Welcome back man, glad to see the league not going anywhere.

Yea, I have pretty much given up on gaming forums myself.  I have moderated at everywhere from Gamespot and IGN to the PS3forums (even though I am mostly a 360 fan).

The biggest lesson I learned is that once a forum gets out of control, there is never a good way to get it back under control.

The biggest example for me was PS3forums.  Over there I ran a tight ship for close to 2.5 years.  We had extremely strict rules, most of which I drafted, which basically said no insulting, no posts without content, no off topic posts, and on and on.

For those 2.5 years, it was the best forum I had ever been apart of.  I could hold a conversation and not have to worry about getting slammed for no good reason.  Even though I didn't agree with more than 10% of their members on most topics, we could hold real debates and have legitimate disagreements about the industry and the focus of the individual console makers.

Shortly after the PS3 came out and it wasn't doing very well, one of the admins decided that holding back PS3 supporters was not helping, so he loosened the rules, except when enforcing them against apposing fans.  For a while I convinced him to just let me run the 360 only forum the old way and he let me.  Then one day I did a temp ban on a couple of people who would stop spamming nearly every thread in the forum with hate toward 360 supporters, he punished me publically on the site for doing so.

Right now, I look at VGChartz and see it mostly down the same tube.  At one point I was able to come here and have really good, sometimes intense, conversations about sales information.  I mostly participated from a viewer level here, but it was still worthy.  Then about 1 - 2 years ago, it just went down hill and quick.

The biggest issue isn't the rules, its unfair enforcement of them.  If you have rules, you have to have moderators from all perspectives that enforce them religously.  Threads are deleted instantly if any real chance of flamebait, otherwise they spiral and take the site with them.  Trolls are banned within just a couple of posts, no super secret triple play chances to come back and be good boys.  IP addresses are watched for Sock Puppets.

Unfortunately, about the only thing I have left to enjoy with gaming forums on the internet is laughing at idiots and this Gamerscore League.

SWEET!

Welcome back Neo buddy.

Okay, few questions or observations.

Who exactly decides how we perceive certain terms? What if I think fanboy is a positive term, because it shows that the person has a devoted love of a product... are we not all guilty of that?

Second, so it's not okay to say "(insert person here) you are a fanboy!" but it is perfectly okay to have generic sweeping statements calling large groups of people fanboys in our sigs?

That's just hypocritical, I don't care who you are. Also I would like to choose to live in a world where I decide how I will personally take being called one name or another. I really don't need a stupid set of rules telling me what should offend me.

Most the mods are cool here but there is a problem with some. I remember when the website design changed and some of the mods were threatening the ban hammer to people just stating their opinion that they didn't like it. I've also seen someone actually banned for just saying they didn't personally like one of the mods. Can we not have opinions?

And by the way, if fanboy is so offensive I can name about 30 words that are way more offensive.

Here is an even better solution that I try to live my life by: If you don't get offended by anything then you will never get offended. Some people need thicker skin.

Why do people need thick skin, how hard is it to just not directly insult people? Yes making sweeping generalities about why you dislike fanboys is fine, as long as you don't direct the term at a member. My sig is a play on what I think a video game episode of one of my favorite animes would be like. If it's honestly causing so much confusion about what is and is not insulting (which surprises the hell out of me but oh well) then I'll just get rid of it.

I got the 250 Gb 360 MW2 console because I only had a few GB left on my 120 GB RE5 console...

It is taking longer and longer to reload all my game saves and DLC to a new drive. I hope this lasts a while.

Torillian, because we are living in a society where every one has become such big politically correct babies. I'm so serious here, our biggest fear seems to be, oh no, someones feelings got hurt. And its getting to the point where people can't seem to have their own opinions if they aren't full of butterflies and puppy dogs.

The whole world needs to grow up.

You ask how hard is it not to insult people, I ask why is that such a big deal? Is getting insulted the worst freaking thing that can happen to a person? I've been insulted left and right whenever I go into an argument thread. I could care less. Geez, I have too many real problems in life to worry about what some net jockey thinks about me. Seriously, like 95 percent of the Internet is people insulting each other. Are we not used to it by now. So yes, people need thick skin, so that everytime someone says a meanie weenie word they don't go running off crying about it.


And I don't care about your sig, its fine. I just can't believe you don't see my point. I mean, under what you are saying, basically, that it would be alright for me to call a group of people the "N-word" as long as I didn't direct that language at any given individual. Or any other racial slur, that would be fine as long as it directed at an entire race not just one person.

It isn't about the word being taboo, it's about insulting people who are a member of this site.

I can say all I want about idiots in general, idiots suck, idiots never have a good argument, but the second I say "____ is an idiot" that's when the flaming starts.

Alright, then we can just agree to disagree. I'm not saying people should insult other people, just they should get over it when it happens. I hope you notice I tend not to insult people. You can disagree with someone and still have a civil conversation.

@Neo, a few gigs ya lucky bastid! I have 300 mbs left!!! lol. How many boxes do you even have at this point? I guess I'm going to have to delete some arcade titles. I kind of refuse to pay microsoft's insane hard drive prices.

I'm not sure if Forza 3 will work for me because I thought I had heard something about hard drive install of the second disk being mandatory, there is no way I can work that.

In a shocking turn of events, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has become platinum... 24 Owners...

Forza 3 works without the install, you just won't get as much content...  Do you have a 120 GB?