Venom Rants About GameFAQs

Venomscarnage is back again to talk about his experience with the moderators. GUAC was the first to cover this story (see part 1 and part 2), and we'll give it one more mention just to update on what's happened since then, and because it's such an egregious example of mod power on the site. Venom's released a video about it so check it out!

Here's some points if you can't handle the 16 minutes of badassery.

"I'm just gonna be honest: the staff is a joke" Venom replies. While GameFAQs is useful for its FAQs, cheats, and what have you, the message boards are the "bastard stepchild" of the site. The terms of use are pretty straightforward spelled out, but not at the hands of mods who will bend and twist them any way they like. 

Once you're a moderator, all bets are off. You're allowed to break the rules. You're allowed to take the written terms of use...and kind of bend them at your will, basically, and you're allowed to pretty much warn people, ban people, suspend people's accounts at your discretion, and it even says in the gamefaqs terms of use that moderators at any time may moderate you at their will, delete their messages, et cetera. I'm okay with that, but...these moderators, instead of using the written terms of use that gamefaqs has, 9 times out of 10  what happens is you end up getting moderated for things and it's more like an interpreted form of the terms of use.

The problem? This opens you up to a bunch of moderations if you do something a mod thinks is unpopular or offensive to him personally. If you said "I think that the color green SUCKS on money, or I think that's a stupid color - boom, you get moderated for being 'offensive'...Being offended, it's all on what you feel." However, the terms are pretty simple when it comes to this, defining it as what would be considered NSFW, racial slurs, obvious things. But this is stretched and bent to whatever the mod wants it to be. You "should not have to go to any site, where you're supposed to have a fun and enjoyable experience, you shouldn't have to constantly watch your back..."

If you dispute it will nearly always be upheld, because moderators know each other and there's going to be a buddy of the original mod that will side with him. "The moderation staff at gamefaqs? They never do anything wrong. They're always right."

Venom considers Error's twitter linking to be unprofessional and a form of harassment. "instead of holding himself to a higher standard, which this individual fails to do on an everyday basis, he decided to post links to a conversation in a topic which i had posted in. I've confronted him about this...you'd have to be an idiot to not know what his intention was. It was clearly to get other people to come and harass me, and I actually did have people come and harass me." From time to time he even puts people down on his twitter page. Why humiliate other people like that?

As for the resulting back and forth: "Was  I childish? Yeah a little bit. But I needed to vent. I needed to express myself. Because that's another thing about gamefaqs: there is no expression there...you're not really free to express yourself. You really can't be yourself there."

Venom brings up one of Error's defenses, that what he does on his twitter account is just his personal opinion, separate from GameFAQs. For one, if it was a personal account then why put your lead moderator position right on your profile, and why bring up moderations you've made on the boards to belittle the other person? One thing Venom didn't get at was that the whole "personal opinion" thing is undone when you're linking right to your opinion on gamefaqs. If a regular user was insulting someone else and said something obviously offensive, like "you're a f***** n*****" that message isn't less moddable just because you decide to post the message on twitter first and then link the user right to it from the boards. So we can't really buy into the whole "twitter is separate" thing, when Error kept linking to twitter from GameFAQs and mixing the two together.

Venom believes that GameFAQs needs some moderator rotation and a neutral manager who isn't going to be biased. "Once you give one person power and authority for so long, it'll get to their head and that's probably not the best thing for gamefaqs."

Venom closed his account in protest, something which I wouldn't personally recommend (why do the mod's job for them?) But to each his own.

While Error's multi-post, nearly weeklong flame war with Venom was not considered harassment by the wise elders, mentioning someone's account's name on a neutral list of 180 boardgoers apparently is. Error says what he did was all right because it was a public place (at least, a place that can be viewed publicly). So is gamefaqs. But if someone quotes a public statement from another person in their signature without permission, that can get you suspended. If someone does exactly what Error did, but to another gamefaqs board, that can get you suspended for board invasion. When I quoted about a dozen bad public political arguments made by a moderator on GameFAQs, that single post was considered "harassment." So this rule can give you a really bad time, unless you're a mod.

Tales from CE: "The most unfair moderation you've ever had?"

Presented without commentary.

"I got modded for posting a latias set on a pokemon board once." -LightningAce11

"Posted what TM you got for beating the 8th Gym leader in Pokemon Black and White. Got overturned but still." -Octaivian_Rex
   
"'People could possibly live a happier, more fulfilling life once they convert to Christianity.' *warned*" -WoodBerry18

"I use to post in the politics section but after so many mods over nothing. No more. Unless you share the same exact ideology as the people over there then you're basically worse than Hitler. It should just be called the Bleeding Heart Socialist board." -EternalDivide

"I got modded for posting a spoiler even though it wasn't a spoiler and it was in spoiler tags just in case." -Mikablu

"'If it were me, I'd kill off *insert fictional game character name here*' *gets warned*" -Distant_Rainbow

"I once got a spoiler moderation for mentioning a certain character in a book series was a top swordsman. Original mod upheld with a super snarky response, but the lead thankfully overturned it." -MC_BatCommander

"warned for having a suggestive signature. 3 YEARS and tens of thousands of posts after I started using it. They went back and modded every active post in my history at the time, around 175 posts. When I disputed, a mod said it didn't matter how long it went unnoticed for, it mattered that someone was offended NOW." -TheJester2

"I also got modded for posting there should be a super smash bros anime. Did they not see the palutena reveal? It was animated. How is it not feasible?" -LightningAce11

"I was modded for off-topic on a pokemon board for posting about a gen 1 pokemon." -Tropicalwood

"Banned for a board invasion that never happened." -VulcanP90

"Back during prerelease Brawl boards, made a topic titled "Put Captain Falcon in a match and I'll tell you how he wins". The topic was successful and resulted in multiple copycat topics, got warned for fad topic. Disputed that my topic was first and wasn't part of the fad, moderator told me something along the lines of "Sure it was." Went all the way to the lead, they all refused to check timestamps." -CM_Ponch

"I was modded for spoilers for saying that a boss dies after you kill him." -InvincibleEagle

"I remarked that some overweight people that I know are constantly talking about losing weight and getting in shape, but never actually do anything about it. Apparently that's trolling." -thrilIhouse

"Modded few hours ago for being 'offensive' Said pedophiles and child molesters don't deserve sympathy or help." -Mr_Karate_II

"gave my unfavorable opinion on obama" -Skunkdog1

"I quoted someone and got modded because the post I was quoting was apparently trolling even though the original post was left intact." -Vita_Nuova

"90 day suspension for saying some hot sauce I bought was bland and boring. Apparently it was a racist comment against Mexicans because I said it had a Mexican woman on the bottle (couldn't remember the name)" -PurpleMouse

"My Nick_Clegg account got banned for Offensive Username on Gamespot" -Mobileoconkers

"purgatory for saying "i concur" on the brawl board when a guy was complaining about jigglypuff" -GibraItar

"I've had every single post I made modded and was warned/suspended (don't remember) once because I had a quote in my sig that said Sonic was garbage before Sonic 06...Mod claimed that I was trolling, even though I never went on sonic boards or sega boards or even posted in Sonic topics" -KillerSlaw

"I got modded for posting a spoiler I didn't even know was a spoiler. In fact it was actually a guess that turned out to be right. It got overturned though." -Miku_369

"3KL for saying that gay people aren't much different from straight people" -srgz

"Quoted my own post and insulted myself as a joke. It got overturned though." -ZephyrSSX

"I recently got modded for saying "I'd rather be a poor nice guy than a rich scumbag"
Also I got modded for calling a girl "he" on accident" -ICameIsawICorn

"Gotten an alt banned for posting "tl;dr". On a lesser note, had a 3KL for asking what was a Gunblade on the FFXIII board....despite that being the main weapon of Lightning. Had it overturned." -thompsontalker7

"spoiler warning with "no spoilers in post" according to the mod the name of the final dungeon isn't a spoiler and since I marked it as such it was disruptive" -Sxmfct

GUAC News and Reader Comments: 7/19/14

A few things that have sat in the backlog for a little bit, so let's mention them and record it for future reference.

From 261: cjsdowg wrote a topic asking why a lot of hate Obama gets isn't about race.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/261-politics/69588065

While I disagree with him on the politics, that he was modded for his opinion is problematic. This topic shows he's at least trying to defend his views, putting thought into it, which is something we should be encouraging. But it seems like on 261, the harder you try to make your argument the more you get punished for it (especially when users were once penalized for citing too much of a source to back up their points). cjsdowg graciously responded at a request for comment:

I have been on this site for a while and the one thing that I have noticed is that it is no use trying understand what gets modded or what doesn't . You would pull your hair out trying to understand it. I really have no idea why I was modded.

From CE: A little bit before Venomscarnage was modded, Vindris wrote to complain about a moderation: "Can your sex be changed from an operation?...post-op, pre-op, doesn't matter, they're still a male." Well shucks if that ain't offensive to someone because if I say I'm a girl everyone's supposed to agree, or I am being discriminated against. If I decide I am a mysteriously discovered alternate sex no one knows about, or a walrus, or a three-headed space alien, I have the freedom to say that these days, but you aren't allowed to say I'm full of it. Of course there are contradictions present. If someone's gay we are to assume there's a gay gene without evidence, and we'll mod you if you deviate from this supposed biological truth. But if someone's trans we are to assume that one day they can choose to alter their sex, and we'll mod you if you deviate from their choice and point out the biological truth. Why mods are in the business of taking down these views is strange, along with the logic, which seems to be based not on an actual rule but on whatever a social justice warrior somewhere got upset about.


Vindris wrote:

It was deemed "offensive" ... A truthful statement that wasn't meant to offend anyone was modded as offensive. I'm struck dumb at how ridiculous this is.

I'm beginning to recognize that conservative values are seen as offensive on these forums. Here on the internet, if you hold traditional values, you're considered offensive, and modded off the face of these forums.

I understand these forums are privately ran, and they can mod anyone at any time for any reason... but it's a reflection of what society is becoming. Honest people who have sincere traditional values are squelched. Their ways are no longer accepted. They are considered bigots and offensive, and they are erased.

This issue is honestly very frightening and sad to me...

Noting the double standard, Vindris asked why views that offended him weren't taken down. Suppose someone thought the intricate details of gay sex were gross. "Should they all be modded because they've offended me? Why not?" When it was suggested he could be banned for bringing this up, he responded, "I'd rather get banned than remain silent." Well, he wasn't exactly banned...but he was suspended and the topic was closed. Yes, this was all for saying a man was a man no matter how much he messed with what he had downstairs. Throw those old XY chromosomes out the window while we're at it, they were probably just made up by bigoted 20th century researchers.

Reader comments!

I got a request to talk about climate change, and while at some future point I might be in the mood to rant about it if I get modded over something, I'm not going to make this place all about my political feelings and whatnot. I will say that when I last talked about it on the politics board, the topic was locked. I'm guessing people marked it because someone didn't like that it was getting big and lasting pretty long, why, you can't just bump the same topic and keep the thing going (please ignore those other topics just like this one). No I never just say "bump" and all my entries were responding to people or updating with new articles, doesn't matter. So then when that topic was closed I made another one about some climate issue in the news, and people complained that I did not confine my climate arguments to one topic...which is what I was doing in the first place. Go figure.

Mr_Positivity over at NGS was pleased by my article on how his list of users in a board contest was "harassing" someone. Really man, next time just follow the Error model, find the guy's twitter and keep linking to it from gamefaqs, because that's not considered harassment.

"God I swear this site has the WORST mods...I know this is stating the obvious, but still." -jakisthe

"Tails is awesome." -BeiberBush69

"The mods here have quite a bad reputation." -MegaFlareon

Not everyone was as understanding though, claiming I have an "obsessive hatred" for the mods. Hmmmmmm....not really. I hate mods about as much as they hate my messages, is that fair to say?  I mean you can't have step 2 without step 1. No I don't hate anyone on a personal level, might really disagree with what they do but it's a message board. My account will survive the dreaded karma dings and the debate goes on. I'm just making my case and bringing up the other side of things.

Mr_Positivity himself:

One of the reasons mods get away with so much crap around here is because as a collective, we don't do anything to combat it and instead just let it slide. If more people sided against abuse of the moderation system, something could be accomplished. But instead, lol, that guy gave some commentary on moderator abuse.... loooooooooool get a life dood what a loser, look how cool i am.

Well the interesting thing about this is that some people will either say "TaiIs tries too hard for nothing" or "This is too big and TaiIs can't change it if he tries." It's either so small it's not worth my time, or way above me. I'd say that's a fair mix and it's medium-sized enough to put a little effort into it and make a medium-sized difference.

Venom vs. Error, Part 2: The Safe Way to Call Someone Gay

There's plenty more to talk about when it comes to this story, namely: how can I avoid a moderation if I really, really want to make fun of someone's orientation? We'll get to that soon enough, but let's talk about the latest developments.

Last night's entry got the attention on Hellhole and explains what happened with Venom's most recent warning. OrangeCrush980 brought it up noting "Apparently you can get warned for nothing at all." But come on, what kind of mods do you take them for? Do you think they would really just mod someone for anything they wanted? No! (*whispers* yes, I'm aware mod discretion exists). Of course not! Any good moderator would find a pretext valid reason.

Cataclysms (Moderator) Posted...
It is clear from the screenshot that the warning was due to abusing the marking system.

What's that, you ask. Well that's the thing that happens if you mark a mod too much. Now, I would get it if Venom took it too far and started marking everyone in the topic he didn't like, as a sarcastic way to turn the tables and say "I offend you? Well this 'offends' me too!" That would be a silly thing to do and we at GUAC don't approve of it (why be a hypocrite and try to get the mods to mod more users?) Marking mods, however, is fair game. They enforce the byzantine and heavy-handed rules, they have to live up to them. That's kindof what Venom wanted to do with Error, as he pointed me to the Terms and board etiquette. The rules that say "If you participate in any kind of organized invasion of any other service, you will likely be suspended for it."

Venom emailed me four instances of the CE topic where Error was linking to Twitter. He did it more than four times overall. Error wanted the flame war to continue, so he called in some of his friends and for the next few days they simply gave Venom a hard time on his Twitter and Youtube accounts. No big deal, right? Except that Venom didn't see it that way. He told them to stop the messages telling him to put his balls in a blender and so on, and since they weren't he decided he was going to report them. That's what Venom did to Error when he returned to Gamefaqs and found out Error was encouraging the messages. For a board that mods someone for "harassment" if they include someone's name in  passing in a 180-person popularity contest, they sure are lenient when a mod directs people to someone's Twitter account and they go to town on it for several days.

Honestly, who wouldn't mark mods when they blatantly do what they just modded you for? It's a fun little hobby, although up to now largely an exercise in futility. I did it myself a few months back and it draws a great parallel. Remember this? When I was warned for trolling over a political opinion, "Democrats refuse to pass budgets. The Senate willfully obstructs and then Obama claims this is proof he needs to act unilaterally." Well, I went out and found a few examples of mods "trolling" and marked them. (WALLY ALERT). Coincidentally, I made a joke at the time about how the mods might freak out and suspend me for abuse of the form. But if my political opinion was a warnable offense for "trolling," well certainly chain-quoting someone, for example, and adding nothing to the conversation besides *points and laughs* would be a message designed to incite flames, blah blah blah, you know, the literal definition of trolling under the Terms. You silly person. As if the mods follow what the Terms actually say?

Which brings us to the first safe way to call someone gay on gamefaqs: become a mod. It will make you largely immune from all those crazy rules you'll be enforcing on some other sap. After all, good old wally has brought up sexual orientation against me when we were having an argument. TaiIs, don't follow me around like that. What are you, gay for me?

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/261-politics/66598496?page=1
 
Taiis, I don't swing that way, bro. Sorry.

Mods on Hellhole called it a potential violation - not when I marked the message itself of course, but when they were taking my own message down since I quoted it in a topic after it archived, and they had taken no action against it.

Hey Venom, if you're reading this and Error's still giving you guff, try questioning his orientation and telling him you don't "swing that way." What could possibly happen to your account?

Hey Error, if you're reading this, you aren't off the hook either mister. I saw what you did. Very homophobic.

https://twitter.com/error1355/status/482713163285012480

Speaking as a guy who is gay for wally, this deeply offends me! Is this what you do on your leisure time, belittle a loving romance between two dudes and make a mockery of their union? Does this amuse you? A poor little gay kid might see this picture, feel bad about himself, and commit suicide. That's on you. I demand an apology, a special edition gamefaqs T-shirt with rainbow tie-dye, and will absolve you of your sin if you commit to be a social justice warrior and do 10 moderations against people who aren't 100 percent down with the gay rights agenda.

But really, don't joke around and do something like this on gamefaqs if you're a regular old user. Or you might face the wrath of mods who do it offsite in their spare time.

The second safe way to call someone gay on gamefaqs: make sure your target is conservative.  wally hit a two-fer with the above comment. You could fill whole topics on the politics board talking about whether all  those homophobe conservatives are really secret closet gay guys who just have bad self-esteem. The thinking is, hey, gay guys are gay. Non-gay guys must be secret jealous gay too. If everyone's gay, everyone wins! Straight people who say they're straight and actually are? That's so 20th century.

Here's a comment from KingBabyCub in the CE topic, also questioning my sexuality:

Oh hey, haven't I seen you around in the LGBT topics? It's been a while, did you ever come to terms with your feelings about men? I know you were having a great deal of trouble accepting how men made you feel, and I do hope our kind words of comfort were able to ease your weary soul. Remember, all things aside the most important thing to remember is that it is totally okay for you to like men.

Another safe way to say someone's gay and smear them over it. Did Venom mark this message too? All I know is that this poster wasn't warned, but Venom was. "Don't mod us, we'll mod you."

So there you have it, the safe way to get away with "Hate speech, such as using sexual orientation...as a means of insult." That's what's in the Terms. Saying someone chooses to be gay is not meant to insult, calling someone gay is. But silly you. You're still assuming the mods follow what the Terms actually say.

Tales from CE: Venomscarnage vs. Error1355

The outreach to other boards continues, and this story was just too hard to pass up. The drama began when moderators became outraged that someone said being gay was primarily a choice. Which...isn't even a negative thing to say about homosexuals in itself. I previously wrote, "As it stands, you could be the biggest flag-waving, parade-marching, fundraising LGBT-friendly guy in town, but if you show up on gamefaqs and say these people are choosing who they are, you run the risk of a moderation." But enough of my opinion, Venomscarnage had plenty to offer himself. He pushed, and the mods pushed back.

After his 3kl for "trolling," Venomscarnage made a topic saying "So basically other people's assumptions can get you modded." Taking offense at the idea that he was trolling for expressing a personal belief, he pointed to the definition of trolling as laid down in the terms: "posting a message designed to get others mad enough to violate one of the other rules."

I never created that topic and "designed" it to create any drama. If that was the case any topic could be subject to making someone offensive. If someone said "I like the color green" how do you know that I don't find that offensive...

Here's where I joined in with a response:

an awful standard because it judges you based on what someone else says later. Maybe you post about how you like puppies and gardening, some guy gets offended and is all "SHAME ON YOU! My uncle got his head stuck in a flowerpot once and went to the hospital 'cause he was allergic to a puppy!" And that meant it was you trolling because you hurt some random dude's feelings and didn't provide a trigger warning or whatever.

Then of course when someone does get offended enough to "violate one of the other rules," that person's usually not punished for violating the rule, but you're punished instead for 'making them mad.'

Well, Venomscarnage ended up making the mods mad because soon enough he was warned (for basically repeating what he was originally modded for). TRIGGER WARNING, CLOSE EYES IF EASILY SPOOKED

Life is about choices in my opinion. I honestly believe being gay is a choice (in) life because no one thing is making you choose a man or a woman. Nothing makes you date anyone despite their sex. The choice is ultimately yours.

I might be born to prefer women over men but nothing is making me be married to a woman or be attracted to them. It is a choice.

Venom routinely made it clear that he wasn't out to offend or troll anyone:

I understand and I do apologize if it seems like I'm expressing some sort of hate but that wasn't my intention at all.
...
I don't hate any group of people. I'm just trying to make an opinionated point.

 Didn't change a thing, though, and it wasn't over with a warning. Soon enough, Error showed up to keep the topic alive and link to an ongoing feud with Venom over Twitter. In a later interview, Venom explained to me that Error kindof has a history of posting about things he's modded on his Twitter account, and sure enough he was to end up as the next example. Error was returning to Venom's topic to post half a dozen links to his Twitter, encouraging people to join in. Being warned, Venom didn't know it at the time that Error was keeping his CE topic going, or in Error's words, "mocking you for being a man child." A few other accounts joined in.

Venom eventually returned to the topic and figured out why he was being hassled on Twitter: because Error had kept the argument going by linking other people to it. Venom responded.

You know what. It must be nice to be a mod, flame people and keep instagating a situation. The integrity of this site is ridiculous. One person posts how he feels about something not bashing anyone and people get all outraged about it. I'm sorry you don't like how I feel but guess what that's life. Do with it what you will. Sad that I get warned for stating how I feel which never was intended to harm or hurt anyone.

He was then rewarned.

But wait, there's more: we don't quite know why Venom was warned again.

The message didn't give a reason. Hellhole confirmed but didn't quite give a reason. I suspected something was wack because this is unusual, and yet...something I would sadly not be surprised about. Venom says it was over his return message to complain about what Error was doing. If moderators have a different side of this I'd love to hear it, but it doesn't really help when your reaction is to 1) not provide a reason in the original message and 2) lock my topic on Hellhole as always without much of an explanation.

So what's to be done? Venom tells me that while there's been ups and downs, "I've been here for ten years and see the place gets worse over time...It's like once you're moderated, they assume you're wrong and they're always right." His suggestions? Some mod rotations every 6-12 months. "That way they don't let the power get to their head." Also, get the community manager position up and running to keep the boards under control and resolve disputes like these.

Meanwhile, Error spoke on Hellhole against other proposed changes: about how it would be bad to attach a name to dispute forms so users could see who they were talking with.

I think signing your disputes is a good way to get users to hold useless grudges against you for no reason other than you being the one to tell them the rules.

Which is an odd thing for Error to say, since his gimmick seems to be going after accounts he doesn't like and holding grudges in a very open way, in an attempt to curry favor with others when it suits him. Signs of a grudge? It's been like three years here, and he still shows up in my topics with the same spam image, so he's doing a pretty bad job if he wants to fly under the radar. But when it comes to appeals, his name will be off the response when he decides to uphold your moderated message. Hassling a few accounts in front of your friends can be so edgy, but if someone found out you were modding them too that would cost you some major cool points. It appears that Error is a bit too afraid to attach his name to decisions that matter.

Another 10kl (WARNING: anti-pedophile extremism)

Has it been a month already? It must have been, because once again a moderator has set my account to warned...one day before the previous warning was about to leave my message history. How about that timing? It's happened before, I can reasonably expect it to happen again next month. I don't know which is worse: if we're to believe someone actually got "offended" and marked this, or if a mod just went through my active messages and found something they didn't like.

So here we are. In a topic titled, 'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males' a group of college professors were in the news for pushing the boundaries, arguing “The isolation, secrecy, guilt and anguish of many paedophiles...are not intrinsic to the phenomen[on] but are derived from the extreme social repression placed on minorities"...While these radical egalitarians obviously never consider that these groups are minorities for a  very good reason. This is just like the civil rights movement! Not so fast my friends. Here's my counter:

We could spend a lifetime pointing out the obvious reasons why pedophilia is bad, but the professors who push this stuff will simply put their hands over their ears and call their opponents the equivalent of racists until their Big Lie sinks in. They'll go for it incrementally by pushing to redefine/lower the age of consent piece by piece, so keep an eye out for those who want to do it and condemn them loudly.

Warned because this was offensive? To who? You know what, maybe I don't wanna know about the kind of person who gets offended by this. If you don't agree with everything I said though, you could try forming your own opinion and explain why. But that never happens. This is board 261, the land of personal attacks, mass ignore lists and people who literally mod everything they see.

The thing about it is, don't the moderator actions reinforce my message? I'm open to debating on the merits of each side during an argument, but on the other end there are people who don't want that. They want to put their hands over their ears and mod the other guy, rather than talk. And of course the guy who just states his opinion is always the extremist, while the people who go out of their way to censor others are always the exact opposite of bigots, even as they move to block out anyone they don't like because they said something differently than them.

As of press time, here are some opinions the mods allow:

Say One Thing, Do Another

Chalk this one under "wacky things that will get you modded on GameFAQs" - Today's issue with the moderation system comes from Mr_Positivity over at NGS, who was recently accused of harassment. The reason? A topic where several board regulars were placed on a voting list for favorite user. Someone complained about their inclusion on the list, and so the whole thing naturally had to be taken down. This raises the question, can someone get you modded if you mention their account anywhere in passing? To call this harassment is...interesting, because the person in question was not spoken about in a negative way, and was simply included on a big list of boardgoers. You would think it'd be rude to single someone out and leave them off the list.

To Mr_Positivity, this raises a consistency problem more than anything else. On Hellhole, he noted that moderators were asked about similar contests before. gmo responded that they were fine.

Personally, I would say it's one of those things that if the user who doesn't want to see his/her name in this type of contest, he/she doesn't have to look at the topic. It's basically harmless fun, and if a user doesn't want to participate in the topic, no one is forcing that user to participate. At the end of the day, it's not like anything is won or loss for being voted as the "most popular user" or "most liked user", and nothing is won or loss for being voted as the "least popular" or "least liked" user (basically, the user who receives the fewest votes).

I know some people may not like that thought, but in all honesty, I've never heard a good reason not to include someone just because they didn't want to be included. It's hurting no one.

Unfortunately once this contest topic was made along the same lines, the line from the moderators was different. We can't say TC didn't do his research, the only mistake appears to be expecting moderators would be consistent. While gmo said one thing, another moderator did something else. 

In a copy of the dispute received by GUAC, yet another topic was brought up as precedent: a rate the user  contest right on Hellhole. Here's another mod response from that topic:

As a registered user on this site, he has the right to make any topic he wishes to make as long as it is within the scope of the Terms of Use. As long as he doesn't say anything like "this user sucks" or make a poll with only "1s" for potential score, there's nothing wrong with making the poll/topic.

Asking politely (or even inpolitely) for him to not make the topic does nothing in all honesty. It might be rude for him to make the topic now that he knows your desires, but being rude is not against the ToU.

Frankly, if you don't wish to see said topic, should it be made, the only thing I can advise you to do is not visit the board.

So if a rate the user topic with a single individual is allowed, what's the harm in holding a contest where no one is singled out and the only votes you can give are positive votes in favor of a certain person? That's certainly not harassment, that's a poll. Or as Mr_Positivity put it, "In no way is telling someone 'hey, I like you' considered hostile or harassing." gmo didn't seem to find a problem with it, under a plain reading of what the Terms laid out:

And, exactly of what part of "chapter 4" of the ToU would said topic be in violation?...
Harassment/Stalking/Privacy? My assumption is this is what you're going after, so let's look at this.

"Continual harassing behavior directed towards a certain individual or group by another individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the Service, with or without use of explicit or implicit threats, is strictly prohibited."

Well, I'm not seeing how creating an open topic that has been created for a large number of users fits this. Perhaps if it was made in a manner (as I said before) that made it insulting toward you, maybe just maybe I could see it. But, in no way, shape, or form would that be "continual harassing behavior". It would not be done with the "intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the Service", as it had been done for other users.

...

I'm pretty much done with you, as your comprehension level of things related to this site is - how shall I put this - different from those who actually know about what they're talking.

That's a pretty conclusive ending there, that suggests anyone on the site would get what is and isn't harassment (and these polls aren't). Yet here we are with a "harassment" charge for doing something that was not malicious in any way and was defended by the mods multiple times. Now the mods tell us the recent topic was "a means to upset" the user in question? It's hard to see how. There were 180 people in the poll, and the whole thing had to be taken down as harassment because one person complained? Despite what gmo insisted multiple times, apparently.

You might be saying well, that was just gmo's personal opinion. Yet Mr_Positivity did his homework there as well and found this section of Ask the Mods written by our Dear Admin SBAllen:

4) Even if you disagree with a moderator's response, do not ignore the answer or ask for a different moderator to reply. The moderation staff will be monitoring this board and if one of us sees an answer that might not be totally correct, we will attempt to get a more accurate answer. This ties in with #5.

5) It's possible for a moderator to answer incorrectly. We are all human and we make mistakes. In this case, we will try to get the incorrect answer removed and get a more accurate answer posted as quickly as possible. 

Have the moderators acted on this? No. Instead, they moved to uphold Mr_Positivity's appeal twice, and his topic on Hellhole was locked. gmo's response was to say he isn't a mod...even though he was at the time. Perhaps it's easier for the mods to ignore the problem than correct a mistake.

For Mr_Positivity, that's the biggest issue. "My main gripe is that false information remains on the site, which is quite obviously confusing to anyone looking for clarification." Granted, getting an administrator to remove archived messages may take some time. Meanwhile the mods will be quick to say one thing, then do another.

Supreme Court vs. Obama: 9-0 (for the Thirteenth Time)

Just a little reminder that it was once a warnable offense for me to say "this should be another easy 9-0 ruling against Obama" when talking about cases before the Supreme Court. While Hobby Lobby was a loss for the Obama administration, the ruling was not unanimous but plenty of other decisions have been. Why did I have to justify my political opinion to a group of moderators anyway? Where's it say this in the Terms? Nobody would care if a liberal got upset at the ruling and said it should've gone 9-0 the other way.

But hey, I was also warned for saying Obama would act without Congress, something he's now made a centerpiece of his campaign. Maybe I'm being modded for "spoilers" - making too many correct predictions.