I can give you my views, hopefully I have credits given my claims were proven. 

I never thought I couldn't express my politics.  I felt expressing my politics made me a target of the mods.  

As an example I was threatened with a ban for something like "the adults are talking" in a thread about PC vs Nintendo.  I flatly got banned for pointing out captain lives with his mom.  

Meanwhile Captain told me years ago he wanted to blow me up.  He said something about stabbing Leynos.  He is calling for executive assassination and talks openly about desires to blow up data centers..  and that is all fine.

Leynos got a laughable slap on the wrist for saying kill Republicans, in a thread where i identified as a republican.

My only rationale explanation is I identified as right so now there is a target on my back.  Unless you got s better explanation  because it makes no sense to me that straight up calls for violence is great, but don't dare tease anyone.

Point being, I really dont care what the rules are, in a sense.  But apply rules equally and fairly.

*calls for violence should be banned, period. 

Rap isn't music. I said it, I mean it. I also hate Indian food. I also hate sushi. K-Pop is ear torture to me. I'm pretty confident I won't get banned for saying these things. Please stop pretending that kind of speech is what we're talking about because it clearly isn't. 

You're welcome to respond to my earlier post if you want. Fair warning I may or may not read it and may or may not reply back. Not because of anything you said and that's not intended as a knock on you, just cause I'm getting kind of bored here. But, just felt I should let you know before you spend your time replying. 

Shadow said you could not question specific mod decisions. He did not say you could not define what you mean by "right wing speech" or "politically incorrect speech".

I gave tons of examples of right wing speech. And Curl literally just gave a concrete example of speech that isn't right wing that he thinks should be allowed by saying we should be allowed to be anti-AI. So clearly they are comfortable giving examples, but they just don't want to give an example of what right wing speech is. But, they really think you should be able to say it. 

The reality is, as Jumpin pointed out and was ignored, it's not about politics. It's about people wanting to be able to talk about their problems with certain groups of people, primarily the lbgtq+ people. But saying "the mods are banning right wing speech" sounds a lot better than "I can't rant about my problems with the gays". 

I'm not sure that is responsive to what I said. What I asked for was examples of right wing speech that should be allowed but isn't.

I would need to see the context for those to really address them all and give an actual explanation. Which I'm not interested in doing, frankly because I feel like I've kind of wasted enough time in my thread. But I'll just assume all of these are accurate and there's no missing context. Already discussed the post about republicans, so going to skip that one.

Honestly, I would personally agree with you on most of those points. But, that's not generally the policy of the mod team, at least from my experience, which I haven't been a part of for years now so I do not speak for them.

The team had always been more lenient with any kind of speech about people who are not actually on the forums (i.e. celebrities or hypothetical executives) then comments that were made directly towards members of the forum. I'm pretty sure I argued pretty much the point you're making, that anything violent should always receive the harshest penalties even if the target is not an actual poster. Which is not to criticize the mod team, they just saw it differently. 

As for the comments about stabbing and exploding, I'm pretty sure if Captain Explosion said he was going to blow me up (and if I recall correctly he did once) I'd probably get a chuckle out of it. I would take it as hyperbolic and silly and think he was kind of crazy, but I would not really care that much. On the other hand, in my early 30's, I did have to move back in with my parents for a while. I genuinely felt super ashamed of it to the point where even now I'm upset thinking about it. If someone had said that to me on a forum, I would likely be super upset and not want to post here anymore. Bringing up personal information about a user in a negative way meant to embarass them was actually something that would always receive very harsh penalties.

The point is, mods are not necessarily objectively evaluating which speech is "worse". A big part of it is what the mods feel is more likely to be disruptive to the forums. For example, back to trans stuff. The mods are genuinely pro-trans (as they should be), but that's really not the whole reason we policed that so heavily. A big part of it was that we knew that once someone started talking about trans people that's what the thread was about. Anyone who wanted to talk about the actual topic would inevitably leave and it would boil down to two people arguing about trans issues. And trying to nip any conversation in the bud before it derailed a topic was simply more workable than trying to wait till it got out of hand to reign it back in. 

So I would probably agree objectively that saying you want to blow someone up is objectively more unacceptable than saying someone lives at home (which isn't really something to be ashamed of we're all doing our best our best here), I think the latter comment is much more likely to derail a thread and make users less likely to come back. Whether you believe me or not, that being treated more harshly is 100% what I would expect without knowing anything about either user's political views.

Comments which are likely to evoke strong negative emotional reactions from users are typically treated far more severely. If I were to say I want to beat Jaleel White to death with a sock full of pennies, that is a horrible thing to say, but honestly, I think it would slide because despite being violent, no particular user is likely to feel any sort of way about it. Meanwhile, if I said "user X is a pathetic loser" that would much more likely get a ban. Not saying I agree, but that's what my experience has been. 

So no, I do not think you have been personally targetted. I think teasing is in many cases generally treated more severely than violent speech whether that should or should not be the case. I personally do not believe it had anything to do with you being particularly targeted. Take that as you will.

At any rate, I think I'm going to check out of this topic, cause I've spent too much time and I really ought to do other things with my weekend. I'm probably not going to read anything further. Just putting that out there in case anyone was going to respond to me. You still can of course, just know that I might not read it and decide accordingly if that's what you want to spend your Saturday on.

That is my point.  I think the argument is being misunderstood.  I don't think people are annoyed at not being able to voice their opinion.  I think the issue is the unbalance in warnings/bans.  At least the half dozen people who left when I did, we all felt this way.

My knock at captain was because he kept calling for assassinations and domestic terrorism.  I reported it every single time (as I was told to do) and nobody cared.  So I took a shot out of frustration.  IMHO, when reported 12 different times, action should have been taken.

Really it boils down to many of us, not understanding the rules.  Calling for assassination is fine...  but jokingly saying the adults are talking, well that is a problem.  To your point, which we agree, objectively that makes no sense.

Many of us are simply confused.

Either way, time to play Fortunes Weave.  And Shadow heard the concerns and is working on it.  Thus, give faith to Shadow in fixing what is a problem for many of us 

Edit 

I did want to mention that you and Sundin, both agreeing that violent posts should have ramifications does sincerely make me feel better.  I am being genuine when I say violent posts being accepted legitimately has bothered me.  

Well, any examples I gave would just harkin back to Shadow's mod decisions which I disagreed with. 

Yeah so in other words you never genuinely thought I wanted to derail the thread. You just already had this policy in place of accusing people of wanting to derail threads in order to keep the forums more civil. Nice. 

The problem isn't that people want to say racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic things. The problem is that people in extreme left wing corners have decided that anything that doesn't tow the party line is inherently racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic. Everything is a dog whistle and nothing can be taken literally. Anything even slightly controversial can get you banned if a couple of random mods decide to twist the rules like silly putty. And with that I'm done with this thread too. I'm just arguing with one hand tied behind my back here because I can't actually discuss mod actions. -_-

Edit: If you really want examples PM me. I'm happy to discuss in private but I'm not breaking forum rules, when I've already been given fair warning. 

Lol what? 

I have a policy? I'm a random user now. I was last on the mod team like 5+ years ago. Do you think I have my own personal VGchartz policies? Do you have policies? 

I'll respond to this because I don't want to say anything that might unfairly reflect on the mod team. There was no policy, mine or anyone else's, at any time I am aware of to accuse anyone of derailing anything if they spoke about trans issues.

What I said, which tbh I think was abundantly clear but w/e, is that we knew trans issues were likely to derail threads, so we had heavier presense in certain threads where it was likely to come up (for instance anything involving TLOU2 because one of the major characters was kind of butch which made transphobes really upset for some reason) and would not necessarily prevent anyone from talking about trans people, but would try our best to be ready to jump in and redirect as soon as possible and give warnings/bans as necessary. That's all. Point is a lot of the time it was less about limiting certain topics because we wanted to push a specific view but was just about us knowing which topics people could not discuss like rational adults and being extra vigilant when those things came up.

To be clear, I 100% honestly and truly did believe that you were attempting in bad faith to derail the thread and that you cared more about expressing your thoughts about trans people than actually discussing moderation. I already explained why. Not gonna PM you about this.

While I'm here.

I would not agree that it makes no sense. I think I explained what I thought the logic was. Its not always about an objective judgment of how bad what was said was, it's sometimes about what is most problematic for the community. And that's not always the same things. I'll agree that blowing up data centers is bad. But is someone talking about doing so really disruptive to the community? In my opinion probably not. Is people talking about other people's personal lives going to be more disruptive? Imo probably. Is that a good reason to ban the latter more heavily? Not my call. 

In my opinion, based on what you told me, it's just based on your values not aligning with what the mod teams prioritize. And I don't necessarily disagree with you, but again, I think if you were a liberal user, the situation would have played out exactly the same. 

Honestly, of all the people I banned virtually all of them claimed I did it out of some sort of bias whether it was political, against their favorite console, or just because I had some personal vendetta against them.  Not going to name names, but even a person who I genuinely liked (who I believe is fairly liberal I might add) somehow came to the conclusion that I was personally out to get them for reasons I still don't understand. Like I got up in the morning thinking "man how can find an excuse to mess with user X". Bwuhahaha. You'll have to take my word that was not the case. 

Fun fact we used to do mod surveys. One of the questions was about if the mod had a bias towards a particular console. Mine came out that I was biased towards XBox. Which is far and away my least favorite of the three manufacturers. Because a lot of the bans I made were about people trolling XBox (since it had the least fans and therefore more potential people to troll it). And certainly zero of those people actually did anything wrong, so it must be because I love XBox so much and definitely not because they were being trolls. *Shrug* I would say if you did a survey of all the people we've banned somewhere close to 100% would insist it was due to some sort of bias. Which, to be honest, is why I maybe was a bit dismissive of you at first. Because it's kind of a boy who cried wolf situation. Having talked with you more, I get why you interpret things as you're doing, but I just think you're wrong.

Now, I really do intend to stay away this time, but I suggest a little thought experiment. Or an actual experiment if you really want. Browse through the forums, or some other internet place. Find some people arguing. How often do you think one side says "oh you know what? I was wrong this time. My bad." Close to never right? I'm sure almost everyone insists very strongly that they are correct and the other side was unreasonable, biased, bad faith, w/e (and I think if there's an authority figure inolved the other sight right or wrong tends to dig in deeper). But logically, at least half of them must be wrong.

So, I'm sure you and the other people you mentioned genuinely feel you were treated unfairly. But a lot of people who genuinely feel very strongly that they're right must be wrong. That could be you. That could be me. Just food for thought.

Anyway I'm also going to be playing fortune's weave now. Good luck in the heroic games. 

Hmm, I rarely engage but what I notice is that there are people who believe their opinion should override people's ability to decide what the want for themselves. For example:
I read a comment saying 'Sex and Gender are the same thing'

they don't say its an oponion, they say it like there is no other way of thinking as if it overrides other people's views on the topic. Its the idea that another viewpoint is to purged that I find problematic. Who am I to decided how people understand and project a construct like gender? I have my own opinion but that is how i define myself, not how you must be forced to define yourself.
And maybe that's the issue with political discussion online. We never try to understand each other, we only try to reproject ourself on the world.
There seems to be this fear that if we don't see our own views out in the world constantly that we are losing something. I think we should reject that our idea for our own sanity.

I feel like when someone "x is/isn't y" or "Nintendo is better than Xbox" or "capitalism is better than communism", the "IMO" is kind of implied and it's not really necessary to add that you are stating your own opinion, not forcing it on others.

The problem arises when people try to force their beliefs on others by demanding that any opinion contrary to theirs be banned, silenced, or otherwise punished.

That's not what i observe.  What I have noticed is that people demand to be protected when they feel they are under attack.  And that happens when the implication is not obvious.  The rules exist for that reason.  The forum isnt supposed to feel like a place where people have to implicitly know what isn't stated and users aren't expected to just take it on the chin so that prejudices can be dispensed at the expense of other members.  I have zero expectations or desire for people to agree on everything... but implying that feeling attacked is the same thing as forcing a belief doesn't pass the non bias test.  It is not difficult to express a different opinion in a manner that is not abrasive.  

Also, are you saying that someone has requested a ban for someone else for simply saying 'capitalism is better than communism'?  I feel like you are making false equivalencies to actaul legit complaints.  If this really happened then of course its silly.  I once read a comment on here years ago from some expressing that gay people should be killed.  That's what im talking about.  Implicit IMO my ass lol.  

Give me an example of a real life frivolous ban request so I know where you are coming from.  We may be on the same page and I just don't realize it.