AssultTank - Gamefaqs Mod And Massive Troll

A lot of things have happened since the last blog update, the biggest one for me being the continued lockdown on my community board, Better Than Hellhole. The board had a few notable draws: loose enforcement of the board etiquette (community board owners did not have to moderate for trolling or most flaming, for example), and the board's main activity source, reposting topics that were locked on Hellhole. This was a huge bump in traffic alone because people continued conversations that were not allowed on Hellhole, despite these topics not violating the site terms in any way.

On my board, I operated as I expected Gamefaqs mods to. I was engaged, I did not abuse my control of the board, and if something HAD to be moderated according to the site terms I always explained why. This led to a level of mutual trust between board members - the "troublemakers," the so-called worst of the worst invited from Hellhole ended up being OK dudes. There was no gore, there was no porn (I requested a takedown on ONE image that was borderline, just to be safe). The board quickly took off and became a top 10, then top 5 community board on Gamefaqs.

But there was only one problem: the board was largely critical of Gamefaqs mods. And the mods hated that.

It started off with random mod hits on my guests, and me, for ridiculous reasons. As board owner, I had access to the moderation queue and often these messages were never in the queue at all, never marked. This was the case when Error1355, well-known bad mod that he is, decided to suspend my account for the weekend over a message that said users would treat mods as badly as mods treated users. Basically, a moderation over the golden rule. He claimed this was "harassment" for me to post this on MY board - which is kinda like the creepy neighbor with the binoculars claiming he got "harassed" because someone caught him spying on them and then flipped him the bird. I say it was Error with certainty since he was only 1 of 2 mods active at the time, deciding the first thing to do at 7am after getting up was to go trolling my community board for unmarked messages to take down. Yeah, no. This would be the first time that I got a moderation downgraded without even having to dispute it.

Having failed to pick my guests off one by one, the mod raids stopped for a time. I later found out that this was because they decided to take a different track behind the scenes: an attempt to get my board locked down completely.

The desire to lock everything down is prevalent among Gamefaqs mods - it's a big reason why the board traffic is continuing its decline, and why up to 1 in 3 Hellhole topics are locked on any given day - a week ago, this actually jumped to a 90% closure rate. So with this in mind, it was not surprising that the mods would also want to lock down a board that reposted locked conversations. Even though this was totally "mod discretion" and wasn't violating the terms at all.

The mods involved went completely behind my back, like cowards, and decided to push for an admin to step in because...there were 2 "offensive" messages in my queue, which I didn't get to flagging by their arbitrary deadline of 9:30pm (how was I to know this?) because I was interacting with users first that night, before opening the queue. "Offensive" message #1 turned out to be an nkl violation...because someone said that they once killed off a fictional character in a CYOA. Offensive #2 was when somebody said they wanted to throw a grenade at a fictional anime waifu. Again, these are both fictional characters. But this is enough to get admin involvement at Gamefaqs, if the mods don't like you.

The excuse to step in was laughable - was a mod buttmad that one of his anime waifus was disliked? I mean really. This was at the same time people were wondering on Hellhole why full Mortal Kombat fatality videos were allowed, but not this. Compare the 1 or 2 offensive messages my board got that week to what CE gets in an HOUR - and nobody on mod staff wants to close CE. Compare my board to what happened on LUE, which is still open. It's an absurd overreaction to single out my board, but they ended up getting an admin involved because a mod didn't like the place.

I didn't agree with the threat but, like a responsible person, I let everyone on the board know and then I asked Hellhole mods to come to my board and take down any violations they could find. I received no takers. I wrote SBAllen back to say that I received the message and would like him to keep in touch with me about the board's standing. For the next 3 months, I never heard from him. So the mods were no-shows...after their random hits on my board, they now claimed - amazingly - that it wasn't their job to patrol the boards! And yet at the same time, they WERE patrolling the boards looking for any reason to cause trouble, as we'll see with AssultTank below. There are a few reasons why none of the mods took up my offer to censor whatever they wanted. 1) there actually was NOTHING for them to moderate that violated the terms, 2) any decision they made on my board would have to have their name attached to it - and like cowards, they weren't ready for that, even though they placed all these demands on me.

As I said on Hellhole at the time, not a single mod would pass the standard that was placed upon my board. Not a single board would pass it! As I already mentioned, CE, LUE...there are plenty of places that actually had violations stacked up for them (they frequently whine that the queue is too big and takes days to get through), but here they were singling out my board for special attention. An nkl and a violation, both against fictional characters, when passed through hyperbolic mod speech turned into "multiple violations" (2 is "multiple") and of course "violent threats." Against FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.

So knowing all this, and hearing absolutely nothing from neither mod nor Allen for months, I assumed it was one of their typical temporary mod panics that made no sense and would be quickly forgotten. But this is where people like AssultTank come in. Turns out, they were having freakouts about my board that continued for at least 3 months.

AssultTank is not a mod I would normally suspect of anything, and he actually does decent competitions. He should stick to that. It isn't entirely his fault that the prizes take forever to go out. Here's the thing, though: as I continued to take part in the competitions, it started to become fairly obvious that mods were not thrilled with me due to the things I have said about the site. Still, I did not think that AssultTank would come out of practically nowhere to be so petty.

Just a little background: in the last competition I took part in, I won 5 karma. Whoopy doo. It's like, meaningless site points, much like their badges. Since it always takes forever to get the prizes out, I checked a few times but then dropped it because who cares. I don't know if I ever got it, don't wanna do the math, don't care. Here's the thing with Assult, though: he had to know enough about me to intentionally misspell my main account's name - Tails82 vs TaiIs82, which due to font quirks look the same on Gamefaqs. Because God forbid I get 5 karma on a message board. It's a rather small thing, but the actions start to reveal a rather small person.

After my community board was locked without any regard to my input or what I had to say, I was followed to The Range by someone's obvious alt account. At first I didn't think anything of it, but then AssultTank brought him up again as like, the source authority for why my board was locked. So I googled...and wound up getting here.

Possibly embarrassed by the lame excuses of "violence against fictional characters" made last time, this time I received absolutely no explanation as to which messages had locked my board. At most I was told well, it's just generally offensive - a great answer if you have no messages whatsoever to point to. Assult also said on The Range that he was surprised it took so long to lock my board (months of bitching from him, apparently). This is a sign that there was nothing really there on the board that would justify a total lockdown of a top 5 community. And after Assult falsely claimed I was "invading" gwwak's board, why would I believe anything he had to say about my board? I operated it, I saw the queue, I knew what was going on. It was nothing like the lies that the troll Cuttlefish was spreading offsite, without mods ever asking me about anything.

I sent another message to SBAllen asking if the "general offensive" environment was the issue, rename my board entirely and make it a solo blog. I would be the only one posting on it, so that nobody else can put up offensive anime waifu deaths and hurt some pillow-carrying mod's feelings. After all, LUE went private, right? And look at what actually happened there. Surely a blog community board (no, not a repost of anything here) would be enough to save one of the earliest community boards?

Well, who knows. Allen is about as nonexistent as he was for the previous 3 months. Just as I received nothing then, I have no answer now for 2 months and counting.

So I'll make an additional proposal.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/691087-playstation-4/72152601?page=4#226

Here's one of many topics where Error1355 goes into a game board and just gets dumped on for being a terrible moderator, it's always fun to read. As always, when it comes to Gamefaqs site rules, there are inconsistencies and exceptions depending on if a moderator likes you or not. I came across this one from former mod Mith. Hey, something can be totally off-topic, but if the mod finds it enjoyable or entertaining we just don't have to enforce that rule! How about that.

Why not do the same for boards? I can tell you that plenty of people enjoyed BTH and found it entertaining, Assult included. So how about putting in some words for me. Reopen my board, in memory of Mith!