So it's okay to call someone a pedophile now?

He created a Help Desk thread and called Elwood a fake cop because he didn't get something he wanted.

So rep kept him in check?



Can we expect the same from you shortly when you're rep neutered?

Listen the majority of us know Pardot aka Liet going all the way back to TBBS. His partner was Dendorcia.

You must be under the impression he joined only last year. You're wrong.

We've known him for a long time and he's always been nasty. Him and his partner in crime Dendorcia. You should have been here for the 2004 election.

No Liet is lying to you. There has never been any Liet like the one he and you are trying to say used to exist.

Largely, yeah. But really, the vast majority of my posts in non-drama non-troll threads are still just as they always were. I just don't find any reason not to vent freely or express my disgust in full color when there's trolling or drama going on or when people respond completely flippantly to substantive posts. It's been made clear that an environment and posters inhospitable to discussion will be tolerated in the Red Room, and, in threads where discussion isn't happening anyway, I'm not going to try to coddle members who are destructive to the possibility of discussion or who tolerate those who are. If the rules change, or if peer pressure is really brought to bear on the obvious crowd, then I'll be more polite. When wordforge at large starts acting more interested in discussion, I'll be more willing in the face of trolls and abject stupidity to temper honest expression with politeness. But I have to fake polite often enough in real life, and right now the rewards just aren't there in the Red Room; for now I get more value out of the catharsis of not having to bother with polite when I don't feel like it because the possibility of meaningful discussion just isn't there.

I'd like to see the Red Room be a friendlier place, and I really don't care what steps get taken to make the Red Room a friendlier place, but I'm not going to engage in a pretense of friendliness when the sociopathic behavior of other posters is tolerated. I'll gladly volunteer to take a significant break from here if that's what's needed to get some rules in place to deal with the board sociopaths.

If that's not good enough for Lanzman, it's his board, and he can do what he wants.

DO IT LIET! Fucking DO IT!

If you leave right now, the staff is absolutely guaranteed to be hit so hard by your departure they'll have no choice but to step back and take a long hard look in the mirror and start coming up with way to make this place the way you want it to be.

In fact, while you're gone, I'm going to continue your righteous fight in your name to get them to see the light. I might even volunteer to visit you on your cross every day, climb up that tall ladder and give you a sip of water if you let me know where you'll be.

We have a forum just like that. The Green Room.

You, sir, are full of it.

There is a whole board of more moderated forums where the worst behaviors can be avoided. If the mere fact that two fora exist where people can let it all hang out offends, well, that is simply your problem. And in fact the worst individuals can be avoided even there with the ignore function.

The problem is, you want people punished for behaviors you don't approve of, period. The majority here prefer the freedom, even if they don't partake of it themselves much. You have control over most of your own experience here....use it.

As for the topic...it's a word. And frankly, whenever you ban a word you get 20 new people trying to find new ways to introduce it and it's meaning everywhere resulting in a net increase of more vicious usage of such insults. Just hold your nose and move on or put the perp on ignore.

And there is still plenty of good discussion on WF...a rather interesting discussion on torture is ongoing in the RR for example, which is both thought provoking and rather surprising on occasion on who is posting what.

We can start political threads in the Green Room?

And there'll be rules against flaming and trolling and whatnot?


That might be very interesting.

I've often wondered what would happen if someone started a political Green Room thread? Chances are, it would get moved to the Red Room in short order.

Wasn't there a forum before called The Brain Society or something similar? Where people debated topics without the name calling or slandering? Whatever happened to that? I know it wasn't the most popular forum, but it did have it's regulars.

If a person is really concerned that the Red Room is an unfriendly place, and you are being a douchebag there, then be happy, because there are at least two things you can do to make it a better place.

...and the answer to this question is....yes.

Actually, I have often stated that I would be in favor of having some of the forums, at least, differentiated by the rules rather than by the topics. Why not have threads in the Green Room that can be about the same subjects as the Red Room, but where blatant flaming and other intentionally disruptive behavior is not allowed? Why not have threads in the Red Room that are about music, games, and so on, but where you can insult other people as much as you want, if that's how you get your thrills?

I don't really see how that would be disruptive to the board, or how it would even require changing anything except the policy on what can be where. And that way we would have a choice. As it stands now, you can only discuss politics, religion, and so on in a forum where discussion is not always easy, and you can only discuss "daily life" subjects in a forum where you have to "play nice."

I would love to see more choice than that.

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Nobody went there.

We're not done here.

The whole point of the rule isn't to protect members, it's to protect the owner and the board at large, because it was agreed upon that eventually the authorities would get involved, especially with how often Polarslam was making the accusation.

There was a time when I cared if this place shut down, but judging from the responses in this thread, I'm not the only person who's apathetic to that.

Secondly, if you want to get at the root of the problem, kill all the spam in the Red Room. I say spam, because that's all this trolling is. Sokar's been picking fights with people for years and no one did anything about it, now things have come to a head. I shouldn't have to put a bunch of people on ignore and skip over half the threads on the front page because a bunch of "e-thugs" want to play tough guy. Especially now that I can count on one hand the number of people I care to talk to here.

This place was once the crown jewel of the extended TBBS family, but it's devolved into a run down shithole, filled with hooting apes throwing shit at each other. Troll Kingdom is better than this place, and saying that makes me ill.

You know, people move with their feet. We have to face facts and realize that we've lost not just people like Dendroica, but gul, Storm, Cassandra, marathon. We're down to second-stringers and newbies, and let's face it, the Sokar/Liet war isn't nearly as entertaining or endearing as the brouhahas that Storm and Cassandra had. Now, I'm sure a lot of people will say they have left because they have real life business, but I can't help but feel that spending a half hour on a message board isn't terribly difficult and that maybe, if this place was anything like it used to be, they'd find time to be here.

I do care. I'd much prefer to see wordforge reformed than to see it disappear. I just don't care at this point, with wordforge in this state, whether or not people are upset that I'm not nice enough. I don't care for bullies, and tolerance of bullying genuinely offends me. The vast majority of wordforge--not just the administration--is guilty of the latter, and many people don't even seem to realize it.

There are many different kinds of spam, some of which are real problems and some of which aren't. The problem is that any effort to regulate spam requires allowing mods to use their judgment, something the various administrators here have always avoided. I understand why it gets avoided, but that doesn't mean I agree with its getting avoided. When you don't allow mods to use their judgment, malicious posters will always be able to find ways to turn the board into sludge and to get around whatever rules you have. So long as judgment is used in good faith and egregious cases of bad judgment are promptly corrected, that's good enough.

Of course not. On some level Cass and Storm amused each other and were therefore able to amuse others. There's nothing even a little bit amusing about a bully. I want people to be uncomfortable and unamused when they see a Sokar post, because otherwise it's a sure thing that nothing's ever going to get done to fix this place up. I really don't care anymore if that means that they're also uncomfortable when they see a post of mine.

Then perhaps the wisest course of action would be to stop doing it.

Just an idea...

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I Just slapped four people on ignore, two spammers recently and two internet hard "men" who really had nothing to say last year.

It cut down on the crap you had to wade through to read the interesting posts.

My understanding of the Green Room was that it's the "community" forum for talking about general topics, but without the rough-and-tumble of the Red Room. But being aware, of course, that some topics should go to the fora dedicated to them, like tech issues to Techforge, entertainment industry stuff to Media Central, and gaming stuff to Press Start.

^ Yes.

I don't see any problem with starting a political/emotional thread in the Green Room, as long as you play by the Green Room rules. You should probably state clearly in the first post that you mean for the thread to be in the Green Room so that none of the mods assume you meant for it to be in the Red Room.

This suits me.

Is it acceptable to Lanzman?

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Yup.

There might be an easy fix for that.

There's a way of saying "Red Room rules" in a Blue Room thread.

There's also a way to start a fairly innocuous thread in the Red Room and say enough dirty words or insult enough people so it has to stay there.

Could there be a thread icon or some sort of "safe phrase" where a poster can say "Yes, this is a controversial topic and I'm starting it in the Green Room, but please don't move it to the Red Room"?

That might change the tone of the entire board.

So... get rid of me and everything will be wonderful again?



Hey Chris, two things.

I'm not going anywhere, ever, and I will post exactly how I see fit without giving you or anybody else the slightest goddamn consideration. You go ahead and keep feeding Liet's victim mentality.

Hopefully that will help you make your decision on whether or not you're going to ride out the horrors of New Wordforge.

We tried that with Packard and look where that got us.

I think opening up the green room to red room type threads would be a great idea.

If it gets too heated, someone can start an equivalent in the red room.

Also a good idea.

Seconded. Of course it would require a critical mass of posters to go along with the idea, and I've got my doubts. Threads tend to die in the Green Room, which is why so many Green Room threads get started in the Red Room. Still, it's worth a shot.

So, would a poll be appropriate about now, or do we need to wait for the accusations that we're all a bunch of pussies to run their course?

Do we really need a poll, or can staff indicate they'll give this some thought?

And, if implemented, would it require a special thread icon, like the "Red Room Rules" one in the Blue Room, or would the thread-starter's request in the OP ("Please leave this in the Green Room") be sufficient to keep it from being moved?

Fuck the Green Room.

I'll be in the Red Room where losing debates and angry words don't result in crying to the staff, or, when they do, a 'suck it up' is rightly presented to the whiner.

You guys on staff have my condolences if you go this way. You'll spend all of your time playing referee for poltical discussions there. I'll put money on it based on the people who have shown interest in turning that room into their personal political discussion forum. But if bending to appease a handful of crybabies who are just as disruptive as anybody else they whine about is what you want to do, it's your time.

I think you're painting those of us who are in favor of the idea with a pretty broad brush there. Of course, that's just my personal evaluation.

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