If you want some examples of what got those whopping three four people moderated this year for something unrelated to trolling or flaming over console war nonsense, here you go (language warning, obviously; their words in italics, typos and everything left as-is):

User 1: Example A

They had a trans person model / actor as Cortana.... for a game that likely has like a 90%+ male demographic of players.
Why complicate things (and push agendas) ? Let guys have a babe, that looks like one (and is one, if you go for a actor).

Look at who they hired.
The old Bungie studio was like almost exclusively males.... that loved the idea of miltiary service, honor, and war games.
You hire some purple haired lesbian, that wants "girl boss energy" characters to dunk on master chief.... and others that "hate guns" and war, and look at the concept of military service with loathing....

What do you think happens ? The future halo games turn out crap.
Resulting in years and years going by, and eventually the studio being shut down.

(Shadow's Note: The claim that the actor for Cortana in Campaign Evolved is trans is false. Not that it matters, though. But people like this user seem personally offended that trans people exist, that "purple haired lesbians" work as game devs, and is generally being a bigoted asshole.)

User 2: Example A

Prob had nothing to do with some sort of lgbqri+ inclusive and diversity direction sony was/is heading in...nah

User 2: Example B

Sad to say the only group of "peacefull" religion that hurt/hate others are muslims.

Sorry just thats what i see here.

User 2: Example C

Gee i wonder why...
Lol his statement is funny af..we all know wy he left.

(Shadow's Note: This was the user deliberately misgendering a game dev.)

User 2: Example D

Nope. Wont support that forced lgbqti+ sweet baby inc bought reviews crap

*a few posts later in the same thread*

This is verry funny.

Okej .

A man is a man and a woman is a woman.

Cutting your D or tits wont make a difference.

There are only 2 genders.

Who is "offended" now

User 3: Multiple Examples

Across multiple posts a user said a black woman had "hood instincts," called a black man a "Neanderthal," referred to Muslims as "Muzzies," and made multiple other racist comments over an extended period of time. Also made a comment stating: "It seems like a lot of the mods are gay and if so, then they'd jump on the mod bandwagon and get to it. Which mods have dated irl???"

(Shadow's Note: This is the user that was perma-banned.)

User 4: Example 1

can men give birth?

(Shadow's Note: Complete non-sequitur in the context of the discussion. Blatant transphobia out of nowhere for no good reason. User has made multiple other homophobic and transphobic comments over an extended period of time, resulting in three other temp bans since early 2022.)

That should give you plenty of examples of the kind of stuff that will get you moderated here. This isn't 4Chan, GAF, or any of the other places where it's cool to go around openly hating on marginalized groups. Not one bit of that flies here. We will shut that shit down, no exceptions. The rules are clear. Keep it to yourself, or we'll show you the door. And I consider us very lenient compared to sites like Era, where spouting any of the above garbage would get your account nuked on the first offense. Three of those users cited above are repeat offenders. One is gone for good, another has two strikes at best before getting the boot, and another has three strikes at best. We try to give people multiple chances to correct bad behavior, but if they can't shape up, well, they're getting shipped out.

Similar to what I said in that thread I created a couple months back about how easy it is for people to not be assholes towards each other over video games and movies and the like, it's just as easy to not be an asshole towards entire groups of people whose only "crime" is existing. People can choose not to use slurs or other demeaning comments towards marginalized groups. It's easier to not say something than it is to say that thing. Yet some people consciously choose to write something blatantly offensive and therefore against the rules of this site, hit "Post," yet they and others get surprised when the banhammer comes down. Well, sorry, not sorry. Want to avoid getting banned? Don't say racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise bigoted things. Not in gaming discussions, not in general discussions, not in the Politics board, not in article comments. Keep. It. To. Yourself. Simple as that.

Every so often I lurk here, mostly for the PC thread, which still stands are one of the best threads on the internet. This thread of course caught my attention, and my knee jerk reaction was to list the clear and absurd imbalance of moderation when it comes to allowing violent and extreme leftist views, but then I decided it was a waste of time. As far as I am concerned two mods in particular flatly owe me apologies for their mistreatment. The moderation imbalance without a doubt makes my activity range between minimal to nonexistent. Until there is a mod shake-up, I will not be actively supporting VG.  A large part of the reason is because I check up on videogame news on a work computer.  There are comments by the left that I don't feel are safe for work.  

*and I did chortle with the current mod defense that they don't ban...  that is actually the problem.  When people call for violence, they should be banned, because you know, they called for violence.  

Curl, that's what's called special pleading for a group that hides behind a political ideological definition because they feel it makes it permissible for them to break the code of conduct on this site.

Based on my observations, I think the moderation team has done a great job on this site. It is true that this site has a particular philosophy that it upholds.
1. We're granted a wide range of freedom, but the decorum window has a boundary when you start denigrating people based on their immutable characteristics.

2. "That's my religious beliefs" or "That's my political beliefs" (or any other reason) is not justification for dehumanizing people. It isn't a necessity of any religion or political ideology to engage in dehumanizing rhetoric on this site.

3. So, when people get banned for dehumanizing people, saying "it's politics" is not a valid response for behaviour. Nor is it any kind of political bias.

Dehumanizing people and then saying "it's my political belief" or "it's my religious belief" to justify bullying someone or a group (directly or indirectly) is simple cowardice. This is the sort of moral grandstanding nonsense that shouldn't be tolerated on this site. If you want to flout the rules of the site and get banned for it, you're the perpetrator, not the victim. We live in a society, and I think it's a valuable social contract to just stay off of the prejudice against immutable characteristics.

Now, the large platform social internet stuff (like YouTube, social media platforms) has become a very foolish place where people are encouraged to post overdramatic, virtue signaling, and victimization accusation posts (basically, the moral grandstanding genre of posts). There are vast swathes of people who generally to almost only criticize media and art (including video games) as a political question and through political values and then everything degrades to back and forth low-comprehension gibberish.

Yes, we have fewer animals in the building, but I don't think that's an argument to let the skunks in.

We have a smaller number of people, but we also have higher quality conversations where people are a lot better at actually comprehending what's being said, responding in long form. We have a political forum which I think works great as a heat sink for the site: doubling as a venting center as well as a current events and mitigating the venting in other forums.

Yeah, these people often show incompetence in arguing and low reading comprehension, and persist in the demonstration of both. I generally interpret this as a coping mechanism to avoid appearing foolish and inept → and that's somehow the more optimistic view. The fact that these people have free time, and choose to waste that free time arguing on the internet purely for the entertainment of enraging someone else is a much sadder story about them.

"Cipolla's Third Law of Stupidity (1976): A stupid person is one who causes harm to another person or group without at the same time obtaining a benefit for himself or even damaging himself."

Well that's on me then for forgetting to mention people who are born as intersex. Someone born as intersex can pretty much choose whatever gender to be because they are biologically stuck in the middle due to hormonal pollution or other factors messing with their development in the womb. But people born as intersex are only 0.005% of the population. It's a very rare condition, as you can see here: https://worldmetrics.org/intersex-statistics/ Wait??!?!?! 1.7% of newborns are now intersex? Holy crap! Ok yeah, so I am now convinced that pollution has messed with embryo development to a serious level in the world. This is not normal. And if that many babies are being born as intersex then being there's a much higher chance of someone's transgender identity being more than psychological. 

And yeah, someone being intersex wanting to compete in women's sports sounds fair to me. There's already the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya. 

I honestly don't care if a thread gets derailed a little bit. There's a difference between two people discussing water vs gatorade in a koolaid thread for a few posts and those same people arguing water vs gatorade for days. 

It was never my intention to derail the thread on purpose. I don't really care if it does get derailed a little bit mind you. But to accuse me of trying to post this in the hopes that someone would argue with me for days on the trans issues and then ban me over it is silly. It's exactly the kind of psy-ops bullshit that mods ban people here for. And then when you ask which rules you broke, they point out the ambiguous rules that can be applied to anyone. And the best part? Those mods use their own bias to unfairly and disproportionately ban a side of politics that they don't like. 

P.S. I usually vote straight democrat ticket. In fact I have never not voted straight Dem. 

Example 1 I agree with because people should get a ban for spreading misinformation. If the Cortana actor was indeed trans then maybe banning that user wouldn't be appropriate but it's easy to look it up and find out that the Cortana actor isn't trans. Also who cares? It's a videogame character. Who cares who jumps in the mocap suit? Cortana isn't male or female anyway. Cortana is a computer program. 

User 2 Example A = I need context. 

User 2 Example B = Bannable offense because almost all religions are hateful or have a hateful sect. Posting disinformation should be a bannable offense. Had the user said "The Muslim religion is one that often promotes hate." they wouldn't be wrong and the ban would not be deserved. But because they made the false claim that ONLY the Muslim religion is hateful they would deserve a ban IMO. 

User 2 Example C = Misgendering shouldn't be a bannable offense. You can't tell people there are five lights when there are really four and then ban them when they say there are four lights. You can't point to a green pen and say that it is black and that anyone who calls it green will be banned. Like I said earlier, forcing someone else's reality on another person is wrong. Might was well ban me for saying God doesn't exist, because that is somehow hurtful/hateful towards religious people. 

User 2 Example D = I need context. What is sweet baby inc? Some of the statements made could be just factual but without context I don't know the user's intent. IMO right now, without context I see it as a 50/50 chance the user deserved that ban. 

User 3 = Obvious ban. 

User 4 = The question by itself is a fair question. I don't think it's fair to take a question like that and apply previous banning history to ban said person. Imagine if someone had a history of being banned for racist comments and then said "Wow that actor sure is dark skinned!" in a genuine statement of surprise. And then post history is applied and said mod assumes they can read said users mind and the psy-ops begin.

"You stepped on the grass in the past and we banned you for it. This time you were walking towards the grass and looking at it. You didn't step on it but we are able to read your filthy mind and have decided that stepping on the grass was your intention. Perma-man initiated!"

Edit: In user 2 Example D I mean I can't know the user's intent because I don't know which posts they were responding to. I'm not talking about intent as in looking up their post history here. Just wanted to clear that up. 

Wow. That sounds like a real problem. What are some examples of these violent extreme comments that are not safe for work? Also, where did you find a job where you could be browsing the internet so obviously that people around you can actually read the comments on an article? I want one.

I don't recall exact verbiage, but three items jump to mind.  Something about "we should just kill all republicans."  "We should blow up AI data centers."  "We should Luigi Mangione" AI executives.  The first one was reported and required a few of us to beg for action, and the action was sad/pathetic.  The latter I reported many times and to the best of knowledge, nothing happened, but I also took a break shortly after, so I don't know.

Science, we have delays between instrumental runs, browsing the internet is common.  I have no idea what IT can (or can't) pick up.  But those types of comments bothered me personally and professionally.  I know it is speculation, but where I see the problem is the other versions wouldn't be allowed.  We should get rid of all democrats, we should blow up woke centers, etc.  That **** would be banned immediately.  There is a clear and obvious double standard with the mods.  Anybody who thinks otherwise is foolish, IMHO.  Either way, I found other websites that actually are fair.  I only popped by to check out the PC thread, thus I will be leaving till my next lurking session.  

I think it's also important to mention that several people have complained about being targeted, not because the mod team bans/warns them, but because they feel attacked because 5 people responded disagreeing with them.  

I can understand that feeling, I've been on the other side of it. I think I got a ban on Gaf like a decade ago, because several users misunderstood my comment (I was not very clear about what I was meaning), and I think I came back to like 15 replies. 

That can certainly suck. 

But I think that's kind of fundamentally what forums are about. You get 40 people's perspectives.