^This

Agree with almost of of your points, especially about some mods having too thin of skin. 

With that said, I think you guys are doing a great job. You have to manage a site with a pretty large forum community that has to put up with some very immature users. At times however the reasons for moderations are quite silly. For example I don't like how you can be banned/warned for calling somebody a "troll" if you back it up with valid reasons. It happened to me. I said in the thread that bashing a company without any constructive critisism was trolling, which it was. Many people agreed with me. Not sure what I did wrong that the guy trolling did not do....

Here's the thing. You're supposed to make that argument to us, directly, via the comment box in the report button. You are not supposed to derail discussion by saying why so-and-so is being a troll.

I admit I find the "thing are getting progressively worse and more quiet, so we have to make as much noise as possible to maintain the status quo" line of reasoning endearing

Well this thread has been...useful. If you need any more mods, I'll happily provide my services to help. I'll apply and all that as well; it's been 18 months since my last moderation so that's a good sign. Doesn't hurt to have another mod to help, right?

See, I was trying to look through the Penny Arcade forums for a thread which was a link to another article, and promptly realised that their entire forum is official discussion threads. Ugh, talk about lack of variety. It's not a forum at all; it's a collection of one-thread subforums.

I agree with you about the reviews, because each game will have, say, 70-80 reviews which have exactly the same subject matter. Articles, however, are entirely different. Articles have unique arguments to make about unique topics and spark unique discussion and I honestly don't see the difference between a well-written OP talking about a subject, and an OP referring to an article on another website written about that same subject.

Oh, and we don't have "limited conversational resources", that is complete rubbish. Banning the sorts of threads you don't like would not turn us into Penny Arcade, it would turn us into a wasteland.

When in your four years here you have never observed this site as being anything like the Penny Arcade forums (which incidentally are extraordinarily similar to the NeoGAF forums except that NeoGAF occasionally discusses something new), what makes you think that we could ever even want to be like them?

You are laboring under the assumption that I want these forums to fall under the auspices or styling of any other particular forum.

You are mistaken.

I simply am pointing out things that I don't like; I demand nothing. I expect nothing. I intend to steer the forums in no way. But - and this is important - I cannot help seeing the tone of threads and the defensiveness concerning the status quo as feeding into a

Hrm, how best to put this

There is an old idea of the idea that 'nerd' used to refer to intelligence and discipline, rather than obsession. They are not mutually exclusive, but this is a forum more grounded in obsession than most.

Banned for doing it once - Insane. Giving a verbal warning, fine. 2nd time, mod action. 3rd time, ban.

The DS vs PS2 discussions should had never happened. They came about because the site reported factually incorrect numbers. People saw it and instantly thought it was true because they were too lazy to check the facts. Articles like what Jay posted do this. They spread incorrect information that people percieve as fact.

On a site like VGChartz, this leads to bad things.

Which isnt being pushed out as fact like the article was. The numbers there are estimations.

They will also be fixing the numbers, according to ioi

It's terrible. Amp316 can make jokes and get away with them because of who he is.

It's terrible. I can't make jokes and get away with them because certain mods don't get my sense of humour.