A Few Updates and a Rant

It has been a bit since I posted as I’ve been quite busy this past month, which I’ll go in to a bit here. I do expect to get back in to reading “The Neverending Story” this week, as I’ll be out of town the next few days and often will have nothing better to do (I’ll get in to that as well in this post). As an update I’ve been playing my way through the entire Half-Life series, which has been a blast. I finished Episode Two last night, so I’m stuck in a holding pattern until the final episode is released. I’m debating whether I want to post about Half-Life now or wait until whenever they finally release episode 3. Given that Valve has release schedules like Blizzard, there’s no telling how long of a wait that’ll be.

I have a few updates though, so I’m going to squish them all in to one thread. One update is along more personal lines, which I don’t post often aside from major events. The other is site related, though nothing particularly huge, just some changes I’m in the process of making. Then I also have a little rant I decided to toss in, which I’ll get in to at the end of the post. Given that I’ve been immersed in the Half-Life world and am waiting on Episode 3 at this time, I’ll divide this post in to “episodes” as homage to the game.

Episode 1: The Personal Stuff

I’ll be out of town on Wednesday and Thursday this week as my grandfather unfortunately passed away on Sunday. This really came quite as a shock because, as far as those older than 65 go, my grandfather was in great shape and didn’t really have any major medical problems. This really drives the point home that we need to cherish the time we have because there’s just no warning for things like this. One day your have a grandfather, and the next day you don’t, these things can sometimes just come at your out of the blue like that. I’ve dealt with the deaths of family members before, but they always came after a battle with a sickness or medical condition. This is the first I’ve ever dealt with that came so suddenly and without warning like this, and it feels all the more tragic as a result.

Episode 2: The Site Releated Stuff

I am working on some changes to the “About the Author” page, for any who care to view it. The one in place right now was my first attempt at adding to it, but I honestly don’t care for it so I’m going to start work on a more branched out version of it. I’m a talkative and opinionated person, and I just hate throwing up lists without some tidbit of information about it. I found if I added info to each piece then the page was too long, and even with nothing but a list it’s still too long. So I’m going to make a central page and then add subpages for things like movies and books and music and so on. This’ll be a lengthy process probably, particularly with this recent distraction that’ll have me out of town in the coming days, and I imagine that the “About the Author” page is going to look like an ugly mess during that time.

I think it’ll be good when I’m done though, and will provide a decent amount of insight for any who are interested. If not, hey, then this is of no consequence to ya. I’m also working with a few new themes as well to add as options to the sidebar, as well as a few widgets. The page has been pretty static since I set this theme up, but I’m actually constantly looking at new elements and changes that can be made to improve it. I also welcome any feedback from the few readers I have out there as well.

Episode 3: The Rant

I saved this for last because, honestly, it might be a pretty lengthy rant. As many who know me know, I am a frequent visitor to the forums at ANN and at VN/IGN, as well as being a moderator at ANN. Well, apparently without warning or reason, I find myself banned from IGN. It’s a temporary ban, but still, I have to admit that I find this to be an incredibly poor example of forum moderating. I’ll go in to detail here.

First, I got no warning, no e-mail, no notice, nothing. I simply hit my bookmark to go to IGN and find myself at a page saying I’ve been temporarily banned, and that the ban will last 24 hours to 7 days. I check my e-mails and there’s nothing and I can’t check my PMs or anything, though I can still see the count and that there are no new PM’s. Anything I try to do brings me to the ban page, which basically tells me that I have to fill out a form to get the reason for the ban and the length of the ban and that they will get back to me within 72 hours. I mean, wow, really? That’s half the potential length of the ban, and three times as long as the minimum possible length of the ban. So basically, it’s possible my ban could be over before I even find out why I was banned or am told for how long the ban will last. At this point it has been almost 24 hours since the ban and since I filled out the form and I have still received no response to the inquiry.

Now, if my actions somehow warranted a ban then so be it, but this method of handling bans is ridiculous, to say the least. On ANN bans, even temporary bans, are a last resort and are generally pretty rare. When a ban is dished out the person is given the reason, and a reason is put in to the software so that when they try to log in the rejection message will tell them why they can’t. IGN is a big board run by a company and is something users pay for, including myself, yet this is how they handle these situations? Considering the major bugs IGN has been having the past month, which has made it a pain in the butt to even try to post sometimes, and now this, I’m seriously second guessing my willingness to shell out another subscription fee when it comes due. Considering it’s a relatively small annual fee, the fact that I’m questioning whether the site is even worth that much is really saying something.

Now, from doing my own research I’ve been able to determine what the offending post was on my own, and the fact I’ve been banned for it just adds to this rant even more. I frequent a forum on the boards that is a community forum for Anime fans (big surprise huh?). As a community forum it is actually OT chat for any and every topic within reason. Every board has its troll, some are obvious and some are clever and some don’t even realize they’re trolls, but they’re always there none the less. On this board we have one of the latter, a guy who is a such a Mac fanboy you’d swear he works for Apple, and any mention of Mac or anything that competes with Mac will result in his appearance, which usually results in direct attacks against users that don’t agree with him. He isn’t Mac exclusive though, as if we talk about movies or shows or books or whatever and someone mentions liking something he doesn’t, he’ll come on and blast their opinion and even outright insult the users intelligence or personal tastes. He’s an all out troll, plain and simple, as very few of his posts don’t come at another posters expense, and I’m one of the few that’ll call him out on his behavior. Honestly, he wouldn’t last a day on ANN due to his love of going after users for their personal tastes to the point of insults, and his love of soapboxing and twisting threads as a result.

Well, someone posted a thread about a problem with their Macintosh. I was happy to leave the thread be, unlike him I don’t hunt down people with differing opinions and blast them whenever I can. If it was a Windows user I guarantee he’d have already shown up to soapbox about Macs, even though his contribution wouldn’t help the user at all. I know this, of course, because I’ve already seen him do it repeatedly. In fact, I’ve seen him jump in to threads to soapbox at the mere mention of Windows, even if it has little to absolutely no relevance to the discussion. Well, eventually someone else posted this in the thread:

You should get rid of your macs because they suck. PCs rule!!

Well, I knew this would attract the guys attention, so I posted:

Incoming <users name>! LOL

That’s it, nothing more and nothing less. I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t exactly a great post or anything, but IGN the standards are quite low, and that post falls well within the standard there. If it was ANN it would have been deleted right away, but if it were ANN I would have never posted it to begin with. Two different boards with two very different standards, rules and enforcement. Now, I’m happy to accept my ban if that post somehow violated the rules, okay, but it’s the inconsistency that bothers me the most. If I did something wrong, so be it, then I’m temp banned and that’s the way it works. As I said though, IGN has very difference standards and rules, and I see far worse daily and no bans issued from it. If I were to equate this enforcement to real laws, I would say it’s like giving someone a ticket for jaywalking while the liquor store across the street is robbed and people are drag racing down the same street.

Let’s look at the post that inspired my post. It adds less than mine, and could be considered borderline or potential trolling. That post stuck and nothing happened to that user. Yet my post, far tamer by comparison, was deleted and I was banned for it. Then there’s the poster in question who I predicted would appear in the thread, particularly after the other users comment. This guy is known for trolling, insulting other users who disagree with him, soapboxing and personal attacks, but he’s yet to be banned for his behavior. I’m banned for a joking one-liner that I predict the troll will show up, but the troll isn’t banned for blatant and insulting behavior. On top of that the user who made the initial one-liner that contributed less than mine and could be considered trolling had his post kept and he remains unbanned. As I said before, I’ll take my ban for the pointless one-liner or whatever it is that post is considered that got me the ban, but it bothers me that the other offender in the post got nothing and the rampant trolls are also given free reign. This particularly bothers me because I’m paying a yearly fee just to use this site, but yet I’m apparently paying for moderation that bans users for one-liners and lets users roam free who insult and attack one another or simply troll.

I’m not sure what happened here, maybe it’s a vendetta, I’ve heard from former mods that the moderators on IGN love to play favorites and cater more to their cliques than the forum overall. I really don’t know honestly. The person who initially opened the thread this occurred in is a moderator, so she might have disliked me posting the one-liner in her request thread, but then why didn’t she clear the troll post above mine and ban that person? Either it wasn’t her, or it’s because that person is a more long-term established user on the boards where as I’m pretty quiet and not as well known. That would fall in line with the favoritism and clique idea that former mods have told me is common on IGN, but that’s just a theory, and I don’t care to stir up the inevitable s**tstorm that would be required to prove it. The troll that inspired my post is an established poster on those boards as well, in spite of being a complete ass to many there, so that would also explain why he gets away with it.

Bottom line is that, whether I like it or not or agree with it, I got a temp ban. The ban will wear out soon enough and I’ll go back in and that’ll be that. Unfortunately, as if I didn’t post enough, now I have to tread carefully. The inconsistent moderation will only serve to make me second guess every post I make, since it’s clear I’ll get banned for far less than what others get away with. Ultimately my membership comes up for renewal in a month or two, and for the first time in years I must admit I’m considering just letting it drop and ditching IGN. The board glitches and problems that have gone untouched by IGN the past few months is bad enough, but now this? I use forums to kill dead time at home and work, and I’ve stuck with IGN because it has so many forums for various different topics. So, if anyone knows of any other great forums and sites out there like that, I’m all ears.

Edit (11-01-09): Well, my ban was lifted a few days ago, and it was confirmed that it was for the reason I suspected. Sadly, it took almost the full 72 hours for them to finally tell me that. The worst part is that there was a spammer on the boards advertising DVDs that I reported earlier the day I was banned, and those spam posts are still there, not to mention the user has since posted more of them. I swear, it astonishes me how awful the moderating there has proven to be.

© 2009, Keonyn. All rights reserved.

Tags: IGN, Personal, Rants, Site News