So - I just kind of want to clarify why the temperature on the thread became what it did.
Point of the thread:
The issue at hand was concerns about Kormak’s account being messed with in some way by moderators. The concern was that censorship may have been involved. The purpose of the thread was to address this issue regarding Kormak, because I wasn’t the only person who felt uncomfortable about what happened with his account.
Why people care:
People care about the Kormak problem because a lot of us spend a lot of time on this forum bouncing our ideas and philosophies off of other people, or seeking self-growth. The thought that we might be penalized for our ideas by someone who can manipulate our accounts and then sweep the issue under the rug is a concerning one. When people invest a lot of time, thought, and energy on this thread, and when they become involved in other people’s lives, they inevitably become attached to the people and this experience. Even though we’re not meeting the bodies of other people in real life, we’re meeting their minds, which in some ways, is a deeper experience. It’s natural for people to want to feel like they have a degree of protection here from being manipulated or operated upon by some moderator holding a grudge. The fact that the moderators tend to seem particularly sensitive doesn’t set anyone’s mind at ease.
That was why Kormak’s situation was a problem for the community, and that is why it needed to be addressed. It made people feel uneasy. I felt like we had to clear the air, and IF there was a bad actor - a moderator who did something they shouldn’t have - I felt like that information should be exposed because that’s not the fault of the forum is it? That is the behavior of one person who shouldn’t be abusing their power.
Why things got heated:
Things started to escalate when the issue of censorship became a topic. Redbaron, so it seemed to me, was of the stance that if Kormak’s opinions might be offensive to someone, then he SHOULD be censored. It’s upsetting to hear from a moderator that someone should be censored for their philosophies. When I voiced my opinions regarding freedom of speech, I got trolled by Angel - someone I’ve never met and do not know, but who apparently had a grudge for me...which is unusual, because as to my knowledge so far, there was only one person on this forum that seemed to have an issue with something I said during my time here - another moderator.
So things started to become very suspicious. We had one moderator who seemed to say that people should be censored for voicing their beliefs, if those beliefs aren’t politically correct. We had a user from an apparently inactive account come out of no where to troll the concept of freedom of speech - and we had another user who I personally don’t really know who showed up to brush off the idea that people should have free speech.
So we had an issue where people were concerned about censorship, and we were trying to figure out what happened to Kormak, and it snowballed into this weird shit storm of random people showing up on this thread to basically advocate for the stance of censorship.
Rebis and I at least seemed to think this was just extremely weird and suspicious. We started wondering if, perhaps, some of these people were duplicate accounts - or if there was some conversation going on behind the scenes. It wasn’t a good situation. Here, I’d open this thread to address the possibly cheroot handling of another user - who is now gone and we will probably never get back, and who we miss here on the forum - and all of these sort of corrupt anti-free speech things start going down.
At this point, I’m seriously questioning my involvement on the forum - because if people really do want to censor me and they feel at liberty to manipulate my account or mess with me, without feeling like they should have to provide transparency for it - well this isn’t a place I want to entrust with my ideologies, or build relationships with other people - is it?
Then Redbaron, very wisely and maturely, returned to the issue at hand - Kormak. He said that to his knowledge, there’d been no foul play. I got the chance to ask him a useful question (whether a mod had physically deleted Kormak’s duplicate account), which I believe he answered honestly - and for me, that seemed to show that Redbaron at least probably wasn’t involved in the stuff that went down with Kormak, and that he was willing to discuss the issue with us. Which I really appreciated.
Marbles showed up and tried to offer a solution to cool things down. He was concerned that if Rebis and I left, we’d basically have no activity on this forum. Marbles is quite the peacekeeper really. He has this gift for making people see sense and laugh about stuff. So he really kind of diffused the situation. I think he’s good with Rebis too. They’re a good dynamic - those guys.
Anyways, the gang was kind of cooling off now and things were going well. We were having a progressive conversation about where to go from here - I felt. I also felt like Redbaron was still pretty upset...but it’s kind of to be expected because he’s gender fluid and the thread had turned into something of a debate about whether or not it’s okay to voice philosophies that can be hurtful to marginalized people. So I get it. Personal experiences, you know? It’s not easy to be anything but heterosexual. I have a lot of compassion for the LGBT+ struggle. I believe in freedom of speech, yeah, but also in freedom of expression. Both are important...
Anyways. We still had this issue because this random person Angel was still being a troll. It was annoying, because the conversation was taking a productive turn and we kind of all wanted to move on now. Marbles told him he should go away, essentially, and he quipped back, naturally, and Marbles dished out a comeback.
Here’s my perspective. This is pretty typical behavior - especially when dealing with a troll. People don’t like being mocked. I don’t like being mocked, and I don’t think Rebis does either. This user was doing quite a bit of mocking - and Rebis and I are potentially some of the more volatile users - and newer users to the forum. We also talk with Marbles a bit so we have this little gang going. Marbles is here trying to cool things off, and being successful about it, but this user Angel seems to want to keep the drama going.
Generally, trolls don’t get the five star treatment. When someone keeps antagonizing people and trying to troll up drama - people on the forum start saying harsher and harsher things to shut them up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it makes it worse. Anyways - this is what Marbles did. He made a remark to shut this person up. It was predictable behavior, that was a long time coming, and seemed perfectly normal within the context.
Everyone seemed to understand this situation, except for Redbaron. Even Angel seemed to understand this situation, and they made some kind of more easy going remark and said they were headed off - a wise move, given the tension. After Angel said he was leaving, it looked like things were pretty much settled down at that point.
But then - seemingly out of nowhere (according to my feelings on the subject), Redbaron decided to take issue with this remark. He took it out of the context of the situation, and seemed to decide to nail Marbles to the wall over it - for what literally appeared to be
no reason. That’s what it seemed like to the rest of us.
I was shocked. I think other people were too. We don’t usually get moderators banning people or penalizing us for something we said. Usually, they seem to just randomly pop up from time to time to hate on people, and then disappear into the woodwork.
What really upset me was the seeming double standard of it. Here was this person trolling Rebis and I, and that was okay and acceptable. But one, simple sentence, was enough to get Marbles banned? When I tried to argue this case, and how judgement and justice are things that require context and exceptions, Redbaron voiced the opinion in the heat of the moment that he doesn’t care about justice. Tensions were high, admittedly, but based on his black and white attitude, it really did seem to be that he believes this philosophy - that justice doesn’t matter.
He banned Marbles, who was playing the peacekeeper, and at the time, none of us had any information on when Marbles would be coming back - if he would be coming back. Judging on Redbaron’s temperament, I actually thought he was permanently banned.
So we had a thread that was about seeking transparency for potential corruption, and justice for how Kormak’s account was handled, prior to his leaving this forum, and us, forever - which culminated in a moderator banning one of our most active members for saying something that the moderator, personally, felt was a comparatively unacceptable transgression.
We also had this climate whereby a whole bunch of other people were coming out off the woodwork I’d never really spoken to and barely new existed, to sort of get up in arms, seemingly against Rebis, Marbles, and I.
Redbaron made it sound like he was running around anonymously gathering agreement from these other people we don’t know and haven’t spoken to - like there was some behind the scenes judgement day going on against Marbles.
And as (I think Kuu?) mentioned later on in the discoed - yeah, this quickly devolved into an “us vs them”.
It appeared to me like Redbaron was on some kind of power trip and like he had it in for Marbles - because the other things that happened on the forum didn’t seem to matter to him. He was voicing fallacious reasoning (about how if I think mutilation is okay he cant help that...obviously no one thinks circumcision with rusty scissors is cool. Very, very obviously..) - and he was basically of the mentality that the way we, the users, feel doesn’t matter. That we have no power, and no right to discuss what is fair and what is not. That at any time, a moderator can randomly ban us for something that - yes, is potentially against the rules - but also is selectively enforced. That the opinions of people unseen and unknown are what matter, and the basic fundamental philosophy here was “if you don’t like it, you can leave”. He tied things off pretty childishly in my opinion, basically by saying “I’ve let you have the last word, but let me reiterate, you are powerless
So herein lies my problem....
Users here are subject to sensitive moderators with short fuses who have dictator-level authority over who is allowed to say what, when, based on their personal feelings.
The rules aren’t universal and they’re not objective. They seem to exist to be used against certain people.
What seems to be the underlying message here - ie: people should be censored, I don’t care about justice, freedom of speech doesn’t matter - is that if someone here has a philosophy that a moderator finds offensive, that person can will be banned the moment they slip up. And of course, they’re going to slip up - because nobody polices these forums in general, and saying things that are a bit extreme isn’t an uncommon thing. Nor has it ever really seemed to be an issue - at least since I’ve been here - because we’re all mature adults that are capable of handling a little bit of online unpleasantness.
That’s why this community isn’t really a safe place to be. It’s become something very similar to the extremist liberal culture
- Rules are black and white but selectively applied to people we don’t like.
- If you don’t agree with our philosophy, you shouldn’t be allowed to speak.
- If you don’t submit to our doctrine, we’ll banish you from the community.
This is one of the main reasons the thread was opened to begin with. Some members believed that Kormak’s account was messed with in an effort to censor him. Here on this thread, we learned that Redbaron believes in censorship, does not believe in justice, and feels that authoritarian-style discipline is appropriate.
So rather than resolving the issue of Kormak, we, in a way, demonstrated in this thread that our concerns about his issue were actually very warranted. Even - that the problem is probably worse than we thought. After all, I had just suspected that there might be one bad actor who had it in for Kormak. According to Redbaron, there’s a whole team of people we don’t know that believe it’s okay to ban members without warning by selectively applying the rules, and that censorship is important to the forum, and that moderators can do whatever they want to users as they feel fit, and they don’t have to justify their actions.
That is why this got heated, and that is why I’m skeptical about returning.
Marbles should not have been banned. Kormak should not have felt like he had to leave because he wasn’t wanted here.
Moderators should value people in the community and treat them with respect. We come here because it’s a place where we can freely have a voice and exchange ideas without cultural oppression. If this thread is moderated oppressively, what’s the point?
Final Thoughts:
I didn’t think Redbaron should be banned because I don’t think people should be censored. I didn’t think Angel should be banned either, and as I said - I wasn’t “reporting” them. That was Redbaron putting words in my mouth and, I feel, throwing me under the bus for voicing a stance to contradict his beliefs.
I do not believe that Redbaron should be a moderator though. I don’t think it’s okay to ban members without warning, and if that’s how this forum operates, I want no part of it.
But I’ll say this - you seem to have issues keeping your attendance up. Look at the way people are treated though? Ignore Kormak’s problem - sure, people don’t have endless time to give to fix accounts, I get it. But then ban him for trying to make a new account? What? Then ban Marbles, who was trying to keep the peace? Then ban Angel despite the fact that, literally, the person he was trolling argued AGAINST the fact that he should be banned? Then blame me by saying it’s my fault for complaining about it?
No, this behavior is unacceptable and inexcusable, and it should not be the kind of response someone has if they are a moderator. If a person is hostile, sensitive, rash, and happy to dish out punishments selectively, and apparently to people they do not like - this kind of person is not suitable to be a moderator of a forum. I feel like that is painfully obvious.
All that was resolved here was that Marble’s ban was reduced. I don’t know what happened with Angel. Obviously, the board of authorities that is composed of people we do not know, doesn’t want to offend the moderator or step on toes. You guys have created some kind of weird micro-government here. It’s politics, control, and power plays. Not cool.
Redbaron shouldn’t be censored, but he shouldn’t be given the power to punish other members if he’s too sensitive to exercise appropriate judgement.
There should be policies in place to protect the interests of the users. People invest a good deal of themselves in this community. We spend hours upon hours here, and share a lot of our personal selves. That should be protected and respected.
Your goal in managing this forum should not be to ensure that drama never happens and that nobody ever gets their feelings hurt. That’s not the demographic you cater to. You cater to people who want a sanctuary away from the confines of culture where they can explore the world, themselves, and the truths of life. Those are the kinds of people here. We’re not 4chan people. We’re not people with short attention spans, no reasoning capabilities, and a thirst for drama and trolling.
You should value and appreciate the people you’ve attracted to this forum, and you should protect their rights. When in doubt - simply don’t act. Try that on for size. Yeah - okay, there will be drama, wars, and hurt feelings. If someone has an issue, let them report it, and then how about it you open up a thread about the problem and let the community talk it over? We’re not children, or unreasonable people.
Give people a voice and a sense that they are valued and their opinions count, and that we are a unified community who rationally tackles drama - and you will find, I think, that you have a lovely group of intellectuals who feel dire loyalty to this community.
Anyways, I know this isn’t going to happen. But at least maybe you might one day see why you have no activity here. Authoritarian rule has never worked when people have the free will to simply leave.
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