My respect for the mods went several levels down. It is some kind of unwritten rule that all the users with +1000 posts have a higher tolerance for bans. We all know that veterans can do minor name calling (idiot, dumb, stupid), newbies on the other hand taste the ban hammer for using the word "lame" alongside with the mod favorite console. We have veterans creating threads for trollish purposes left and right, users that post quasi-erotic pictures and spammers creating 30 threads/day.

So, I have to ask myself why the fuck ban a user with one of the highest post counts on the site? Even worse, why ban one that do not even resort to name calling?

There is so much ban material on the site. There should be some code or strict rules. I am not swallowing this "mods ban at they own discretion" crap. There is no consistency.

Creating 20 threads and posting 300 times in 2 hours - 3 hours ban
Posting porn - warning
Racist comments - 1 day ban (several times for some users)
Xenophobic comments - nothing
Name calling - warnig for veterans, lifetime ban for everyone under 200 posts
Posting links for roms and isos - nothing so far


Console criticism to the mod favorite console while he is online - at least 1 day ban
Being reported on a out of context 1 month old post - 1 day ban

While I agree that the ban system is inconsistent, a lot of it is up to the individual moderator. As an example, I use short bans in an attempt to get the user to "clean up his/her behavior". If I'm forced to ban the person again (it has yet to happen to me personally), then the ban will be lengthened. Repeat ad nauseum, though I doubt it will ever come to that.

As for older users getting more leeway; of course they do. Part of moderating is trying to decipher intent, which is quite difficult at times given the nature of the internet and a person's ability/inability to type the Queen's English. So what do we have left to fall back on? The poster's history and that's about it. If a person has 4,000 posts and has yet to be banned, there's a good chance that the poster was being a little snotty, had a bad day, is being misunderstood, or any other myriad of things that might be going on in the post.

In my opinion, it's always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to bans and long-time users deserve a little benefit of the doubt. After all, they're the ones who have been here the longest and built up VGC to what it is today. It doesn't mean that they should be untouchable, but they deserve to be cut some slack for one bad post. 

^well said

@ itsaMii

Why do you care so much about the supposed "bias" against "newbs". You are in the 1000+ Range. I want to know what happened to Rol too, but you shouldn't be trying to find some supposed bias against new posters.

well, we had a guy get banned when he said he worked for a company, and he wanted to edit his game so he was going to see if there was any other way besides spamming 100 posts to edit it.

I guess updating the game database if you own the game is against the rules, as that was so nice to the guy who was praising VGChartz numbers and happened to work in the industry. To bad we'll never know if he had malicious intent, but I do know we probably put him off from saying anything nice about VGChartz again.

The easiest way to handle this is to send a message to the banned person, by the mod who banned, explaining the post and showing what rule it broke.

Right now, I'm seeing "hey, I got banned. Who did it/Why did they do it/What got me banned?" from users. Feedback is necessary for these types of actions, or people will just feel pissed at the mods instead of trying to clean up their act/check their attitude/not post creepy pics.

@chadius--this will hurt, not the first part...thats a good solution, i mean the all these angry people are just going to go to other sites ad freakout about how bad we are here

Bookmark post. Also, at least something good might come of this since RolStoppable is such a valued member and the ban so (apparently) unjustified that everyone recognizes that something needs to be addressed here.

This topic came up some months ago. Many members wanted to know why people get banned, and suggested a thread were bans were announced. IIRC ioi didn't like the idea of a "wall of shame", but implemented the ban reason field in a banned user's profile.

He's free to do what he wants with his site, but I don't think the current system works very well. Mods have next to zero accountability unless someone really raises a racket for questionable bans, and the limits of how far you can go are really vague from a user's point of view.

*Banned*
Expires: 9th Mar 35
Created: 22nd Oct 07
Last login: 22nd Oct 07
Profile views: 43
Forum posts: 2
Posts / Day: 2.00
Reason for ban: alt ban

uhmmm alt ban....?