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Unsleeved media was accused and never proven, so until such evidence surface he was falsely accused, the burden of proof falls to the accuser, not to the accused, the judge on the other hand was both accused and proven.

We can debate for eternity if his behaviour was as bad as the law makes it be and if the sexual harassment laws are fair, we better not do that.

EVE online is a bad game design for many reasons it never delivered the consequences for player actions it promises, it is a lawless framework that fails to deliver any tools for law and order or any form consequences for "destructive" player actions, essentially in EVE you are penalised for been "constructive" that been said it caters to a certain type of player base and as long as the costs do not exceed their player base they are safe, it is really difficult to gain and retain new players though.

That been said despite EVE been a PVP online game and clearly sold as a game were you are going to loose your stuff while playing it, there are fundamental parts you are not going to loose like the characters, the real money cosmetics ectr, this brings EVE and MTGO on the same place were player has input money for microtransactions, the items bought are or should be owned by the player, covered by the usual trade laws, I guess more or less they are the same in all western countries give or take some details. setting aside the morality and legality of banning somebody for things outside the companies jurisdiction, the company that chooses to sever ties with their costumer should give the customer at least their money back, since they took back their payed product.

Yes I said from the start it is a messy situation but the trade laws should apply to digital products, Valve tried to pull a similar thing in the past and it was ruled against them.

I do not accept a company invading my private life and morally judging me on principle, it is irrelevant if this can or cannot happen in 40k, its a precedent that should not exist and can have big consequences in the future, been concerned about giving easily abuseable power to anybody is not paranoia, it is logic.

My reference to complains is that the ideological parties that you mentioned in your post that would be overjoyed if the judge was banned did not raise any complains that he was not banned but merely demoted, nor raised any complains that Wotc are quite happy to accept him back , given the complains they made against a guy that has so far been falsely accused, not complaining about such a clear cut case as you said is suspect.

Finally Wotc did not ban him just demoted him and reporting on the situation they say they are happy to accept him back, I am not sure how that means they are not ok with his actions...

In any case I used your logic and beliefs to illustrate my point, you are the one proposing guilt by association, not me and you are now defending Wotc from your logic, not me, I do not think Wotc should be held responsible for his actions or the actions of their employees who harassed unsleeved media in the false flag campaign, they should do something about it, but they are not responsible for their actions as that Pro Player is not responsible for whatever idiocy people in his closed group do.

Companies don't invade peoples privates lifes and morally judges them based on their ideology. At least, sucesfull ones don't.

Theres only one reason a company will act agaisn't someone: The guy/girl in question generates bad reputation and a loss of money.

All the people that try to put this as some kind of "Ideological" attack are just delusional about their own perception of the divided political american enviroment.
If this guy was more leftists than Marx, but had done something to gather bad rep for WoTC and Magic, they would have banned him if the noise was big enough.

 Galas wrote:


Theres only one reason a company will act agaisn't someone: The guy/girl in question generates bad reputation and a loss of money.

Galas wins this thread...common sensibility

I would believe that if they acted equally harsh against people that do equally bad damage to the company's reputation.

Or you suggest he was banned with the weakest excuse just because he was big enouph?

I can see that, beyond his attitude that is edgy and acceptable/ unacceptable depending on were you stand on the subject, he is the biggest (and only) critic about Wotc from the big 3 channels.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I would believe that if they acted equally harsh against people that do equally bad damage to the company's reputation.

Or you suggest he was banned with the weakest excuse just because he was big enouph?

I can see that, beyond his attitude that is edgy and acceptable/ unacceptable depending on were you stand on the subject, he is the biggest (and only) critic about Wotc from the big 3 channels.

I believe this is a case of bad luck. He did upset the wrong people, and that people, with more or less reasons did enough noise for the company to notice and take action. Many, many people will and would have done worse than this Jeremy guy, but they have been lucky, or just didn't where a "public" figure like Hambly, so WoTC didn't do anything agaisn't them.

When the theacher yells at you because you where talking, it doesn't matter that you said "But others where talking too!". You just had bad luck to be the one to receive the reprimand that time.

 Galas wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I would believe that if they acted equally harsh against people that do equally bad damage to the company's reputation.

Or you suggest he was banned with the weakest excuse just because he was big enouph?

I can see that, beyond his attitude that is edgy and acceptable/ unacceptable depending on were you stand on the subject, he is the biggest (and only) critic about Wotc from the big 3 channels.

I believe this is a case of bad luck. He did upset the wrong people, and that people, with more or less reasons did enough noise for the company to notice and take action. Many, many people will and would have done worse than this Jeremy guy, but they have been lucky, or just didn't where a "public" figure like Hambly, so WoTC didn't do anything agaisn't them.

When the teacher yells at you because you where talking, it doesn't matter that you said "But others where talking too!". You just had bad luck to be the one to receive the reprimand that time.

Actually, speaking as an experienced teacher, it is normally because you were talking louder, with more animation, or for longer. At the very least it will be because you have a habit of talking more regularly, so they already have their eye on you. In fact, often it is a combination of all of the above.

I think all those apply to the case of Jeremy Hambly compared with other guys that also do things that could generate bad rep to WoTC, but don't receive as much attention from the public.

 Galas wrote:


Theres only one reason a company will act agaisn't someone: The guy/girl in question generates bad reputation and a loss of money.

That's exactly the point, though. Where do you think that noise was coming from? The average MtG player?

MtG has a very closed-off media environment by design. You have to have the official support of WotC in order to get previews, event coverage etc. This creates a network of content creators, and I don't think it beggars belief that such a network would share a common alignment. I don't even really have to argue for it, because it's true. Hell, I'll let one of them say it in his own words:

“This is not the opening salvo in a long campaign. This is not intended to change the minds of these awful people. This is setting the boundaries of who I want in my game store, in my cube drafts, in my Twitter feed, in my group of friends who play Magic.

It is our duty, as longtime Magic players, to throw out people who don’t belong. If I go to a PTQ and my first round opponent is a known hateful piece of gak, I don’t have to grace them with my presence and treat them like a human being playing a game. I’m standing up and walking out, because they have no business playing a game with me… feth you. I might catch more flies with honey, but I’m not trying to catch them. I’m trying to force them out.” – Jesse Mason

I think you may also find some of the language familiar.

The noise came from a specific group of ideologically motivated people who, by their own words, leverage any kind of influence they can. Including PR incidents like this one. That's all I've been saying this whole time. It gives me the creeps, to be honest.

Edit: Also creepy; a vast majority of these people are straight white males.

I do not believe in luck, so I think I will go with the Fifty's explanation witch is more or less what I said from the beginning.

He was the 3rd biggest channel, critical to Wotc for the things they did bad and critical to the other two big channels that did not mention the critical issues present in the MtG community so he was terminated with the slightest excuse because they did not like him, some of it was ideological, some because he talked things they wished nobody talked about.

People trying to keep away other people that they don't like because how they think, how they play, etc... has been a constant ever in any kind of group.
Is not a phylosophy that I personally share, but lets not pretend this is something new or something specific to any political alignement, as many people has tryed to paint this over. Heck, I remember when in my young days some dudes talked gak to me because I was speaking galician in a warhammer store (In Galicia, so you can imagine). When I was 14 years old I ended walking away, of course. The store owner didn't did anything about that
This is more about personal values and how willing are you to accept the behaviour of others that you don't like.

For example, I know many people that have no problems playing with people that stink, that cheat, or that is rude in a non comical way. Personally, my time is precious, I have no time with that kind of people, and is not the first time I have banned someone from my gaming club.
I remember two that I banned. One because started talking gak about one dude with an Iphone (Typical communist propaganda), and other said a highly sexual and inapropiate joke to a 16 years old girl (He was something like 26-28). The first one was rude when I banned him, the second one and his friends called me SJW, because he was obviously "Joking". I didn't cared.
I love black humour. I do mysoginistic, mysandric, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic jokes all the time towards literally everything (My own racial, social, geographic and sexual groups too) with my brothers and friends, but I have the inteligence to do those in a private enviroment and where people that could be hurt about that kind of thing isn't present. Is called respect. But many people forgot what is that on the internet, and then they get angry when they are punished for being disrespectfull.

At the end of the day this is all about playing with cards. If WoTC don't want him anymore maybe he can try with Yu-Gi-Oh or other card games (To be honest I have no idea about other card games besides digital ones)

It is true that this is not a new occurrence; I would say it's similar to any other moral panic such as the antics of the religious right in the 90's. But I also criticized that for the same reasons.

In his case it is quite clear there is an ideological conflict between him and at least some of his opponents since nobody was trying to hide it, some of the people who wrote articles against him were Wotc employees, so even if the company was ideologically neutral, its employees were not.

In the demands for public ban lists for the other hobbies it was again clearly ideological, buzzwords such as toxic and extreme thinking hold no meaning as they are undefinable one can address virtually anything as "toxic" or "extreme thinking".

Personally since I watched much of his content because of the story I find him a very harsh critic, with heavy language, but nowhere near what others described him.

He really does call Wotc on many subjects of their business though, card quality, print runs, bad cutting and misalignment of foils, maybe they the incident in hopes they removed their most prominent critic from the scene.

 Luciferian wrote:
It is true that this is not a new occurrence; I would say it's similar to any other moral panic such as the antics of the religious right in the 90's. But I also criticized that for the same reasons.

This is exactly my view about this. I hate hipocrisy, and all this "Omg PC freedom of speech!" crown, to me, are a bunch of hipocrits (Talking general here), because I have known enough people in my life to know that most of them (People, not right or left here) doesn't like to confront different opinions than their own. Most of those "freedom figthers", if they where the ones in "social power"; would do exactly the same they are critizisim right now. As they have done in the past.

Social standards and morals change, what its ok to say now, it wasn't 30 years ago, and probably it will not be 30 years in the future.
I can totally respect people that has stood agaisn't repression in the past, and now. But thats a minority.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
In his case it is quite clear there is an ideological conflict between him and at least some of his opponents since nobody was trying to hide it, some of the people who wrote articles against him were Wotc employees, so even if the company was ideologically neutral, its employees were not.

In the demands for public ban lists for the other hobbies it was again clearly ideological, buzzwords such as toxic and extreme thinking hold no meaning as they are undefinable one can address virtually anything as "toxic" or "extreme thinking".

Personally since I watched much of his content because of the story I find him a very harsh critic, with heavy language, but nowhere near what others described him.

He really does call Wotc on many subjects of their business though, card quality, print runs, bad cutting and misalignment of foils, maybe they the incident in hopes they removed their most prominent critic from the scene.

So he was basically your average DakkaDakka poster? Well. As Peregrine said, in 40k is impossible to do what they have done to him in Magic because theres not organised play by the companny. One can't enforce "bans" at a general level.

Sadly I do have to agree that most people seem to skew authoritarian. Which is something I'm a bit anxious about, to be honest with you. Still, I'd no rather have a skeezy televangelist trying to meddle in art that I enjoy than a council of tumblr fanatics. They're the same kind of people from what I can see. But that's also why I feel so passionately about things like this.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Unsleeved media was accused and never proven, so until such evidence surface he was falsely accused, the burden of proof falls to the accuser, not to the accused, the judge on the other hand was both accused and proven.

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal principle, not a social one. You don't have to have absolute proof of an accusation before deciding that you don't want to be friends with someone, and WOTC clearly found the accusation credible enough to take action based on it. But there's a reason I've been talking about this as the things that Hambly has been accused of, not the things that he has been proven to have done.

EVE online is a bad game design for many reasons it never delivered the consequences for player actions it promises, it is a lawless framework that fails to deliver any tools for law and order or any form consequences for "destructive" player actions, essentially in EVE you are penalised for been "constructive" that been said it caters to a certain type of player base and as long as the costs do not exceed their player base they are safe, it is really difficult to gain and retain new players though.

On the other hand, there's the demonstrated fact that EVE has survived for ~15 years in a market where large numbers of other games have tried and failed. And it does deliver tools for law and order: players being free to create law and order, and to punish other players for their actions. EVE gives you the freedom to decide how things are going to be, if there is no law and order it's because the players trying to build it are weak and fail. Ultimately that is what makes EVE a successful game, unlike all those games where "winning" is largely a matter of grinding for enough hours, EVE puts success and failure entirely in your own hands.

Now, you are clearly not the kind of player that EVE is aimed at, but that doesn't make it bad design.

That been said despite EVE been a PVP online game and clearly sold as a game were you are going to loose your stuff while playing it, there are fundamental parts you are not going to loose like the characters, the real money cosmetics ectr, this brings EVE and MTGO on the same place were player has input money for microtransactions, the items bought are or should be owned by the player, covered by the usual trade laws, I guess more or less they are the same in all western countries give or take some details. setting aside the morality and legality of banning somebody for things outside the companies jurisdiction, the company that chooses to sever ties with their costumer should give the customer at least their money back, since they took back their payed product.

No, that's not how it works. If video game character attributes are property then all video game character attributes are property. You can't say "well, your laser cannon was stolen, but you still have your skill points so no crime was committed". Each attribute of the character, items included, is property, and taking any of it from another player would be a crime. This is the fundamental problem with your argument: you want video game character attributes to function like property in one particular way ("WOTC can't take your cards!"), but not all of the other ways which lead to undesirable outcomes.

And I agree, if a company takes back the product they should issue a refund. Hambly has a legitimate claim to a prorated refund of any subscription fees that were paid for the remaining time on his MTGO subscription. But whether or not WOTC refunded his $5 is hardly an issue to get outraged about.

Yes I said from the start it is a messy situation but the trade laws should apply to digital products, Valve tried to pull a similar thing in the past and it was ruled against them.

The difference is that Valve is actually selling you a product. A game you buy on Steam is a digital object that can have its own independent existence, and you can meaningfully take possession of it. MTGO cards and other in-game character attributes do not have that independent existence. There is nothing where you can say "this is my property" and take it into your possession. Even if you demand that WOTC give you the digital files for your account those files would be useless and worthless. Where Steam games can only be taken from you because of EULA abuse MTGO cards are entirely dependent on WOTC continuing to run MTGO as it is now. The two situations are entirely different from a functional point of view, and the legal reasoning that applies to one does not apply to the other.

I do not accept a company invading my private life and morally judging me on principle, it is irrelevant if this can or cannot happen in 40k, its a precedent that should not exist and can have big consequences in the future, been concerned about giving easily abuseable power to anybody is not paranoia, it is logic.

Ok, fine, you don't accept it. Don't participate in MTG and WOTC will not "invade your private life". That's the difference you keep overlooking between a private organization and the government. When the government judges you they can put you in prison, or even kill you. When a private organization judges you all you have to do to end the consequences is stop doing business with them.

And yes, it is paranoia. You keep talking about "easily abuseable power" and ignoring the fact that no such power even theoretically exists in 40k. There is no central authority that could have the power, so there's certainly no way to abuse nonexistent power. For anything like the WOTC situation to be possible in 40k, regardless of your opinions on whether bans like this should happen, GW would have to do a complete 180 in their business practices and create a WOTC-style tournament structure that drives out all of the third-party events and leaves GW with control over the majority of 40k games. Then GW could ban someone and it would have meaningful consequences. But that is not happening now, and there is no credible reason to believe that it will happen.

Finally Wotc did not ban him just demoted him and reporting on the situation they say they are happy to accept him back, I am not sure how that means they are not ok with his actions...

That's a pretty dishonest way to present this. They didn't just demote him, they stripped him of his judge powers entirely. He is not able to act as a MTG judge until WOTC allows him to re-apply and start working his way back up to his former position. That's a major punishment. And WOTC has not said they'd be happy to have him back, they have said they'd consider taking him back sometime in the future if he demonstrates that he has learned from his punishment and can be trusted to behave. Allowing someone to return once they have served their punishment does not negate the fact that the punishment was imposed, nor does it mean that you approve of someone's actions.

that Pro Player is not responsible for whatever idiocy people in his closed group do.

Of course he is. He is/was an admin of the group, with the power to shut down the offensive material. And it was a group created specifically to share offensive material. Don't act like he was innocent in this, he didn't just accidentally find himself added to the group without his consent. His participation as an admin is endorsement of its content, and a statement that he is a TFG who does not belong in the community.

And, again, I'll point out that it's not just WOTC punishing him. Before WOTC did anything his sponsors had already dumped him, and he had been kicked off his team.

First, I just want to say how refreshing it was to read this thread. Most of the gaming communities I belong to are to the point where disagreement leads to ostracization. Even mentioning GamerGate is a permaban in some places. It's refreshing to see a discussion like this have some room to breathe. Dakka has a lot of older posters, and I think it shows in discussions like this.

The one thing I wanted to add is that this isn't just about Wizards and the youtuber. The Magic Reddit group's moderators took it upon themselves to start banning people from their subreddit, not just for sticking up for the youtuber, but even taking a moderate position on it (or even posting on other subreddits the Magic group deem toxic, like the GamerGate one or The_Donald). This has led to a bunch of them moving over to their own new subreddit, /r/freemagic, which has about a 1,000 subscribers now. These guys are hanging on to their fandom by a thread, and I don't think it would take much for them to bail.

This event has been a catalyst for a split in the Magic community, and I think the people who have been kicked out are trying to create a separate but equal group. Unfortunately, in the past, these things have happened in other communities and the ones with the power and ear of WotC will use it to paint this second community as a bunch of Nazi sympathizers and work towards preventing them from playing at tournaments, unable to comment in official settings, and generally kept away from any position to affect or comment on the nature of the game. After this, the progressives will use their unquestioned power to then become much worse in how their rule their fiefdom, becoming more ban happy, and generally pushing Wizards to mirror their ideals even more, to the point where most fans of Magic will find themselves having a line in the sand that they have to decide which side to stand on.

In my opinion, we're looking at the beginning of the end of the Magic community. It's not a community that I'm familiar with, but I started playing miniature games because the video game community became so mean and awful. I've seen it happen with comic books too. I used to be a big Marvel fan, unfortunately. Watching the reactions to The Last Jedi makes me think Star Wars is next. The miniatures community has largely resisted attempts to divide the community, but after those editorials on BolS and SpikeyBits, it looks like it is inevitable. They didn't work, but each time editorials like that are posted, the community gets more frustrated by it, and people who act in a frustrated manner become easy targets for claiming they are acting out because they are misogynists or white supremacists.

So, I don't think this discussion is just about how Wizards done this guy dirty. It is bs. They shouldn't have done it. Perhaps worse though is that they set an example for the various Magic communities everywhere that ideology matters, and that Wizards has chosen a particularly divisive one to enforce. Some power hungry moderators will use to seek ideological purity, destroying these communities in the process.

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius]

I was watching on Youtube a lawyer by trade explaining the case of the MTGO cards, unfortunately the case falls apart for Wotc on EULA so he did not delve much on the laws about digital products been purchased with real money and having a real world value.

His legal advice in the end was that while Unsleeved media is wronged under EULA and can win the case, it is not economically advisable.

Otherwise I came across a report on a (FB?) post from the ex lead artist of magic, claiming that Magic was not designed for people holding a certain ideology claiming that anybody having such ideology is an "interloper and needs to go"

I think that this is one more person associated with Wotc, admittedly not with them anymore, putting the ban in an ideological (and political) level, instead of a "company protection perspective".

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
I suspect it'll die down if Jeremy manages to take a few lesser scalps down for their doxxing antics, I think he knows it's unlikely WoTC will do anything much public to their favoured shills beyond getting a lady staffer to write a puff 'be excellent to each other' article on the Magic homepage

The new expansion spoilers will most likely start rolling out in earnest soon giving people something else to prevaricate about

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/commitment-each-other-building-community-together-2017-12-19

haha called it (okay so they didn't use a Lady staffer but still giving myself 7.5/ 10

...

This is for real?

not sure but there are Magic judge guidelines addressing it under section H.4. Failure to Agree on Reality (which I previously assumed were to stop some players stalling matchs by engaging in Philosophical debates)

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/commitment-each-other-building-community-together-2017-12-19

This is what I was talking about. Wizards isn't just going after this one guy. They are going after everyone similar to this guy, and they are setting the example they expect the Magic communities to follow. The moderators of these communities will not exercise constraint when enforcing these vague and nebulous rules - not now that they have the blessing of WotC - and will use it to purge the communities of anyone they ideologically disagree with. It's not too late to save Magic, but it doesn't seem like anybody is actually interested in doing so.

Edit: A mod posted this in the magictcg subreddit:

Yeah, we must be lazy. Let's look at the modlog!

In the past 12 hours 617 comments have been removed in /r/magictcg.
In the past 12 hours 49 posts have been removed in /r/magictcg.
In the past 12 hours 79 users have been banned in /r/magictcg.

That's an average of one comment removed every 1.16 minutes, one post removed every 14 minutes and one user banned every 9.1 minutes. Continuously, for twelve hours.

I used to run a forum that had about ten thousand daily visitors, with a team of about a dozen moderators, and those numbers are nuts to me, especially if those numbers are worse for the previous 4-5 days as suggested elsewhere. Even a coordinated brigading attempt won't yield around 800 bans in a single week. Then, in another post by a moderator:

We think that having anyone who speaks out against harassment immediately be mobbed by a bunch of "devil's advocates" and "just saying..." and "well technically..." and "well I need you to post proof and citations and do it again separately for me and then again separately for the next guy and then again separately for the next guy while we all nit-pick your exact terminology" causes people to not want to speak out against harassment.

We think the users who do that stuff know this. And we think causing people to leave the community and not feel welcome or like they can engage here is exactly the goal of those users. And we're not OK with that.

If you don't like the resulting moderation, which includes removing a lot of comments, issuing a lot of bans and removing or locking a lot of posts either because they're obvious trolls or because we need to keep the subreddit manageable, well, you don't like it. But if your overriding goal is to enable all the stuff I listed above? Your goals and ours don't match up. And let's make no mistake: "open discussion" and "letting all viewpoints be heard" is just letting people do the stuff I listed above.

He basically says that asking for proof or playing devil's advocate is bad for the community and will get you banned. This may have started as a lifetime ban for one player, but a lot of players (hundreds) are being exiled from their community for it. This isn't just about one youtuber anymore.

eh, I happen to see the moderator's point. If a community values inclusiveness, it needs to work to keep cliques from forming and taking over to the detriment of the larger community. That technique in the last quote of his is dead on what killed our US Politics threads, so more power to him.

Wouldn't want anyone asking any of those pesky questions or engaging in "open discussion" now would we? Questions are dangerous, and anyone who asks them can't be trusted!

There is a difference between sincerely asking questions and playing devil's advocate (or just trolling and hiding behind "devil's advocate" or "just asking questions"). The behavior being declared worthy of a ban is not constructive and adds nothing to a discussion.

Call me crazy, but when someone tells me right off the bat that asking for proof or clarification is off limits, I brace myself for a con. It's an instinct that has kept me out of joining any cults so far, so I think I'll continue to heed it.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:eh, I happen to see the moderator's point. If a community values inclusiveness, it needs to work to keep cliques from forming and taking over to the detriment of the larger community. That technique in the last quote of his is dead on what killed our US Politics threads, so more power to him.

Moderating is not an easy or fun job (I HATED it), but banning users doesn't result in them simply going away. They come back with a different name or simply just become a serial harasser for your forums and the moderators. More than once, I was woken up in the middle of the night because my forum had been attacked by users I had banned and was filling up with goatse pictures and what have you - these posters were bad before, but banning gave them a purpose.

When you ban a lot of people in one go, they end up going somewhere else - their own new community that exists antithetical to the one they were just banned from. And if one user can be a pain in the ass, even after banning, imagine what it is like having an entire community that exists just to hate yours (and this is happening with the Magic reddit groups, and it is essentially the origin of GamerGate and Sad Puppies).

My guess is that the group handled the moderation of the initial situation poorly, creating ill will and resulting in a few unfair bannings. That likely led to brigading (see previous paragraph), and the moderators had their hands full defending against it. As such, anything which even remotely looks like brigading (like being your first post in that group, you also post on verboten forums) just gets lumped in and banned. This created more ill will and had even more unfair bannings, which led to even more brigading. It's a self perpetuating cycle of resentment.

The second thing is that they are instilling an ideological litmus test, and anything that fails that test (questioning harassment, being skeptical, not thinking things are "toxic" and "gross") gets banned as well. It's a bit like a serial killer using a war to cover up his crimes. When the body count is that high, who is going to look too closely at a few more?

Peregrine wrote:There is a difference between sincerely asking questions and playing devil's advocate (or just trolling and hiding behind "devil's advocate" or "just asking questions"). The behavior being declared worthy of a ban is not constructive and adds nothing to a discussion.

"Where's the proof of harassment?" "Asking questions is trolling!" Well, you've convinced me.

If a moderator brags about his ban list... that is never a good sign, banning is a final solution.

Now banning for asking for proof as trolling......

Especially since all the things said are subjective.

 Sqorgar wrote:
"Where's the proof of harassment?" "Asking questions is trolling!" Well, you've convinced me.

That's a rather dishonest misrepresentation of what I actually said. I explicitly said that there is a difference between legitimate questions and playing dumb with "just asking questions". The problem behavior the moderator is talking about is when trolls toss a grenade into a forum and then try to hide behind "I was just asking a question" when it inevitably starts the conflict they want to see. For example, posting "what if everyone who defends Jeremy Hambly enjoys performing sexual acts on sheep", and then whining about how it's "just a question" when people accurately criticize you for it. There is no good-faith effort to find the answer to a genuine question, only an attempt to avoid getting banned for obvious trolling.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Now banning for asking for proof as trolling......

That's not what was suggested. The ban-worthy behavior is tedious and repetitive demands for proof. To quote:

and "well I need you to post proof and citations and do it again separately for me and then again separately for the next guy and then again separately for the next guy while we all nit-pick your exact terminology"

That isn't a good-faith desire to see proof, it's spamming "GIVE ME PROOF" in the hope that people get tired of providing the same answers after the 15th cycle of demanding them and let you "win".


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 Sqorgar wrote:
The moderators of these communities will not exercise constraint when enforcing these vague and nebulous rules - not now that they have the blessing of WotC - and will use it to purge the communities of anyone they ideologically disagree with.

At which point nobody is left to post there, the communities become ghost towns, and alternative communities with a less-strict ban policy become the focus of the hobby. As I said before, this is a self-regulating problem. If you go beyond banning the worst outliers you destroy your own product, and your former customers go elsewhere. It's true for games, and it's especially true for forums/blogs/etc given how easy it is to set up a new online community. If dakka bans 90% of its members most of those people aren't going to leave the hobby, they're just going to move to a different forum and keep going on with business as usual.

 Peregrine wrote:
I explicitly said that there is a difference between legitimate questions and playing dumb with "just asking questions".

And there's a difference between a legitimate answer and deflecting so you don't have to give one.

The problem behavior the moderator is talking about is when trolls toss a grenade into a forum and then try to hide behind "I was just asking a question" when it inevitably starts the conflict they want to see. For example, posting "what if everyone who defends Jeremy Hambly enjoys performing sexual acts on sheep", and then whining about how it's "just a question" when people accurately criticize you for it. There is no good-faith effort to find the answer to a genuine question, only an attempt to avoid getting banned for obvious trolling.

That has got to be the worst example I've ever seen anyone give. Some of the people getting banned were asking for proof of harassment, not insulting anybody. By asking that question, they are implicating that the accuser is being dishonest (or could be), and that's why they got banned.

That's not what was suggested. The ban-worthy behavior is tedious and repetitive demands for proof. To quote:

and "well I need you to post proof and citations and do it again separately for me and then again separately for the next guy and then again separately for the next guy while we all nit-pick your exact terminology"

That isn't a good-faith desire to see proof, it's spamming "GIVE ME PROOF" in the hope that people get tired of providing the same answers after the 15th cycle of demanding them and let you "win".

You write one post in glorious detail, with every shred of evidence you can find, hotlinked and crossreferenced, and then when anybody asks for proof and citations, you link to that post. Sticky it. Of course, you have to be honest when you write it. I've seen sticky posts which literally say "If you're here to tell us we are wrong, overreacting, or to dismiss our opinions, then please don't bother." - that's an actual quote. I'm not paraphrasing.

The problem is, they weren't honest. I've seen the things they considered proof and it was circumstantial and unprovable, and even then, it was still nothing worthy of a lifetime ban from Magic. But in their heads, that was all the proof anyone should ever need. So when someone goes, "Uh, guys. That's not evidence.", he gets banned - in their heads, the proof is sufficient and if he is doubting it, he must be trolling. They never once, themselves, questioned the motivations or veracity of the cosplayer's claims.

At which point nobody is left to post there, the communities become ghost towns, and alternative communities with a less-strict ban policy become the focus of the hobby. As I said before, this is a self-regulating problem. If you go beyond banning the worst outliers you destroy your own product, and your former customers go elsewhere. It's true for games, and it's especially true for forums/blogs/etc given how easy it is to set up a new online community. If dakka bans 90% of its members most of those people aren't going to leave the hobby, they're just going to move to a different forum and keep going on with business as usual.

And that's exactly what happened to the video game forum NeoGAF. It used to be the biggest video game forum by a wide margin - one of the biggest online communities in the world, actually. A few years ago, they got some real nutjobs as mods who started banning people by the THOUSANDS over ideological grounds (and usually really petty stuff). NeoGAF started shrinking, many of their banned users went and joined other anti-NeoGAF communities (The Bore, NeoF*G, the GamerGate community), and their Alexa ranking dropped like a rock. After the site owner was accused of sexual harassment, all the nutjob mods and the nutjob posters (the only ones left not banned) fled en masse and started ResetEra. The last couple days of that exodus involved a bunch of brigading, where people filled the forum with gay porn and spam. NeoGAF is a ghost town now. It went from thousands of post an hour to dozens.

It has happened before and it is happening right now in Magic - largely with the blessing and support of WotC. Demanding ideological purity will end up destroying the community and ultimately the game, but it doesn't mean they won't do it anyway. I've seen it real time, and it's why I get worried every time I see a boob armor thread on Dakka.

 Sqorgar wrote:

At which point nobody is left to post there, the communities become ghost towns, and alternative communities with a less-strict ban policy become the focus of the hobby. As I said before, this is a self-regulating problem. If you go beyond banning the worst outliers you destroy your own product, and your former customers go elsewhere. It's true for games, and it's especially true for forums/blogs/etc given how easy it is to set up a new online community. If dakka bans 90% of its members most of those people aren't going to leave the hobby, they're just going to move to a different forum and keep going on with business as usual.

And that's exactly what happened to the video game forum NeoGAF. It used to be the biggest video game forum by a wide margin - one of the biggest online communities in the world, actually. A few years ago, they got some real nutjobs as mods who started banning people by the THOUSANDS over ideological grounds (and usually really petty stuff). NeoGAF started shrinking, many of their banned users went and joined other anti-NeoGAF communities (The Bore, NeoF*G, the GamerGate community), and their Alexa ranking dropped like a rock. After the site owner was accused of sexual harassment, all the nutjob mods and the nutjob posters (the only ones left not banned) fled en masse and started ResetEra. The last couple days of that exodus involved a bunch of brigading, where people filled the forum with gay porn and spam. NeoGAF is a ghost town now. It went from thousands of post an hour to dozens.

It has happened before and it is happening right now in Magic - largely with the blessing and support of WotC. Demanding ideological purity will end up destroying the community and ultimately the game, but it doesn't mean they won't do it anyway. I've seen it real time, and it's why I get worried every time I see a boob armor thread on Dakka.

I'll quote myself:

 Galas wrote:
Companies don't invade peoples privates lifes and morally judges them based on their ideology. At least, sucesfull ones don't.

This is a free market of luxury products. WoTC are free to do what they want. People is free to give them feedback. WoTC is free to ignore that feedback and bann people that give that kind of feedback. In some years, we'll know if that was a good move.
Of course I have no horse on this race so I can understand people that his emotional about this issue. Blizzard pushed me away from World of Warcraft after butchering the lore (I know, very different from "ideological" purge, but whatever). I was SO invested in that game and universe. After that I have learn to not become "fan" of anything. I enjoy products as long as they appeal to me. Companies don't deserve to be emotionally invested in them and their products. Thats a life of suffering.