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.