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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I'm quite intrigued why after what has been what, a year? This bothers you quite a bit. Enough that you put it in your signature, even.

Oh, you think that's for you. No, that's not for you, that's for me. I keep that there as a reminder of that time a moderator picked sides.

I mean, I've been here 10 years now, and toxic posters come and go. The nature of online forums, you get anonymity with the internet, you know what you get. What changed is when - for reasons I don't understand and can't speculate on - a mod decided to look the other way when you repeatedly referred to the wargaming community as pathetic incels, suggested they were possibly pedophiles, had a lot in common with Elliot Rodgers, and then suggested they were as bad as ISIS. And why not? Once you had free reign, why not spike the ball? No one was stopping that particular end-zone dance.

So no, that reminder is for myself, to continue to vote with my wallet, just as I said I would.

And moderation is really what this whole thread is about. Now we have growing tranche of topics that are essentially not allowed on Dakka Dakka "because they get toxic". This list of topics you can't discuss here is going to continue to grow as long as the heckler's veto is successful, as long as the philosophy is that there are "toxic topics" and not "toxic posters".

 Ouze wrote:
Oh, you think that's for you. No, that's not for you, that's for me. I keep that there as a reminder of that time a moderator picked sides.

Then allow me to be blunt with you.

I will admit in retrospect, without reading the original material, that I was unwise in saying that. Even if I didn't say it specifically like that, whatever I said was at least worded in such a way that you took that impression from it, so it was either malice or recklessness on my part, and I admit fault there.

I will only attempt to clarify that there are some extreme variables that tend to crop up with everything, and those variables are divisive. They are hardly ever even the majority, but they are the 'village idiot' and the village idiot is always the loudest and very disruptive. So, I will say I dislike the village idiot of any form of village, and I am vigilant to see if the person from said village is the idiot that causes the problems. I think this is fair.

But now I will be honest, you state that you believe mods 'picked sides'. I have seen you and a few others, seemingly get a blank check to hurl names and insults at others. I have seen some posters outright condone violence and despite using all means provided to me to help the moderators deal with these behaviors, I saw no changes or adjustments to the posts and the posters continue to carry on with their forum activities.

And I say this full well knowing that in the past, I have been at fault for being rude to others. I know I did it, I did it willingly, and I own that. For whatever it is now, that's mine. But because I've done that, I've become more than a little familiar with moderator action- and, from my perspective, I've seen persons get away with it and continue on. And it was not the first, second, or tenth time they were reported to mods by more than one person on here. So the report function seems to either be defective, or there's more lenience toward some.

So, the mods aren't perfect and I'll give them that. But don't think for a moment you're entirely a victim here. I've seen you call names repeatedly, or at least deliver rude and insulting responses and nothing has changed.

But then again, you could be as stubborn as I am.

I'm not insulting you here, I'm just being honest. If there's a grudge here, I'm willing to bury it if you are and just drive on focusing on things we enjoy. We don't have to be friends or anything, we can just drop this nonsense. I've been stupid, but I'm not the only one.

 Ouze wrote:
...when you repeatedly referred to the wargaming community as pathetic incels, suggested they were possibly pedophiles, had a lot in common with Elliot Rodgers, and then suggested they were as bad as ISIS...

Vague recollection here, but for what it's worth- I'm pretty sure that throughout wargaming there's quite a bit of really scummy people (as there is with most anything), and if the internet stories are to be believed we have all of these 'social problems' with various types of people (unless those stories aren't true, which could be the case sometimes). I'm pretty sure that's hard to argue with, and I'm pretty sure that it's on both sides of the ideological fence.

I mean, if you're asking me to see some fault in saying there's awful people that do this hobby, and just enough of them to make their hobby communities unbearable... I'm just... not.

Hey guys,

I appreciate the honest posts here, but I think we've illustrated the problem:

More than anywhere else on the site, the politics debates engender hard feelings, a feeling of not having been moderated fairly, and escalating issues between users that seem to continue over time. This bleeds into other areas of the site (the incident that Ouze is referring to isn't even from the OT, but touches on all the same topics).

Ouze, I can only say I'm sorry if we missed something egregious previously - we're certainly human, and sometimes don't run a tight enough ship here when an obvious "ism" comes up.

Adeptus Doritos, you make some fair points as well, and I'll follow up via PM.

Overall, as I said, I think this illustrates just why we're considering pulling the plug on political discussion - we'd really love everyone, as much as possible, to get along here and enjoy discussing our hobby (and sometimes other nerd) passions. When politics is causing folks to have long-term, significant issues with both the site and each other... it seems to be counter-productive to what we've got this message board here for.

I'll lock this up for now, as we've gotten a lot of useful feedback, but are probably at the end of where this thread can remain useful... if someone wanted to share their opinion but didn't get a chance to feel free to PM me and I will pass it along to the rest of the mods.

Thanks all...