None. None that i was informed of. It was sudden and arbitrary. I violated the rule of not being of the majority thought. I.e. I am not a sheep.

Welcome to Libtards paradise.

Yes, I'm insulting and crude. Funny thing is. . all the pathetic assholes that want me banned.. Tell me so insulting and crude language. The fucking hypocrisy is classic.

Lets just get it over with and ban everyone.

krellin fails at this all the time:

"When in doubt about whether posting something is allowed, remember your first responsibility: use common sense and respect other players!"

Awwww Jeefypoo.... That's so cute when, as a typical hypocrite Libtards, you constantly disrespect me and then demand respect. Fuck off Jeff. You are the WORST kind of douchebag hypocrite. The difference between you and me is I tolerate your hate and difference of opinion. You, on the other hand, call for an end to any opposing opinion... But you call for and end to dissent by insulting and disrespecting people.

Such a fucking baby. I know you have the Ruling Authority on your side as you sling your hate. But most people recognize the hateful hypocritical fuck that you are.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure respect is lacking just about everywhere in this forum.

Then King, you would agree that punishing someone for insulting someone who is insulting is ridiculous and hypocritical?

Maybe a game that is fundamentally about deceit and betrayed attracts a certain personality type. If this was real diplomacy and we all were being paid 200k+ and staying over at each other's houses, I'd bet we would all get along famously. Whilst continuing to cut each other's throats on 'the board' of course.

The aggro on the forum is really a consequence of Zultar not paying us well. He's never even shouted anyone a hooker! Long way to go until this is the best diplomacy site.

Betrayal

Fing phone

"...you constantly disrespect me and then demand respect. Fuck off Jeff. You are the WORST kind of douchebag hypocrite. The difference between you and me is I tolerate your hate and difference of opinion. You, on the other hand, call for an end to any opposing opinion... But you call for and end to dissent by insulting and disrespecting people..."

This is what it's really like in krellin's head. He is so far removed from reality here.

I'm disrespecting you? You mean when I point out that you are constantly violating site rules? No, you're the one doing just about all of the disrespecting here.

I've never called for an end to opposing opinions. You just can't handle civil discussion. So all you have up your sleeve is more insults and LIES about what others have said.

You have things so very twisted in your head, krellin.

Worthy of pity.

Yes krellin, as long as the offensiveness are at the same level.

I am going to be brief to make this clear as the mod team, ATC and I have made this clear elsewhere and we have explained in detail our rationale so I won't belabor it here:

The vast majority of the people come here to play Diplomacy. I have told you elsewhere and recently ATC published site data on what's happening on our site: we are making this into the best online Diplomacy site, not a whatever goes or a philosophy site or a rule discussion site or whatever else, and we are making excellent progress.

The norms and ethos of this site are not what they used to be. We are moderating the forum and we are not allowing nonsense offensive behavior on this site. The vast, vast majority of our members have absolutely no issues with this. This is what they want and this is what we want. They are here to play Diplomacy and enjoy this great hobby.

If the banning or exclusion of offensive behavior that krellin exhibited in this thread isn't your cup of tea, please feel free to leave this site because this site is not for you. Feel free to find another Diplomacy site that allows or encourages that kind of behavior.

The mods, the developers like ATC and I, the people who devote endless hours of our time to ensure that others are enjoying their games, catching cheaters, resolving issues, and making site development are not going to let a few, I mean a literal few, people to ruin this site for the rest of us. I am not going to let that happen. If that means a few people get banned, so be it. I have absolutely no issue with that whatsoever.

"Maybe a game that is fundamentally about deceit and betrayed attracts a certain personality type. If this was real diplomacy and we all were being paid 200k+ and staying over at each other's houses, I'd bet we would all get along famously. Whilst continuing to cut each other's throats on 'the board' of course."

Is this your justification Fiedler? Did you just ignore what i said because it cut so close to the truth? I had hoped you took my advice to heart, but now you seem to just be ignoring it...

No reply? Perhaps the cognitive dissonance it brought out in you forced your brain to shut down and ignoring it is the only way you can deal with it. A pity then.

@Krellin, i have some sympathy for your position. Or at least your imagined position. It is logically internally consistant. Though it is also far removed from what i see going on - which is a great example, often you are so far removed in your ( logically consistant ) views that i find it hard to fathom, i imagine you are nothing but a troll ( and perhaps you are often trolling ) but you can hardly complain when your remarks are designed to encourage the kind of offensive remarks you enjoy engaing in.

Even when you are not trolling, you go to no lenghts to make yourself understood, you don't try to work with others - except those who already agree with you - and you don't try to resolve your differences ( of opinion ) is a considered way. You simply resort to shouting and name calling. You're even guilty of the 'no true scotsman' fallacy in your use of the term 'libtard' (Aside: shouldn't this be libetard? Sounds much nicer to say...).

I'd ask you the same sort of thing i asked fiedler, what is your prupose here? If it is just trolling libtards and exposing their hypocrisy, then well done! You have failed to expouse anything. You continously fail to show this hypocrisy up to anyone but those who already believe. Your style is preaching to the choir, rather than exposing for the masses. So what is your reason for being here?

Umm, I wasn't talking to you orathaic. I have no interest in talking to you.

You should be banned as a spammer of the forum, spewing your socialist drivel. Which I have little doubt is all about helping you self-justify your own non-contribution to the tax base.

Nothing you say is of any interest. I usually just skip it, but i noticed you were addressing me directly. We have known each other a long time on this forum and we just don't agree. Again, not interested in talking to you. End of. No need to reply. Really.

Fin

Orathaic, or should I say Pastor Orath - he who preaches to his own masses and shouts fiwn the opposition with insults.... You are a delight. The perfect example of what I seek to expose. Closed minded, full of insults to those you disagree with, etc. When people DO offer legitimate and logical counters to your discussion points, yoi ignore and/or reject them without examination. I learned long ago that attempting actual discussion with the modern Libtards authoritarians is useless.

What is YOUR purpose here? I play games, I have a series I run, I join others, and I screw around in the forums when I am bored.

Thus is a GAME site....but you think it is Socialist Propaganda Central... And you want to claim the hgh ground??? Lol. Hilarious.

Orath had played 50 games in 9 years.,. Yeah - yu are not here to game. You're here to preach your brand of divisive politics, hypocrite.

Perhaps owners concerned about the gaming portion should silence those NOT PLAYING GAMES

March 2014 - Oraths last listed game. Impressive.... Before you sputter and troll me again Orath, start a damned game since that IS the purpose of this site!

We all feel your pain brother Krellin. Stay strong.

I'll just leave this here:
http://jezebel.com/i-have-questions-about-that-white-lady-who-maybe-preten-1710807777

That's my sister....

zultar,

Was that addressed to me? If so, thanks. But you may have misunderstood my question. I understand that you've decided to have a moderated forum in order to create an environment that better suits your vision. I'm glad to hear it's working for you. But in order to do that, of course, you created rules. My post was not about decrying those rules or saying they were a bad idea. (We've had our disagreements about those, but I think we understand where each other stand, and of course it's your site). I was just curious which one of the rules krellin had violated. In order to have an effective moderation scheme, it is important that it be understood what kinds of behaviors are not tolerated, so I'm trying to help that be clarified so we can all better understand what rules forbid what.

So, which of the forum rules was the one applied in krellin's case?

Thanks!

No, it was not addressed to you. I am not going to waste my time debating which rule he broke that time again when we have done that with him plenty of time. I have also found that debating with you is a waste of my time.

At the end of the day when the vast majority of people don't have any issues following site rules and don't have any issues with our rules and moderation, I am not going to waste my time nor encourage my mods to waste theirs engaging with you in your lawery rule reading theoretical waste of time exercise. You obviously have much time to waste to debate the theoretical limit and finer point of wordings and such, but this is merely one of my many tasks running this site.

zultar,

I wasn't actually debating anything, which I took some pains to point out. I was just asking for a simple statement of which rule he broke, since you have taken the trouble to write rules, and I am interested in understanding them well (and think that it would be beneficial for the site if everybody understood them better). So, while I'm sorry you have found debating me to be a waste of time, I'm even more sorry that that finding seems to make you unwilling to answer simple queries. It's nothing I can help, I guess.

Quit while you are behind semck.

You can infer the rules by their application.

I don't find that to be the case, fiedler, but since you do, by all means please let me know which of the rules krellin, in this case, violated (along with an explanation -- I don't find your personal authority to be sufficient to justify much). zultar seems to be too busy to explain what the forum rules are, so you may be doing quite a favor. Thank you.

No, I don't find wasting my time with you, semck, to be a good use of my time, but since you insist on having a conversation, I will indulge a bit.

I find that you are either intellectually lazy or intellectually dishonest. This kind of behavior and how we deal with it is a reoccurring and diminishing issue and we spent a large portion of last summer, last fall, and part of the winter dealing with. We quoted rules over and over and had lengthy discussions on the forum many times over. You were a part of most, if not almost all of those, public discussions of rules on the forum, so I find your questioning of which rule to be rather intellectually lazy since if by chance you forgot, you can do a search.

If not that, then I find your questioning to be intellectually dishonest. If the rules were somehow vague, unclear, and incomprehensible, then we would have a whole lot more issues than what we have. Instead the vast majority of our users do not have any issues with our rules and our moderation. So this "clarification" is not for the benefit of the site and please don't pretend to speak on behalf of the site or its health as you want for this site isn't what I want or what our users want. No, this is more of those intellectual masturbation conversations that you personally are fond of and I have no time for as I have actual things to do and my actions have actual consequences and real life outcomes. So, no I am not going to engage with you on that front as it is a complete waste of my time but surely interesting for you.

Let's take this one step further and consider two thought experiments on the extremes.

One, the best case scenario, is that the rules are damn clear and the mods or I can show which rule(s) and how they have been applied before and how warnings were given before. If this is the case, then everything is fine and dandy. Without actually doing it, I posit that this is something we have done and can do, but since it's a positive outcome, who cares.

Two, the worst case scenario, the rules are damn arbitrary and so are the moderators and moderation. Everything is applied randomly. Basically, it's just the mod team's whim or mine. Let's say that's the case.
My response: And??? So what???
It's a private site. Don't like it? Find another one. But this is a rather crude response.
The more important and interesting answer is if things were so vague and randomly done, then users won't like it. But as we have found, the vast majority of our members have no problems with our rules and our site. They like this site and they greatly appreciate what we provide for them and they have repeatedly shown their appreciation of the work that the mod team and I and developers like ATC have put in. They like it here and they want to make it a better Diplomacy site. From feedback on the forum to PMs to emails to donations, this is what our users are saying. They have no issues with our rules, our site, and our moderation. And they probably will like what we have in store for them in the future and what we are actively spending our time doing.

The mod team, developers and I are going to spend time to DO things to make this site better, not intellectualize and bullshit wordings. So please don't waste my time and speak as if you know or have the site's best interest in mind.

Is this thread still a thing?

Semck and orathic play no games here. This is a gaming site.

zultar,

I appreciate your taking the time to respond. I do believe that you're busy, and that all such discussions appear to you as nothing more than an annoyance. I'm glad that you did respond, though, because it enables me to easily see, I think, a couple of the sources of disagreement.

You are under the impression that, during our lengthy discussions in the summer, fall, and winter, you "quoted rules over and over." We're simply not on the same page here. There have been times when I asked under which rule something was done, and got an answer. Typically I said thank you and moved on. None of them seems relevant to the current case, so I'm not sure what enlightenment I was supposed to take with me to today. And then there were times when I asked what rule had been violated, and got, instead, lengthy responses of exactly this type, refusing to say. A further time, it turned out that the wrong reason had been given, and you even sent a very nice apology, and as far as I was aware, we were all friends afterward (your recent rhetoric makes me doubt whether this was real).

And I just don't get it. Nobody made you develop rules. But you chose to do so. Why?

One great thing about rules is, once you have them, it's SUPER EASY to point to the rule that was broken and then have that be the end. Instead, sometimes (not always) when I ask the (extremely simple) question about which rule was broken, you have given a very long post such as the above, and not answered the question. I can certainly see how you feel frustrated with the amount of time you're spending on that. What's sad is that I feel frustrated with the amount of time you're spending on it, too. I didn't ask for a lengthy restatement of philosophy that you have already stated clearly and well elsewhere. (It's your site, you want an emphasis on a quality gaming experience not a few cranky loudmouths, and the rules were designed to promote that. Check).

But even to the degree that you have answered past questions about which rules were being violated, how could that answer my current question about which rule was violated this time? I'm asking a specific question about a specific infraction. I don't see much of an analogy with any of the ones you've answered before.

Lest you call me lazy, let me link some actual past threads in which this question has come up. I'm not posting them because I want to bring up the issues raised again. Actually, I very much don't. I'm just posting because I think that otherwise, you'll say that I'm just too lazy to Google where you've answered this question in the past.

http://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=1198597&page-thread=1#threadPager (here, my question pretty much went unanswered, like today).

Here is one where the question was answered. (You'll notice that I then let the issue die, immediately).

http://www.webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=1163491

Here is another where a clarification was made.

http://www.webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=1249800

Notice that again, I dropped the issue promptly once an explanation was given. As you said yourself here, mod misstatement was part of the confusion on this issue.

I confess I don't much take the point of your "two hypotheticals." We're in a very concrete situation here. I asked a question whose answer could be no more than two words -- no intellectual philosophizing required (see, anybody can use that adjective as a slur if they want to). Or indeed, as you correctly say, if the answer is, "We do whatever we want, rules be damned," you could say that too. It is, as you point out (very often) your site. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to make of this abstract argument for the non-arbitrariness of your moderation. I didn't say it was arbitrary. I just asked a concrete question.

And overall, l really, really don't get the hostility here.Last time we talked about this issue, we had (via PM) friendly and cordial words, and seemed to have reached accord. Why I'm getting so much bile for a very simple and polite question, I cannot fathom.

So that's that. I'd like to make a couple of personal points, though. As both of us have pointed out, you and I have disagreed a fair bit about some of these issues over time (although I wasn't doing so today), and it's probably fair to say we have a philosophical difference on the issue. That said, however strongly I have expressed disagreement with your positions, I have not gotten personal. I know you very little, and I have no reason to doubt that the opinions you hold, you hold because you honestly believe they are best for the site you have worked very hard for.

The thing is, the reverse is true as well. In truth, you have no reason to believe that I am being either dishonest or lazy. You have made it clear recently that you have something of a problem with "intellectuals," (and you used the word liberally as an adjective in your recent post), but whatever that problem and whatever its source, there is no excuse for turning disagreements into groundless accusations because you perceive the person you're addressing to be in a group you dislike. And that's not an "intellectual" value, but just a tenet of common decency and politeness.

Your response illustrates part of the point I was trying to make. You do spend an awful lot of time pontificating for the sake of pontificating. I am unclear why you have no addressed the main issue I brought up which is that the vast majority of our users have no issues with our rules or which rule was broken. You have an agenda with your question, that is clear to many here and it is not to clarify for the site or for the purpose of making this site a better Diplomacy cite as our users have no problems following the rules. But please you don't need to explain why your questioning would lead us to some sort of enlightenment or greater understanding as we do not need it.

In terms of intellectuals, this is blatantly false. I am in academia and on a daily basis I am surrounded by people who greatly value thinking, its use, how it contributes to the understanding of the field and how it can be applied to improve X, Y, or Z. On a regular basis I have discussions that make me think deeply about an issue or how an idea from one field can be borrowed and expanded or modified in another. Furthermore, I also talk with the mods and individuals on here about a great number of things, many of which are fairly high level conversations. I have no issues with intellectuals whatsoever as they are the ones I interact with daily and there are days where I aspire to be an "intellectual." What I do have an issue with is people who "intellectualize" for the sake of "intellectualizing" or appearing to be an "intellectual."

The rule krellin broke is simple: 3. Do not make targeted threads that are abusive or degrading toward another member, group of members, or social group. This includes but is not limited to posts regarding sexuality, race, and religion.
It's pretty clear and straightforward and you have seen it before and krellin has been given this warning before multiple times, but I am sure you'll be able to rationalize why there is such a need again.

As I don't think this is at all useful for me or the vast majority of users to engage in any longer on the forum, I shall disengage hereafter.

So Zultar, when Christianity is attacked, will you start silencing those that insult and slander rise of an entire religion? This happens often. "All Christians are...". When Republicans as a group are attacked and labeled with vile insults, will you stay silencing people? When all white people are labeled as racist, and vile assertions are made about how all white people are... Will you start silencing.

I'm not arguing that I should not have been silenced - but five me a break, man - this game site is full odd people that don't even play games, but spend all their time making threads or posting about intentionally provocative, divisive subjects for the purpose of getting a response.... And then they whine and complain when they get the push-back they KNEW they would get.

You always insist that first and foremost it is a game site. Great. I agree. In my time here, unless life didn't allow it, I have almost ALWAYS been in a game. Others don't game at all for king stretched. I.e. this is ONLY a political/religious forum to them. Why don't you consider to purge that lot of provacatuers? I'm being quite serious, too, and NOR saying this because our recent dealings, but because I think it would help you further achieve your goals here.