Serious thread about abuse of Mod powers.

Anc recently got banned for reporting a potentional leak of personal information in the red room, I think this is completely unjust. First of all there is no way to prove he was not just trying to help bring the attention of the mods to a potentional rules violation and second of all there is absolutely nothing in the posted rules which he has violated. Hell, the rules even state that any changes to the rules will be posted in advance to any new rule taking effect.

Paladin has banned Anc yet cannot show any posted rule which he has broken. This is clearly just an abuse of mod powers and I for do not want mods to be able to make up crap and ban people for stuff which is not posted in the rules. That's just bullshit.

Anc abused the Report Post feature by reporting a release of personal information where he knew such a release had not occurred. He did so after he was explicitly informed that doing so would earn him a ban.

This is a waste of the staff's time and an undermining of efforts to make sure personal information is not released.

Most of us have never seen a picture of Chup so how can we know what he looks like? Best to report possible infractions and let the mods sort it out. Banning someone for something which didn't even violate any posted rule though is just arbitrary and capricious.

I mean, why bother even posting any rules at all if you intend to just ignore the rules when ever you damn well feel like it?

So can you point out exactly which posted rule he violated or will you admit he has not broken any posted rule?

If you feel a new rule needs to be posted to solve a problem then that is fair but banning people who have not violated any rule is complete bullshit.

Actually a lot of people do know what Chup looks like. Total purpose of the thread.

What, thirty seconds?

So...Anc got banned for "wasting staff time"?

Paladin, generally, I think you make level-headed decisions, but this one is boneheaded to the max, if that is what he's banned for.

It's worse than that $corp. He was banned for using an important safety feature of the board. Paladin can say all he wants that Ancalagon knew it wasn't a picture of el chup, but only anc knows for sure. This will have a chilling effect on the report post feature, since now we not only have to believe the post is inappropriate, but also believe the responding mod will agree. If they don't, then it's a week off. I can say truthfully that many of us won't be using that feature any more, as it's just not worth the risk.

Well what are you going to do? The Staff needs to focus on getting Christian his XBox.

I have no idea what he looks like because I purposely avoid exposing myself to other peoples' personal information. Avoiding other people's personal info allows me to not get in trouble for exposing said personal info. I was under the impression that was a priority for staff, but now apparently it's a waste of time and bannable.

This thread is going to be locked and we'll all be given warnings for wasting his time.

Paging Captain Harriman. Your presence is requested on the bridge.

But don't you see how dangerous that can be? Suppose a poster's RL name is Charlie and, without knowing that, you post something like "Sorry, Charlie" when replying to him.

Tamar considers posting someone's initials a bannable offense (because apparently you can find out anything you want to know about someone if you know his initials).

Imagine the consequences of inadvertently posting someone's entire first name.

I was once banned for hinting that I had personal information. I didn't even post it. They will ban who they want to ban and toss up whatever vague justification comes closest.

Well, yeah the staff has proven to be fairly bipolar when it comes to protecting personal information. And that's entirely within the rules, because it's always at their "discretion." I guess that's a risk I have to take. My only evidence to establish my innocence would be the fact that I don't have any WF posters added on Facebook and I disabled my access to the Blue Room long ago (for this very reason).

Looks like the circlejerk decided they were bored with skinofevil and have found themselves a more interesting target.

The board sure has gotten better since rep was neutered, hasn't it?

Ahah! So this is a vendetta against Ancalagon for pushing the rule change (and all that other shit he spams the helpdesk with). Paladin should have just said so in the first place. Honesty is always the best policy.

If someone opened up another board, and ran it the way Borgs ran it (without the tampering of the actual board itself.) Would you guys give it a try?

Personally, I thought Borg's time was the golden years here. Aside from having the board go down because he screwed with it, I was quite happy with the administration there.

Elwood was alright, but he banned a hell of a lot of people. And though I like him well enough as a person, Lanzman is one of the worst, IMO.

Cassandra was just batshit insane.

Having thought about it, this is either a wacky prank on the part of both Anc and Paladin and we're all falling for it, or Paladin has committed a creepy abuse of power and needs to be disciplined for it.

It's almost certainly the latter, and it's probably because Ancalagon has recently and repeatedly exposed Paladin as a partisan hack.

What abuse?

The post report button was being abused by members with obviously fake reports.

They were told to stop. They were told the next member who did it would get banned.

Perhaps a better way would have been to for everyone to stop doing it and then discuss it instead of baiting the mod into carrying out what they said they would do.

I seem to recall on this board being told that when a mod says "stop" you the member stop doing the shit your doing.

And it was done in a completely separate thread. There was no indication of this being a new rule, and if it were a new rule, I would assume a boardwide announcement would have been made. And I still question whether Anc was submitting a false report.

Speaking for myself, I'm not comfortable with rules that aren't publicly known. A user should never have to hunt through a bunch of random threads to be aware of rules.

Additionally, most rule changes get agreed upon by the staff before being put into effect, then added to the FAQ, and sometimes an announcement is made. There are damn good reasons for it too, it prevents any staff member besides the owner acting unilaterally, it ensures that the wording of any rule is consistent with other rules and not prone to tampering or rules lawyering, and it allows cooler heads to prevail before enacting any change in policy.

Do I think Ancalagon was in the wrong? Yes, speaking as a former member of the staff, it was pretty damn annoying to get my inbox flooded with useless reported posts, having my smartphone go off because someone farted in the wrong direction. But is it against the codified set of rules that we have? No.

Seems it's time for a staff rotation.

I myself am not completely convinced that I didn't post personal information. I was so excited to think that I had discovered the real visionrazer, that I simply posted the thread without thinking. Had I seen it from somebody else, I might well have reported it too. What evidence do we have that the LinkedIn profile isn't his?

I agree, that's how it should be done and how it's been done in the past. Even so, Paladin's unilateral "no more reporting posts" rule seemed to only be in the context of the thread it was posted in.

Paladin should resign for this nonsense.

Oh, wtf.

Right?