The state of this forum

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Well, I'm usually more a reader than a poster. I do like many posts here, disagree and agree with many but I end up not replying much.

mZuzek said:

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

I guess you think OTB is irrelevant then?

I don't, but... hmm, let's not go there. But I did think he had been around for longer. I never said there are no relevant users from this period, only that there are few, and if anything, it kinda shows here - with you and Bofferbrauer turning up, from late 2016/early 2017, and now OTBWY who is from mid 2017... and so far, no 2018 or 2019 users mentioned at all. It's easy to see that there's been a decline in new users.

I joined in 2016 but my activity flows with news. These days have been a bit boring.

mZuzek said:

CommandoII said:
Additionally, to the discussion of the mod/ban concerns (which from my viewpoint has been an ever-present thing here [NOTABLE to THE DISCUSSSION, so I deem the posts here valid, but think it is still a "secondary issue".]) I always wondered why, at the end of the day, Fanboy-ism was banned from the beginning/early days. I agree that it CAN thwart meaningful discussion at times; but that is honestly the reason we all wanted to engage in the first place. {This is why there are the NINTENDO, SONY, and Microsoft discussion Tabs/areas. At the end of the day we really just wanted to bash the "other side" (without a ban) and we used make a big production about who was changing sides and what-not. (I jumped from Nintendo to Xbox and now I went to the Dark Side) It's fun. We have these game opinions and our culture is to type-scream those opinions to others, especially the ones who don't wanna hear it. Ha ha ah.
The point is, I feel the whole mod/user war undercurrent was just a cat and mouse game because we had this rule of argue, but don't REALLY argue, that's not nice, and people wanted to get really clever about breaking the rule in indirect ways. The mods eventually had to come in and start banning people who really were abusive to the rules, and they would just come back later with new names and the beat went on...
It was a lot of fun though...
(thoughts?)

Yeah, I'm a little bit torn on the whole mod situation showing up here in this thread. We can dismiss them and pretend it's a non-issue all we want, but there has been a number of people coming here to express their distaste for the situation and ignoring that is ignoring a real thing that's going on. I can't speak for them, because I haven't been moderated in years (though a mod did approach me via PM recently), but I do sometimes feel almost... privileged. Like for some reason it doesn't really matter what I say, as long as I'm not being blatantly offensive I can get away with things other users don't seem to. Maybe that's just me, though.

I know the mods are likely to dismiss these concerns as just moaning from toxic members, and they may or may not be right, but I think there's a certain stubborness, maybe even arrogance, about the team at the moment. They're not really wrong to do what they do, after all the place does have rules. I've always been thankful to the work the mods put in on VGC, because it's what kept the place full of sensible and constructive people, but maybe now, with the reduced activity around and fewer new users, it could be the time to start reviewing those concepts and try to take a more lenient approach to moderations. It's clear that many members have been scared away by the nature of bans here, and funny enough, looking back at some of our oldest users still around, many of them haven't always had the most enviable behavior.

Maybe we could introduce new ways of moderation? Something that drives people to be more constructive and less toxic, without driving them away? For example, say instead of there being warnings and bans, there's something in between, like a half-ban or something, where the person isn't allowed to do certain actions for a while but can still come around and discuss the matters of their moderation or whatever.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

I would have mentioned QuickRick, but he fell of a cliff already...

Also, how could you forget about Marth?

I didn't, I actually thought he'd been around longer. Like, much longer. Still early 2017, though. And no, quickrick doesn't count.

I disagreed with a few warnings I got. One of the the guy was rude and I replied as rude as he was. I got moderated, but not him. The last one I was banned because I called someone Nintendo warrior which is on the forbidden "fanboy vocabulary".

Anyway, I wouldn't say that mods here are bad, I don't think so, but at the same time after a few moderations the way I learned to avoid moderation is just to avoid posting when I disagree. Like I said, I don't post a lot, but I've been posting less as a result of my personal experience with moderation.

This is not a criticism, but this is what happened. To avoid moderation I avoid disagreeing. When I agree though, most times I don't have anything else to add.

FragileSurface said:
Wouldn't be surprised if those intrusive video ads have something to do with it. I understand you need revenue, but damn.

I agree that it's a bit too much. Since I moved from Chrmoe to FF, it's fine. FF is good at getting rid of ads and privacy issues.