Community Manager Discussion Kicks Off...With Admin Blocking Discussion

Will there be Gamefaqs community input on Krystal's replacement? Probably not.

Courtesy of "the mod bias monitor" - a user who was warned for making a topic about the next community manager - comes this tip:

Allen later walked back this comment and said he was only talking to Krystal, who's under a non-disclosure agreement. Yet if this silencing was only meant to apply to Krystal, why did he lock all topics on the discussion and why were other users warned for starting new topics? The wording of the message itself is pretty clear it's meant to apply to everyone, since "any discussion" is, well, pretty much anything between two or more people, not just Krystal. For what it's worth, here's Krystal's comment about her termination before Allen told her to zip it:

More of that trademark condemnation of entire boards and some of the most active message board users on the site. Apparently the numbers aren't up to snuff for the higher ups, possibly due to things like staff hostility towards users or the site's trigger-happy moderation system driving people away, and Krystal's defense against this data was that her bosses simply don't understand how much the userbase sucks. With an attitude like that, it's really hard to see why she was let go. Said no one ever.

Anyway, since Allen seemed to distance himself from his early crackdown you can try to start a discussion on this subject and see how it goes. We'll keep monitoring it here. In the meantime, also be aware that posting a picture of Krystal that she herself provided a few months ago is now considered "harassment."

Krystal's Gone, and I'm Actually Sad To See Her Go

In a surprise decision - but not really, when you think about it - Krystal109 is no longer our community manager. Some would say she never really was. Krystal (also known as Stephanie Barnes, for you future employers doing an internet search) has appeared several times in this blog. Sometimes because we had a complaint, other times because the users at Current Events and other boards were upset with her performance. But I have to say, I was always cautiously optimistic or at least neutral about her overall. For her work as a FAQ contributor and behind the scenes I have no reason to criticize her. In fact I think she did an all right job keeping moderators in check, even though that's a little anecdotal. As for actually managing the community...a lot of users simply believed she wasn't cut out for it.

Krystal started off by making quite a few flubs that we've discussed here before, and she wasn't exactly known for professionalism or good grammar. One easy suggestion: please learn how to use the apostrophe correctly. Please. As for her interactions with the message board community, it seemed like a train wreck early on. This experience probably led her to post less because it just didn't seem to go well whenever she became involved in an argument. Krystal started off assuring us that she could deal with the criticism and trolling that came with the position, but those assurances appeared to be directly contradicted whenever she lost her temper and "had a meltdown" as some called it.

A quick summary: telling users it would be fun to troll everyone with her new powers and either close their board, or make everyone a mod for a day and watch the chaos. Telling users she wouldn't date a black person because of "cultural differences," a subject that's questionable for her to raise in the first place, and also a similar view that got a mod dismissed a few months earlier. Constantly closing topics she didn't personally like, even though she was supposed to be discouraging mods from abusing this same function. Misleading and belittling users when they started to complain that a moderator had stolen multiple accounts from other users - an accusation that turned out to be true and something that she knew was true for several days. Yet instead of waiting for the site's main admin to return and deal with the situation, and instead of simply declining to comment until the accusations were sorted out, she went out of her way to imply that long-time users were lying or pushing a "BS" conspiracy theory while calling some of the critics "whining babies." Declining to update the gamefaqs social media accounts on a consistent basis, until users began to call out that she had promised to make this a main part of her job. Possibly a decline in board traffic.

Whatever the reason, Krystal is no longer with us. I'm a little sad because despite her faults she did seem to do some things right, like mod oversight. As for the rest of the nonsense she did, I guess I'm also sad that we won't have this source of entertainment around anymore.

Perhaps the most telling verdict on her performance:

Finally, some additional testimony:

"She rarely updated the GameFAQs OFFICAL Twitter and Facebook except for when Hothlin called her out on it...She was good at bringing the community together at hating her though" -ToPoPO

"I remember when she first got hired she proclaimed to have thick skin and that's one of the reasons she was hired. Over time it was quite evident this wasn't the case." -WaterLink

"i had perhaps five or six interactions with her, and none were positive. the one that sticks out most in my mind is when i took 30 minutes out of my day to submit feedback on the beta for the new site UI, and i got back a reply from her that was nothing short of f***ing bristling. no "thank you for taking your time submitting feedback, we appreciate your interest in helping to make gamefaqs a better place" or anything gracious like that, just a temperamental message that amounted to "you opinion doesn't matter, our metrics show everyone loves the new UI." then the redesign went live and everyone lost their s***." -Mecha Sonic

"Right from the very beginning she spent so much time f***ing feeding the trolls on CE. Many users warned her that any thing she posted would just get trolled to death, since that's the nature of CE but she didn't even take that advice. But the fact that she needed to be told in the first place was already a death knell. What kind of professional needs to be told not to feed trolls, let alone someone who gets the job of COMMUNITY MANAGER, someone who should be intimately familiar with the community. It's clear she wasn't even familiar with interaction on the internet, let alone understanding GameFAQs' community." -4chan

"She did some good things, but she also put her foot in her mouth too many times to count. I feel kinda bad about CE treated her, but she treated a lot of CE with contempt as well, making it easier to dislike her. I didn't dislike her myself, so I'll just say that she was average." -PerseusRad

"'Wait, she bumped the topic to start and talk s*** and then closed it immediately after to get the last word? Wow that's pretty damn low, even for her.' she sounds like a 15 yr old teenage girl based on that topic. It is the equivalent of 'mom I hate u!' and then closing the door" -DomoArigatoMr

"She was absolutely miserable and made wrong steps at almost every turn" -Littlegator

"It's possible to be an authority figure and involve yourself with the community. She was just really s*** at it, was thin skinned as hell, and would troll and make petty spiteful comments when people would post their grievances. She was s*** at her job and it was a mystery how she even got it in the first place." -3rd_Best_Master

"for how much she made a big deal about running the gamefaqs twitter, she really let it go to s***. as a community manager, she was very hostile, offensive and let people get under her skin way too much." -D-Lo_BrownTown

"The problem is that she had no idea what the community was like. If you're going to be a community manager, you should at least have lurked for a month or two before being given the position. It was obvious that she had no clue about the community here, and people spoke up. But instead of listening, she just locked topics and banned people for not liking her. Glad to see her gone." -mfwahwah

I wonder if the higher-ups at Gamefaqs ever think about what inspires people to make site messages, lengthy blog posts and entire videos slamming the way Gamefaqs is run. Maybe in the future it'd be a better idea to have a community manager who listens, instead of calling long-time users a bunch of dumb babies.

Back by Popular Demand: DO NOT BLASPHEME!!

We return from the depths of Gamefaqs to demonstrate that, despite a lull in the action for the past several months, some moderators remain just as eager to clamp down on dissenting voices as ever. This time: opposition to the founder of Islam.

Is it just me? No, it's not. Many liberals on board 261 have already noticed that some people make a career out of smearing Christianity as the source of all problems, but criticism of Islam is severely lacking. Not only is there near total silence about it, but the far left goes out of its way to silence people who do speak up because not supporting a religion somehow makes you the same as a racist.

So I propose to the curious in those topics: the reason you don't see a liberal criticize Islam, at least on that board, is the same reason you don't see a lot of conservatives: the far left censors them. Offensive, hate crime, blasphemy, whatever you want to call it - it's just not allowed. Challenging any other religion besides Christianity is just mean. It's not fair. So you just can't do it.

Off to the source of my message. In a topic titled, "Prophet Muhammed warned us of ISIS" we were treated to a puff piece based off a Huffington Post writer's strange conspiracy theory, where Muhammed the all-knowing and kind philosopher knew ISIS was going to happen thousands of years later and he was so mad. He was mad because he knew they were just a bunch of fakers who would act like Muslims in their fasting, rituals, and so on, but were actually not doing what Islam demanded of them.

"The Quran would not go beyond their throats, meaning they wouldn't understand its essence at all, merely regurgitating it selectively. The Prophet then went on to describe these people as "the worst of the creation."

Meanwhile in reality, you might remember that Muhammed was famous for spreading belief in his cult through the sword. If he had a beef with ISIS today, it'd probably be a disagreement over how to kill the infidels. You might also recall that the two big sects of this great religion, the Sunni and Shia, arose not from religious disagreements but were an argument over which warlord got to take up the sword after Muhammed. A political struggle that has continued for centuries and with a lot more barbaric terror behind it than one group like ISIS can manage.

Here's my message:

2015-07-03 01:44:47: Prophet Muhammed warned us of ISIS
Mohammed was a butcher. He was talking down to moderate Muslims, not ISIS. He is describing people who do rituals but not the physical violence and conquering he stood for. Mohammed's definition of "heinous deeds" was probably being homosexual or a woman in public with no chaperone. He was fine with mass murder.

The towering intellect known as a volunteer video game forum moderator decided that this message warranted a suspension. Was my message history good? No, but you're gonna love why. The reason is that I had a prior warning on my account, which I appealed, which was reposted, after even a gamefaqs mod could see that it was not a violation. Yet due to the way gamefaqs operates, this warning remains attached to your account for a month no matter whether it got overturned or not. And no, you can't say anything in your defense because the idea is that you're so guilty and the mods are always so right, so there's no need.

To the administrator who's looking at this message, you might want to look at the following passages from the Koran:

2:191-193 - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful.   And fight them until there is no more Fitnah and worship is for Allah alone.  But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)" - this means against Christians (who believe in the Trinity)

2:216 - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."

3:56 - "As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help." - "in this world" obviously means through the sword and historically has meant the "choice" at gunpoint of either forced conversion, strict taxation, or death for any non-Muslim.

4:74 - "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward." - obviously jihad is not a lovey-dovey "internal struggle with faith" as moderates claim. It involves physical violence, either slaying others or being slain.

4:76 - "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah"

4:89 - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."

4:95 - "Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred in grades those who strive hard and fight with their wealth and their lives above those who sit (at home). Unto each, Allah has promised good (Paradise), but Allah has preferred those who strive hard and fight, above those who sit (at home) by a huge reward" - are you listening? This is in DIRECT CONTRADICTION to the claim that Muhammed would praise non-violence while supporting moderate Muslims, not the other way around.

5:33 - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement" - punishments like crucifixion are EXACTLY what ISIS has been doing.

8:12 - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

9:29 - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." - again, the choice of conversion, submission, or death.

These are just from the first ten verses. We could go on. This is Muhammed and his legacy, it cannot be denied.

You might also consider that Muhammed wasn't just talking about this stuff, he was waging war whenever he had the chance. "Peace" agreements to him were only temporary arrangements to survive; when his enemy was perceived as weak, or when he managed to build up enough forces for another challenge, he would take to the battlefield again (such as modern-day Hamas "truce" periods with Israel, even as they continue to call for its destruction and have only used the time of "peace" to get more rockets and kidnapping tunnels set up to kill Jews). The caliphate was meant to be a global Islamic state, where Muslims fought against everyone else until they won over the entire world. Just because they failed the first time, and are confined to extremist groups now, doesn't change what Muhammed wanted and doesn't make them any less of a threat. Especially when ISIS is now the richest terror group and is by its own admission looking to spread Muhammed's legacy with global conquest.

Who do you think Muhammed would reject as "regurgitating the Quran selectively" - the extremists carrying out all the things the book says about jihad? Or the moderate Muslims?

You might also want to look at how terror groups like Hamas frequently cite other hadiths such as the following:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)."

You might also want to examine how ISIS is following the earlier example of caliphate rulers and copying their methods. Abu Bakr, for example, was Muhammed's father-in-law and direct successor. His favorite punishment for homosexuals involved throwing them off tall buildings, a practice that ISIS picked up on. The leader of ISIS loves to refer to himself as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as well. In fact, we only wish Abu Bakr had been as merciful as ISIS. While ISIS merely does the first step and throws them off buildings, Bakr liked to follow that up with a stoning of the corpse just to make sure the message got across.

We say ISIS is backwards for a reason. It's not because they're inventing new ways to torture and kill people. It's because they're looking back on the punishments that Muhammed and his men doled out, and want to bring that brutality back.

But let's suppose you overlook these inconvenient facts and continue to disagree. Fine. But don't censor other people and tell them they can't have different opinions. Sharia law doesn't apply to gamefaqs, so please do us a favor and bugger off.

Cheerfully yours,

TaiIs82

Tanon Demodded - Best of WOT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Removing your status as a moderator

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

along with a Krystal message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gmo7897 writes (emphasis added):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GUAC News 12/24/14: Trigger Alert! - Is Gamefaqs Dying? - Don't Offend Terrorists

Trigger Words Now A Thing

As Gamefaqs is but a part of the broader politically-correct culture, where its increasingly aging userbase must be sheltered like children more and more the older they get, an increasing amount of self-defined mean and offensive and bigoted and insensitive words are not allowed. They could hurt someone's feelings. Sometimes seemingly-harmless words can act as magical enchantments which curse your enemies. These dangerous incantations could trigger a social justice warrior and send them into a diabetic coma of negative vibes and harshed mellows. Speaking of which, Gamefaqs tried to autoflag the term "social justice warrior" itself, so that when anyone referred to an SJW this would be auto-reviewed by mods to protect uptight users from the insult that they are uptight.

The account [name redacted]* brought this new addition to the attention of CE:

The autoflag system itself hasn't changed, but for whatever reason someone decided a few months ago that "trigger words" are a thing now. If you wanna know what admins talk about on their Monday meetings, it's things like this. Something that clearly needs to be shoehorned into the system so that we're all put on notice that this trigger culture needs to stop, and SJWs know someone has their back.

UnbiasedFAQs.

Is Gamefaqs Dying?

This isn't the first time we've heard this narrative but CE recently got to talking about the subject again, and some made their dissatisfaction with the mods known.

"Gamefaqs and CE are dying for 2 reasons. Firstly the mods are terrible and Draconian. Secondly the site has been infested by a large wave of leftist SJW garbage posters"-ColdOne666

" I use to post on CE all the time and shared my conservative opinion on things and would get modded while those with opposing beliefs to mine would blast me and not get modded. I knew there was nothing I could do to change it so I just started posting on the sports boards." -Numba1linesmen

"@Bover_87: It's because terrible moderation policies/new staff is driving away users in droves and also because anyone who has been here for a really long time can notice how unique IP traffic is down significantly in a short amount of time. I personally feel like trolls are tolerated because they are an easy way to generate site traffic/hits instead of actually working hard to cultivate new users to come here. We don't really need numbers to see the ship is starting to sink.

"@Smoliske: Maybe instead of parroting "don't break the rules", you should consider that maybe the rules are broken. If you have a wide variety of the user base saying the same thing (including people who are not trolling or otherwise getting into stuff), then maybe there is actually a real problem. Having insanely liberal slanting for moderation is *not* ok. Having a really strict offensive posting policy enforcement while not having any form of trolling policy *is a problem*. That's really not the moderator's fault either -- that is a systemic failure that needs to be addressed. Trolling honestly wasn't an actual problem of note up until the whole sjw thing this year where you have people actively antagonizing people on a large scale." -CreekCo

"this site is dying because of the terrible mods and getting modded for pretty much nothing. People are leaving to better forums with better interfaces and mods who aren't on a powertrip." -WalkingLobsters 

Krystal, who I feel the need to remind you is a paid admin on the site (lest you couldn't tell from how she acts) responded that the people who complained were "mad"

But eventually Krystal made a substantive argument that the site was not in decline (in general), the numbers in fact showed improvement, but she couldn't legally give specifics. Users continued to suggest possible improvements until Krystal returned to say "still mad I see" and close the topic.

It's probably true that the site in general is doing fine, but the boards have seen a significant decline which many users have pointed out. Look at declining participation in polls, the lower number of active visitors, the fact that 25 of the accounts with the most messages make up 13% of all active messages as of November...and you get the idea that the boards, the domain of the mods, aren't doing as well as the rest of the site. It's likely they know about this - relaxing the terms of use a few years ago, hiring a community manager who said she would be open and look into moderator abuse - but for the above users and others, the site has a way to go.

Don't Offend Terrorists

From Halpert123 comes another one of those "generalizations are bad" moderations. This happened to me a little while ago for generalizing liberal policies as failures...on the politics board, and when I posted a message against pedophiles. Basically, if you say ANYTHING bad about ANY group, it runs the risk of a moderation. Why even call these groups by name and recognize they exist? I mean, if you're already talking about a group you've already lumped a bunch of people under one general label. Awful.

Sarcasm aside, the user got in trouble for being too critical of ISIS. You know those guys who go around beheading people? Yeah, they could get offended by this. The problem was that in the heat of the moment he added that the terrorist group had goats for girlfriends (which he insisted in dispute was a real thing happening among some of the group's members). Apparently this is a thing where members of ISIS have been caught on drone footage with a goat or donkey...anyway, Krystal entered to give her take.

So you guys got that? Just because someone belongs to a "bad group" of "f***ing terrorists" doesn't mean you get to make any generalizations about these bad terrorists...uh, isn't that what you did? Oh and sorry dude, but if we accepted that ISIS was a bad group then it's one slippery slope away from becoming a world where no mod knows who we can and can't generalize as a bad group, therefore we can't let you do it for clearly bad groups. These contradictory statements goat too far imo.

Only 0.3% of Moderations are Overturned

Here's a fun stat: 99.7% of all moderations are either never going to be contested or will be upheld. That's about 90 percent of disputed messages. You could see this two ways: either mods don't like to overturn messages, or they're usually really really accurate at taking down violations and that's a great track record. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the former. As for poor overtaxed mods who can't keep up with all the violations, and all the contest abuse from users, do note that only 2.5% of the messages are in dispute and a whopping 0.7% abuse the form. Hardly the widespread abuse from users we've heard about.

Reason 101 Why wally Shouldn't Be Lead

via the Politics board:

Yeah it was a satire (aka fake) story people fell for, but man wouldn't it be a blast to abuse my powers and put that right up top to help spread my fake social justice message? I'm getting flashbacks to when Krystal said it'd be cool to shut down boards for a day and make everyone a mod for 24 hours to see what craziness would happen. You know, wally, maybe your sights are too low. You can run for admin.

*account involved did not want to be named on the idea that gamefaqs mods could target him based on this blog.

No, wally Should Not Be A Lead Mod

Recent demoddings must be replaced with new moddings, and Krystal said decisions would be made this week on new mods or promotions. Speaking of which, a couple people said wally should be lead because he's "cool" and "level headed." Certainly not. My experience with him has been shown to be anything but. I have no idea how these decisions are being made or if wally's even being looked at for anything, but if he is let's take a look at some of the stuff he's done over at the Politics board.

Board 261 is hardly known for being level headed, but people who wish their opponents would be arrested for treason, publicly flogged or decapitated by terrorists still stick out like extremist sore thumbs. He has a signature ability of flying off the handle over even minor things. If wally doesn't have the time to vent at others the way he wants to, he'll usually settle for just a "derp" or "XD" sometimes more than once in the same topic, which as you know adds so much to the conversation. Sometimes he'll go off-topic and derail the thing by talking about cheeseburgers and lasagna if it's a topic he dislikes - and of course once the topic's been derailed we need a mod to close it to keep us safe. Note that wally will also tell some users he dislikes to stop making topics, and some (including me) that he would be looking for reasons to suspend, which has more than once been called a chilling effect on the board. He may not in fact moderate the politics board (personally, I'll believe that when he's gone), but it isn't beneath him to tell his least favorite users he might do something to them if they don't stop posting. But let's not spend any more time just talking about it and get to the good stuff: