What's with all the ban requests?

[faeshadow]

It's pretty simple:

Childish attention seeking.

Mature people who don't want to participate in the site anymore would just leave and not come back. People who want attention for it have to make a big fuss about it and make sure everyone knows that they're leaving and not coming back. As if we care.

 

[ForumSafari]

The point of protesting is the same as all protesting, it's just not over something you agree with this time. Take whatever the anti-gay donating burger joint in the US was, I forget, but people didn't just stop going,t hey stopped going and explained why.

When I think of going out with a bang, I think of Animehermit. People are usually so passive aggressive with their anger that when you actually see someone totally lose it on this site, it's quite shocking. Not advocating to do that obviously, it's just that asking for a ban seems like going out in denial of your own importance rather than going out with a bang.

I was disappointed with my first ban, my 2 week suspension was over a pretty good rant but my banpost was utterly pedestrian.

 

[Sarge034]

Conversation about what? If you want a random converstation thread, why don't you open a thread, title it "Conversation" and put "see topic title" as the OP. It would actually make for more of a conversation than a "please ban me" thread, as, theoretically, people can discuss the nature of conversation. Chances are, they wouldn't, but hey - you had more faith in them discussing...well, presumably whatever in an unrelated thread.

Is this whole thread not filled with some intelligent conversation on the topic of "please ban me"? Points for it, against it, and thoughts on it? I see discussion value in that, but more so in that if the OP lists reasons they're unhappy here then that can discussion points all their own.

Allegation, then. But you were really fast to go from "I don't know, can you clarify" to "There be shady shit". Which doesn't really fly well with your statement that you were forgiving.

Nor was it allegation. All I asked for was for him to clarify why the threads were locked. But because I remembered their previous antics I said IF there wasn't a reason then it's shady like it was before. The implication being that IF there was a legit reason then all is well.

Or can I say, "Can you clarify what you mean by forgiving, because if you murdered somebody in cold blood for not saying hello to you, this would be really untruthful". No accusation, yet, right? ButI hope you see how it's not really a request for clarification, either.

Not only is this an example of more fallacies then I'm willing to list, I don't know what point you're trying to make. I forgave them for censoring the GG threads early on, but I remember they did it. I don't hold it against them, but I watch to make sure it doesn't happen again. Just because I forgive "you" for an action doesn't mean I'm going to forget "you" tried to do it in the first place. Clearer now?

 

[happyninja42]

I find it quite funny, that they would do such a thing. Shows how much they grave attention going out, reminds me of the, "how dare you ignore me, ignoring you!?", lol.

Let them burn their own exit doors, they are only burning down their own house.

 

[DoPo]

Conversation about what? If you want a random converstation thread, why don't you open a thread, title it "Conversation" and put "see topic title" as the OP. It would actually make for more of a conversation than a "please ban me" thread, as, theoretically, people can discuss the nature of conversation. Chances are, they wouldn't, but hey - you had more faith in them discussing...well, presumably whatever in an unrelated thread.

Is this whole thread not filled with some intelligent conversation on the topic of "please ban me"? Points for it, against it, and thoughts on it? I see discussion value in that, but more so in that if the OP lists reasons they're unhappy here then that can discussion points all their own.

Point the discussion value in a thread literally saying "please ban me". Because so far, you've just been adding "but"s and "if"s to these. Yes, if the person says "please ban me, and by the way, here is an essay discussing the distinction of controllers versus keyboards and mice to support a narrative", then it's different than saying "please ban me". I am fairly sure everybody is aware of that. And no amount of thought experiments proposed by you would make anybody realise something they already know. But the actual facts are, nobody posted this essay, nor anything worthy of discussion. Your added qualifiers to me pointing this out are irrelevant.

So, AGAIN - what are people to discuss when somebody says "please ban me"? Stick to this question, stop twisting it into something else.

You keep talking about it like there is this great discussion that somehow requires an unrelated thread for it to come forth. If you really wanted this discussion to happen, how about you make a thread for it instead of going "but...but, what if the 'ban me' threads would magically conjure it?"

EDIT: Actually appears you might be too late [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.871768-Conversations]

 

[IceForce]

.

Somewhat related to this conversation, a large number of threads were outright deleted very recently:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.871672-Why-were-all-the-dating-threads-deleted

 

[Sarge034]

Point the discussion value in a thread literally saying "please ban me". Because so far, you've just been adding "but"s and "if"s to these. Yes, if the person says "please ban me, and by the way, here is an essay discussing the distinction of controllers versus keyboards and mice to support a narrative", then it's different than saying "please ban me". I am fairly sure everybody is aware of that. And no amount of thought experiments proposed by you would make anybody realise something they already know. But the actual facts are, nobody posted this essay, nor anything worthy of discussion. Your added qualifiers to me pointing this out are irrelevant.

So, AGAIN - what are people to discuss when somebody says "please ban me"? Stick to this question, stop twisting it into something else.

You keep talking about it like there is this great discussion that somehow requires an unrelated thread for it to come forth. If you really wanted this discussion to happen, how about you make a thread for it instead of going "but...but, what if the 'ban me' threads would magically conjure it?"

EDIT: Actually appears you might be too late [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.871768-Conversations]

How about you stow the passive aggressiveness and read what I said instead of what you want to see? I already said those types of threads are truly deserving of a lock, but I was asking if all were THAT type of thread. An example of what I said would be a legit thread was if the OP was something like this...

EXAMPLE (I don't wish to be banned)
"Due to the direction the escapist has recently taken I feel this is no longer a place I am welcome/comfortable/approve of (what have you). [List of things perceived as wrong AND why; IE Bob, Jim, whoever that new guy is, mods, rules, censoring, whatever]. Because I disagree with these things so fully and I feel like my voice is not being heard (or ignored), I wish to be banned."
/ EXAMPLE (I still don't wish to be banned)

Are you telling me there is no discussion value there? The list of things the OP perceived as wrong are discussions in and of themselves. People can agree things are wrong and add their thoughts (Preferably on how they think things could get better. Solutions as opposed to complaining kindda deal.) and people can disagree too. People can discuss the very idea of requesting bans (as there seems to be discussions to be had judging from this thread).

Somewhat related to this conversation, a large number of threads were outright deleted very recently:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.871672-Why-were-all-the-dating-threads-deleted

Urmk, I actually saw quite a few of those threads so I can actually comment on them!

I can see both sides of the argument but there was some funny shit going on in them. They started off serious and then became joke threads. I didn't really get pissed till I read the last post... before the mod locked the thread discussing the locking of threads.

Spoiler: The post in question

Drathnoxis:
Just *poof* all gone, overnight. I looked over the code of conduct again and I can't figure that they break any rules.

There's nothing specifically in the Code of Conduct that forbids threads like these, nor really should there be, but there is some logic behind culling the threads if they get too out of hand.

Solaire of Astora:
[T]hey were kinda stopping a lot of other threads with legitimate discussions from getting ... attention ...

This really covers the most of it. In short, the more a string of specific topic threads appear in short order, the more likely it is any other topic of discussion is going to get pushed out of public awareness and be denied the readership it could have thrived under.

The longer answer is more complex, but effectively boils down to the same thing. Not only does that sort of monolithic mentality do a lot of foster only a specific sort of discussion, but there are studies to suggest that it will also do a lot to foster only a specific audience. The longer people are exposed to like-minded individuals or topics, the more likely they are to either stop trying to post or outright leave the community entirely. It's that same logic that informs things like Megathreads, to prevent certain discussions or topics from single-handedly taking over the entirety of the forum population.

In short, fewer threads on a single topic will foster a wider, better, more participatory audience.

Now I'm mad. If there's nothing in the CoC against it you have no right to lock it, none. Either your CoC is a failure or irrelevant. What I mean is if this is a problem, amend the CoC to show that and give you rights to act. If you aren't going to do that then you just made the CoC irrelevant because you've basically said you can do whatever you want even if no rules were broken. *Sigh* Just the thought process here saddens me. "You broke no rules but it's not what we want to see. Shhhhhhhh, trust us. We know best." So what if other topics were being drowned? That just means those are popular topics if they occupy ALL TRHEE of the DIFFERENT quick search boxes (being; recently posted, most views, and most comments) ... Or you could, ya know, make you own thread or actually pull up the thread list.

Spoiler: But don't worry guys...

 

[DoPo]

but I was asking if all were THAT type of thread.

Yes, as it was pointed out to you by two people so far.

An example of what I said would be a legit thread was if the OP was something like this...

And as was also pointed - no. I have no idea why you keep adding "but...but...but" to this.

Are you telling me there is no discussion value there?

Maybe I'm not getting my point across, or maybe the text is coming out all jumbled on your end or something, but I'll try again: this is irrelevant. We aren't talking about that. Such a thread hasn't been posted. You are trying to defend the non-existent. It is simply beyond me to understand why you do that. We have been talking about the threads that have been posted so far.

I hope this message doesn't come out as gibberish to you again.

 

[Sarge034]

Yes, as it was pointed out to you by two people so far.

And I was content to leave that topic once I got a straight answer. That is until someone decided to started implying there could be NO conversation value to a thread like that.

And as was also pointed - no. I have no idea why you keep adding "but...but...but" to this.

See above.

Maybe I'm not getting my point across, or maybe the text is coming out all jumbled on your end or something, but I'll try again: this is irrelevant. We aren't talking about that. Such a thread hasn't been posted. You are trying to defend the non-existent. It is simply beyond me to understand why you do that. We have been talking about the threads that have been posted so far.

I hope this message doesn't come out as gibberish to you again.

Maybe your point is wrong and passive aggressive, who can say? All I know is that not only did I say IF there where any civil conversations (as I didn't know at the time) but also you were the one to start talking about the "non-existent" first as I recall...

Sarge034:
So why not ban the person and leave the thread there if there are any civil conversations?

DoPo:
Conversation about what? If you want a random converstation thread, why don't you open a thread, title it "Conversation" and put "see topic title" as the OP. It would actually make for more of a conversation than a "please ban me" thread, as, theoretically, people can discuss the nature of conversation. Chances are, they wouldn't, but hey - you had more faith in them discussing...well, presumably whatever in an unrelated thread.

 

[StorkV]

Are you seriously asking why people are dumb on the internet? Because we're on the internet...

 

[DoPo]

Yes, as it was pointed out to you by two people so far.

And I was content to leave that topic once I got a straight answer. That is until someone decided to started implying there could be NO conversation value to a thread like that.

Because none of the topics so far, which have been what we were discussing, did not have a discussion value. Your theoretical asking of "what if they did" does not apply to them. I did not imply anything about stuff that wasn't a reality.

All I know is that not only did I say IF there where any civil conversations (as I didn't know at the time) but also you were the one to start talking about the "non-existent" first as I recall...

Sarge034:
So why not ban the person and leave the thread there if there are any civil conversations?

You recall wrong. Which is astonishing to me. Let me pull out the ACTUAL quote with context

That's pretty all of the "please ban me" threads, really. Not all of them were even really rude, in fact, but more or less exactly said "please ban me".

So why not ban the person and leave the thread there if there are any civil conversations? I've seen many a thread OP be modded and the thread be allowed to live on because other were handling the topic in a civil manner.

You know, your question of "what if these threads had a discussion value" was to my pointing out they didn't. But yet it was somehow before you knew, apparently.

 

[Sarge034]

snip

You're very rustled by this and I don't know why. I was working with the info I had at the time and as such worded my posts to allow for the possibility that both sides were correct. "If" is a great word for doing this.

 

[Dizchu]

The last half a year has been a mess. And it wasn't one group's fault, the situation with gaming sites such has the Escapist has been like a house of cards. Tensions were already as high as possible and then you-know-what happened and caused a paradigm shift all across the board.

I don't blame people for abandoning ship. I mostly joined just to get a grasp of what the hell was even going on at the time, but I could tell people were getting sick of it pretty quickly.

I'll stick around just to see what happens. Also because the community here is more reasonable than most.

 

[Belaam]

Good grief. I'm definitely in the crowd that thinks the site is dead. Extra Punctuation is about it. I kept coming for a while to get original sources from the article stream on the left side of the main page, but I now feel like I've found a reasonably solid three sites and two blogs that fill the need for why I originally came here, Kind of hilariously, a couple of those sites are far more anti-GG than I had used to visit, but given the dearth here, I had to go somewhere and so went hunting and found several sites I'd never visited before.

At any rate, the forums still have a bit of life, and probably will for a bit, so I'll occasionally wander by. It's kind of reminiscent of how I'd wander by the old televisionwithoutpity.com forums with decreasing frequency as that site went from a favorite to terrible to out of business when it changed management. The forums are always the last to go, and there are still occasional conversations worth having.

But demanding perma ban is just stupid. If you really want to make a statement, I guess you could delete your own account, but really, the decreasing hits are all that will really matter. Making a spectacle accomplishes nothing.

 

[runic knight]

I love all the self-righteousness in this thread. Now, if people are actually posting porn or pointless vulgar diatribes, then go ahead and mock. But I haven't seen anything more than people saying that they don't agree with the direction the site is taking and are no longer willing to support them through page clicks. So everyone in here saying "LOL, ATENSHUN HOR" are actually MORE obnoxious than the people I've seen leave. Way to feel good about yourself for not being able to see things from other people's perspective; I think that says more about YOU than the people you talk about.

There is a difference between walking to the door and leaving, and throwing a tantrum in the middle of it and forcing the manager make security personally escort you out the front door.

The people who left, or even just stopped showing up and made a post explaining why before going? Yeah, they are the ones aren't the topic of conversation. The ones who are, are those who make a spectacle about their leaving, as though they matter enough to be seen as a loss in spite of making their last act a tantrum.

For analogy, let line this up with youtube comments. The topic of this thread is about those who publicly and viciously start insulting the channel and demanding to be blocked by the content creator, while you are equating that with people who leave a simple explaining of their dislike and then posting "unsubbed". It is the act of demanding the site itself prevent you from coming back as a means of protest that is the spectacle and over the top aspect being mocked, and I think it has a good reason to be.

or is stuff like this

Ban, please; screw bigotry. Sexism, racist, homophobia and transphobia is evil and those who subscribe to those beliefs can go fuck themselves. Have fun with your contentless website.

really so undeserving of being frowned upon?

 

[Snotnarok]

There's a lot of content creators leaving/being fired so they want to show their dislike of it.

I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to come to the escapist, not finding the arguments I find myself in all too interesting, many creators have left, people I posted with as well. I've seen less Pony topics on asking why the show is popular which I was hoping would come but now it's being replaced with topics like this "why is everyone leaving?" which isn't a good thing to read on a site you enjoyed frequenting.
Most of the articles I find similar to those I find on facebook so there's not a point to come here much anymore.

 

[runic knight]

There is a difference between walking to the door and leaving, and throwing a tantrum in the middle of it and forcing the manager make security personally escort you out the front door.

The people who left, or even just stopped showing up and made a post explaining why before going? Yeah, they are the ones aren't the topic of conversation. The ones who are, are those who make a spectacle about their leaving, as though they matter enough to be seen as a loss in spite of making their last act a tantrum.

Well, the OP makes no such distinction and if you looked at the first part of my comment you'd see I agree that childish people are childish. So basically you just called me out for saying the exact same thing you did, but you assumed the OP was only speaking about the type of person YOU are, as well. Well done?

The OP is specifically talking about people who post requests to be banned, so yeah, they do distinguish between those who just leave and those who publicly request a ban. And as I tried to point out in the post, the act of requesting a ban is a public temper tantrum, because it is most often coupled with behaving badly in order to force the management of the site to respond to them. And even if sometimes more civil (and I have seen far, far more that have not been civil), it is still a public display intentionally trying to get attention of the site and the users on it with the same justification as a toddler throwing toys to the ground in a store. On top of that, the general conversation presently is towards those that put on a spectacle requesting being banned and your own post is instead based on deriding those people for being "self righteous" in daring to comment that the intentional attention seeking public displays are indeed intentionally seeking attention.

Your entire post seemed like a knee-jerk scorn at people calling out the behavior of people acting like children with a weak justification and a lot of attempted shame and judgement. Hell, you farcically try to present the scorn of the temper tantrum behavior as "not seeing from their perspective" which is non-sensical as the perspective one has doesn't excuse one's behavior, merely gives a lens to understand it. And as most of the conversation here seems to show, a lot of people do understand the perspective of publicly making a scene and forcing the moderator's hand as being entirely about making the scene itself. Feeling justified or not in making the scene doesn't make it less an open attempt to get attention in the first place, even if you wish to misrepresent that line of reasoning as "LOL, ATENSHUN HOR".

So, no, gonna have to ask you to re-read my post a second time, as it seems you didn't bother to pick up on it. Perhaps I should frame it as a series of questions instead? Very well.

How is publicly requesting a ban any different then forcing a manager of a store call security to get you to leave, and how is even the less over the top swear laden variety of those request not a public tantrum display? Furthermore, why is it worse to comment on how childish and obnoxious to comment on people throwing a tantrum and forcing management to escort them to the door and never return, then the people who are demanding management treat them in such a fashion as a public display or civil disobedience or whatever justification for making a spectacle the action might have?