Why isn't The Escapist up for a webby this year?

[CODE-D]

Too many rape threads....or rather threads about rape.

 

[dexxyoto]

So I tossed an email to the webby folks and here's what they said:

Hi, Tegan!

Thank you for your inquiry!

There are no restrictions against previous Winners or Nominees being selected for recognition in the current year competition. And actually, "The Escapist" was selected as an Honoree in both the Games-Related and the Best Writing (Editorial) categories. However, only the 5 top-scoring entries in each category are selected as Nominees and this year's judges scored other submissions more favorably.

Please let me know if you have additional questions!

Thanks,
Denise
Webby Awards

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

To be honest, I'm not bothered. The Escapist has won or at least been nominated every year I can remember, so I guess they thought it was better to let someone else have a chance?

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

why is that so? can you explain for me, im a little dense when it comes to inferring. and algebra.

http://deadhorseinterchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Escapist_Forums
Posted that link earlier, sums up most of the opinions I see when the escapist is brought up on other sites.

ohhh....THAT site?

that site has to be the stupidest thing Ive ever seen, im not saying that as a defense of the escapist (I dont care)

but seriously..its jusy this whiney hate filled cess pit thats hardly funny

But in this case, they're right. These forums have gone from mediocre to terrible in the last year or so. I can tell you for a fact that I've received a warning and had a thread deleted for going against the Escapist's hivemind and talking about HL2's negative impact on gaming. The forums have always been strict, but now it's just stupid since you can't say anything new without fear of a warning. The only reason I still go to this site, and I mean the ONLY reason, is for the video content from LRR, Sterling, Yahtzee, and Moviebob as well as the occasional Shamus article. The community are nothing more than fanboy entitled whiners who are incapable of having an intelligent discussion wherein one opinion differs even slightly from their own. I hope they change the forum rules and get some new mods soon, but I don't see the user end of this site being saved any time soon. And yes, I fully expect to get a warning for this.

To be honest, I'm a bit bemused by this. I've been disagreeing with wider-held opinions here (I'm not a big Valve fan, I actually enjoy CoD, I've had some big arguments about welfare and I've actually had rants at the whole community) and I've not once received any mod-wrath. I don't really get why you'd get hit and I wouldn't (it's not going to be luck, I've been around a while).

 

[teh_v]

I'd far rather have the forum too well moderated then too loosely. Look at the Bandai CCG Forums, where the mods only use banning as a last resort. Conversations rarely go longer then a few posts before the flaming and attacks start, because people know they won't get in trouble. Any chance of adult speak goes down the tubes.

Personally, I love the forums here. It is a fortress of civil discussion (and MassRim threads, but you take the good with the bad) against the YouTube Comments and chans of the world.

Hence why I said there's some value to be had in such an approach. The problem is that the mods here take it too far.

Mod action on personal attacks against another poster makes perfect sense. Banning people for (for example) posting an image that expresses a complete idea, without a redundant paragraph further explaining it, does not.

There definitely should be mod action and rigid standards. The problem is that said standards are (in some cases) too strict and the mods are too eager to enforce it.

Edit: Also, the mods here have a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for excessive reactions to criticism. They generally do a decent job, from what I've seen, but there's definitely a few cases of people being banned for nothing more than criticizing them in a relatively reasonable manner.

Have you heard of our appeals system?

 

[teh_v]

http://deadhorseinterchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Escapist_Forums
Posted that link earlier, sums up most of the opinions I see when the escapist is brought up on other sites.

Wow, thanks for the laugh. The vast majority of what I read there is blown universes out of proportion or blatantly wrong.

I read through and checked all the links to the things they said were crazy because people got Mod wrath because of their comments.

Everyone of them was perfectly legitimate, because the poster wasn't following the codes of conduct of the Escapist.

They said that people get mod wrath for criticizing the Escapist or people get wrath because they are on the "wrong-side of the argument".....well, of course they do if they go about such things by name calling and throwing insults. Once people resort to such blows, their criticism isn't valid.

I've seen plenty of people criticize the Escapist and how the staff review things, and there posts were left alone, because their arguments were presented in a civil manner. And it doesn't matter if people are defending themselves from a "Troll", in such a situation, people should either report the troll or if they want to make an argument against the troll, they can do it without said name calling and insults.

you can report trolls all day long and the mods wont do crap about it, they are far too busy looking for people who say piracy is a good thing, or looking for 1-3 word posts/picture posts.

I reported a troll who was calling a person names about 5 times, and they never got censored, and I hit that little report button another few times when someone admitted, in their god damn post, that they had ban jumped, but they didn't get banned, no the person who posted 4 posts after that with a picture got the warning.

You are always welcome to send me a PM or to post in the Moderation Team user group if you feel that your complaint isn't being sufficiently addressed.

 

[teh_v]

I recognize that some of your complaints about moderation being unfair or too harsh in the past might be perfectly well founded. However, in the last year that I've been acting as Community Manager I've made a lot of effort to address these complaints, and to make myself constantly available to those of you that have queries.

You can always PM me on the website, post in the Moderation Team user group or take advantage of the Appeals process. If you ever feel that action has been taken against you unfairly, you are within your rights to request a revision and we will do our best to evaluate whether you have actually broken a rule or not.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct

If there's anything else I can help to clear up, please do let me know.

- Nas

 

[Lucem712]

I recognize that some of your complaints about moderation being unfair or too harsh in the past might be perfectly well founded. However, in the last year that I've been acting as Community Manager I've made a lot of effort to address these complaints, and to make myself constantly available to those of you that have queries.

You can always PM me on the website, post in the Moderation Team user group or take advantage of the Appeals process. If you ever feel that action has been taken against you unfairly, you are within your rights to request a revision and we will do our best to evaluate whether you have actually broken a rule or not.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct

If there's anything else I can help to clear up, please do let me know.

- Nas

I think you guys do a great job and usually those who complain about being punished for their "opinions" are the ones posting bile/insults and make themselves out to be victims of evil mods.

I'm glad I'm not a mod for I would smash my rivals down with the mighty ban hammer.

 

[sir.rutthed]

To be honest, I'm not bothered. The Escapist has won or at least been nominated every year I can remember, so I guess they thought it was better to let someone else have a chance?

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

why is that so? can you explain for me, im a little dense when it comes to inferring. and algebra.

http://deadhorseinterchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Escapist_Forums
Posted that link earlier, sums up most of the opinions I see when the escapist is brought up on other sites.

ohhh....THAT site?

that site has to be the stupidest thing Ive ever seen, im not saying that as a defense of the escapist (I dont care)

but seriously..its jusy this whiney hate filled cess pit thats hardly funny

But in this case, they're right. These forums have gone from mediocre to terrible in the last year or so. I can tell you for a fact that I've received a warning and had a thread deleted for going against the Escapist's hivemind and talking about HL2's negative impact on gaming. The forums have always been strict, but now it's just stupid since you can't say anything new without fear of a warning. The only reason I still go to this site, and I mean the ONLY reason, is for the video content from LRR, Sterling, Yahtzee, and Moviebob as well as the occasional Shamus article. The community are nothing more than fanboy entitled whiners who are incapable of having an intelligent discussion wherein one opinion differs even slightly from their own. I hope they change the forum rules and get some new mods soon, but I don't see the user end of this site being saved any time soon. And yes, I fully expect to get a warning for this.

To be honest, I'm a bit bemused by this. I've been disagreeing with wider-held opinions here (I'm not a big Valve fan, I actually enjoy CoD, I've had some big arguments about welfare and I've actually had rants at the whole community) and I've not once received any mod-wrath. I don't really get why you'd get hit and I wouldn't (it's not going to be luck, I've been around a while).

To be fair, the post I mention that got me red flagged was a year or so ago. My major issue with the system has been that it only gets rid of the boring trolls that are easy to ignore in the first place, while doing nothing to combat the ones who are intelligent and are actually a threat to a good discussion. With the system as it is, often you can get away with saying absolutely anything as long as you dress it up in a moderately intelligent way and make it slightly on topic. From there, it's easy to get the other guy to derail the thread. If you're a smart troll (which are the ones we should be trying to stop) the rules here are at most a speed bump, and at worst a challenge to be accepted. My second biggest issue with the community is the denial of their hyper-fanboy hivemindism. If you like Bioware games and want to talk about their redeeming qualities, be prepared to be buried in a storm of anti-EA raging. If you don't think Half Life 2 is God's greatest gift to mankind and Gabe Newell is the second coming of Christ, you must be one of those jock assholes who just plays Madden games and brings down the whole medium you selfish prick. At least Reddit and 4Chan are honest and upfront about their hivemind tendencies. Even if the mods don't get you, the fanboys will and they will burry any potential discussion value in your OP with blind hatred and bile. But worse than that actually, by far, is how the community treats the staff when the staff says something the hivemind disagrees with. For example, see the Escapists' reviews of Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3. Both are riddles with personal attacks on the reviewers accusing them/the Escapist of being in EA's pocket. It's shameful, disgusting, and I will not associate myself with people who are so blindly hateful that they can't acknowledge that other people's opinion on a fucking video game can be different from theirs without foaming at the mouth.

I recognize that some of your complaints about moderation being unfair or too harsh in the past might be perfectly well founded. However, in the last year that I've been acting as Community Manager I've made a lot of effort to address these complaints, and to make myself constantly available to those of you that have queries.

You can always PM me on the website, post in the Moderation Team user group or take advantage of the Appeals process. If you ever feel that action has been taken against you unfairly, you are within your rights to request a revision and we will do our best to evaluate whether you have actually broken a rule or not.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct

If there's anything else I can help to clear up, please do let me know.

- Nas

Thank you for being upfront, and good luck with your efforts. One thing I've always loved about this site is how approachable the staff and contributors are; I always feel like my comments on the content are being read and I get a little Geek chill whenever Moviebob or Russ responds to a comment of mine. As far as my concerns go though, I think there's only so much you or any single person can do. See the above part of this post for why. This community has a lot of growing up to do, and I believe they can do it, I just don't want any part of it right now. I still love the site's content and news sections, but as far as I'm concerned the forums are a toxic wasteland. I really do wish you the best, and I hope you can help restore this site to being the respectable community it should be and has been in the past.

 

[-Dragmire-]

I recognize that some of your complaints about moderation being unfair or too harsh in the past might be perfectly well founded. However, in the last year that I've been acting as Community Manager I've made a lot of effort to address these complaints, and to make myself constantly available to those of you that have queries.

You can always PM me on the website, post in the Moderation Team user group or take advantage of the Appeals process. If you ever feel that action has been taken against you unfairly, you are within your rights to request a revision and we will do our best to evaluate whether you have actually broken a rule or not.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/codeofconduct

If there's anything else I can help to clear up, please do let me know.

- Nas

Been a while since I checked the Code of Conduct section. I don't remember seeing the Mod list there before, nice to see it there in case I need to PM one of them.

For everyone else, a quick link to that section is at the bottom of the Forums tab for all your rule searching needs.

So I tossed an email to the webby folks and here's what they said:

Hi, Tegan!

Thank you for your inquiry!

There are no restrictions against previous Winners or Nominees being selected for recognition in the current year competition. And actually, "The Escapist" was selected as an Honoree in both the Games-Related and the Best Writing (Editorial) categories. However, only the 5 top-scoring entries in each category are selected as Nominees and this year's judges scored other submissions more favorably.

Please let me know if you have additional questions!

Thanks,
Denise
Webby Awards

Thanks for making the effort! The speculation in this thread was traveling a rather dark path, nice to have an answer.


Guess we can't win'em all.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Not to take away from the place, but the Escapist is basically just Zero Punctuation and a forum. Most people don't even know about the Escapist despite having seen a fair few episodes of ZP, most people who are aware of it's existence probably don't even know they have other stuff too.

That may be your personal experience, but I can assure you that we're much more than just "ZP and a forum." We wouldn't be an honoree for writing if all we were was a video series and a community.

 

[Waaghpowa]

you can report trolls all day long and the mods wont do crap about it, they are far too busy looking for people who say piracy is a good thing, or looking for 1-3 word posts/picture posts.

I reported a troll who was calling a person names about 5 times, and they never got censored, and I hit that little report button another few times when someone admitted, in their god damn post, that they had ban jumped, but they didn't get banned, no the person who posted 4 posts after that with a picture got the warning.

Let's not forget the gratuitous use of the word "elitist" to describe the PC gamers. I saw someone use the word elitist just because someone had posted a comment regarding transistors in CPU's. Can we please start issuing warnings for that? It's getting old.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

please do tell

Im interested to know

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/realraptalk-escapist.php?page=7

And that is not really mean spirited. I think any community that thinks it's not ridiculed by other websites is fooling itself. Nature of humanity and all that jazz

 

[teh_v]

Cuz this site used to be a lot better.

Yeah, no it didn't.

I've been here for a long time and lurked for a long time before that.

I don't understand where all this 'the old times were better' nonsense is coming from.

I think its because in the past the content writers actually used to try and not be so blatantly biased. It seems like for the last year or so every just said fuck integrity and threw it out the window, including moderators.

Have you heard of our appeals system?

Oh god thats to funny. Oh wait were you being serious? Last time I used to appeals system I got in even more trouble with you guys.

Please use caution when you are making critical remarks about our staff or moderation team's integrity. I personally oversee the moderator's behavior, and they do get notified if they've made a mistake. With regard to the appeals board, I can't speak to your specific circumstance but I can say that each and every complaint is read and compared against our Forum Rules for fairness. The most likely reason I can think of that one would get more punishments for appealing a warning is that they were rude during the process.

 

[Susan Arendt]

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

please do tell

Im interested to know

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/realraptalk-escapist.php?page=7

And that is not really mean spirited. I think any community that thinks it's not ridiculed by other websites is fooling itself. Nature of humanity and all that jazz

Nah, that's not so bad. And it was done by request, after all.

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

why is that so? can you explain for me, im a little dense when it comes to inferring. and algebra.

http://deadhorseinterchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Escapist_Forums
Posted that link earlier, sums up most of the opinions I see when the escapist is brought up on other sites.

Written at least in part by ex-Escapists who are still enraged that they got banned from these forums, so consider the source. You can kind of tell due to the focus on forum moderation. It's kind of a conundrum...the forums are all superlame and the moderators are total assholes, and yet these folks are still incredibly angry that they got booted.

 

[Limecake]

Written at least in part by ex-Escapists who are still enraged that they got banned from these forums, so consider the source. You can kind of tell due to the focus on forum moderation. It's kind of a conundrum...the forums are all superlame and the moderators are total assholes, and yet these folks are still incredibly angry that they got booted.

that's the impression I got from it:

The Escapist has always done like that. They create these soft rules (in that they don't "ban" discussion of the topic). In practice, however, they'll moderate one entire side of the argument, so that only the other side remains. They've been doing this for years.

[citation needed]

They nefariously stack the deck so that nobody CAN disagree with their official position on their website, because that whole side of the argument is a violation of their rules. So they'll always win any argument, because they can just mod people who disagree. Which, honestly, is what their mods have always done (via the term "mod sass.")

I love the citation needed part because they never actually go on to prove any of these claims they make. I've been on this site for a few years (lurked for quite a while) and I've been to many different forums in my time but I like these the best.

it's not perfect, it can be a little pretentious but it's a breath of fresh air for people who have been dealing with trolls and flame wars since the 90's.

I also like the mod system, I usually go read the post someone made that got them banned and for the most part it's entirely justified.

as for the forum 'guidlines' they may seem a little strict, however if you choose to post here you choose to accept the rules.

 

[Bat Vader]

So I tossed an email to the webby folks and here's what they said:

Hi, Tegan!

Thank you for your inquiry!

There are no restrictions against previous Winners or Nominees being selected for recognition in the current year competition. And actually, "The Escapist" was selected as an Honoree in both the Games-Related and the Best Writing (Editorial) categories. However, only the 5 top-scoring entries in each category are selected as Nominees and this year's judges scored other submissions more favorably.

Please let me know if you have additional questions!

Thanks,
Denise
Webby Awards

That saddens me. I was hoping to vote again for The Escapist to win a Webby. If The Escapist isn't going to be in the contest I really don't see a need for myself to vote. Hopefully they get entered next year so they can win another Webby.

 

[Brad Shepard]

I'm not sure why everyone's surprised; whether the users like it or not, this place is kind of a laughingstock among other communities.

Ive seen it, Go to 4chan and try to do an Escapist Thread on /v/, then prepare for the shitstorm, ive seen threads about specific users