I don't understand why this website allows this small group of people to disrupt the vast majority so much. In the short time I've been here I've come to learn quickly that "krellin" and "fiedler" are the nasty bullies in of the play ground (only this isn't a playground, it's a diplomacy website for all ages). Why do you let them continually and habitually detract, disturb and destroy the community on here? It must be off putting to more than just me; and frankly I was surprised that more punishment wasn't given when one of those players told me to commit suicide in the discussion thread on capital punishment: what if I had been an impressionable teenager? It's disgusting. If people aren't here to play diplomacy and engage in constructive, if heated, discussion, and spend the majority of their time going out of their adult way to upset, hurt and harass people, why on earth do you let it go on and on and on?

Those 2 people are ridiculous and make this website, which has so many positives, a nasty, horrible place to be.

I have owned a website with an active community and it was solely on me whether to ban someone. Each time, and I think there were only three, I had to really weigh heavily on my strong beliefs in free speech, versus the harm the person was doing, but recognizing they can take their free speech anywhere and keep it, but it was my fucking website. I respect anytime a mod or site owner does the same and like a Judge or Jury takes full responsibility for the decision they are making. Because it isn't easy. Plus, being banned or silenced from a web site is not a prison sentence, it's a wake up call.

This forum used to be much worse, much much worse, and we are slowly transitioning away from all that nonsense. We have been getting much better over the last year. You guys are absolutely right. This place is a site to play diplomacy on, not to endure any sort of personal attacks by bullies. Those bullies, if they don't follow my site rules, will be banned. If you guys notice other instances of these negative behaviors that reflect poorly on the site, please email the mods at [email protected]

If they don't feel that this site isn't "free" enough for them, they are more than welcome to find another place to play.

Im totally ok with being banned. I'm a free individual and not someone who will be cowed by someone else's sense of 'taste'.

Wjessop you have the option of muting threads and players. Or simply not reading them. Not hard. I think what you really object to is based on your narrow minded intellectual cowardice.

Krellins rhetoric must have some value because look at the number of people who engage with him. Including yourself. Sure gets people thinking. If you don't like us then mute us. Or rally to get me banned. Whatever lol.

Btw, you'll notice krellin never begs for others to be banned. He will tolerantly take on all comers. No matter how disgusting he might find the things they say. Subjectivity and all.

Ban me mods. I am ready.

The thing about krellin is that he wasn't offended - he's playing a part, and in doing so is saying things that really do hurt and offend people.

Basically, he's an asshole.

Telling people online to commit suicide, fiedler, has nothing to do with intellectual argument.

He' an asshole! Hardly front page news.

We should ban anyone who ever even slightly offends wjessop. Ban them from the Internet completely. Yes i am frequently as the French say "un asshole"

My narrow-minded intellectual cowardice as you see it really has nothing to do with this website, a diplomacy website. The puerile, bigoted, racist, homophobic, misogynist, vulgar crap spewed out by your characters also has little presumable place here.

Even if I could ban anyone from the internet, I would not do so as what they do has little to do with me. I do have the right to make the site into what I want, and krellin's "rhetoric" isn't wanted here. I've made that clear any number of time. It has nothing with what krellin's tolerance of others.

I'm actually not offended by krellin' so-called racist posta here...they're not clever enough to be offensive. It's like a child pointing at a brown stick and then pointing at me and laughing and saying it's brown like me. I's just garbage. Drivel. Nonsense. I'm not personally offended or upset by trash talk, though I can understand why others are, we are human beings. Your characters seem to have no regard for people as human beings here, human dignity, or make and maintain this as a welcoming, friendly, constructive place.

I still stand that instructing people to commit suicide is far, far worse. Because that's incitement. In a race issue-sensitive culture, the comments above are more bannable than inciting people to suicide? Weird.

Well alright. As long as you all swear krellins never made you laugh. He's pretty funny sometimes, although Mapleleaf is hard to beat.

Don't forget to ban me, leiblings.

And if you're going to make repeated German references, at least learn to get your "ie" the right way round. You might look less stupid that way.

Lieblings not leiblings
Sieg heil not seig hiel

Typing this on my phone, you insensitive meanie.

I really don't care. You can be so much better. Be better.

Apparently i am 'the guy' who once jokingly advised what wad clearly an adult, that their argument was fail and they should kill self. Now im that guy.

I wonder ssoren, wjessop, if i followed you round all your lives with a tape recorder, how many comments we could hang you from.

Look at all the little nazis salivating over an execution...

A ban would be a badge d'honnuer. I am ready.

Insert random teutonic comment here. Lol

It's your argument that's failing right now, because if you'd actually read my posts in the capital punishment thread, instead of hastily spewing your bile all over them, you'd have realised that I don't support execution, and thus I'm certainly not salivating over anyone's ban/execution. Like I said, you personally don't have any affect on me at all, but I can see that you and krellin are disruptive beyond all possible sense of necessity or debate; joining the many others in acknowledgimg this does not turn me into you. I love my neighbours, however they may be; it's clear from what zultar posted that you have welcome places here as long as you show a modicum of respect; it is your own failure that you cannot see or accept this, not me or anyone else.

See, the random Teutonic comment was witty.

Instructibg people to commit suicide crosses a line and if you don't see that line that all other people do see then yeah you need a wake up call like rkane said; never admitting a mistake or a failure doesn't mean you didn't make them, but prevents you from learning from them, or having the opportunity to reconcile.

Listen everybody, the world's wisest most reasonable man is testifying. He's never crossed the line. He's the model. Sexy too.

I can confirm confidently and from personal experience that krellin does not engage in intellectual discussion. He types in a raging haste. He produces only attacks on general caricatures of anyone that he slightly disagrees with, thinking that everyone that is even slightly more liberal than him is a "libtard" and that he has the free reign to generalize all of them with a single image, an image that he can attack at his own behest, and when he does attack he goes all out. He lets all feel his fury, as he produces a dauntingly hateful rhetoric, for which he is now silenced.

fiedler is a pissant troll---fuck you Hitler youth

i'll ask again: i don't want to judge krellin's behaviour, because frankly, i don't care. i think you can mute him if you find him offensive. but if those who run the site think that's not enough and he should never post on the forum again, that's fine by me as well. after all, it's their site, not mine. my only question is: why is an infinite silence not enough? as far as i'm concerned, krellin hardly uses the same rhetoric he uses on the forum. if he would, a ban would be more than necessary, but he doesn't (that's what i think at least; correct me if i'm wrong).

Fiedler, there is a difference between never crossing the line and apologising when you do. And being an asshole who revels in annoying others and is proud to earn a silence.

Why would you wear it like a badge of honour? Have you proved some point that the liberal free speech agenda is wrong because you were banned? Or do you just like attention?

FYI this site has one agenda, and that involves being the best diplomacy site around. If you do not contribute to that you should be banned. No questions there, no philosophical problem. Just your peers determining that you have nothing of value to contribute, that you violate even our liberal social norms, and that you will not be missed.

If you want to not be missed and proud, then you are free to fuck right off.

"...that's fine by me as well. after all, it's their site, not mine. "

Sure it is their site, on a purely capitalist view of ownership, but we all contribute to this community. It would not be the same site if all the players left and the owners re-launched it tomorrow.

We create the content ( games played ) which attracts new users. The site is owned by a small group, but the community is not, and this is largely what we are discussing.

What are the social norms and expectations of this community.

Your views are entirely valid on this question, as valid as anyone else's.

i agree, orathaic. what i was referring to is that when we last had this discussion, some people said (iirc) that they are entitled to an open forum, as we all contribute to the site. however, this is not the case - we are not "entitled" to anything. we are merely members.

The stance of the site is that there are more members who would like to see such behavior prohibited than would like a completely open forum, or at least it was the last time I was intimately involved in that discussion.

On another note, I would be fully in favor of instituting suspensions from the site rather than full bans. Some offenses deserve a penalty but not necessarily the harshest possible penalty - multi'ing for instance. A week-long suspension would be more appropriate in my mind as a standard with the option to punish in other ways.