Annoying.

Thanks though :P

Can they still talk in-game?

Yes they can.

Well, there's your solution, then.

...there was a problem?

Steephie thought so.

Ah I see now. I forget not everyone has their email visible.

I happen to agree with steephie. I can understand why silencing forum use can be desirable at times (although to do so permanently seems ridiculously draconian), but to combine that with a PM ban seems completely unnecessary. I am sure that in the past it has been possible to be PMd by silenced people, so I'm not sure why that changed.

Also, I miss Nigee's jokes

People are often silenced BECAUSE of their PMs, not just because of forum behaviour.

@abge: How does that solve anything? Join a full press game, send the link to the perma-silenced person and hope he joins so I can have a conversation with him? Perhaps a little trollish to go through all that for a quick note.

I think a perma-silence should not include PMs. If someone tries to circumvent the silence with PMs, you can always take that feature from them at that point.

@Valis: What if it isn't?

If you've proven yourself stupid enough to earn a permanent ban because of your posting behavior, you don't deserve another chance. You've already wasted them all.

That'd make sense if you weren't perma-silenced at the whim of Zultar&Co.

A perma-silence is not something you earn. You get it because Zultar&Co feel like it.

It's their site, their forum, so sure, their whims are law, but surely even from their perspectives it would make sense to allow someone to send PMs for a game with friends or whatever?

If you are close friends enough with someone, you have plenty of other PM options outside of webDip.

@ steephie: "A perma-silence is not something you earn. You get it because Zultar&Co feel like it."

Who are you, SYnapse in disguise?

Show us a good example of someone who was hit with a permanent silence, when they hadn't done anything to justify such a penalty. Go on.

oh man, now I remember why I used to do certain things. Like not go into any thread with steephie.

(JK I <3 you Steephie)

I mean, we have a gchat / email, how hard is it for one of the few silenced members to get into contact with you.

@ Jamie

Show us one good example of when you think a permanent silence was a more appropriate punishment for someone than a simple ban or fixed length silence. Go on.

Aww damn Jamiet99uk, you got me! Never mind then!

P.S. Just out of curiosity, could everyone who thinks NigeeBaby was more obnoxious than krellin please raise their hands?
I'm sure the entire mod team will vouch for the fact that krellin is a rolemodel in comparison to the horribly offensive and bigoted NigeeBaby. Why else would they perma-silence Nigee while krellin is still around?

Perma-silences were expanded to PMs because certain people were working around their silences via pm with foul-mouthed tirades at people. This will not be reversed: if you break the rules enough times for a perma-silence (something very few people have ever managed) then you lose the privilege of being able to talk to anyone on this site outside of games.

@HR: Would you be so kind to tell us whether you raised your hand?

Obnoxiousness is irrelevant to how often people break the rules. Some rulebreakers are very pleasant people. Some unpleasant people never break the rules. If you don't want to be silenced, don't break the rules.

Let's play a game: do these statements best apply to NigeeBaby or to krellin in his gory-days?

Statement one:
"I am tired of you attacking me or the mods who work on this site. All you do is bitch and put down the mods and I am not going to tolerate this any longer. You have been silenced."
-zultar

Steephie - be nice.

So what is the point of this thread steephie? Is there something in specific you are concerned about? If so please shoot us an email and give us the chance to address it. Because right now I don't have a clue what you're trying to achieve besides slandering krellin, nigee, Zultar, and the mod team.

Yeah, steephie, Nigee wasn't all sweetness and light.

There was a time when I was having a rather heated argument with Thucy and managed to cross a line and touch a nerve without noticing. In blunders Nigee-bloody-baby calling me a complete and utter twit (or words to that effect) and stopping me from carrying on like an utter bastard and stopping Thucy from experiencing more genuine upset.

Then there was the time when one of our American members was visiting London on his own and Nigee-sparewheel-baby takes it upon himself to corner the poor chap in a pub and submit him to a painfully warm welcome and make the poor man feel at home...

And the times, of course, when Nigee-chugger-baby was convinced the site was short of funds and took it upon himself to do everything possible to hassle people to donate and keep the place going.

And you really have to ask yourself whether that's the kind of insolent trouble maker we want as a member of this place? Life is so much easier when people of that sort aren't around, after all.

@gold:
I'm being nice to Nigee, hardly offensive to anyone else. I don't see any harm.. do you?

@jmo:
There's nothing going on, really. I asked a question, got an answer and was satisfied. Then some weird, easily falsified statements were made so I pointed out why they were flawed at best.

As I said though, zultar's site and he can do whatever he pleases. It just struck me as odd that anyone would consider him unbiased, especially since NigeeBaby was silenced for disrespecting the mods while some other people who are much more fitting of the description "disrespecting the mods" remain.

Again though, it's his site! I understand that Nigee articulated his concerns well and actually made good points which made him more dangerous than people who are obvious trolls and the times were already turbulent, so of course he had to go in zultar's eyes.

All I'm saying is: just because NigeeBaby is silenced and others aren't doesn't mean that NigeeBaby was more deserving, obnoxious or 'rule-breaking'.
I'd love to hear from anyone who genuinely disagrees to that.

Keep on ruling this site however you please, and I hope I will remain spared!

See the problem with your statements is that you're either hacked into the mod email and have read conversations in which case you'd understand why nigee is silenced, or you're making assumptions about something you don't have all the facts on.

Honestly Steephie, you need to stop assuming that you know better then everyone else when to comes to punished members. You have a bad tendency of thinking you're smarter then everyone else involved with members like Draugnar, and apparently Nigee. This is why we clearly in the our site rules state that we do not take appeals from people not involved in a case. Because those appeals are riddled with untruths.

This will be the last answer you get from us on this thread, because we aren't willing to discuss a case with someone whom it doesn't concern. Though we are willing to discuss any concerns you have via pm (which we have been doing) or via email. But I'm really not interested in watching you slander the person running the site that you're using. If you are so convinced that Zultar is being unfair then can 1. consider you might be wrong. 2. accept that despite this you want to continue using his site to play the game. 3. leave.

Like I said, the discussion just kinda happened and like I also said, I don't object to zultar ruling however he sees fit. I just acknowledge the fact that, as zultar said himself too, zultar indeed rules as he sees fit.

Then I was having some fun along the way, but you really shouldn't read much more into it.

I didn't even know Nigee had been silenced. I thought he had simply left.

Nope, he's active.

Can users who are silenced still give "+1's" on the forum?

Serious question.

Those users can only +1 krellin.

@Jamiet99uk, yes.

While I doubt that Sir Steephie is being as diplomatic as one might hope in advancing his opinion, his opinion does have some underlying merit.

I can remember when I was silenced, it prevented me from transacting legitimate business with my friends here. Isn't the point to punish me, one might wonder? Sure, but remember this was punishing my friends as well, who it should be remembered include multiple staff members. I don't think steephie's suggestion of a metered response is unreasonable.

I say that while careful to emphasize that this is probably the best moderated board I've been a member of during my tenure which extends to the BBS era in pre-internet days.

Al has friends? Who knew?

Not nice ssorenn.

To explain why we made this change, there was a period of time where just a silence worked fine. Then sadly some people we silenced for violating gunboat press rules decided to mass spam the pm system with dozens and dozens of vulgar pm's. We also ran into the issue of people silenced starting to send crude messages to those they felt had gotten them silenced.

There is no way for mods to delete pm's, ATC and I can do it via the db but it's unsafe. So the point of this change was to allow mods to control that type of abuse. We also want all communication with members to come through the email to promote accountability for every mod. Not being able to send pm's does accomplish that, and has worked well since the change in getting members to reach out to us to discuss and resolve our problems.

We do hope/plan in the future to be moving to a new forum layout with a more modern layout and set of tools, but as that is going to take some time we're doing the best we can with simple, and easy to code changes until then. While instead focusing complicated coding changes on the game side of the site.

And to answer your question Al, no a silence is not typically to punish. It's used to provide a period of time where a member can only talk to the mod team, in the hopes of having a a conversation with that member to solve whatever problem lead to the silence. Because having conversations about rules violations on the forum does not work, ever.

@Al: Hold in mind I didn't want to invoke any change, so no need to be diplomatic, although I'm surprised people apparently read something aggressive in my words. I was just making my point, which I like doing by highlighting logical errors.