Tanon Demodded - Best of WOT

One thing Gamefaqs has going for it is its assortment of special interest boards, some interesting, some not, some active, others deserted. It's this variety that got me into board hunting years back. Sometimes it's difficult to keep up with what goes on where, however. But fortunately, thanks to a tip to GUAC, we're happy to present the site's latest demodded user.

One of the new batch, Tanon was fairly well-known on the War on Terror (WoT) board and had a dislike for Barenziah Boy Toy, which would be his undoing. BBT has made a reputation for himself posting the same topics on different boards, to the point where some complain it's spammy. Some good old fashioned board drama erupted on board 408 once BBT's topics started to get closed and he complained about it.

On January 5, BBT posted a topic on Hellhole, "Overaggressive mod closing topics in a Social Board without any justifications.." in which he described that a mod was trying to silence him, even though he wasn't breaking the terms.

"Because the mod couldn't actually get it moderated because it doesn't violate the TOS, he/she has decided to make an end-around and close the topics instead, to avoid having any moderations be overturned."

This topic was itself closed. BBT kept up the pressure, however, and started to get attention for it. In what was almost a repeat of the bover demodding, Krystal told the user to stop complaining, nothing to see here...then reversed after talking to Allen and admitted yeah, there was something. At least this time she didn't call anyone a whining baby.

Krystal109 Posted 1/9/2015
"We have already discussed your complaints with the moderation staff and we are in a review period to see if proper action is done in the future. Whining about it more isn't going to change the past and you can only look to the future...The boards are not your complaint zone and it is disruptive to the flow of the board to constantly complain in new topics."

But she did also reinforce that unpopular messages/users aren't just going to be modded:

"You might find a user annoying, but as long as they are not breaking ToU then they are protected by the ToU. Learn to ignore people if you dislike them...we allow crossposting topics between boards. You can easily see this from topics on Poll of the Day to CE with Full-Throttle. The question is are the disruptive on a board and if the answer is no then we should NOT be closing or modding them. Just because a user is annoying is NOT a violation. If that was the case we'd have no users on any of the boards."

...Wait, did Krystal just call us all annoying? Oh well. Now for the switcharound a few days later.

Krystal109 Posted 1/12/2015
"The PM was written by my boss, who I handed over links to, so it make [sic] have some factual mistakes. That being said, Tanon did make multiple posts that were highly inaccurate and only confuse the user base and incite them against the moderation and administrative staff...We purely abide by the ToU and do now [sic] make up moderations to hit you guys. There were also other cases of false information, such as me correcting you about mods being hired by their own merit and not their home board. Overall, the posts and disputes were sent to my boss who had the ultimate call. My personal view, I never saw anything you did as threatening."

Here's an example of how fast Tanon was closing BBT's topics, this one within minutes as other users were used to expecting him, as he posted at the end to let BBT know he was giving him a hard time:

Tanon's defense was that he was just joking about some of his provocative/inaccurate messages, Krystal replied he can't say something offensive and then write it off as a joke, Tanon fired back "You are the one that told me to have a sense of humor!" (and this is technically true, since Krystal told people have a sense of humor when she was saying unprofessional things like the "vag smells" story and how fun it'd be to troll by closing boards/making everyone a mod and then watching the drama).

The reasons for Tanon's demodding, as provided by the guy himself:

"Removing your status as a moderator

Hello Tanon. After reviewing both your recent public posts and your moderation performance, we have decided to remove you from the moderation staff. You are posting things publicly that simply aren't true, and more than one post appears to be disparaging against your fellow moderators. You also appear to have taken it upon yourself to treat a particular board that you frequent in an inappropriate manner, posting messages that sound threatening as well as moderating posts (or not moderating posts) incorrectly."

along with a Krystal message

"I know that in the past that there has been concern of your pocket modding WOT, which means that you actively seek out marks on that board and give them lenient moderations or N/A's. This is why I suggest not modding a board that your [sic] frequent and instead just mark posts to let an objective part [sic] handle them."

In other words, Tanon was showing favoritism to people he knew on the board by getting accounts he liked off the hook, while punishing accounts he didn't like, even if the accounts didn't violate the Terms. To get around this he simply closed their topics because the users can't dispute a locked topic, keeping it out of any review by anyone else. It was only through BBT's complaints that the closings were investigated.

Mith, another newish mod, decided to use the occasion to make threats to other peoples' accounts if they kept up the complaints:

Tanon responded, "Amusingly what Mith posted is essentially what I posted in two threads before I was de-modded." while RavenFola replied "Are the mods attempting to scare us by threatening the ban hammer? That's pathetic."

User reactions to the demodding varied from praise to 'THE TROLLS WON!!1' Here are some of the best comments.

Hi There Hellhole, What's Up - Ohh...Ugh

We've finally found something mods are all right with!

"Have The Hitler Protocols been relaxed? Like... a lot?"

This entry referred to a Politics board topic where someone claimed Hitler would've stopped concentration camp abuses if he knew about them, the board then basically spent the next few pages responding to the troll or telling people not to respond to the troll, then someone from Politics came over from Hellhole after a few days to ask the mods why apparently pro-Hitler messages weren't getting modded despite all that time since they were marked. While we think this is just an unpopular (but who cares) opinion, we bring it up here because 1) it's part of another Politics board rush to get people punished (more on that later) and 2) the mod response was pretty bad.

gmo7897 writes (emphasis added):

While it's a touchy subject, people are allowed to speculate things of this nature. Denying the Holocaust is one thing. We aren't going to allow that unless someone has some really good evidence. However, since evidence is unlikely to exist at this point, and there's way too much evidence saying the Holocaust did happen, we're not likely going to allow people to deny it.

However, people are allowed to speculate on things that are unpopular such as this. For what it's worth, Hitler was a very smart man and a phenomenal leader. That is... until he went all bat crap crazy. He was also a socialist, which is generally all about the government taking care of the people, so there's possible credence into the thought that camps may have been better if he knew anything about them - assuming he didn't.

I'm not saying I agree one way or another, but it's food for thought either way. Hitler is quite possibly one of the most polarizing figureheads in the last 100 years or so - if not further back.

So, in short, saying Hitler was a "good guy" for what happened or outright denying the Holocaust = bad. Saying Hitler may not have been all that bad of a guy but just got a bum rep = tolerable - assuming there's legitimate backing to the claim.

What "legitimate backing" means is anyone's guess, since all the user basically said was Hitler would've made the camps better if he knew they were bad. No sources, not exactly a thesis. gmo wasn't done. Maybe the guy was right! You can't prove Hitler's totalitarian state knew about what was going on in the camps!

I'm not saying that it has to come with a link; it just has to be something that's potentially believable. Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but there's no real evidence to say that he knew what was going on. As the president of a country (or whatever his title was at the time), don't you think there would have been some pictures or something of him at these camps? There are other pictures and videos available from that time period that show what was happening.

Like I said, it's a touchy subject, but we don't really want to stop people from having views that oppose the norm.

Ha. Haha. Hahaha. Okay, mind telling me why pro-Hitler is a touchy but acceptable subject, but I was modded within 15 minutes recently for "misgendering" (using "he" or "his" instead of "she" when talking about a guy who wanted to be a girl - yes this is what they mod). Less than 15 minutes for a joke moderation that was overturned. What the heck. If you want to veer a topic off course, argue the 40s and how maybe Hitler wasn't that bad, derail a topic, go right ahead. You're awful but go on. Yet these are the same mods who go out of their way to take sides and take down unpopular opinions on current debates, arguments that should have a lot more room for open discussion than "Hitler didn't know about his own camps."

Then again we could be reading too much into this. Here's Mith explaining what the board's about.