Thank you mods, there are a lot of troublemakers out there, so thank you for clamping down.
I am very excited by this change of pace, though I just want to make sure you understand that saying "trolling will not be tolerated" in the OP doesn't make offenses 'more severe'. It should ALWAYS be like that. A thread does not require a disclaimer to make trolling actually trolling.

I will be keeping a much closer eye on the report button now that I know it actually does things.

Cheers

Links. Give me links!

This thread
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=156766&page=1#83

"jaywood's thread" is half of VGC.

would love to see it happen across the board

all the moderating is fairly justified tho, guy just made a thread to point out a good deal online and people came in there raining hate down on xbl and its users. I never really got the dislike of it, had a gold account since it was first available and pay 12euros a month for WoW I really don't get the issue some people having with people paying money to use the service/game they like.

Kinda reminds me of when one of my mates who plays LoL all day everyday was giving out shite to another mate for buying skins from the store saying it was such a rip off charging for those.... took us about 2 hours of talking to him to explain that if no one pays for stuff from the store in a free to play game it would not exist for long. Don't understand it at all.

It's not the worst thing in the world to continue the argument about why XBL should be free (it really should be). The issue was that such posts were off-topic, making a simple thread about a good deal into another flame war.

If those posts had been made in a "should we pay for LIVE" thread, fewer of them would've been equally bannable.

On a side note, i've really fallen off my game. Full time work will do that to you

Well the mods need to be prepared. This set a very bad(good?) precedent.

Posters were not allowed to stray even the slightest bit off topic....and then were immediately banned.

I don't think the mods thought it through properly, they are playing a dangerous game.

No, I completely agree. Trolling should not be allowed. I'm glad that this event seems to be an official signal of cracking down.
There's a lot of trolling that goes down here, and if I can take

"Still too pricey for what's offered. Zero dollars and zero cents would be nice, or dedicated servers for all popular games."

as an example of trolling, then I'm actually pretty excited about the near future.

Users were banned for trolling, not for being off-topic, and I agree they were trolling.