If you can't see a difference between telling a joke to someone you know in a personal conversation (albeit its recorded) and posting stuff anonymously on the internet you need to reevaluate your social skills. Words don't have fixed meaning and their impact is very much dependent on where you use them, how you use them and who is using them. Its context-sensitive. Thats also why it is so hard, if not impossible, to come up with strict rules of what is allowed and what not.

Just think of data. How he struggles to comprehend the human nature, even with his immense computing power and knowledge.

Is that any less serious than the OP, who was quoting Fez creator Phil Fish, who said "Suck my dick, choke on it"? As our conversation has demonstrated, without the context of the OP's statement it can sound as bad as what Vinny said.

P.S.: If someone could turn that into a sound bite for me, that would be great. It needs to go next to "cunt" on my Vinny soundboard.

I think people are judging EnduranceFun based on the context of the many posts or interactions they've had with him where he comes off as overly aggressive or hostile.

As a side note, I don't believe Subscribers should have more or less access to moderators/moderation than anyone else. I hope the mod team takes that into consideration as they continue to refine rules.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

@wrighteous86: Just because I've been moderated doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to say what anyone else could. Again, people have told me to kill myself and not been moderated. Lets move on from this point, it's pointless to bicker about how a certain group of users dislike me.

I'm sure that's the case with some people commenting, but i'm referring to posts such as those below;

Is the duder permabanned or is the -1 wiki point the result of the new site being up? And if we're already allowed to swear then swearing as a result of being frustrated should not be a bannable offense, regardless of the context.

@endurancefun: I don't think we've had that many interactions honestly, that comment was more based on the complaints I've seen others make in this thread. Yes, you do deserve a fair shake just like everyone else on this site, but I also think the attitude of your blog (which you've toned down a bit) weakens your argument. There's a fine line between impassioned response and raving lunatic to a passive observer. Not a personal judgment on you, just pointing that out.

@thedudeofgaming: They remove wiki points if you are banned, so I'm stuck at -1 unless I make more submissions. Weird form of punishment I hear.

@wrighteous86: I thought I'd toned it down to not to sound like a 'raving lunatic' but okay, I'll take your thoughts on board.

You know what, we usually don't like this kind of thing being dragged out into public, but we're making an exception here. Sometimes after moderation, a user will post publicly about their moderation/s because they thought they were unjust. It's very common in these situations for users to leave key information out of their posts or twist the facts of what did happen, and it's frustrating to see users garner attention and sympathy based on all these false stories about the mod team.

When I first read the opening post here, I thought our moderation was firm, maybe even slightly too harsh, but no, after checking the actual details of your moderations EnduranceFun, it's clear that you are telling nowhere near the full story here, and that there was no fault in the moderation process. I'm sure if we could release all the information we have, the users in here would definitely not be happy with your conduct either. While I can see some of your points about how the appeals process could be improved, the mod team are not the engineers, and it has never been the case that you cannot appeal a moderation. The staff have always been there to talk to, and as Sweep pointed out, we have our own email address for users to reach now.

I don't know why you think you should have special rights to insult the mod team more than anyone else, your argument is that other sites don't moderate for it, which is both untrue, and fallacious as an argument. If every other site decided it was okay for users to post gore pics on the forums, does that mean we should do it to? Right after you state that users should be able to insult mods, you say that there are too many double standards here, surely you can see the problem with what you're saying.

I'm sorry you didn't get a response in the chat, but at the end of chats please keep in mind that while we may be logged in, we're often not constantly looking at the chat page, and that we specifically state if you want to talk to the mods, you should PM us. We also do not decide when chats end, the staff do. Please don't start talking about the internal relationship between the staff and the mods, unless you know how it actually works. The staff are, to at least a small degree, involved in moderation, but I don't understand why you think they need to be more involved in it than they are. They're a small team of people trying to produce quite a lot of content for a lot of users, they don't need their schedules cut into by a job that they've already appointed people to do in the first place.

As for the idea that they have zero control over the moderation, I don't even know how that would be possible. It's their website, they are always going to be in control, it's not like the mod team held a coup and wrestled power from them. Lastly, if you can't see the difference between the staff gently ribbing each other on a livestream and a complete stranger hurling insults at them, you shouldn't be posting. EnduranceFun, there's a reason you're hovering so close to a ban. Even in your posting here you've managed to violate the rules, and demonstrate that you don't really understand the problem with your actions in the first place. I really hope that users who have a problem with the mods here see this, because this is the exact kind of thing that happens almost every time a user tries to tell us we're unjust.

After your explosive reaction to Brad's DmC review, I was really surprised to see you weren't banned. Disagreeing with a review is fine, everyone has done it (I don't think Far Cry 3 is a 5-star game), but going on a venom-soaked, bile-filled tirade against the reviewer and anyone who dare agree with that reviewer is just childish.

@gamer_152: I really have no clue where I am distorting the truth here...? I realise I made a terrible post on the DmC review for one and that I've been in a lot of heated arguments on Patrick's articles, but that can't be it, so I don't think we can possibly be on the same page here. How have I violated the rules exactly? Can't help but feel like you're greatly over-exaggerating as I really don't recall what I've left out here and I have not in my knowledge lied.

As far as insulting the mods go, well sure, but it was deserved considering they basically set the entire chat on me and gave no explanation even when I asked the mods specifically. If you're implying I'm insulting the mods in the opening post, I'd like to see where. At least you acknowledge you could improve the banning system, but jeez man, I can't help but feel like you're just trying to bury me and I genuinely don't know where the majority of your sentiment comes from.

Loving the mod beatdowns in this thread. Keep it up, moderation team.

I would've sworn you cancelled your subscription because of the temper tantrum you had when Brad gave DmC 5 stars?

@mariachimacabre: A minute earlier than my post huh... I was warned for that and it was entirely fair. After that it felt like a slippery slope. It's kind of silly a mod wants to make it personal and say I lied, I would be happy just discussing solutions to problems they admit exist. I don't accept this e-mail hidden away on the site somewhere is an answer, it does need to be clear.

I love that we are now resorting to Star Trek references :D

They don't and never have done. Everyone is treated equally. If someone acts like a dick then they're getting banned regardless of if they are paid subscribers or not.

This is probably the excuse we hear the most often when moderating. Allow me to clear this up: Someone else breaking the rules does not provide precedent for you to also break the rules. If you had received insults from other users then you should have flagged their comments or, in extreme cases, contacted a moderator. Think about it; this is a huge site with thousands of users - we don't have some collective spidey sense that goes off whenever a rule is broken. If another user is breaking the rules and their comment hasn't been removed it's not because we have deliberately ignored it, but more likely just because nobody has brought it to our attention yet.

I've seen communities turn to shit before based on people being disciplined and pitchforked for having opinions or not sharing senses of humour, which is why this kind of thing worries me. If this goes deeper than that in EnduranceFun's case then I apologise.

@psylah:

Okay this isn't all directed at you, so hey feel free to not read it!

I don't think Vinny's sounded bad at all. It was part of a very funny story. Sure if you just take "tell your mom to suck a dick." by itself that's looks bad, but if you look at all that came before it then it makes sense. Which I suppose is the point you're making, that in the conversation the op was having suck my dick, choke on it might have been easily identifiable as a joke, but the live chat's a clusterfuck and the mods can only see so much of it and there are often only 2 or 3 on at a time so mods probably don't have the time to sift through the history and see your whole conversation, and as far as I know there aren't tools in place to make it easy to do that so users should post with caution if they don't want to get picked out for something they say. Like a lot of things in life, people get singled out for things and punished not necessarily because of how bad their behavior was relative to other bad behavior or whatever, but sometimes it's just they're the ones who got caught.

Plus we have a whole lot of Vinny on which to base our judgement of what he says at this point, unlike the op, who I've seen his username before but outside of a couple regular users I'm not overly familiar with the personalities of most other users on this site. So were one random user to just say to me "Suck my dick, choke on it." and hope I am familiar with the Phil Fish quote, which I wasn't until this thread, I'd probably be confused by it and would likely understand a suspension for that user. Even if you are aware of the quote, or even if the op stated something like "As Phil Fish would say, suck my dick, choke on it," or whatever, that's not something I'd say to a complete stranger, which is generally the basis I go by when posting on this site.

I've never been suspended or even warned myself, but I do think the system for finding out why you were suspended or banned should be upfront and clear and an option for appealing accidental or possibly overly aggressive suspensions or bans should be in place and actually work in the right cases so I agree with the op on that, but in a lot of cases users might just have a knee jerk reaction to being punished and get themselves in more trouble or make themselves look worse, which is clearly evident in this thread, and that should not be excused. If a cop pulls you over for rolling through a stop sign he doesn't excuse you if you flip him off and tell him to go fuck himself, you would just get in more trouble. Why should that be any different on the internet?

From my experience, once you're on the hit list, your ass is grass. Just a matter of time after that. But the mods here are great! I love em. Wouldn't ever say anything bad about them! No sirree! Wouldn't even dream about it... Not. One. Bit.

Because they're great! And awesome!

You're thinking of this guy.

Reach out to various staff members? That's like throwing a letter out into the wind and hoping your one in a thousand will be caught.

There was a recent long time user who was, by the eyewitness testimony of others who there, unfairly banned and he was completely ignored by the staff from what I can gather. They're busy people with thousands of PMs. They can't see all them.

Basically, you mods can do shit and get away with it, if you're in the mood.

The mods are great! I have nothing bad to say about them! They're good people.

You put a lot of effort into this post so I'll give you a long-winded reply.

What has cancelling your membership got to do with the moderators? Its not like the money goes to them. If anything you are spiting the 'actual' staff of the website for something not directly associated to them (at least not any more)

@endurancefun:

I can only comment from my perspective but, for me, what I notice about you that is an issue is that there's an absoluteness to how you view things. Things are either 'all the way your way and right' or 'completely opposite of me and completely wrong'. There's no degrees to views for yourself and that belief seems to bleed itself over to others' views. So when you get into conversations with others there is no wiggle room. Either a person thinks like you and is right or doesn't and is wrong. This black and white thinking leads to people feeling all sorts of negative emotions with you because getting into these talks with you becomes more a war of attrition rather then a discussions with both parties being open to each other's viewpoints.

This isn't just a problem I've seen with you and your 'side' of any given topic. The other 'side' and everyone in between have been guilty of doing the same thing. I'm guilty of doing this a lot. I don't know your intentions for how you interact with others but I can only speak to what I see and how it has felt being on the other side of a discussion with you. Whether you mean to be as absolute, unyielding and tiring as you are or not almost doesn't matter. What matters is how the person you are interacting with interprets your behavior. And for me it feels exhausting.

Now I guarantee that there is a bias in terms of moderation because the mods are people and people make mistakes. Even if they try not to they will notice certain behaviors more then others. It's probably not fair but this isn't a democracy so it doesn't need to be.

Hey, I don't think that at all, I was replying to a guy who said I should be treated differently because I'd already been banned. I was merely saying that people, that have been left unbanned, are left alone, so why censor someone just because they're been "caught."

Cheesebob: I was really offended by how ignored I was when banned. It was a full month and I didn't get so much as a chance to appeal it, after basically being harassed in the chat. While Sweep may say I should have reported them, how would I do that? Screencap the chat, record it? I'm not going to pay a site that put me through that experience and I have other reasons too, but they're irrelevant. This was somewhat of an excuse.

@jasonr86: I actually feel the same way when I argue on Giant Bomb. It's a staple of the internet in general. The only part of your post I object to at all is the real-life comparison. Where do you draw the line between real-life and the internet? Personally I hate harsh moderation, I don't see the need for it unless in extreme cases, not that this is something I'm arguing for on Giant Bomb. I just want things to be clearer and less about 'mods vs. users.'

@endurancefun:

Step 1: Don't be a dick

Step 2: Don't insult people

Step 3: Profit

Is it really that hard?

Actually, might be best to start replying to a few different things in here now.

The mod team always take context into account, and in fact I think context is what invalidates that argument. We've had a few people trying to defend insulting the staff or other users based on the sale of the "Fuck Ryan Davis" shirt, but whether that shirt exists or not, we still clearly have a rule that says making attacks on other users is not allowed, and surely it can be seen that there's a world of difference between wearing that shirt Jeff made, and some stranger coming up with their own insults and hurling them at the staff.

It is clearly understood that the shirt is a joke, while the "jokiness" of the insults people write on the site often doesn't carry as well as the authors think it does, and for obvious reasons we cannot allow any user to dodge out of moderation if they simply post "Oh, I know I did the exact thing you told me not to, but I did it as a joke". The shirt is also a largely different case because it was created by a staff member to another staff member, users writing this stuff must remember that they are making these attacks from the position of a complete stranger.

What are you referring to exactly? We never prioritise people based on whether they're a subscriber, and have repeatedly told people who think they should be less subject to moderation because they've subscribed, that we won't let them be.

I think we're confusing terms here. You have not been banned, you have been suspended, and it is not true that we confiscate wiki points when we suspend people. The reason we use the "-1" is because it's a means to wiki ban, but not forum ban people. There were a bunch of users who came over from the old site with wiki bans who would have been immediately forum banned on the new site, because this site treats wiki and forum bans as one thing. We didn't think users should be retroactively forum banned for their actions on the wiki, under a different system, and so we just -1ed all the people who were wiki banned but not forum banned up to now.

Unless the mod team discuss it and decide we want to go ahead, I'm not going to post your moderation history here, although I am entirely open to going over how you have violated the rules in private. I'm not saying you've insulted the mods in your posts here, but again, no, you do not get to insult the mod team on this site. The rules are that you don't be a jerk, and that you don't attack people, there are no "But it's deserved if..." appended to the end of these rules. I'm not entirely sure what happened in that chat, but there's no way we commanded the chat to attack you, we just don't deal with things by trying to use the community like a pack of dogs, nor do I think they'd just attack whoever we told them to. If the people in the chat attacked you after whatever happened in that chat, it was of their own accord.

Will try to respond to more of the stuff in here, but no guarantees, this thread is moving much faster than I can write.

I'm a "long time user" too, and pretty much every time I reach out to the staff I get a response from them. I've been in contact with each of them at some point for a variety of reasons, so I'm sure they're at least aware of the situation you're referring to (especially since that person constantly shot them messages and tweets, and started "movements" and threads post-ban to get it repealed).

I assumed it was more that the Staff were aware of it, approved of it (as there's probably more to the story than we've heard), and just didn't want to open a line of communication with them which would inevitably lead to constant pleading or questions and nitpicking of every reason they came up with to justify the ban.

Basically, if you don't think they know that person was banned, and at least one of them looked into it, however briefly, I think you're pot-high.

Just to clarify, I think you're confusing me with someone else. I don't think I said you should be treated differently because you'd already been banned.

Oh that is THIS guy. Haha. I remember that. Posted a pic of it as well and used vulgar language in it to describe Brad and, for some reason, Patrick. Gave me a good laugh at how silly a person can be and basically any "argument" he spins up here is not worth believing.

PS. DMC deserved 5 stars. Great game!

@endurancefun:

I guess I wish that we all wouldn't come to discussions with the intention of arguing. I wish we came to discussions looking to grow our beliefs and learn from others while staying true to ourselves. As for the mods I don't know how it can't be 'mods vs. users' because there will always be that separation.

It was not me who made the GIF of quitting Giant Bomb.

@mrfluke: To be honest, I never felt like Patrick was just joking around, it felt like he was actually being an ass hat. Then he came back into the thread just to ignore what I'd posted and say "yeah fuck you" basically. It was unpleasant. I know what weeaboo means and that post was not meant to be taken seriously, whatever. At least we agree on this strange wiki ban thing.

@jasonr86: Amen to that. I feel I've gotten myself into the majority of problems I have now on Giant Bomb from going into these things and butting heads with other people who disagree, not really exchanging anything of value, just attacking each other. We can always work to change cultures for the better, though, look at what tumblr is all about.

I cancelled because the content isn't worth it. No need to get all philosophical.

@sooty: Yeah, I agree actually. I've not been able to enjoy Giant Bomb videos nearly as much in the last year. The content's shaping up right now but there was a longstretch of nothing. I'm hardly emphatic about the site as I used to be.

I think that's more due to the design of the chat, which, again, isn't really a mod thing. Also, I'm sure the thought is that it shows what kind of posts are being made that are deemed unacceptable, so people can learn from others' mistakes.

Wait, what happened? My comment was deleted? I was just pointing out that this particular angry individual (during the DmC review catastrophe I mean) wasn't the same angry individual who was spreading that pic around of him supposedly cancelling his membership.

@wrighteous86: The post isn't just about the mods, though, and that assumption is a bad one. The mods are simply the ones most likely to actually contact the staff and do something about it. Also that doesn't really work in the chat, it goes too fast to see what the person posted.

The mods are decent on the forums, but I've had a couple issues every now and again. I was banned for a day once for saying the word [Edit] in a joking way. I think I said something like "You [Edit] will argue about anything! I love you guys sometimes" and I got banned for saying an "offensive statement" or something. Which is fucking ironic as shit because I'm not even straight! Still, I find the mods pretty good for the most part and they've done a good job since that spam attack on the forums.

@gamer_152: A quick question. I'm pretty sure on the previous site there was no notification that posts were deleted. Why the change?

@sathingtonwaltz: it's not like people know that though. For all we (and the mod team) know, every single person in this thread is heterosexual, white, male, etc. because that's what the most common demographics are.

Yeah, the problem in that situation and others like it is that it requires context outside of the site, which isn't really possible for the mods.