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Oof, I wouldn't use that above as any sort of example given that it drastically limits the amount of films that can be talked about instead of the widely encompassing term of "Movies."

For reference, here is a link to the topics he has started in Geek Media. https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/recentTopics/showTopicsByUser/0/118912/95.page

Of the 9 banned posts, only 3 of those had less than 1 page. Two of those were immediately locked by Alpharius for whatever reasons. I am not sure. One of them was actually remade because it was a bad lock and then had more posts in it. (That thread wasn't locked)

Of the others that were locked, they were used to consolidate in to one thread. Then that thread was locked because "Well, since no one actually wants to talk about movies ITT"

His Europa thread was locked because it got trolled and then he was punished for it. One of those was even a mod, or ex mod. Not sure anymore. But it was the same mod who locked two of his other threads almost immediately.

There are some serious discrepancies going on here with this poster and his threads. To the point where it seems he is being targeted by the mods for almost no reason other than an enthusiasm for posting.

I'll post it again. Because the "Its not censorship" response was not a valid response to what I posted above. It is glazing over a lot of what I posted as actually targeting and censoring a guy for little reason. It also doesn't answer the glaring inconsistencies with the mods on this specific topic.

Your question was answered;

Its the same rules for any other sub forum, don't duplicate threads, don't spam, its not a personal soapbox/blog etc. Also if the thread goes too far off topic, is flamebait, gets used as a vehicle for politics etc. it will get locked or deleted as appropriate.

As for your point about Techpriestsupport, moderation is done in private between the Mods and the party being moderated, we do not make it public. If you feel there is unfair moderation then feel free to PM another moderator or the sites admins.

I miss TSS, he had a youthful enthusiasm about him.
Was he banned permanently?

Again, no it wasn't. Because what you are saying is vastly different than what has transpired.

We don't get to discuss the mods in Nuts & Bolts anymore?

Ratius, definitely not! I, too, have enjoyed his threads. All we want to see is a reasonable limit on how many new, similar threads one poster makes in a section, so others have room to post threads, too.

That's it, really. No censure, no hidden motives other than that. Maybe we could've made it more clear to start, but it should be pretty clear now, right?

Dreadwinter, your point is fair and well taken. We'll try to be consistent about this going forward, and shouldn't need any more "emergency measures" now that the forum isn't being spammed.

In short, probably almost any thread you'd like to post is going to be fine, and we only ask folks not to create so many threads all at once that others don't have a chance to get their fair say.

Good to hear, hopefully he'll come back.

So it's all ok, because you're pretending there's only a certain amount of digital space available?

What absolute twaddle.

Unpopular, inactive threads quickly sink and are replaced by other, active, popular threads.

Dreadwinter, we simul-posted, did I answer your question? What was done was a one-time thing from a lot if posters complaining about spam, and we probably should've been more clear on this. You can still make any geeky thread you like in there - just not half the front page's worth in short order!

Excommunicatus, it's not digital space, it's front page space. We limit how many threads a single person can make in any part of the site. In really premium parts, like N&R, we limit threads to one per manufacturer, for instance.

But in any area of the site, if only one poster is dominating a section, we usually ask that they let others post threads and make a few less themselves / consolidate some of theirs together.

This has happened a number of times before, but apparently we just weren't clear about what we were doing here. I apologize for that - is it clear now?

Again, going forward you can make almost any thread you like in Geek Media, as can any user. But if you're making a new thread (or even multiples) in that section every day, we'll probably ask you to either consolidate some together, or make a few less so that one poster isn't making all the threads.

Any questions, just post here or PM me!

Well apparently what will actually happen if I make a thread in Geek Media is that it will be moved to Off-Topic so that I cant post in it in a nakedly petty move.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Well apparently what will actually happen if I make a thread in Geek Media is that it will be moved to Off-Topic so that I cant post in it in a nakedly petty move.

Assuming that you've got a subsection ban chances are the mod that moved the thread moved the thread for legitimate purposes and had no idea or forgot that your section banned. Whilst its a major thing for you, for most mods they've likely forgotten about it unless they dealt with you directly over the incident.

Ah, having checked your profile, I think that was likely a simple oversight, Excommunicatus. There's obviously a team of us here, and while we share all info it's not readily apparent when a user is temporarily suspended from the OT section without going through a few pages. So, I think the thread was likely moved as happens often, without realizing you couldn't post in it.

(I also noted that you'll be able to post there again next week, and OT suspensions are becoming much less needed now that politics isn't being discussed, so hopefully this will be a non-issue going forward)

Edit: Ninja'ed, Overread is exact! Apologies for the oversight, next time just shoot one of us a PM if you can, and we'll get it sorted.

I posted a thread specifically about it, specifically mentioning that it had been moved into a sub-forum I couldn't post in and that made no sense for the content.

Insaniak locked it instantly.

The thread is less than halfway down the Nuts and Bolts front page.

This is the thread, I think:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/766893.page

Perhaps a friendly PM will yield better results

I'll check into it now, but it looks like that kind of thread really does belong in OT (I thought you meant a different one which had no replies, which I would've just deleted for you if I'd realized you couldn't follow up on it).

Edit: Well, it's a pretty old thread and does belong in OT, I think. You can post in it next week when the OT suspension is finished, and hopefully that won't be necessary in the future...

My PMs were ignored.

I'll check into it, Excommunicatus (but I think if your PMs were similar to that thread I linked to above, that is likely the problem...)

 RiTides wrote:
Ratius, definitely not! I, too, have enjoyed his threads. All we want to see is a reasonable limit on how many new, similar threads one poster makes in a section, so others have room to post threads, too.

That's it, really. No censure, no hidden motives other than that. Maybe we could've made it more clear to start, but it should be pretty clear now, right?

Dreadwinter, your point is fair and well taken. We'll try to be consistent about this going forward, and shouldn't need any more "emergency measures" now that the forum isn't being spammed.

In short, probably almost any thread you'd like to post is going to be fine, and we only ask folks not to create so many threads all at once that others don't have a chance to get their fair say.

Sure, no censure, no hidden motives.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/769807.page Why was this post locked and why is the mod in question allowed to break rule #1 with his rude response and lock? I don't see any similar threads on the topic. There isn't anything to consolidate like the others threads. Which were consolidated in to a thread which was then locked.

The front page argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either. He currently has 15 threads on the Geek Media front page with most of them locked and the oldest over two weeks old. So he isn't bumping any active or popular posts from the front page. It also leaves 35 other posts on the front page. While that would be an outrageous amount of posts on a very popular and quick moving forum, that is not the case of Geek Media. Not a lot of new posts get made and when they do, we often times have to deal with mod shenanigans.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/769807.page Why was this post locked and why is the mod in question allowed to break rule #1 with his rude response and lock?

Because Rules for Thee and not for Me is how DakkaDakka seems to operate, at least from an outside observers point of view.

To throw my two cents in, I don't think there is any problem with someone making lots of new threads, so long as they are not artificially bumping them to drown out other threads. Like Dreadwinter said, if no-ones interested in a topic it will eventually fall off the front page anyway.

Example: This is what I consider good moderation. Someone makes a post, realises they made an oopsie poopsie, mod locks the thread and tells the poster where to put their post. https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/770003.page

While Techpriestsupport has posted some good thread topics, a lot of them have titles that remind me of 'clickbait' web links, and many of them are way off the topic of wargaming. I'd like Dakkadakka to have a high signal to noise ratio. TPS has (as of this writing) 158 threads started with 1029 overall posts, that seems extraordinarily high to me, when 15% of your posts are new threads.

The "View Recent Threads" subforum is probably the most important one on Dakkadakka. Anyone asking a real question they need answering or advice should be able to be listed there for a reasonable amount of time.

Maybe we need a "View Recent Wargaming Threads" and "View Recent More Dakka" Threads subforums.

Alpharius (who has retired from being a moderator) did not lock that thread, I did. There’s no reasonable discussion to be had on binge reading, as opposed to discussing what people are reading or about reading a certain book or genre, etc. That thread is a great example of spamming the forum, which is against the rules.

I appreciate that you are sticking up for another user but we’re not going to give you the detailed run down on how we moderated someone who isn’t you. I can absolutely confirm, however, that this user was not permanently banned nor was he “censured” or even mildly scolded for opening all these threads. And generally, starting a lot of threads all at once — although a little gauche in terms of etiquette — is not normally an issue. Rather, starting a lot of threads all at once that are about either very similar things or perhaps nothing at all ... well, yeah that’s spamming.

As for accusations of personal grudges, I am the one who locked most of the threads. But you can go back and look at them and see that I participated actively in many of them. This isn’t about being mean or uppity or what have you. I think Techpriestsupport posted some good ideas and on more than one occasion, I told him so. So please rethink the idea that moderation = personal animus.

 RiTides wrote:
This is the thread, I think:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/766893.page

Perhaps a friendly PM will yield better results

A polite post would have potentially yielded better results also. We're generally more than happy to discuss the reasons that decisions are made... but you're far more likely to get an actual discussion out of it if you don't lead with insulting us.


I would point out, though, that the fact that someone is blocked from a particular section of the site doesn't make a topic suddenly appropriate to post in a different section.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
almost no reason other than an enthusiasm for posting.

That itself is a valid reason. When that high a percentage of your posts are starting new threads it comes across as caring less about posting your thoughts and more about being overly concerned with being the person who has their name on the OP for as many threads as possible, as if that makes it "your" thread. Most of the threads in question were either pointless nonsense with no real room for discussion or redundant threads that would have worked just fine as posts in one of the existing threads on the topic.

 Ratius wrote:
I miss TSS, he had a youthful enthusiasm about him.
Was he banned permanently?

Looks like he left of his own volition, because before his voluntary leave of absence, he PM'ed me to basically feth myself, even though I basically haven't interacted with him except like one post agreeing that his threads should be consolidated. I'm not sure if anybody else got these PM's, but if that's his attitude towards the place, good riddance.

Ultimately, these stream of consciousness type of spam threads need to curbed since it sets a bad precedent for other newer posters to do the same, meaning we can potentially have flooded threads from multiple posters that basically have to resort to these kinds of spam threads to get attention.

I would point out that documentaries about WWII fits squarely into what Geek Media is supposed to be about, while Off-Topic specifically says it is for threads that do not fit anywhere else.

Which is why WWII documentaries went into geek media while Sunderland Til I Die did not.

I also wasn't banned from posting in Off-Topic when I made the thread in Geek Media. I am now banned from Off-Topic because I expressed frustration with bad-faith arguments in the Veganuary thread. Coincidentally, I'm sure, I'm banned until Veganuary is over.

Meanwhile, every other poster in that thread who posted nothing but ad hominens and blatantly impolite posts was allowed to continue posting without check.

It could not be more obvious that certain 'faces' around here are utterly exempt from the rules the rest of us are subjected to on an inconsistent and capricious basis.

Did you report offending posts?
In my experience quite a few people seethe and rage at moderator inaction, however a lot of reading is interpretation and it was closer to a case where a moderator was interpreting posts a different way; or perhaps didn't consider the full impact of the comments etc...
But at the same time the user was also not reporting those comments nor giving any feedback as to what their problem was with them.

Some would attack back (both members end up in trouble) whilst others would rage and then unleash it at mods/the site/the system.



Heck sometimes mods already know that user X is a sarcastic pain and they are mentally ignoring them anyway; not realising that some others might read user X's posts as direct insults.

This ^

It's also not at all unusual for us to receive messages from both sides of a dispute complaining about the 'blatant' favoritism we're showing the 'other' side...

I found TPS’s habit of making so many similar threads to be of mild annoyance. I don’t know if specific action was required, but I was personally tempted to ask him to consolidate similar threads, or maybe restrain his “I like this movie” threads to once per week. Defining spam is an art, not a science. I am glad to see active posters but on the other hand... posts that have substance (another vague term!) would be preferred.

Anyone that does not like how someone’s sandbox is run is always welcome to create their own sandbox, The moderators of this particular sandbox are unpaid volunteers that, for reasons beyond my understanding, choose to put up with gak from internet randos on their own free time to keep the place in order.

People that could, for the gaks and giggles of it, give anyone a swift kick in the ass, out of the sandbox, with nothing more than a sarcastic “have a nice life.” As justification. But they don’t. Again, I’m not sure why, other than possible masochistic tendencies.

So, one might consider not pissing in the faces of the gatekeepers of Dakka, since they aren’t paid to put up with your gak. Just saying, as someone that had to figure that out the hard way.

but I was personally tempted to ask him to consolidate similar threads,

I did. My entire post was "I think it's time for a TPS movie thread" in yet another thread specifically about one old movie, and whatever response I got was edited by a mod before I got to read it.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I am now banned from Off-Topic because I expressed frustration with bad-faith arguments in the Veganuary thread. Coincidentally, I'm sure, I'm banned until Veganuary is over.

This is one of the weirder developments on Dakka, right?

One of the things I am most grateful for is this expose of the pro-vegan narrative being pushed by this site. For too long, we meat-eaters have been relentlessly crushed under uncaring, presumably non-animal-origin leather jackboots.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Anyone that does not like how someone’s sandbox is run is always welcome to create their own sandbox,

This. Nobody forces anyone to post here, against their will and/or better judgement. Don't like it, just go!

Although we wouldn't get gems like this:


I LOL'd at that.

 Ouze wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I am now banned from Off-Topic because I expressed frustration with bad-faith arguments in the Veganuary thread. Coincidentally, I'm sure, I'm banned until Veganuary is over.

This is one of the weirder developments on Dakka, right?

One of the things I am most grateful for is this expose of the pro-vegan narrative being pushed by this site. For too long, we meat-eaters have been relentlessly crushed under uncaring, presumably non-animal-origin leather jackboots.

I am a vegan. I posted the thread.

Swing and a miss.