darksiege wrote:
Hey awesome then if this bullshit is going to continue you can probably expect people to start leaving the community.
One of the unfortunate drawbacks of moderation on internet forums is that the forum rules invariably become weapons for people who can't make decent arguments of their own, or who simply think that it ought to be against the rules to disagree with them. On some boards, the rules are weapons for the
moderators to do this. I know of at least one board where the standard tactic against unpopular views is for one moderator to disagree with the poster, then when the poster doesn't concede that their argument is "dishonest", "wrong", "trolling" or whatever", another moderator promptly shows up and issues disciplinary action for violating the rules. When all you have to do is ignore your opponent's support for his argument and then get him banned for "trolling" (by supposedly not supporting the argument) it's really easy to win debates.
If you recall the set of rules I posted a while ago, that was an illustration. I didn't seriously think anyone was going to go for those rules; in fact I didn't even go for them, although I think I put on a pretty good show. However, I got the response I wanted about how the rules might be "biased" and used as a weapon.
Amazingly now, however, that we have a different set of rules, the rules are, in fact, being used as a weapon. Note Lenas's statistics in the locked thread.