New Gamefaqs Mod Flintlock_Staff Was Caught Doxxing A User

 Partially reposted from reddit, with permission from Caution's Club 2

https://wiesnerx0042.blogspot.com/

A few days ago, Rox nuked his blog and appears to be starting over. The topic that people made about him at the time of his ban was (as usual) unhelpful, with the typical gimmicks and screaming to ban a "Trump supporter" even though his last post was this: https://logfaqs.com/topic.php?id=79100847

The owner of the wiesner blog was a mystery for some people, who ended up eventually tracking him down on Gamefaqs and I guess embarrassing him with personal details. It became its own little saga at Caution Club, and Sage got banned for it. But I was going through my old PMs a few weeks ago and it turns out that Rox had messaged me way back, 2014ish, when I had started my blog. He was supportive and told me that he was behind this other blog of his, but to keep it secret for fear of reprisals on Gamefaqs. I didn't tell a soul, and actually forgot about it until I reread the PM in 2020. But after he was outed in July 2019, they indeed gave him a harder time on the site and he would soon end up banned.

As seen in the screen above, Flintlock_Staff took part in outing Rox, but would later distance himself once Sage posted it to CE. Current server owners gwwak and joestarr were there to witness the leak as well. At some point they decided that they couldn't be seen doing stuff like this, however, probably because they were getting a reputation for it on the gwwak server, in spite of their recent denials.

"Do mods target users?" people ask. Well, technically Flintlock_Staff was not a mod yet, but the obsession when it came to tracking Rox down bled into a long night of this behavior with Sage and others, where the users involved went so far as to create Instagram accounts to stalk Rox and find his personal twitter. "I think it goes without saying but this isn't my first time doing this," one of them remarked.

How problematic do you think this is, when you have an aspiring mod working to track down someone's personal life because of a harmless blog he made, before you can imagine what he'd even do to more people with mod tools as well? You tell me.

My Drama With gwwak - And His Censorship - Explained

Community board moderation has typically not been the focus of this blog, but at some point it becomes time to acknowledge when a censorship campaign has been worse than most I've been subjected to, and not just on the community board itself, but on other sites where I have been followed to as well. As someone opposed to unjust censorship in all forms, we would be wise not to ignore someone who has become abusive with what little power he has. Since gwwak has now compared himself to Error, let's take a look at how the Error of the MAGA board operates, starting with the first time I met him.

1. My community board might still exist, if not for gwwak. That's not to say that I blame him personally (I blame the horrid mod staff and their grudgeholding campaign to "Get TaiIs82" at all costs), but keep in mind how much I had to overlook in order to remain on friendly terms with him. gwwak is now claiming that I never moderated anything on my board - this is simply not true. But if he was also going around telling people this story at the time - "TaiIs does nothing on his board, go crazy!" - this intentional misperception contributed to the issues my board had. Of course, quite a few two-bit trolls took credit for closing my board, and gwwak is no exception, but the true blame lies with the mods - who were offered every opportunity to join leadership, but decided to sit back and attack me personally rather than the "violations" they claimed were on my board (funny that they could never actually find any...)

gwwak came to my board looking for 2 things, leadership powers to abuse and sticky topics to spam. I did not know this at the time, but apparently he does this to a lot of community boards and spams their sticky topics closed with a bunch of garbage messages. He wanted leadership on my board and PM'd me about it multiple times, claiming he loved my board and everything that I was doing and so on, but in reality he was just trying to get in so he could no-action his own spam messages once they turned up in the moderation queue. Once I did not give leadership, he turned on me. And at the same time he was praising my board to flatter me, he was telling mods on other boards that he did not really like my place (he did not want to be seen as a "tails supporter" because he wanted to be a mod one day, and any true support of me would cost him social credit points). But just like on the MAGA board, where he pretended to like them even though he was out endorsing Biden elsewhere and telling everyone offsite that he was in favor of closing the board down, gwwak lied to me about his support for my board while talking it down in other company.

Why did he do this? Partly to get mods' favor, and partly because he told me he was "jealous" of my board's success while his board, The Range, was dead. He then saw an opportunity where he could take advantage of my board's closure to redirect the traffic to his board - and likely planned to do the same thing once he got the MAGA board closed down, but that scheme was exposed this time around. The traffic brought to his board the first time around was short-lived, as it quickly became apparent that the board was a trap, rather than anything helpful to my board members.

I defended a lot of things on my board, and by far the stupidest episode involved gwwak. Here's how shitty the Gamefaqs mod staff was: at a time when the site queue was backed up for at least 48 hours - of porn, gore, and whatever else on the site at large - they were focused on me and buttmad at one or two posts they didn't like on my board. Not violations - but things they didn't like. To the point where they stepped in and removed 2 messages about a dead anime waifu, going completely over my head. One of them was gwwak's because he said that a fictional character had been killed in one of his CYOAs on another board. Yes, the actual full death scene was posted on a different board, but because gwwak made reference to it on my board the mods went nuts over what turned out to be an nkl. At the same time full Mortal Kombat fatality videos were all over the site, they said that my board went too far and they targeted me alone. An nkl for "this character got impaled" and a 3kl for "throws grenade at waifu" prompted an admin letter threatening to close my board, because these 2 harmless messages against fictional characters were not taken down by an arbitrary 9pm deadline that night. I defended the hell out of gwwak at the time, which makes his backstabbing later on even worse.

At some point, a few no-name weirdo accounts showed up on my board to cry about it and say things like "this place is a failure of free speech." It turns out that these people were in one of gwwak's groups and he invited them over. gwwak also believes he was the "final straw" to close my board because he claimed that "personal info" about him leaked - even though my archive of the board shows nothing of the sort, gwwak himself had said that something like this did not count as a leak because he had made it publicly available for years, and this alleged incident did not come up at all when I asked mods why the board got closed. However, I WAS soon subjected to an alt account's diatribe against my board, where he claimed he had worked with mods on an offsite discord server for at least 3 months to get my board closed down (without any means for me to defend myself from these attacks). I did some research on the alt and it turned out to be an AssultTank account, a mod who is friends with gwwak and posted on The Range until I came there (he could not handle my existence). The full story about Assult is in a previous blog entry.

Looking back, gwwak was more involved in this activity than I thought, as he was often talking my board down to mods on other boards, and may have actually been involved on that server designed to close my board down. If so, it would've been an early case of brigade activity (we will get more into this group in part 2). 

2. I would probably have all my accounts, if not for gwwak. After it became obvious that The Range was more of a trap than a safe haven for my members, activity there died down, but gwwak and others continued to follow me from board to board to either constantly mark things or check my account status. Current Events had a group that became known as The Brigade that functions this way - constantly stalking other accounts to report anything they say and get them "in trouble." Like his lies about my board and the MAGA board, gwwak kept his membership in this group hidden but is now known as one of its biggest members. He runs their warned/suspended topics on one of his alt accounts, usually DragonGirlYuki or CarrieChan, celebrating when other users are moderated. He originally kept this behavior off of his main, in an attempt to not tie his main to their brigade activity - the warned/suspended generals ended up getting closed down by the mod staff for abuse - but now gwwak runs smaller individual warned/suspended topics right on his main, with his other brigade members, no longer pretending to be someone else.

The story of gwwak, then, is one of constant deception. His discord server, which was sold as having more "free speech" than others? It certainly has more than Error's, but that is not saying much. gwwak now keeps the exact same mod on his server as Error's - bover87 the former mod and account hijacker, who stole at least 3 accounts that we know of. gwwak has also acknowledged on that server that bover was his brigade mod. I entered that server expecting something different from what it actually was. When gwwak referred to a greater amount of "freedom" on that server, he meant "freedom" mainly for brigade members to keep doing what they do, target and harass other users on Gamefaqs, but coordinating this offsite on their discord server rather than the warned/suspended generals that were being shut down on Gamefaqs for harassment. When I entered this server, I soon found instances of gwwak bashing me and other users behind their backs, claiming he got my board closed down, and so on.

But before I had joined the server, my Ninetails82 account was banned. This is because gwwak made a "TaiIs82 is SUSPENDED!" topic on one of his alts and then @'d his other brigade members to come in and mark anything I said. He even went so far as to ask me to repost my moderated message on an alt, so he could mark it again. It was clearly bait. And while other brigade members in that topic constantly insulted me and tried to provoke a response, all I said in return was "I am an antiracist." But this alone was still enough to get a 12-year account banned from Gamefaqs for "suspension-dodging," a made-up rule that their mod staff said later that month, does not exist. So when I did not have a single violation on that account, the mod staff actually made up a fake "rule" just to get TaiIs82 for anything. But again, I don't blame gwwak for this part, that is clearly a problem with the demented Gamefaqs mod staff. I was still on friendly terms with gwwak at this time, as he pretended to be friendly with me, which is why I joined his server after getting banned.

3. I was kicked off gwwak's server, and other servers as a result, over total lies. This is where it gets into offsite activity and the brigade server, which is all on gwwak. Consider how whipped you have to be, to demand that users offsite also abide by the dumbest Gamefaqs TOU provisions. You are under absolutely no obligation to do so, but some Gamefaqs users are so obsessed, they take the TOU with them and choose to live like that. Normally you get away from Gamefaqs to AVOID the petty BS, not enhance it. This is why the failed gamefaqs subreddit and the failed CE discord, both run by Error1355, never took off. He kills conversations there as quickly as he does on Gamefaqs, over any minor issue.

It would appear, then, that the supposedly-independent gwwak server was a good idea, but it soon became a brigade-run Mini Me to the Error server. Just as gwwak invited users from my closed board over to his, he also invited more brigade members off of Error's failed server and even made them mods at his place. To make matters even weirder, Error1355 is constantly monitoring the gwwak server, says nothing, and simply looks at what mods like bover do there to seek his approval. It is possible that Error did this in order to have plausible deniability for his bad actions - since the Error server, while it was active, suffered from a series of leaks where the mods were seen as targeting users, insulting them for having autism or another disability (often untrue), and so on. If Error outsourced this shitty behavior to gwwak's server and pretended he had no part in it, he would not be as open to criticism that he was directly involved. Both gwwak and bover (especially bover) would like to become mods on Gamefaqs one day, so the intent to please Error was there. And so they became their own Mini Me brigade.

Eager to satisfy his master, bover began talking about how TaiIs82 (and some other accounts that Error didn't like) should be banned from the gwwak server, and quickly went looking for ways to accomplish this. He started off by flagging all accounts as read-only in the security settings and would only allow them to post if they verified a phone number, or he gave them his approval through a role. I got around this by asking a different mod for a role. But the instant I returned, bover quickly attacked me over an imagined scheme to reveal personal information on darkprince45 - a user I knew literally nothing about, and had no reason to reveal info on, let alone criticize in any way. If anything, I briefly defended him like I defend all warned/suspended users, and supported him coming to the server if he wanted to. But at this point it was clear that bover, at least, wanted me gone by any means necessary - even if it meant total lies. Here's where gwwak went off the rails too.

Even at this point, I was friendly with gwwak and thought he would unban me that same night, because bover was just rabid and way out of line. Instead, gwwak repeated what bover said and then shunned me totally. In hindsight, it was the same play that he had claimed in order to attack my community board - someone's personal information was about to get leaked, ban TaiIs82. And both times, absolutely no evidence and no leaks followed. But that wasn't the point. The point was to smear me - and in this case, bover was so hysterical that he threatened to SWAT me if he knew my address because "darkprince is a cop and you're committing a crime bro!" Nothing that I said was anywhere close to problematic, let alone questionable legally, and in fact nothing was done at all. So to think that bover could make these absolutely insane claims about me as if he were judge, jury, executioner and crackpot lawyer, while gwwak said nothing to defend me, was the ultimate backstab. Especially after I had defended all of gwwak's behavior on my board for months and backed him up whenever there was a mod raid for a frickin' nkl. But he couldn't spend a second on me.

Actually, that's not entirely true. gwwak has read everything I've said about him since then, including this blog post, and then cried about it on practically any message board that he brings his baggage to on Gamefaqs. He could've resolved this in 1 night by talking to me, but instead he decided to engage in an ongoing 3-month forum war that is entirely one-sided (him and his brigade buddies would mark anything I post on sight, so he smears me all day unopposed from his safe space). Anything I say about gwwak on reddit (reposted below) also gets mass-marked by the brigade, and just yesterday I learned that my reddit account had suspicious activity/a hacking attempt placed on it. If gwwak is not responsible, he should say so, but he has remained silent. And when he does talk on Gamefaqs, he goes on Hellhole to say that ONE non-violation post on SPQR that criticizes his abuse of the MAGA board is proof that the whole board has to come down. Even among the mod staff, I am hard-pressed to find one that is this much of a mass-reporting crybaby.

When it comes to a lot of dumb things said about me, I let them slide. It is only when the falsehoods put my accounts in danger (such as "TaiIs82 is suing Gamefaqs"), that's when I step in and shoot them down. But this lie about "TaiIs82's message board posts are a crime" really takes the cake when it comes to abject stupidity and desperation. I have every right to defend myself against these rantings, and I did - by replying to leaked screens already made public by others, or released to me by someone else (since I had been kicked from the server at that point and couldn't possibly have released them myself). I have never released the contents of private, semi-confidential, beta testing, whatever, for all these years. I happened to make 1 exception to shit-talking on a discord server that was already all over reddit, with the people on that server saying themselves that all of it can be considered public, which I simply replied to in my defense because they were freaking out like it was some sort of armchair legal drama. But all this is lost once the false rumor's out and the typical brigade members are smearing me. And yet through all this, ironically, I remained silent about gwwak's abuse for an additional 1-2 months, hoping to work this out with him personally or receive some explanation for his bad behavior which never came.

Now, I'm a patient person and I actually walk the walk when it comes to censorship, unlike gwwak. I still haven't revenge-reported a single message that gwwak has posted, even though he spammed hundreds of messages on the SPQR board that the mods would find disruptive. But as far as patience goes with being friendly, I think that has finally run out after several years when 1) you talk down my board to mods, spam and try to close it down, 2) you try to bait my accounts and get them banned with the brigade's help, 3) you ban me from a discord server and make up some total shit about me like I'm some sort of criminal, scaring other servers from even having me exist there, refusing to work this out with me or explain yourself for months as you smear me everywhere else. What else? Abuse site power to censor the MAGA board, complain that SPQR even exists because of 1 post you don't like, mass-report me with your brigade friends to the extreme lengths of bumping 6-month old topics of mine that you stalked to dead boards just to find something to mark a second time, cry to reddit with the same mass-reporting of anything you don't like, and so on. 2 years of acting like you loved my board, and others, only to backstab them at every turn, running alts on at least 3 browsers to get around the block lists of people you're harassing, using those alts to lie your way into leadership on other boards run by people who don't want your main there. Falsely claiming you are lax on free speech to boards you want to sneak into, while reporting their users and making warned/suspended topics about them everywhere else, melting down over the smallest things you don't like such as the time you decided to spoil a forum game and ruin it with a tantrum longer than this paragraph, just because you didn't have control over it and didn't like who was running it. And probably trying to have this callout taken down as well, like you do on the MAGA board when anyone questions you too much for your liking. You are a total fraud.

Reddit reposts after the break. Note how at least one of gwwak's brigade mods, Conflict, came to attack me on an alt and possibly mass-mark these messages for him. As you can see, it's a lot like Gamefaqs when they want to cry and have content taken down - they loaded the comments section with insults, orientation smears and so on, and then said that their own harassment posts were the reason why reddit should close the whole thing down. The brigade does this a lot on the MAGA board when they attack topics with spam, insults, etc. and gwwak goes along with it to close the topic.

 What does Red Ventures do? Let's find out...

 Note: this piece originally appeared on r/gamefaqscurrentevents before being taken down by an automated bot. At the time of its writing, sources claimed that "up to" 100 layoffs would take place across CNET. Since then, we have learned that round 1 of the layoffs consisted of AT LEAST 100 employee terminations.

Now that round 1 of layoffs is over - up to 100 jobs cut, with Gamespot Australia and TV Guide hardest hit - ViacomCBS is preparing to hand off CNET to the mysterious RV.

https://twitter.com/RedVentures

RV itself has acknowledged that this is a question that they often get, but the answers aren't forthcoming. You will find the standard corporate boilerplate of feeling inclusive, and unlocking potential, and inspiring synergy for growth and all the buzzwords you'd expect from a forward thinkin' company.

My best prediction, when you look through the fog of feelgood catchphrases, is their CEO's comment about "unlocking the potential of legacy brands" with "legacy" being the keyword. They will look at the brands that still have some name recognition, attempt to monetize off of that, and ditch the rest.

Some comments I came across

https://www.reddit.com/r/giantbomb/comments/j7ob6h/cbsi_red_ventures_layoffs/

"They're buying the branding and content legacy. RV likely has an engineering staff who can assume all the backend responsibilities. Considering what their portfolio is too they'll likely reduce headcount to focus on just churning out content."

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/cbsi-sells-cnet-metacritic-gamespot-and-giant-bomb-to-red-ventures-a-digital-marketing-firm.1565995/

"These are people who create nothing trying to justify their existence via the vaguest language possible. It sounds like they just want the analytics and not the actual sites."

https://twitter.com/hEnereyG/status/1305584781955010561

"I don't want to be a Debbie Downer...Maybe Red Ventures will start a new trend of buying web brands and then NOT hollowing them out, laying off everyone possible, and then collecting a bunch of interns to maintain advertorial factories full of affiliate links to Amazon or Mattress companies! Anything is possible!"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/viacomcbs-nears-deal-to-sell-cnet-to-red-ventures-for-500-million-11600057067

"Red Ventures plans to invest in CNET, GameSpot and ZDNet—sites that focus on technology news and product reviews—and to expand the company’s e-commerce business, according to people familiar with the matter. A focus will be improving the design and performance of the sites, they said."

Is Gamefaqs going to survive with the whole "well, TECHNICALLY we're part of Gamespot" bit that they do? Because they aren't mentioned anywhere. Maybe Gamefaqs will be folded into Gamespot again, given the redundancies? RV will likely keep content like the guides, but Gamefaqs in its current form is not surviving. They're either getting a site overhaul at some point along Red Ventures monetization lines, or they'll decide the effort isn't worth it and just put it all under one roof at a redesigned Gamespot. I feel the least confident about the message boards, but you never know at this point.

https://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2020/10/red-ventures-cnet-viacomcbs-layoffs/

"The company currently operates Healthline, Cord Cutters News, The Points Guys, BankRate.com and CreditCards.com and has a history of acquiring news websites and relaunching them into marketing blogs with a primary mission of selling goods and services to consumers under the guise of journalism."

https://twitter.com/JTGenter/status/1305502599806935041

"Is this good?

"Depends. Do you like how CNET is currently run or anyone working there? If so: no, it's not good. Do you think CNET should do a bunch of sponsored content and milk the brand dry? If so, enjoy the ride!"

The biggest chunk of the reactions I saw were people telling Red Ventures not to touch the Giantbomb staff. They have a lot of concerned fans.

In contrast, here's the sole comment about Gamefaqs that I've seen turn up elsewhere.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/cbsi-sells-cnet-metacritic-gamespot-and-giant-bomb-to-red-ventures-a-digital-marketing-firm.1565995/page-2

"Are we finally going to have a purge of the historically corrupt GameFAQs staff?"

Oh, and one more thing: one of the layoffs tells us something we already knew...

https://twitter.com/thewillennium/status/1314632087308103688

"As bad as it looks from the outside, I promise it's even more of a fucking mess on the ground. The company has been a non-stop trashfire since at least the Viacom merger"

Who IS TaiIs82? (and is he hot?)

From time to time, many questions about TaiIs82 and his mental state have surfaced on gamefaqs.gamespot.com. TaiIs82 - not to be confused with Tails82 - is known mainly on CE for being one of the contributors to this very blog. Fresh off of an attention-grabbing complaint to the FCC, TaiIs is ready to sit down with us for a spur-of-the-moment AMA (Ask Myself Anything).

Q: Are you hot?

A: Yes. Next question.

Q: Are you crazy?

A: Surprisingly no, even though I am talking to myself right now LOL! But I'm just a regular person who is dedicated. You would not be able to pick me out IRL. In fact, I could be behind you right now...

I think the accusations people throw at me are hilarious, so I don't discourage them. With one exception: I can't stand that white supremacist BS. In fact I had a 12-year account banned a few months ago because I said "I am an anti-racist." This may be the worst decision the site has ever made. Quite frankly, I don't think that any GameFAQs moderator who defends that horrid decision of theirs is in any position to question the mental state of others.

Q: Some people say that the mods target you because you are a gwwak supporter. Care to elaborate?

A: gwwak and I had a symbiotic relationship going on for a while, yeah. I had this community board called Better Than Hellhole! which was basically just a mirror of the mod-enforced Hellhole board on Gamefaqs, with one difference: the topics that mods locked on that board would be reposted there, and left unlocked so the conversations could continue. The board became rather popular and made its way up the community boards list, and it also helped that trolling and mild flaming didn't have to be enforced on the community board if the owner didn't want to. gwwak was really keen on the board and said he was becoming a TaiIs supporter, even requesting a leadership role on the board. 

However, things took a turn for the worse when a couple users joked about throwing grenades at anime waifus and this was considered "too offensive" for Gamefaqs (at the same time full Mortal Kombat fatality videos were okay. Go figure). Apparently there was some mod who took his fictional anime waifus seriously, and so does SBAllen, because I quickly received an admin letter warning me that my board would be closed down. This was about the same time that the Sex board was created as a joke by its first owner, was completely unwatched and had some serious issues bordering on pedophilia, but that board is still open while mine is not. A few months later, I logged in one day and my whole board was locked down

I never did find out what message(s) they closed the board down for, and it happened so suddenly that poor gwwak couldn't raid my sticky topics for AMP. Then some mod alt posted on gwwak's board revealing that they had been working outside the system for at least 3 months on some discord server to complain about my board and have it closed down (anime waifus are serious business). gwwak was also under pressure to denounce his TaiIs supporter status in order to save his board, The Range. He invited me there and the instant I posted 1 message, AssultTank threw a hissy fit and said he was never going to visit the board again just because I was there. So unfortunately I have no more AMP to offer gwwak, even though our active topics are still sitting behind a board lock on Better Than Hellhole! We hang out at the Official CE Discord these days and I do things like ask him to create a gwwak82 account in solidarity with me, you know, the usual things that any sane person does.

Q: So you had a board closed down for being free-speech, and an account banned for being anti-racist. Why do you think mods hate you this much?

A: It comes with the fame, yo. I have never done anything malicious on the site, never hacked anything, never stole an account...but I am Enemy Number One when I appear on their radar. This is partly because I have a gift at this, but also because I am the stand-in for annoyed users just as Error1355 is the stand-in for bad mods. Our conflict is the abstract personified. Just as a lot of people blame Error for their moderations since he does it all day, has no life and defends some of the dumbest moderation decisions out there...so too am I attacked as the Chief Troublemaker because I am the most vocal in calling out their BS. When ex-mod bover87 stole an account and this was exposed, I was not the one who did that. I simply blog'd about what happened. Neither did I have anything to do with Error's obesity photos leaking. But because I am in the general vicinity I am the target. Heck, I'm the target even when I'm NOT there. I haven't posted in 2 months going on 3, and people still see imaginary alts of mine wherever they go. It is TaiIs Derangement Syndrome in many ways.

Q: Do you ever get tired of it?

A: Define "it." Sure I've been tired of their mod BS for many years, but I have to have some fun doing this. Surely you know that, me. So I am not tired of having fun.

Q: But don't you just feel like going back to a reformed user sometimes? What do you have to say about people who knew you from board hunting and so on?

A: To those people, I am very, very sorry. But just as my community board no longer exists, some things simply aren't possible anymore. They. Banned. Me. For. Being. Anti. Racist. There is really nothing I could go back to. They couldn't get me on any actual terms of use violations so they invented new ones, until they got to this point. If they banned me for a message like that, they are banning me for ANYTHING. I assume that any future board hunting or harmless posts would be targeted by the mods the same way they've attacked me for nothing in the past. I simply can't take the time to make future contributions if I will just end up getting insulted for them and treated badly.

Q: Alex Benson? Really?

A: I go by many names, some made-up, sometimes real. My real name may be out there somewhere, maybe not. I will neither confirm nor deny, because I like sending stalkers on wild goose chases. Maybe I have used my name before, maybe not, and I use other names to muddy the waters. Maybe I drop my real name from time to time out in the open somewhere and nobody knows the difference.

Q: Sounds complicated. Why all the twists and turns? We're probably wondering how you got here?

A: Oh sure. Quite a simple start, Gamefaqs was (once) popular and there were a ton of blue coins hidden in Super Mario Sunshine. I wanted to find the stragglers in my game. Then it sorta ballooned into looking up any neat cheats for other games I owned. No board account until 2008 though. I was a bit put off by all the personal information you had to put in at the time to create an account, including my real name! At that age it honestly didn't occur to me that you could lie on the form, or if you did you could get in trouble. But I eventually took the dive and here we are. I have another account now and I was surprised at how easy it was compared to the long form back then!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the game of the day, a good board all around, although from an early age the mods were already making it clear that there was no fun allowed. My first moderations were for stuff like the Phoenix Wright customized objections, which were labeled "disruptive." *rolls eyes* I guess the Objection noise at the start of your message could scare and deeply, deeply scar someone who clicked on the link...even though clickable links weren't even a thing on Gamefaqs yet. You may notice that when I post, I also keep a lot of the old Gamefaqs conventions, like italicizing instead of the new quotes system, and asterisking any swear words. In fact, I'm probably the biggest adherent to the terms of use on Gamefaqs. Even if they removed a rule, I kept adhering to it, on the (correct) assumption that they will moderate you for practically anything over there. I've seen what former mods say about the system there, and most recently it turns out that bover and I agree on a lot of things. I think he put it simply and accurately: SBAllen thinks that "simplifying" the terms of use means shortening the text on the page, while still keeping the same enforcement and the same legalistic and complex mess that it is. This is what I meant when I said for years that Gamefaqs has a complex labyrinth of secret rules. While the terms today say "users cannot do this and that, which includes x and y" it ends up including a lot more unwritten things until it turns into "users cannot do x, y, z, x-y, (z+x)/g, x2: electric boogaloo..." but most importantly, "anything that might slightly annoy one of our moderators."

And then there was my foray into Politics, which has a lot for mods to dislike. I did get a bit confused when people said I behaved in 2 separate ways on the boards, one as the friendly games and board hunting person, another as "politics troll." But I never trolled, just gave my opinion on things, and I'm still a friendly person. I think I've been amazingly friendly, considering the things that have been sent my way. But there was never a point I "became a troll." I had both the Tails82 and TaiIs82 accounts rolling back in 2009. I think this split personality thing came up because I used a naming trick where Tails82 and TaiIs82 look the same on Gamefaqs due to the font. One account I would use mostly for board hunting, and one I would use for politics. This would divide my activity into logical chunks, while my name across the site would look the same for everything. This is another thing I don't get about the "troll" part. If I was a troll, I would've made a completely different account name for politics and I would've avoided a LOT of grief sent at my main. But RaptorLC took my account split as a sign that I had a secret trolling alt (how is it secret? It's my name!) and at some point made it his life's mission to take my "troll alt" away. Keep in mind that this is the guy who is obsessed with karma and bought a pile of Gamefaqs T-shirts just for the karma points bonus that the site would give him. So it was considered a deep wrong to him when my main would not lose karma for posting things on politics with another account. He was the board police and I was committing an imaginary karma crime in his head, and he just couldn't stand it. So after struggling to punish me in some way for 10 years or so, and with dozens of his trademark childish insults sent my way, when he finally landed a hit this decade that was probably a very pleasing day to his racist ass.

Q: But what about Error?

A: My first big interaction with Error was when he was plugging some joke mod complaint form on his website, and I filled it out in a matching fashion. Something about the most recent moderation I had received, followed by a statement that Gamefaqs had a censorship problem with LGBT and sympathizers. Old rules? Let's remember that back when I signed up, you weren't allowed to talk about gay anything at all. It's a gaming website. If the word "gay" came up, it was likely you were using it as an insult. And there was really no other reason to talk about it on the site, so you almost couldn't bring it up for anything else. This is another reason why I find it funny - when they say "you agreed to the rules when you signed up" - I signed up to something very different. You could even say that the terms were more "anti-gay" than me! But then the Politics board got going and...turned into what it is now. But who can say whether things swing the other way again in the next 10 years?

Like many mods, Error misses context or worse, invents some of his own - aka his rule where anyone who ever complains about a moderation on Hellhole is just there to be a troublemaker. It's a good thing that this board cop only has mod tools and not a gun. But anyway...I was responding to a clear joke form. I ended it on something like "you can be my mole and help me smoke out the renegade mod! Unless YOU are the renegade mod, then I will never stop until you are demodded and Gamefaqs is free again" and then signed at the end with a "cheerfully yours, TaiIs82" for a sudden comedic shift. But Error can't seem to pick up on these things, which is partly why he's a terrible mod. The other part was when he followed me around the boards for 5-6 years with the image of the joke mod dispute form, reposting it after anything I said like he was a total stalkerish weirdo. Which - again - is another thing I find funny, when I later would get modded just for posting in the same topic as him. So THAT was apparently going too far, but not what he did. I guess it isn't harassment if a mod does it.

Speaking of harassment: Error1355 directly caused 2 account closures, when he was also convinced that a 10-year account on the site was far right and got into a twitter war with the dude. Error even linked to it from CE like it was a board invasion and essentially inviting his buddies to go after the guy's personal account offsite. This "far right" user ended up closing his account and today he posts more anti-Trump comments on twitter than Error does. Again...all I can do is find this hilarious. Another person driven off the site by Error's failure to read.

Q: But why did you make the blog, TaiIs? Whyyyyyy?

A: 2 reasons: to inform and entertain. I can say things that they don't allow on the site, repost moderations and so on. There's also a sizable amount of TaiIs supporters out there, such as gwwak who love the popcorn. While I did want to get some attention with this, it was not attention just to get attention. Even though I was getting a number of views, I would not keep up activity just to get clicks. No imaginary filler outrages against the mods, like they do when they go looking to mod someone for imaginary violations.

At the heart of the blog is this: after years of seeing or receiving fairly-dumb to very-dumb moderations on the site, and with mods claiming "you can't prove this and you can't prove that," I set out to show they're full of it. That was 2014 and I went at it with the documentation to the point of overkill. Today, the mods there are totally underwater and we don't have to prove anything anymore, it's assumed. But again, I was not the one to turn opinion against the moderators, the mods did that themselves. I was just vocal about it. And at the end of the day, I consider it an absolute win. I will gladly be known as the guy with the blog, in exchange for what the mods are now known for.

Q: Any final comments?

A: ELIZA!! I WROTE THIS FOR YOUUUUU!! I'M NOT CRAZY!! DUNCAN ONLY NAMED A POKEMON AFTER YOU, BUT I GAVE YOU MY LIFE'S STORY!! AND IF THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH I HEREBY DEDICATE MY FCC COMPLAINT TO YOU!! CHEERFULLY YOURS!! I HOPE YOU LIKE IT!!

...

Oh, and 2020 is not over yet, readers. There's more on the way!

TaiIs82 Announces His New Home Board: Hellhole!

Hello everyone and new visitors,

As some of you may know, I have been frozen out of my old board for quite a while now. In the past year, numerous community boards have reached out to me and had me on as a leader, and I find it all so flattering. There are really some great community boards out there and you should check them out.

In the meantime I thought I'd settle down again and proclaim a new home board. While the competition was fierce I decided that these community boards were all like my children. How could I pick one over the other? I shouldn't have to choose.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/573081-hellhole

I decided that my new board is now Hellhole. It was the closest name match to my last home board and it was a good idea to keep friends close, and mods closer.

A few caveats:

1) Don't invade my board, but feel free to refer to it as "TaiIs's board" from this point on.

2) Don't be surprised if Hellhole is quickly closed down now that I've announced that it's my home board.

Have a great day and I hope to see none of you there!

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!

Are You on Error1355's List of Troublemakers?

Short answer? If you've ever complained about Gamefaqs moderations, yes.

Perpetual bad mod Error1355 is back at it again, after recent criticism of the Gamefaqs moderators and their frequent ridiculous moves. It's no surprise that Error has a problem with people who don't like how badly the moderation system is run, but this past week he decided to launch off this doozy: "the only people who say I'm bad at 'user relations' are the troublemakers."

Mind you, this is someone whose greatest contributions to Hellhole include random gibberish and showboating about accounts he's gone after.

Criticism from all the "troublemakers" was swift:

"f*** out of here with that. For once pull the head out of your ass...I'm expecting to have my account terminated after that but this had to be said." -Miz_iZ_AwSOme_X

"Error. As per usual, you're not helping, and only using this board to insult people." -BurgerTime79

"I don't understand why error won't resign" -ripparagon

"Do you really take to your Twitter account to discuss the moderations you have instituted as a Gamefaqs moderator? If true I find that to be very unprofessional behavior. My interest and visits to this website have waned in the last few months, and behavior like this by people who represent Gamefaqs and CBSi does little to encourage future use. As someone who is in a position of authority, you are required to rise above the commonality of this site's regular users Error. You have failed in that regard." -ILikesCheese

"error1355 could stand to be a better mod...And the gamefaqs moderation team in general" -Rika_Furude

While yet another longtime Gamefaqs user (18 years!) was ready to leave:

"I'm wondering if I should just close my nearly 18-year-old account. I have recently kept getting moderated for flaming over on the politics board (261 board), but there are plenty of users that have been constantly trolling there, yet they don't get moderated for anything of the sort, even though posters like myself have moderated them for such...I have gotten placed on warned status a few days ago. If they're gonna threaten to suspend me for something like that while letting everyone else get away scot free for constantly trolling, then fine, I think I'm just gonna f***ing quit posting on these messageboards altogether! I'm sick of this s***. I've just about lost my patience." -Shinobi120

Other, past criticism of mod-user relations include the infamous "cultural differences" from the former Gamefaqs community manager (a comment against dating black people that was largely viewed as racist), as well as that time a moderator was caught red-handed hijacking the account of another long-time user, as Gamefaqs staff spent the entire weekend telling users who had been there since 2000 - and would vouch for the guy who had his account stolen - that they were actually super wrong and also whining babies. These would also fall under Error1355's list of "troublemakers."

Here are some more "troublemakers" who have bothered Error with their complaints:

"how sad that someone has modship yet pulls s*** like this, or the fact that mods like error, raptor and burgers are constantly aware of the [account hijacking] history and openly cover for them." -Josh__Gordon

"whats stupid is when you are suspended by a horrible moderator like Error you have no recourse. you cant contest anything b/c the site wont let you view your messages........where is the logic in that? and of course no higher level mod is going to review it or overturn it...........there should be a way to get him canned." -iamintents

"Error once contested my mod dispute by saying he "knew what I really meant" (even if my message said otherwise), that he wanted me to lose my account. In a different instance he gave me that "i award you no points, this is the most stupid thing... May God have mercy on your soul" line." -ElectroSable

"Instead of giving an answer acting in a mature manner as mods should act since they of all people are supposed to be the ones that set the example of how the rules should be followed, in fact, do the exact opposite by engaging users in a way that is quite condescending and rude which is really no way to treat anyone. From my time here it seems that Error and Raptor are the biggest culprits of engaging in other users this way. This is what happens when someone with even the finest bit of power is given to them. It'll be a cold day in hell though when these two actually know how to act appropriately when speaking to someone even when they disagree with them. I sure hope you don't treat people this way at your real life job." -cowabunga1984

"Literally a 3kl with no history for doing something Error said is ToS safe. Never change, mods. Never change. And before you start, no, me accepting the moderation doesn't mean you were right. It means I want it cleared faster." -Th3_Butt3rfly

"[Baseman, Burgess and Admiral] all got demodded for their controversial behavior. Rather than being controversial, Error is outright incompetent, so he would have to be demodded for entirely different reasons than those three, so we don't know if it'll happen." -FriendSystem

"[Canned mod] Burgess had it coming. Every single little piece of it. He and error literally tried to get me banned by abusing auto-suspensions." -ROD

"If you're going to hold a position of authority, you should at least be a little bit humble/cordial/professional/whatever. Error straight doesn't give a f***. He'll troll the f*** out of you then mod you for getting mad. He's like the cop that tail gates you then pulls you over for speeding when you try to put some distance between him." -mfwahwah

"Many of you think it's okay that because of your status as a moderator, you have the right to troll. You don't. Please stop f***ing with us. Burgess, stop trolling people and then modding those who retaliate. Error, just stop provoking people. tbh you have no sense of humor...You are both corrupt and biased and need to do your duty as a moderator to keep these boards a safe place, not mod the victims instead of the bullies...Focus on the queue, and stop silently locking topics that don't need to be locked." -DN-boards1

"Literally trolling the users again and antagonizing them again...This is why you need to be demodded." -ElectroSable

"Error and raptor both fail really hard in mod to user relations. Take gmo, lady, and yoshifan1 not once have I seen them give sass rude remarks or anything of that nature they useually just answer the topic question at hand in a professional manner. Error and raptor on the other give rude remarks and even start making fun of people getting moderated which isn't ok." -ripparagon

"So how exactly do mods get away with trolling/flaming people after banning them?...people like Rator, Error and more so Gavi are allowed to bad mouth users on here especially people asking about things which IRC what this board [Hellhole] was originally created for yet you people act like you have some stick up your ass and have to put people down for merely asking about their moderations." -The_Santa_Claus

"Burgess/Raptor/Error I feel great pity for since they enjoy trolling forums and that seems to be their only source of joy...Allen is just ugh. He trusts his trolls mods for whatever reason." -BrutaI_Deluxe

"Raptor is just sad, Admiral and Error are legit trolls." -papermonkey21

"I am blowing the whistle on Error1355...Error is constantly targeting a specific user on CE and closing said user's topics with no explanation or chance to appeal...How is the topic creator supposed to have a normal GameFAQs browsing experience when he is the target of a vicious, misguided witch hunt by a moderator drunk on power? The moderator lock, frankly, is crap. It gives moderators free reign to lock topics while A.) Not saying which mod locked it, and B.), the more important one, not saying why the topic was locked." -Nuffinz0rz

"[Error and Raptor are] bad role models for newer mods. Both of you two's behavior is chronically, publicly inappropriate and bushleague. I know this is just gaming forum, but authority parallels abound in modern community that you two are not publicly competent at this job...You two are probably the majority source of community relations problems on the site's end. It's sad...you're a good example of a bad moderator. At least in public. One that you hope new moderators look at and say, "I'm not going to be like him in 10 years." That's your only shot at being a good influence on a new mod." -benjjjamin

"I got modded for mentioning Error like twice. Nowhere in any of the rules does it say you can't mention someone, and when I contested it the mod said some s*** like "oh well now you know" like what the f***" -DocileOrangeCup

"Error, please, PLEASE, PLEASE, leave me alone. It's starting to get to the point where you're harassing me now." -DN-boards1

All this is just a sampling of the many complaints made against Error1355 (and other mods) on Gamefaqs in recent years. Offsite, there's even more. But Error will continue to attack the Gamefaqs users he doesn't like, rather than listen to anybody.

But one thing is no longer in dispute, at least...(WALLY ALERT):

Error1355 has finally admitted that wally was a "bad mod" looooong after this blog called him out on it, years after he stepped down, and waaaaay after it would've made any difference. Better (super) late than never, but this was after all that time they covered for wally and let him do whatever he wanted. So it kinda makes you wonder: how many "bad mods" is Error1355 covering for today?

Gamefaqs is Evil - Gamefaqs Mods Defend Murderers

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: unless it's someone criticizing said evil!

We're leading off with perhaps my most provocative headline ever, seeing as Gamefaqs is, in fact, a terrible place, with moderators who are even more terrible. With every unjust moderation made by them, attacking my character, I will add yet another post to this blog - and the long litany of complaints elsewhere - giving Gamefaqs the bad press that it so richly deserves. Because GameFAQs sucks. And so does this last moderation.

Meet the latest government statistics that the GameFAQs moderators don't want you to see! Facts which, since these ignorant and evil Gamefaqs scumf***ers thought they could censor, I will now constantly draw attention to and leave up here forever:

"Meet the 50,000 DACA criminals let in by Obama"

http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/06/18/dhs-factsheet-shows-1000s-daca-crimes/

Obama Admin Approved 50,000+ DACA Amnesty Applicants with Criminal Records

Those details were hidden by Obama’s deputies, who also hid information about the DACA illegals’ education credentials and work histories.

They hid it because none of it was good...

17,079 DACA recipients have been arrested more than two times...DACA-approved people have been arrested for ten murders, 31 rapes, 95 kidnappings, 187 robberies, 425 hit-and-runs, 2,007 assaults, 4,611 drug offenses, 6,629 thefts, plus many crimes related to their illegal status — 11,861 immigration crimes and 20,926 non-DUI driving-related offenses...

Obama’s deputies were very forgiving of the crimes. For example, 2,503 people with arrest records for battery were allowed into the amnesty. So were 2,378 DUI drivers, 6,629 thieves, and 1,173 burglars.

Overall, 70.8 percent of applicants with one arrest were approved for the amnesty, as were 59.9 percent of people with two arrests and 51.7 percent of people with three arrests. One-third, or 33 percent, of applicants with eight arrests were included in the amnesty, as were 18.8 percent of people with a record of 10 or more arrests.

Thousands upon thousands of crimes which, you would think, someone would be interested in stopping. Crimes which you would think are fair to bring up at a place that calls itself a Politics board. Crimes which, if I recall correctly, the vast majority of Americans oppose and which were frequently called out and condemned by one of the most successful, totally-from-scratch grassroots presidential campaigns in this country's history. You would think that with the extent of all these crimes, along with the issue's constant presence in the political realm, that this is a mainstream and fair issue to raise. Not according to Gamefaqs airheads, who would rather cover up the crimes and censor based on their own preconceived biases.

And it is a radical bias, make no mistake about it. We have documented it right here quite well in recent years. There is absolutely nothing moddable about the facts, other than some pissant GameFAQs moderator doesn't like these facts. Now, when GameFAQs mods decided to censor based on their opinions, I don't mean just that topic. And when I raise a title that provocative, I don't just mean that they defend murderers by taking these murder and rape stats down, trying to cover them up. I also mean the daily, constant stream of BS on that very same board that they either do nothing about, or actively jump in and endorse. I'm talking about open calls to lynch politicians and attack people with violent lynch mobs, crimes which are apparently acceptable discourse on the GameFAQs politics board, even though criticism of said crimes (like the post above) is not allowed. And as you can see from that link, I don't even have to think back for examples of this. They happen every single day.

Now, wally used to be the poster child of poor GameFAQs modsmanship. But even though he still makes frequent calls for violence against political opponents - and has a weird penchant for things such as child rape-robot pedophilia - he's now a former mod. I don't miss him (and really, you can't - despite making a fake account bet on the 2016 election to close down and leave the board forever, he welched on both promises and continues to be wrong about almost everything to this day).

But no, I'm afraid that the award for sucky Gamefaqs moderator now goes to Error1355, who is my prime suspect in this latest crime cover-up. I can tell you exactly what's happened here, with near absolute certainty, because I've seen this game before.

Readers may recall the moderation I received because I (again) posted accurate statistics in a topic last month. Note the time from that last warning. I have brought this little game of theirs up before, and it always plays out the same way: the warning happens, I appeal it, and then absolutely nothing happens for about a month. Suddenly, near the end of the month, a second warning pops up right before the first one clears from the account history. Every. Time.

The second warning is always timed to string along the penalties on this account. It doesn't matter if the message in question has been on the boards without any problem for 10 days or more. They will go into my active messages and pick something at random to mod me for. Since they could find absolutely nothing to censor about LGBT for this month (a favorite censorship point for them), they have instead hit upon a random post on a random subject from days ago.

It is in this way, through this timed personal targeting, that 1) the warning status continues virtually indefinitely, 2) any harmless message can be slapped with a warning, since "the last warning proves they are a repeat offender," and 3) since they know the most recent warning is a harmless message and absurd moderation, they time it so I have no appeal ability - they make sure it's timed a few days before the last appeal expires and goes off my account.

Why do I refer to the moderator in question as "they"? Because even though Error1355 is the prime suspect, the one who hates me enough to do this, and the one petty enough to stalk accounts, we really can't say for certain. This is because GameFAQs has a policy of COLLECTIVE MOD COWARDICE - rather than debate on the Politics board, as everyone else does, they remove messages they don't like and hide behind anonymity. Therefore, I have no choice but to blame them all collectively and call every mod on GameFAQs a coward.

So here goes!

Alucard188, you are a coward.

AmegaiShiryuu,  you are a coward.

AssultTank,  you are a coward.

billyb2004,  you are a coward.

Bluffnix,  you are a coward.

Caelthus,  you are a coward.

Centurion,  you are a coward.

Citrik,  you are a coward.

Crazymaori,  you are a coward.

Dark Magic,  you are a coward.

Deathjester,  you are a coward.

Deja Blue 03,  you are a coward.

Devin Morgan,  you are a coward.

Error1355,  you are a double coward.

Exolamb102,  you are a coward.

FridgeBeard,  you are a coward.

Ghost_Turtle,  you are a coward.

gmo7897,  you are a coward.

Hikewne,  you are a coward.

jimmyjones69,  you are a coward.

jondias,  you are a coward.

KookyCouture,  you are a coward.

Lady_Ninane,  you are a coward.

LanHikari10,  you are a coward.

Life Sympathy,  you are a coward.

Lord_of_BeefDip,  you are a coward.

Magna Stryker,  you are a coward.

MMZ,  you are a coward.

ne14a6t9r,  you are a coward.

Optimus Magnus,  you are a coward.

Orbo99,  you are a coward.

RaptorLC,  you are a coward.

RySenkari,  you are a coward.

SBAllen,  you are probably not responsible, but I'll keep you here just to point out that your GameFAQs moderators suck and they're cowards.

ScarletSuzumiya,  you are a coward.

ScarlettEve,  you are a coward.

Seaman9999,  you are a coward.

shmirlywhirl, you are a coward.

Shotgunnova,  you are a coward.

Silent Sniper IV,  you are a coward.

Silverhaze2525,  you are a coward.

spartan99ruler,  you are a coward.

spooky96,  you are a coward.

stahlbaum,  you are a coward.

TarElessar,  you are a coward.

Team Rocket Elite,  you are a coward.

TheFifthPerson,  you are a coward.

Tom Clark,  you are a coward.

Tommy873,  you are a coward.

Touchdown Boy,  you are a coward.

TrunksTheMighty1,  you are a coward.

Tyrasibion,  you are a coward.

WafflehouseJK,  you are a coward.

WalkingWiki,  you are a coward.

Wolfieroo,  you are a coward.

yoshifan1,  you are a coward.

Zanzenburger,  you are a coward.

Zilong17, you are a coward.

*phew*

With all that copypasting done, I would just like to point out to all you cowards that if you would actually like to be a civilized human being and try to debate me one day, instead of moderating people over (and/or eating your own) s***, you know where to find me. Because I've been here for 10 years, and I've got at least another 10 in me. I'll be here long after Error1355 becomes such a massive ball of utter idiocy that he crumples in on himself and forms a wormhole to the Stupid Dimension.

Cheerfully yours,

TaiIs82

New Mod Low? HIV-Positivity Defended, Criticism Shunned

A looooong-standing position of this blog has been that mods should avoid censoring other people based on their personal opinions. Unfortunately, the moderators on Gamefaqs continue to inject their personal opinions into their moderations, despite recent changes to the terms of use - and these opinions of theirs are often abhorrent.

Gamefaqs recently made some changes to their site, which didn't go as far as what was originally proposed, but they were significant ones. A lot of rules were relaxed, which is great by us. But on the opposite end of that, a rule against namecalling was expanded in a big way. As for Yours Truly, I can't say that this would have an impact on me, since my arguments do not rely on namecalling but on factual statements - but as for others who like to namecall often, the rule sought to crack down on that. The "playground heckler" rule was criticized by many, as it meant that basically the mods would be playing schoolteacher to five year olds, telling them not to call people "children," "idiots," etc. Long-time memes like "Saxon=joke account" would now get you modded under these rules.

But more importantly for this little entry of our blog, the new rules did away with 3 karma loss notifications. Sounds good? A lot of people thought so, us included. At the same time there are obvious drawbacks. In place of 3kls, you would either be getting a message from the mods (a nanny lecture saying "I'll keep this up, but don't you do it again!") or you'd go straight to a warning. Some questioned why moderators, who already claimed they were overburdened and couldn't keep up with the queue, are now expanding their job to lecture people about messages they weren't even going to take down. But on the more dangerous side of things, people could go straight to warnings - meaning that instead of a 3kl, they would now get their account locked for several days over a single message - and they even wanted to remove disputes so you couldn't defend yourself!

Warnings breed contempt, which is something I can tell you from personal experience. And few things are more contemptible than the mods' ongoing stranglehold over anything to do with HIV issues. This is where their personal opinions come in. If you're in favor of the status quo, great. If you aren't, and if you want to point out that the status quo has failed, prepare to be moderated.

By all accounts, Yours Truly has been a good kid. There has not been a single moderation on this end at any time this year - and quite frankly, we were almost convinced that the mods were done with these games of theirs. But mods are always changing, and there's always someone out there looking to abuse a position. So here we go.

As always, the full text can be found here and here. At issue are basic facts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which a moderator claimed were "misrepresented." Now, as the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions but you aren't entitled to your own facts. It's difficult to see how I misrepresented an article that I quoted extensively from, and almost entirely. It is hard to say how I misrepresented anything when the article literally states "The number of people in the military who take...Truvada, began surging after the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2011." It's data that some people obviously do not like, but it's a fact. Nothing was misrepresented.

My original source was the Washington Examiner, which is the website that the mod took issue with. I don't know why it's any of his business which source I choose, but since he (incorrectly) claimed that the CDC was misrepresented - and that this was the reason for his moderation - I changed the source and went to the CDC directly.


https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6720a1.htm

Would anyone be surprised at what happened next? This "fixed" topic was also taken down and sent straight to warning. Additional details that the moderators don't want anyone to know:

"The maximum estimated annual cost of PrEP to the military health care system is substantial, and new prescriptions for PrEP are expected to continue to rise...In addition, indirect costs associated with HIV-infected personnel who are prohibited from combat deployment might have substantial impact on military unit readiness and ability to accomplish specific missions.

"285 (37%) had at least some college education. The indication for initiating PrEP was most commonly sexual contact with men (87%) and condomless sex (73%); 30% reported exposure to sexual partners with known HIV infection."


Additional information left unquoted: the soldiers obviously didn't get HIV on the battlefield and this was contracted mainly within the US (in a manner which the military itself points out is unprofessional), and that drugs like Truvada are not readily deployable to battlefield situations. Knowing all this, knowing that the cost of HIV per person can ruin their lives to the tune of $450,000, would you assume that this is open to political discussion on a politics board? Well, maybe on a better board than the one at Gamefaqs. Because they were having none of it.

After this additional moderation, it became obvious that I was correct the first time and their real issue with the message was not the source used - but the facts provided. In another shining example of mod work, the moderator claimed that the data was anti-gay:

A Mod/Admin said on 5/27/2018 7:46:55 AM:
You will continue to be moderated if you continue to imply that any man who has sex with another man is 'knowingly having sex with others who have HIV'. This is you generalizing homosexual men as inherently having HIV and that is an offensive stereotype that will not be allowed here.

If anyone is misrepresenting the data here, it's the moderators. If you ctrl+f any of the text from my message, you will not find any mention of gay or homosexual soldiers made by me in that topic. The data from the CDC, which is there for anyone to see, literally says "30% REPORTED EXPOSURE TO SEXUAL PARTNERS WITH KNOWN HIV INFECTION." Does this say "any man who has sex with another man" as the mod claimed? No. Does this mention orientation at all? No. This is another one of those situations where we wish mods could display some evidence of reading comprehension.

Gamefaqs moderators should stop inserting their own political opinions into their moderations, and should look at what the message actually says - none of this "you implied" or "I think you meant to say" which is just their projection of my feelings onto the message, and has nothing to do with what the actual message itself says.

But furthermore, and more troubling for free speech, what if the data HAD said all that? What if the facts were that all men who had sex with men were undermining military readiness, as the mod claimed? Would moderators have banned talk of that as well? Is this an issue we just aren't allowed to talk about, regardless of what the percentage is? As I pointed out within that topic before its deletion, not everyone who smokes will get lung cancer. On any other issue, would discussion be banned? For fear of offending smokers, would a factual correlation between smoking and lung cancer be censored by Gamefaqs unless it could be proven to be 100%? This would be an absurd approach. So why is there a ban on mentioning any correlation between DADT repeal, and the results of said repeal? Why is there special treatment here?

Are there some special groups that just aren't allowed to be criticized, no matter what? Imagine if Gamefaqs did this for a church. Enforced speech codes for protected groups are the modern-day equivalent of blasphemy laws, and I simply don't think that this bigotry has any place in modern society.

And so, since the moderator in question decided to attack my character with "you implied so-and-so" and other made-up accusations, I decided to question their character as well and point out what they're effectively doing through their censorship. As another Gamefaqs user pointed out before the topic's deletion, there are now "HIV-positive" activists who think it's fine and dandy to infect other people with HIV, despite the massive costs to society, despite the damaged and ruined lives that result from it. This group was the target of my criticism, and in the military this was the 30% who self-reported that they knowingly got it that way (it may be higher). Regardless of orientation, I pointed out that the VA is already scandal-plagued, overstretched with waiting lists, as people died without treatment from wounds they received while serving honorably on the battlefield.

What kind of society would justify, and even praise, watching those veterans die while HIV spreads - even though this is a disease that is entirely avoidable? A society that sits back as both of these things happen, is simply wrong. And so, I decided to call out moderators for enabling censorship that seeks to silence anyone who wants to put a stop to both these tragedies:

Why not debate like anyone else if you disagree? I suppose it's because that would require taking a stand for something, rather than hiding behind anonymity. Now, I understand why the person in question doesn't want to play defense for HIV/AIDS on a forum where they would be held accountable for what they say - but that simply means that the person should re-examine their own flawed and gravely incorrect worldview, not sweep under the rug those who are right. I do believe an apology is in order.

As for me, I will never apologize for wanting to end the scourge of HIV/AIDS - and this site continues to remain an embarrassment to the internet when they continue to actively fight against those who do.

I've asked them for an apology. We'll see how it goes.

Terrible Gamefaqs Mods Censor Views, Defend Deserter


Let it never be said that TaiIs82 provokes conflict with Gamefaqs or hypes up stories just to get attention. In truth, we would love to walk away from this blog and be left alone. For that to happen, corrupt Gamefaqs mods need to stop their shallow games. But until then, this will remain one of the few places where censored users have the opportunity to defend themselves - and it's always in defense, from absurd moderator attacks. We even held off from some more recent criticism. But with the attacks that have just occurred, we can do so no longer. It is imperative that we defend ourselves from the mods' most recent hate campaign.

Since users are asking for details, the incident seems to be a repeat of last July 4 - when a huge batch of users were suspended by the site and left in limbo for over a week. CE keeps a running list of warned/suspended users, and there's been a similar surge - the main difference this time is that the admin wasn't off for over a week this time, and could respond more quickly.

This list is certainly useful, but at the same time it raises some obvious questions. Who is tracking all these users and watching for them to be warned/suspended? (And there are indeed some people who go beyond just informing, and root for more). We maintain that there is a group of biased individuals who do not come to the board to contribute, but to destroy - to chill discourse and silence others. A few are well-known to longtime readers of this blog, such as the multiple individuals on Hellhole who openly said that they marked EVERY message by yours truly, just because they didn't like the account. In the past, groups like Snack Attack (formed to mass-mark and censor other people) used to be frowned upon - and were even moderated themselves for making false reports - but apparently the idea continues to this day. Despite losing in a big way, these blind squirrels will find a nut sometime. What do we mean by that? Two things.

Either mods are gullible and fall for the complaints of The Aggrieved, or worse - they are actively working with them to silence people they disagree with. From our experience, both of these factors are at play. There can be 1,000 phony complaints to mods, and all it takes to hit the targeted user is to have 1 get through, either because of a mod who can't read or a mod who is in on it too and goes looking for any reason to damage the targeted account.

My personal favorite moderation happened a few months ago, when I had a message taken down because the moderator disagreed with the topic title (the guy who actually made that topic, and therefore the topic itself, remains up for all time in the site archive). First, for anyone to get "offended" at a title because it said the name of a bill in parliament with an "LOL" attached to the end, is one of the stupidest grounds for moderation I've ever seen. No one is getting offended at that in good faith. But second, assume it was something serious. Assume the title was "Hitler was right, kill all the Jews." If I had posted in that topic and said "That's a disgusting and repugnant view," Gamefaqs mods are so incompetent that they would've punished me instead of the guy who made the topic I'm posting under, because some of them are so bad at it to the point where they don't even bother to read what they're censoring.

That's pretty terrible on its own. But, it goes further than that.

It's no secret to any Hellhole follower that the mods there hold personal grudges - in fact, it's no secret to anyone who has an interaction to these bad apples on any board. They have it in for certain users, and if someone doesn't mark a message they will moderate it directly. RaptorLC is a prime example of this (more on him later). Arbitrary topic locks, arbitrary moderations if he decides you're annoying him...or if he's just bored with the topic.

But before I rant on longer, let's get to the moderations. Enter Warning #1 from about a month ago. On the Politics board, someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to make a topic asking if we should quarantine people with HIV. My response was that we shouldn't do that and it was not a realistic policy. Are we good? Of course not. You see, I was still insensitive because I didn't rule out a quarantine waaaay in the past when it WAS realistic and would've meant stopping half a dozen people at the border. In other words, they warned me because I opposed a quarantine, but didn't oppose it enough.

Why it is any of their business to enforce their personal opinions on everyone is beyond me. But it gets more ridiculous: moderator Lord_of_Beefdip, whose opinions are as long as they are wrong, stepped in to quote me and tell me personally that I am a threat to human rights. Clearly someone this biased and out of it should not be moderating their opinions - at the very least, have someone else look at it. But not only did Beefdip fail to contain his temper, by posting he indicated that he had been through that topic and read the other messages within - none of which he had a problem with. Out of over 60 messages, mine and mine alone was singled out and moderated.

Let's look at what some of the other posts said: first, there's the guy who made the topic itself, asking to quarantine thousands of people today. Don't you think that any mod looking at that topic would've started there? But not a peep from Beefdip.

There were some additional people who agreed with the topic title. No moderations there.

There was a guy who said we should go even further and quarantine "all stupid people." That remained up, too.

There was the guy who said we should treat everyone who has an STD as if they were a bioterrorist. Beefdip was nowhere to be found.

No, out of over 60 posts, Beefdip quoted mine personally - again, "quoting a violation" which was a longstanding site rule not to do, but of course is never enforced on mods or their friends (even as they'll mod me because of some other guy's topic title? Riddle me that).

In fact, mine was the only message that was taken down in that entire topic - until Beefdip finally nuked it to cover his tracks, once I pointed out on CE how biased, targeted and inconsistent the moderations were, along with his mistreatment of me. The train wreck that had unfolded - personally singling me out, modding just me, lying about my position while ignoring multiple messages that actually wanted a quarantine, or worse - all this has no other explanation but mod bias.

By the way, since Beefdip said my opinion was a threat to human rights, I tried that line out in part of my dispute and asked mods not to be "human rights violators" for undermining my free speech. You can guess how that turned out. Lead mod stuck with their guy.

And so we make our way to warning #2, which is the title of this blog post, and which almost would've been a blog entry on its own a few weeks ago considering how awful it was. We don't go out of our way to complain here, but since the mods continue to harass and attack on a daily basis, it's only right for us to defend ourselves.

Warning #2 was for saying that I do not respect deserters like Bergdahl - this was in response to someone who (sarcastically) said that everybody should be respected no matter what, as long as they were in the military for at least a day.

Let's not dwell on the politics for too long, but just keep this in mind: as I mentioned in that topic and elsewhere, Bergdahl is someone who admitted his own guilt and, right up to the end of last month, was still saying that the Taliban treated him better than the US.

The official reason for my moderation was that I could offend someone by "disrespecting the troops."

...To anyone who knows even a speck of what goes on at the Politics board, when in the hell has anyone ever been moderated for that? Also, that wasn't what I was doing at all. The guy was a self-admitted deserter who was dishonorably discharged. Why does Gamefaqs feel compelled to tell me that I'd better respect him, or get censored?

So that night, I took a tally of the other opinions that remained up (and apparently don't offend the mods), including:

- Multiple people who also used my exact same terminology and said that they have zero respect for anyone who voted for Trump, including (and especially) Democrats who had voted for Obama 2 times
- Multiple people who praised an attacker who broke Rand Paul's ribs
- Put a quarantine wall around the entire midwest to punish them for having GOP in their states
- Abraham Lincoln was the worst president ever and he oppressed the Confederate south

These are all opinions that would normally fall under the offensive rule - if we were using my moderations as a baseline. The difference between lovers of free speech and The Offended is that the former act like adults and can turn the other cheek, debate and defeat offensive views on their own. The latter can only shriek like a child and claim they're offended.

There is nothing that stops Gamefaqs mods from debating like anyone else - if Beefdip, for example, had just disagreed with me and left it at that, I'd still think he was incorrect but I wouldn't view him as a power-abusing ass. There is absolutely no reason to mod people based off one's personal political opinion and what they personally like or dislike - or rather, WHO they personally dislike (Beefdip no doubt would disagree with those other quarantine remarks, but he decided to target me exclusively). Forget the actual content of the message. The #1 thing that offends them is your username.

We here at GUAC hope that the upcoming, but seemingly stalled proposals to reform the moderation system address this problem. We'd prefer to see more loosening of the rules, but at the very least, be consistent. Right now, "offensive" moderations have no definition and are entirely up to the personal feelings of the mod involved - which, as we saw last July 4, can quickly lead to mass-suspensions if the person involved is abusive or easily triggered.

But let's finally get to today.

This one's another doozy because it popped up on my screen 2-3 minutes after I had posted it, right before I went to sleep last night. I couldn't log out before it showed up, it was that fast. And it wasn't a one-liner; it was towards the upper character limit (basically my final comments that night to 3 people) covering everything from abortion to the Alabama election to Hulk Hogan.

I want you to imagine all those times mods said they were super-busy, MIASU, or needed a lot more time to respond to your disputes, feedback, whatever. Think about all the times they weren't there. Now let's think about what happened here: in the span of 2-3 minutes, this message went from queue to mod review to moderation. There was hardly enough time to read the message, let alone by two or more people, let alone review it properly. That in itself is a big red flag. Look how quickly they're here, and suddenly how fast they act, when it's all to screw you over.

Did they even read the thing? Well, considering how that mod from above, who got offended at "LOL," couldn't tell the difference between my message and the TC's title, I have my doubts. But here's my theory...

After I got that moderation, I acted quickly as well - bringing up the profile pages of our Gamefaqs moderators. Since mods like to hide behind a cloak of anonymity in all their decisions and dispute responses, my approach was one of the few ways to whittle down who was actually responsible. Turns out at that time of night, RaptorLC was the only mod to register recent activity within the past hour. Suddenly things began to make more sense.

I propose that nobody saw that message, nobody got "offended," nobody marked it in that narrow timeframe. Two people weren't involved, just one. And Raptor fits the bill perfectly: any time he gets into one of his moods on Hellhole, he closes the topic or moderates the user directly, sometimes adding some message about how their comment annoyed him. Raptor also has the motive against me, as I've called out these tactics of his before.

Raptor saw my most recent message, got annoyed with my opinion, had a kneejerk response and that was that.

Granted, this is a theory because Gamefaqs intentionally makes it hard to know mod actions (which does wonders for transparency and clamping down on abuse, he said with an eyeroll). But it's backed up with some evidence, as much as account activity would let one deduce, and the following message definitely applies anyway for the stuff that he openly pulls on Hellhole.

RaptorLC: it's time for you to grow up. Stop being such a keyboard warrior coward.