Free voice thread.. say anything you want.

Just quickly, as I don't want this to drag on...

Yup, tone is hard to detect in text. Nothing meant maliciously, it's all just stated as fact.

Yup, mods should know the rules. Hex - you're a buffoon lol

You're never going to agree with me on this, are you? You say you're not trying to profit in one breath, then that you need to cover your time as an expense in another - also known as... PROFITING! (Oh look, excessive use of "caps lock" to highlight ONE word... ok, two hehe).

I never said bootlegs are worthless. I said they are, by and large, low value. You were talking about $10 games = low value, NOT worthless. Why not buy them for your collection, dump them for free, and have everyone be eternally grateful? Because you want to be paid for it - right? My suggestion helps alleviate that, though - get together with collectors and all of you dump. It takes less time, it costs less, the costs for the initial games are split... and you all end up with nice collections that you bought yourself.

Likewise, no hard feelings - I appreciate what you were trying to do, but you got off to a bad start by not being upfront about it. Had you been, ASSEMbler would have told you that's not how fundraisers work here. As I said in your thread that you demanded be deleted, the site wants to disassociate itself with the operation, but accepts that there's nothing shady happening here, everyone's money has been put to the intended purpose and we're sure you will get the dumps to donators. Nobody worry, please!

In the spirit of the openness you request, here is your message to Kevin, verbatim:

So, as I said before, you told Kev you HAD some games (not had them on hold and haven't paid for them... and want to go on buying indefinitely) and want to cover the cost of the games you possess (that's how it's worded) and a dumper that you didn't yet have.

My comment that it's your doing if you came off looking bad was not meant out of malice - it was a statement of fact that you asked to cover the cost of games you owned, then posted a differently worded fundraiser. Regardless of how you see it, people will see this as funding your collection - of course, that's their right and they have every right not to donate as a result.

Sorry if you feel it's unprofessional of me to donate hours of my time FOR FREE to helping to moderate this site. Considering this isn't my profession, why do you expect me to be professional, exactly? Yup, I donate my time for free and ask for nothing in return, as do all the moderators. Imagine that! What I do try to be is fair and considerate of both sides in a dispute - which was done in your case, leaving your thread undeleted pending an investigation and making it clear to any donators that their money wasn't in jeopardy.

My friendly advice is that you be upfront with people about your intentions and start a community project to do this. I do wish you the best of luck with it. I'm sure that other dumping groups will show an interest, maybe even offer you a sounding board that will far greater suit your purpose than we ever would have. And hopefully teach you how to dump Gameboy games... as they shouldn't take 5 hours!

Anyway, as per you, that's me done with this

*EDIT*

I guess I don't do quick very well

 

YOU WOT?!

 

Lol, I was kidding Glad yer paying attention, though

 

The new moderators haven't been moderators for a year. Sure it's getting close, few months. But I don't like to be call out saying I'm locking everything. Which I'm not, unless you're not saying I am in particular. Can you be a bit clearer and which threads have bothered you to be locked? Only one I've really locked was the 'Wii without fan'. It was turning into a troll fest, perhaps I should've just left it open and make the forums look like Gamespot?

 

No thread has ever been locked for being bumped ON TOPIC. In fact, if you'd care to have a look, you'll see that I personally have constantly said that we're fine with bumps so long as they add something to the thread.

As per Hex, would you care to give an example of a topic that was locked when someone asked an on-topic question? Yes, I've locked sales threads that have been somewhere between 3-7 years old and a new user has signed up specifically to ask whether the item is still for sale, when the OP is often long gone. Said threads are no longer within the rules as they don't have the required validation photo. The item has probably long gone. And the OP isn't around to fix that problem. In all these cases, I've said OP - please PM me if you still want to sell this. By locking the thread, which was needlessly bumped, it shows people that there's no reason to click on the thread and waste your time. £10 SNES?! Yes plea... oh, it's from 2005. Thanks a lot, Ibuyjoorgamez123. To be fair, I'm not one for locking sales threads when done, nor clearing everything out of it, but the amount of users who ask that a mod lock their thread once sold HAS increased of late. And they get locked. I'd just like to say here - NEVER BY ME!! lol

The latest sales thread to be locked was from 2011 and the OP hadn't touched it since January 2012... and there are zero photos. Actually, looking back it was a new user saying he could SELL or swap his games, posting pics. The OP wasn't asking for swaps, and it wasn't a WTB thread - so it was a bad bump. Admittedly, I didn't point out to the OP that I'd reopen it if corrected. However, the next one back, I did that (effectively an abandoned thread as the seller hasn't logged in since November and is uncontactable).

Yup, I'm talking about amiga and many members' extreme intolerance from the word go. Racism isn't tolerated and that's what got him kicked out. And, to be honest with you, a lot of us wanted him gone and Kev was saying - no, he's got special needs, let's be patient. So we tried... and it didn't work. At least we tried, though. The intolerance of some people here was quite disgusting, though. And actually, the least tolerant was wheelaa - apologies, I may have slightly confused you with him, there! I never said you PMed - you voiced your opinion in public though, if I remember rightly. And lots and lots of people reported his posts - whether you did, I don't remember - but I wouldn't blame you, to be honest! Nor did I say you tried to get him banned - I said SINCE (as in you didn't seem to have an issue before that point) we refused to ban him. (Incidentally, I banned his second account and asked Kev to ban his IP.) It was a difficult situation and Kev had his reasons for not instabanning, which we respected.



I find it amusing that someone with such an obstinate signature as "Your comments are noted. Nothing will change" wants to criticize my moderation style ! However, if you're going to read into things too deeply and take offence to something in a manner which I never intended, I find it offensive that you compare my moderation to the Nationalist Social party - one of the worst bunch of racists ever. Don't you find the use of the word Nazi out of context as puerile as the teen penchant for using gay in a derogatory fashion?

Anyway, I think you'll find I haven't changed at all, actually. Far from it. I'm still as stubborn as ever - just as yourself! I keep an open mind with my moderation, but my first consideration is - does this fit in with the rules? You do have to go into automated mode sometimes, or you'd never be able to moderate everything. As I'm sure you yourself know as you often talk about forum admin, do you not, there's a lot that goes on behind-the-scenes that users don't see.

Oh great... another PM spam bot. Expect many more reports, moderators - as nobody reads the notifications!

 

I'll just do a generic reply to the above as I don't want to litter the post with quotes, and I'm going to try and be brief. Brief for me, that is ;-)

To both Bad_Ad and Wheelaa, my memory is, quite frankly, shit! I fully admit I probably remember things in a certain light, maybe not the whole picture. I do recall far worse conversations in the past, often fuelled by NG members. As I constantly say, I like and respect the pair of you... yup, you're part of the "old bunch" and it wouldn't be the same around here without your input. Wheelaa, you're right... I'm sure we did settle our differences at the time. Your initial message was perfectly reasonable... maybe it's some kind of gestalt entity I've created - an amalgamation of several users! There were so many bloody complaints, heh! And yes, you pointed out when he started being deliberately offensive and I think that was the final straw for the staff. So yes... it was just a statement, not intended to offend or question your characters, certainly - so profuse apologies if it didn't come across quite right!

It's quite hard to have to moderate people you consider friends and equals since long before I was on the staff. The staff have an additional role of responsibility, keeping things tidy and people in check every now and then, but they are first and foremost old fogies of the community. I know that several of us are stubborn, dramatic arseholes as wheelaa so delicately put it, heh - that doesn't always help. I think all the mods can be opinionated on a subject - it's great that we can sound off each other on issues and often get a fresh perspective. Like one person saying - oh he's a twat, let's ban him... then someone else points out maybe there's evidence of autism. We all get angry and frustrated sometimes. I know looking back at some of my moderated posts I think wow, I must have been having a bad day - "this bumped thread would need pictures to be in line with current rules - closing but OP... sort pics and PM me if you want it reopened" one one day becomes "CLOSED!!! DOES NOT COMPLY!!" another! Oops!

I have always been proud of this community for, by and large, being mature enough to know that there's a human on the other side of the keyboard and not having the immature name-calling seen on other forums... whilst at the same time the staff are able to appreciate a joke and, I would hope, don't over-moderate. I was once a member of a forum where you weren't allowed to mention eBay, trying to skirt around the issue by saying fleabay or that big auction site was even worse, and I don't really remember any joke going down well. Yes, it was a technically-minded forum, but the people could be quite unhelpful. There were nice members... but a lot of them got banned for petty reasons.... usually saying they find the moderation approach rather harsh! We would never penalize that... although repeated, purposeful disrespect of staff doesn't go down well.

For the most part, and perhaps it's the subject matter here being on a slightly more technical level than your average gaming forum, we do seem capable of intelligent conversation, respecting other members and indeed resolving issues. Look at us here in this very thread, discussing issues that irk us rationally! Can you imagine that happening on NG? It's great that this thread is here, and has sometimes been used to settle differences.

I am chucking at wheelaa saying I AM NOT A MONSTER.... when his avatar is Bela Lugosi!

You can only try so much for some people, sadly. It's really hard trying to moderate someone who is repeatedly riling everyone up, but obviously needs a certain amount of patience and is clearly frustrated. You want to show understanding where perhaps the rest of the community aren't so much... it's an international forum, we have members whose English isn't so good because it's not their first language, or due to learning difficulties. I think we're all fairly tolerant of those barriers. It's just quite hard when you're trying to be nice to the person, but at the same time have to tell them they can't keep using that language, or whatever they're doing wrong. You end up looking like The Big Bad Wolf to them, rather than a sympathetic middleman. I don't want to compare us to medical professionals - they're a marvellous bunch with far more important jobs, but you can sometimes empathize with nurses who are stuck between trying to care for patients and the red tape, rules and regulations that prevent them from doing their job. Sometimes, you just have to be the bad man... and grin and bear it.

 

Everything's bloody broken! To be fair, Kev partially broke them at least 5 years ago lol

 

I've even redesigned the post count images, PM'd them to Kev and never heard back. I understand he's going through a lot too, maybe they'll change.

We need another Admin, but I doubt blame him for being very skeptical and wanting to be the only driver here.