GUAC News: 6/30/14

wally's Upset at Your Outrage Against Pedophiles

Fresh off that whole boys will be boys attitude about statutory rape, wally is wading back into the subject of pedophilia.

In a topic titled, "NC Lawmaker: Pedophilia is a sexual orientation like homosexuality," something I'm not touching with a 10 foot pole, wally has popped up again and has decided someone just went way too far criticizing someone who likes the kiddies.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/261-politics/69534220
  
"I don't care HOW liberal and tolerant our society gets.. I will NEVER tolerate pedophiles, and I don't care if it is innate to that person and not any more of a choice than homosexuality is. People don't want to consider homosexuality a mental problem (or a problem at all really), but I will always consider pedophilia to be a mental problem; one that is likely 100% irredeemable. And just because they never act on it does NOT mean we should accept and tolerate them in our society."

Holy crap dude. Even Big Brother from 1984 would tell you that you're a little extreme here.

"100 percent irredeemable" is something I'd disagree with. But more extreme than Big Brother for not tolerating pedophiles? Maybe wally should try this line out on victims and their families, and see where it gets him. There's a lot of posts in the sea...why he felt compelled to call this one out as extremist is anyone's guess.

Rumors of Plagiarism Strike Back

Two separate comments have informed me that there could still be users getting hit for illegal activities after quoting too long from a source they cited. Absent evidence, I'm going to do something strange and trust the two mods who said this is over with. I've got a big red X on my back but haven't had a problem doing it so far. But if this has happened to you recently, send it in to here and appeal that nonsense. k?

Board Outreach

Efforts to reach out to all gamefaqs are taking place slowly but surely. Expansion is our goal here. Some people have told me, hey TaiIs, improve the blog. Make it relevant to my interests. Go big or go home. Well, I can't do it without your help. Politics is my area of expertise, and politics it will remain unless there is more outreach. So with that I've been keeping tabs on a few more boards and keeping an eye out for issues. You can say oh this is just a conservative thing. Not true! I welcome input from liberals if they have a mod story to tell. There's going to be some entries on the things I've gathered from outreach, and if you have something you'd like to see send me a message! I aim to please.

Mod Outreach

Here at Gamefaqs Users Against Censorship, we pride ourselves on giving a fair hearing to all sorts. Over the past few weeks I've made an effort to reach out to moderators for their take on things when I had questions. So as Screw the Mods month dies down, let's unscrew a little bit and take a look at what they have to say. Their comments are greatly appreciated.

When this blog made some waves, a few readers mentioned the name of Admiral as an example of a conservative mod. Having had little to no contact with this mod before, I decided to ask a few questions.

TaiIs82:
What has your experience been like with other mods when it comes to their beliefs? Do you find that they tend to lean a certain direction when it comes to their political stance?

 The Admiral:
I think it's important to distinguish between a moderator's personal bias and a moderator's moderating bias. Certain mods are definitely more right or left oriented than others, and some of them make this known through through their posts on the boards. There is nothing wrong with that, and, in fact, some diversity is valuable in our discussions on determining moderation polices.

However, the mods, in general, are very good at detaching their personal politics from their moderation decisions. Most moderators (myself included) will enforce rules they might not personally believe in because they've made a commitment to uphold this site's rules, and that's part of the job. Others simply avoid handling marks if they disagree with them on a political basis, and this is fine. We always encourage mods to refrain from handling marks if they don't feel they can be objective. Since my time as a mod, we haven't had any issues with moderators pushing their own personal agendas through moderations.

All that being said, there is definitely a disparity over the types of comments that are marked. The user base on this site tends to be more liberal on social issues, so comments criticizing the left or left-wing policies are marked more often than comments criticizing the right. However, this is a byproduct of the community-oriented moderation system, not a result of any bias at the mod level.

The response was supportive of the idea that moderators place their political views aside, but I had some more questions. What exactly was meant by a community-oriented moderation system? I've seen some people claim that if enough users mark a message for trolling, the moderators would have to do something about it. Is there any merit to that, and are unpopular views at risk? There's also the old "your party's political opinions are no different from trolling." When a mod decides whether something is trolling or offensive, aren't there subjective judgments to be made there? My inbox is open if any mod wants to take a crack at those questions.

 Next up I wrote willythemailboy, who had some interesting things to say about his time as a mod.

Personal bias is pretty minimal in most cases. Since there's no reason any particular mod has to handle any specific message, it's easy to skip ones you feel you can't be impartial on. The user relations I mentioned were users that disagreed with my views on the politics board and absolutely believed that any action against them was solely due to a mod trying to suppress their views. Thus I got blamed for any moderated message - accurately, but for different reasons.

At the time, I was the only mod active on the politics board. Wally posts but has stated that he does not moderate anything posted on that board, and I have good reason to believe that to be true. I would moderate any violations I saw while reading topics, regardless of who posted them. Most mods do not, and it really annoys me when I see a mod post in a topic with blatant violations in it; they either didn't read the topic before posting, or did and chose to ignore the violations. For 2 or 3 years nearly every moderation on the politics board was from me, simply because no one else was doing it.

I also asked if it was true that a moderator could no-action their own messages, having heard an allegation on the politics board that someone was doing it  - and due to the nature of the info, if my memory was correct that this happened it had to have been either wally or willy who said it (and it sure as heck wasn't wally):

It was true (I don't know that it still is or not) that *any* mod could no-action their own messages if they got marked. Note that a no-actioned message can still be moderated, but the post shows up with a big "this message has already been no-actioned by another moderator" and is given a very low priority in the queue if marked again. And, of course, the same moderator could no-action it again if it showed up in the queue again. The automatic system could easily be abused by a mod defending their own post, but it could also be bypassed by bringing a blatant violation to the attention of a different mod, and I suspect a mod caught abusing it would not be a mod very long.

Finally I asked Crazymaori about a post of his from last year:

Crazymaori(Moderator)Posted 10/5/2013 4:28:18 AM
"After CE, console boards and GTA5, I think that board receives the greatest percent of marks from what I usually see. An opinion that isn't the same as someone else's is always marked for trolling."

I think you're correct with the part where you mention that unpopular views are more likely to be marked, but perhaps not moderated. I'd like to think that there aren't any moderators on the team which actually take a bias into account. I know when there are marks which involve something I'm sensitive about (which isn't often) I tend to just leave it and see what action was taken on it at a later date. 

I tend to avoid trolling marks for the politics board. Offensive/off-topic etc I'll happily handle since those moderations tend to be straight-forward. Trolling on the other hand is a lot harder because I simply do not understand the intricate details of US politics...

I think trolling is a lot harder to put on someone in general, because you have to look at them and decide motive. Especially when the person marking it can do it just because they don't like that person. With a 'community-oriented' system, could we say the dominant belief dominates what can be said on the board? If someone on 19th century gamefaqs says women should vote and the board says poppycock, this man has been inhaling the vapors and is behaving as if he were a troll, does that view go bye-bye not because it was insincere, but because it wasn't popular enough to be protected as a legitimate view? My assumption is that everyone's not a troll until proven otherwise, and there's a bit of a golden rule going there because there's always someone calling someone else a troll just because they don't agree on the same things.

Give me a shout if you have any thoughts, and keep your eyes open! Maybe you'll hear from me next.

Looking at Other Blogs (Cited Plagiarism Flashback)

While looking around for some old posts to link here, I came across a few old blog posts from other people and they're a little interesting, so why not take a look.

First, here's a response/joke blog from what appears to be a wally cultist, if not wally himself (I can dream...)
Nah I kid, not enough obscenities and suggestions that I kill myself to be wally.

http://progamefaqscensorship.blogspot.com/2014_06_01_archive.html

I'd like to thank wally for all his hard work and dedication in his dealings with the false shepard...Tails82. This unholy blasphemer, this maniacal monster that spreads lies and deceit and corruption everywhere it goes. This vile hellspawn created from the darkest pits of hell. Yes this wretched abomination saint wally deals with on a daily basis for free for our security.     
He keeps us safe from this demonic creature and its heathenous anti censorship ideals. It is only when we accept censorship and fair moderation that we cast out this baron of darkness.

Unfortunately, your wally with his little w cannot do anything against the conservatroll tide. Even though he's a mod he doesn't touch the politics board, so we can take his word over reality.

It turns out someone has actually tried harder than me - to support mods. No I'm not talking about that guy up there. I'm looking at this:

http://thatrandomuser.wordpress.com/

Dude be pissed that people spend so much of their precious time complaining about moderations, so he's spent his precious time with walls of text getting upset over how those other people should not be upset. Though he appears to have been inactive for many a moon now. Dude does not know what paragraph breaks are. It's going to take some time to look at this thing and have some fun with it, not for the guy's opinion but for the stuff he's quoted from. Latest post featuring tmk, where Error is called a troll AND troll apologist (poor guy, and he doesn't even get paid for it):

There are two reasons GameFAQs would even have mods. The first reason would be to keep the site out of any serious trouble, so like, deleting things that would upset companies, or authorities for example. Threats and harassingly revealing personal information, child porn being removed of course, stuff like that. If that’s why the mods are here, then the rules are currently EXTREMELY over-bloated and rather nonsensical to the point of the site’s rules.
Alternative reason is, the above, plus also to try and maintain some degree of order on the boards, to try and prevent things from being overly disrupted and such by troublemakers, to reign in troublemakers. When a mod acts trollish, that is directly counter to this second reason, and tends to be rather disruptive because of this wacky idea of thinking mods should probably be held to a bit higher standards than a 3 week old account.
Trolling also comes across way, way worse when it’s coming from someone with some degree of authority over the site and you, especially on a site where trolling is supposed to be something you can be modded for. Some of the most disruptive dickery I’ve seen on the site came from moderators, in fact.

It doesn’t engender a lot of respect or cooperation between the userbase and the authority on GameFAQs when the mods come across as dismissive and trollish and above all else, hypocrites.

the moonlight knight could not be reached for comment. And that's a shame too, because I'd give him more fair treatment than this guy did.

Here's an entry that's a bit old and known around town, but may be worth a read. The secretive environment of mod decisions is arguably still a problem today, with that whole unannounced flip-flop on cited plagiarism.

http://poker-over-killing.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-was-gamefaqs-moderator-for-5-yrs.html

The level of consistency was ridiculous. I remember making topics on the mod boards that some of us worked on to try and get an idea on where people's heads were and it was amazing to see the complete mess it was. Some people would NKL one thing while some would warn for the same thing, a couple would suspend, and a couple would notify, and then about 50 mods would never even bother to read or participate on the mod boards. It was a mess.

the basic theme is that they think all their users are a bunch of retarded monkey children who will do anything they can to break a rule so may as well live in the old ages of internet forums...The reason people get mad and frustrated is that keeping such ridiculous secrets does make it look as if the mods are vastly superior to the regs. Like the regs are too stupid to handle it.

Speaking of secrecy, images of Willy Wonka popped in my head there for a minute there. "Nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out." Starring the Oompa Loompas as retarded monkey children. I'd pay for a seat in that theater.

Where it really gets interesting though, is this comment. Tell me if it sounds familiar.

Things like the issue of "consistency" combined with the secrecy are what bugs the shit out of most users, especially the vets like me who are going on almost eight years of posting. A few years back there was a flareup on the main board I visit (WOT) about large copy-pasted posts of news articles being deleted as "illegal activities". Yet that was tolerated and indeed part of the normal function of the mostly politically-oriented board for years.

Fine, okay, suddenly we respect copyrights down to the letter, right? The problem is, there was no clear idea of what "fair use" length was being considered, whether you could fill one post, half a post, one eighth of the article, etc., etc. and any attempt to question the local mod staff only received bullshit responses about how they couldn't say things that would actually inform us as to how to NOT BREAK THE FUCKING RULES.

So what happened? When the controversy died down, so too did the moderations, and nowadays it is again normal for a full post of text from a linked article to be posted and not moderated. At the same time, post public domain text from something like Wikisource going across a few posts and you get told how it is "illegal". Yes, comrade, it has always been a violation, it is only now that mod consciousness has fully awakened to it.

Think they have a book lying around of ways to screw with users, and every once in a while they dust it off to briefly retry some silly rule? The way things happen behind closed doors, could be, we'd never know. Maybe the rules go in and out of fashion like hairstyles. Thus, I called it a fad. I guess they've never really figured it out because they're still going at it. How strange to punish users because mods are indecisive and can't agree on what the rules are.

So it turns out in this big sea known as the wide wild web, I'm not quite alone. Who knows what lurks around the bend or the next google search? One thing's for sure, there's bound to be more adventure out there, more things to find. We'll keep you up to date as we go along.

wally, wally, wally...

I'm working on a few leads right now that aren't quite story worthy yet, so let's have a blast from the past ("write what you know").

When you're on the politics board, it's only a matter of time before you come across this here character. As the only liberal moderator on gamefaqs (yeah right), poor old wally is unable to stop the tide of rascally conservatrolls gripping 261 because he swears he doesn't moderate the politics board. This is a source of great frustration because whenever someone is losing an argument, they would just love to call up the mod squad and have wally go to town on the other guy's account. While wally says with some regret that he cannot do this, he will however tell you to stop making topics if he doesn't like you, talk with himself about maybe moderating you if he can find a reason (for chilling effect), and express his anger at you in pointed terms if you rub him the wrong way. And it is usually only a matter of time before that happens.

I began collecting wally quotes early on, so let's share them with the world shall we? Hypocrisy strikes me as a terrible thing. With my recent moderation over a stereotypical generalization of a political party ("liberals are always angry because their policies always fail"), it's rather eye-beamy to see the public face of the mods on board 261 make statements that go a lot further. You might think the messages below are not mod-worthy, and that might be true. But. When I brought up a selection of things wally has said on Hellhole, my message of simply barebones quotes was moderated, and in appeal I learned that this was for quoting wally's "potential violations." Of course this punishment is reserved for the messenger, while the original messages are there for you to see and are safely archived without problem.

So today, we'll be looking into the wally vault at some of these potential violations:

TaiIs82 Takes Even More Reader Comments

Also, defusing the latest rumors about yours truly.

Cited Plagiarism, Part 2: R.I.P.

As mentioned in my last news entry, the rash of plagiarism allegations from mods, even when you cite a source, is said to be over. I cannot help but think that the sizable opposition to such an unofficial plagiarism rule, along with the fact that it was just plain silly, played a part in ending the fad. Of course a silent repeal of the rule didn't take away my three-month moderated message history with no appeals, after everyone up to Dear Admin stuck with the original moderation, but three karma lost is nothing really and this is more of a moral victory.

One thing I can say is without this effort, we may not have learned as quickly about the higher-ups deciding to change the rule. What I'll never really know is, who knew this unofficial rule was on the books so quickly and marked me for it? Since I was an early victim of enforcement, the guy who marked it must have been following the mods pretty closely to have got wind of the rule and tried it out on me. How would you like that life? I can just imagine that person complaining I spend too much time on this blog, right before they go scour the terms of use for any obscure, hidden mod rule to launch a gotcha game against anyone they don't like. (There's just gotta be a way for gamefaqs mods to punish someone for speaking offsite, right?)

In memory of the cited plagiarism fad, here's some quotes from affected users and people of all persuasions who thought the rule was just plain dumb:

"The topic got modded for illegal activities. Terrible mods." -bsballa09

"That can't be true...That is absurd." -JIC X

"Please dispute it, thats so stupid" -TheRealJiraiya

"Thanks, mods, for killing the first borderline-productive discussion I've ever had with Tails...I love when 90+ post topics suddenly disappear without explanation after having stayed up for weeks, so that I can sit vainly blinking at my posted messages list wondering if I've gone senile or selectively blind." -JIC X

"For the first time ever, I am on Tails's side. The mods literally don't know what the word "entire" means. I'm not sure if I should be laughing or weeping." -TheRunner PD

"On Tail's side for this. Then again, a mod taking Tails seriously is a snowball's chance in hell." -GBALoser

"This is pathetic" -goatthief

"This is f****** stupid. I am usually the last person to complain about the ToS or the moderators. I actually enjoy posting on this site, and have had no issue in the past. This is pretty ridiculous, and such a loosely enforced rule." -StarDestroyer

"Doesn't posting the link along with the text credit the original writer? What the hell gamefaqs?" -biohazard1775

"The mods on this site will never be good at their job. It's not surprise. Just keep chugging along and try to ignore their constant gaffs." -SepirothSama

"What sort of people does the site hire to be a mod? Seems to be mostly jerk high school types who think they're much smarter than they actually are. They consistently provide inane and mind boggling dumb and illogical judgements even after facts are used. I've been lucky to get a couple disputes overturned in the past, but it required A LOT of reasoning and explaining on my part and a bit of luck. They consistently lecture us about following the rules, but those rules often seem arbitrary and inconsistently enforced, and are usually not made with the demographic of this website in mind." -Orange Clockwork

"The one thing everyone on the politics board can agree on: The mods suck at their job." -bsballa09
 
"The mods' vision of copyright isn't based on law or reason; it's raw power, and they wield it like a battleaxe." -JIC X

And finally, the most recent quote from someone who didn't get the memo that the party was over - but who can really blame him when the decisions were all done behind the scenes:

"...and we'll get randomly modded for quoting 4 sentences instead of three because that's how one moderator decided copyright infringement works. never change, gamefaqs." -YouAreCrumbs, in a topic with a cited quote that was four posts long.

After my mid-February moderation, I began to keep a running count of all topics and messages on the politics board alone that broke gmo's definition of plagiarism: 4-5 lines from a source, just like in papers (apparently we've never heard of block quotes). For good measure I even kept a little notepad file of every account that broke the 4-5 line rule at least once. First report can be seen here. The point of the list was to keep a running count of how many messages broke the rule but were not moderated. My point of course was not to say "mod hundreds of these people too" but instead "that one time you modded me was a mistake." And yes, if I heard a message had been moderated I lowered the count by 1, but since that rarely happened the number of non-modded messages remained high. I officially stopped the count yesterday. Here's the final list...

Friends of GUAC: GoemonFan471986

Send your messages in to TaiIs82!

The following is a guest article and does not reflect the personal views of TaiIs82, but has a pretty kickin' message regardless. -Editor





Re: Gamefaqs Users Against Censorship

I still think there's basically a 0% chance of this causing any changes at GameFAQs but it is nice to see someone point out that the emperor has no clothes. I've had problems with the moderating staff since before I even found 261, when it was apparent that several of the gaming boards were ruined by trolling that the mods refused to do anything about.

Meanwhile, on Politics trolling appears to be defined as anything that upsets the liberal majority on 261. I don't have the details because most of my modded messages have disappeared into the ether, but one thing I've noticed is that any time I post about how Obama's policies have effected me, that post is modded. Yet, oddly enough, people can quote those posts without getting modded.

It certainly doesn't help that the visible moderator presence on 261 is wally who, aside from having obvious vendettas against certain users, adds nothing of value to the board since most of his posts are trolling in the form of stupid one liners or image macros.

Of course, as bad as wally's posts where he just replies with something like "XD" or where he makes sweeping generalizations about parts of the country he's never been to are, they're nothing compared to when he brings his daughter up.

In the thread you pointed out where he defends statutory rape, note that in one post he specifically does so by heavily implying that he'd blame his daughter for a hypothetical scenario in which she is taken advantage of by an older man. In an earlier thread, he posted about a scenario in which his wife had an affair and he discovers at age 16 that he is not the biological father of his daughter and doesn't want to pay to help support her. When I called him out on his shockingly cold posting about his own daughter he of course ignored the real issue and replied as though my issue was his views on the child support system and not his habit of making borderline sociopathic remarks about his own daughter. That's where he crosses the line from bad poster/mod to bad person.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/261-politics/67429962

The fallout from Message #19 in this thread is probably the most ridiculous example I can come up with of how the mods operate here. My defense of George W. Bush was considered such egregious trolling that not only was it deleted but my status was set to warned over it. Meanwhile, none of the liberals who quoted the post for the sole purpose of mocking me were [not] modded in any way.

And seriously, how is that trolling? Strong worded, sure. But I doubt a similar defense of Obama would be modded.