Page 1 of 7

Ok, the red line has been crossed..

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 8:54 am
by Benjamin
I have to speak out. If I get banned or something that is fine, there are other forums I can visit. feyd and patrickG have frankly smurf me off. I am sick of harmless posts getting deleted. I'm sick of feyd's condescending attitude towards members.

I agree with the forum rules, but I'm sick of them being used to proactively express opinions. I'm not going to search through the forums and search for a million examples, but they are there.

Jason has said that this community was built by the members. The fact is that I have never seen any polls asking the members for opinions on rules. I've never even seen any polls about who should be moderators!! Perhaps a search might find some, but I've been here a while and I have never stumbled across one. This site is run by a few overzealous idiots and I've got the feeling Jason is too busy with his own life to realize it. Either that or there is something weird going on.

Either way, I'm about done with this site. Sure I get a few questions answered, but I mainly come here with the intention of helping other people. There are other places I can go. Things need to change here. Something isn't right. My intuition tells me so.

It's funny how when anyone speaks out about an issue like this, they are encouraged to talk about it privately.

Well here is the straw that broke the camels back..

In regards to this post.. viewtopic.php?t=56090

Edit: For those who didn't notice, my answer was promptly removed

I sent patrikG a message..
9. Warez, copyright violation, or promotion of any other illegal activity may NOT be linked or expressed or posted in any form.

1. It's not warez
2. It's not copyright violation, he asked how to parse a string, not put copyright material on his website. It could have been a school project or anything.
3. It's not promotion or illegal activity to parse a string.
4. There were no links
5. Nothing was expressed.

You were not too lenient, you were too harsh.

He responded..
I ascertained whether or not it was a copyright violation. When the member had argued that it was not (despite sufficient proof), I restored the original content - hence my assertion that I was too lenient.
I wrote back..
How can I contact Jason regarding this smurf? "I ascertained" What is that? Do you feel that you are more inteligent than a lawyer? Do you not realize that devnet can be sued for making assumptions such as what you ascertained?
He wrote back..
You're most welcome to contact Jason, if you believe this to be necessary. Search for his username and PM him.
I'm not going to send Jason a PM. I have sent them to him before and 4 months later it was still unread. I'm sure patrikG and all the other moderators know how to contact Jason. I feel like I was given incorrect information. I feel like these moderators are being overzelous control freaks. Sure feyd is a good programmer. He know's a hell of a lot more than I do when it comes to programming.. but frankly his social skills suck. I worked in customer service for 5 years at fortune 10 companies and these places wouldn't look twice at his resume unless it was for an IT job.

Flame me, hate me, ban me, I don't care.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:00 am
by onion2k
astions wrote:This site is run by a few overzealous idiots and I've got the feeling Jason is too busy with his own life to realize it. Either that or there is something weird going on.
Calling us mods "overzealous idiots" isn't going to get you off to a good start if you want a sensible discussion about this. We're not overzealous. :)
astions wrote:Either way, I'm about done with this site. Sure I get a few questions answered, but I mainly come here with the intention of helping other people. There are other places I can go. Things need to change here. Something isn't right. My intuition tells me so.
Regarding the thread you highlighted, it's a difficult issue. On the one hand you're entirely right, the poster was just asking for help parsing a string and he could have been doing it legitimately. However, he is also attempting to bypass Flickr's API. The only sensible reason for that would be that he wants to display/download images that the API doesn't give access to. Logically that would imply that he wants to download copyrighted images as the API gives access to everything else. We run this place in a way that avoids trouble where possible. Sometimes that means erring on the side of caution. We don't want Flickr coming after us, they can afford better lawyers.

As it happens we don't remove very much at all. 90% of the threads deleted are just plain spam, 9.5% are duplicates, and the last 0.5% or so are things that violate the rules.

Lastly, please bring this sort of thing up if you have an issue with it. Us mods are open to discuss any criticism of our modding (well, I am).

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:06 am
by a94060
ashton,im right with you,this is a pm from feyd:
feyd wrote:This is the last time I remind you to not use aolspeak. If you're wondering where I saw this: viewtopic.php?t=56178
in that article,you will see that there is YOU WOULD capitalized because before i had ud. those were two simple mistakes and he has to warn me for it. he didnt just tell me to fix it,he just says its my last time. he also couldnt simply waste liek 20 secs for it

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:08 am
by Benjamin
We do try to be professional here, so ud really isn't a word, but yeah I can see that was a bit harsh.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:13 am
by onion2k
a94060 wrote:in that article,you will see that there is YOU WOULD capitalized because before i had ud. those were two simple mistakes and he has to warn me for it. he didnt just tell me to fix it,he just says its my last time. he also couldnt simply waste liek 20 secs for it
We're very much an international community, and a lot of our members speak English as a second (or third, forth..) language. While the American and British people can easily translate your posts if you use AOL/1337 speak it's much more difficult for others. If we use proper English it makes life easier for everyone.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:16 am
by Benjamin
onion2k wrote:We're very much an international community, and a lot of our members speak English as a second (or third, forth..) language.
Very true, I think that is one thing that we should be reminded of when we use l33t speak, rather than being spanked.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:21 am
by a94060
what im trying to say is that if most people would still udnerstand even tohugh i write ud,it wasn't an important part of the answer anyways.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:28 am
by onion2k
a94060 wrote:what im trying to say is that if most people would still udnerstand even tohugh i write ud,it wasn't an important part of the answer anyways.
If you don't speak English as a first language, and someone posts 'ud' you have no way to tell if the word is important or not. If I post "Gelieve te gebruiken van nu af aan het juiste Engels." I'll wager that you can't decide how important the word 'af' is.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:31 am
by a94060
but since they would understand the rest of the english(they wouldnt be here otherwise right?)they would still know what i was saying.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:37 am
by Benjamin
a94060 wrote:but since they would understand the rest of the english(they wouldnt be here otherwise right?)they would still know what i was saying.
Not true really. They could be using a translation web site. Then what?

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:39 am
by Obadiah
yea...and not everyone has the greatest spelling on this board(myself included)...so their
probly already have a hard time as is even without things like l33t or aol speak

[edited]

but i can see from both sides...as a user my fustration of trying to get something answered
and/or trying to help someone else and getting counsled by a moddie for whatever reason....its a normal thing to get defensive when recieving any kind of critisism from anywhere

on the other hand....we all have those days....even weeks sometimes(for you women like my girlfriend months...lol) where its just the wrong time we come across the wrong thing that makes that little switch go off and before you know it were taking it out on innocent bystanders and killing little furry animals with granades....in short...we should all remember that we all have bad days "crap happens" but dont take it out on anyone else if thats the problem....and id be the first to admit it...i didnt think feyed had a personality either until i pm'ed the dude about me using aol speak....and he joked around with me reasonabally...hes a cool guy imo....anyways theres my 25 cents....by the way... can any of you guys lone me a quater 8O

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:48 am
by Jenk
The discussion regarding the legibility of AOL speak isn't related to this thread, folks :)

As for the actual discussion.. I'm staying out of it :)

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:53 am
by MrPotatoes
see, i've been on plenty of forums and this is by far the second best that i've been on to date. i'm assuming that Vortex is awesome but don't have a VDub.

these moderators are really not nearly as bad as others and that thread i don't see it being as bad as you might think. i think you're just angry that people just changed your post. i understand that, but i dont think that the thread really show incompetance

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:01 am
by Benjamin
There is more to it than that MrPotatoes

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:04 am
by Chris Corbyn
So are you generalizing all moderators as overzealous then? I feel great, cheers.

We run this community not for money, not for fame or stardom, but because we believe it's a great resource and I think we have a great community here.

Threads get removed all the time. We have to watch what gets posted and moderate as best we can. Your point about patikG removing your post is a little unfair. He prompty replaced it once the confusion was cleared up. It was removed originally for good reason.

There have been polls created asking the members opinions on rules. In fact; this very forum is for things like that.

I feel insulted by your remarks to be frank.

Nobody has ever insulted you or picked at your skills so why are you now doing this to us? I'm confused.

I ask the community now. Do you agree with ~astions? If you do I'd rather see you speak out now and we can address any issues.