What a brilliant idea, YJ.

You got silenced for 24 hours for clearly insinuating that you might just so happen to shoot another player in the face. Get over it. It's 24 fucking hours.

except he didn't clearly insinuate that.

"Please take this statement as a threat while I remind you that I have never chosen to harm anybody."

I think Charles Manson might have said that.

It doesn't even matter at this point. It was 24 hours and it is over. Why drag it on? Everyone knows that jmo can be excessive, but it already ended, so who gives a shit?

Unless you really wanted those oil paintings. Sorry I silenced that thread yesterday.

Really, YJ? At this exact moment, your email is less than 24 hours old (22 hours at the most), so the mods haven't even had a minimum 48 hours to respond to your email. Secondly, in your email, you didn't complain about the silence nor did you have a question or any sort of clarification that needed to be addressed. Third, jmo followed the rules, which prohibits any sort of physical or bodily threats to any member on the site, whether it is jokingly or not. This was set in place by Kestas and I reaffirm the rule.

So I am not sure what purpose this thread serves. I will reply to your email momentarily.

On the contrary, old bean, I insinuated that he ought to be grateful for my continued generosity and love, part of which is choosing every day to not shoot him in the face (much like the Christian God). The only thing I'm guilty of here is bad analogy.

You say, "everbody knows jmo can be excessive" as if it's something we should just laugh off, or resign ourselves to. I say fuck that, and fuck him, and fuck you if you support it.

What did I miss that Thucy and YJ are all worked up?

@zultar no need. Just put it all down right here. You know how much I love disclosure. This thread serves the purpose of raising the forum awareness of this arbitrary lackwit you continue to allow to impose his white-knuckled grip upon the forum.

If you are going to sit here and tell me that you think what I wrote was in any way threatening (joking or otherwise) than you can join bo and jmo in the middle finger crowd. It's a ludicrous position and only a ludicrous person could maintain it. You aren't a ludicrous person, are you?

No, we are not making drama on the forum. If you have an issue with a moderator's action, email the mods and someone other than the mod in question will respond, probably an admin or me. We have seen that it does no good to anyone except for fanning fires and ending up wasting mods' time or my time. I have absolutely no desire or willingness to waste their time or my time. If your issue is with Jmo's decision, then your email should indicate that and give the mods a reasonable amount of time to respond. Less than 24 hours is not a reasonable amount of time.

@chaqa nothing much, I'm just so big and scary that mujus got a little fear-boner and it confused him enough to baaaaah to the mods.

Actually, the ludicrous one is you YJ. You've made a big fuss over incidents that stemmed from one incident (initiated by your comments) in multiple threads now. The only thing you're missing is the threat to quit the site.

There are clear and fair rules (that most can agree with on this site). You broke them, so there were consequences. You aren't the law enforcement on the site, and you aren't a mod. You aren't a victim if you instigated conflict. Just shut up and grow up. The lack of maturity displayed by you is just astounding.

Holy shit I just read it and... they got silenced for THAT?

Shoot me in the face then, damn.

@zultar fair enough, and I do appreciate your response, and apologize for demanding one sooner. I didn't recall any 48h policy. However, I am not going to refrain from discussing things like this on the forum. I respect you, but I do not like that you appear to simultaneously hold the position that "YJ was not threatening" and "jmo was within his rights."

Whether he was "within his rights" isn't the point. The point is that we have a moderator who regularly makes controversial decisions, always errs on the side of enforced peace through intervention, and never bothers to get the most possible information before making decisions that impact others. Some people are not suited for these types of roles, and jmo is clearly one of them.

Despite my admiration for your personal beliefs on this issue, your personal beliefs don't matter. What matters is your decisions, and the decisions made by those you allow to moderate this forum. The buck stops with you, Zully, like it or not, and you are responsible for every decision your moderating team makes.

First, there is a difference between I don't think YJ was threatening and I don't think anyone could have possibly read that YJ was threatening. As a matter of fact, more than one person did think your and thucy's comments went over the line. Second, I am not going to have the mods email or PM everyone to get everyone's side of the story before they make a judgment. This is a colossal waste of time for the mods and they are here mainly to moderate games, not to do fact hunting so they can appease a few people on the forum. This is not a democracy forum experiment where everything needs to have a trial and facts presented. Jmo thought you stepped over the line and acted accordingly. If you thought he was wrong, then email the mods to say why. The silence is brief and nonpermanent. Thirdly, stop saying that jmo regularly makes controversial decisions as he rarely does much with the forum anymore. Fourth, since the buck stops with me, I will say that I would have done the same thing.

This thread is not going to become another "why can't we have the old shit-for-all forum back" as that ship has sailed. If a specific moderator's action is questionable, email the mods. I will hold the mods accountable and they will hold themselves accountable.

I was willing to defend Thucy's original comment when it was made (almost certainly) as a joke. It wasn't particularly funny, but whatever. But what he followed it up with today was highly inappropriate. 1) It lacked any sort of the context that (IMHO) excused the original. 2) He doubled-down on an action that had already been deemed out of order. Locking his thread was entirely proper.

What's the point? You've already made it clear you've put your full support behind this terrible decision. This thread will become whatever the hell I, and the others who participate in it, want it to become. It may be about flying cats in an hour, and fuck you if you don't like it. If you're concerned that it's doomed to become "yet-another-thread-about-my-last-terrible-decision" maybe you should ask yourself why so many people would find it necessary to talk about that?

Or you can just silence it, since I guess that's how we resolve conflict in the new-and-improved webdip now.

It's the no-hurting-feelings webDip, duh.

It's basically the same few individuals who have complained about the change since June/July. So yeah, I'll probably close this thread at one point as I don't see a purpose for it, and if the same people threaten to leave the site or say that the site has gone to shit and nothing is worth anything here anymore, it won't hurt my feelings.

My question is this:

If Thucy is not allowed to discuss "him," is he thinking about "him?" If Thucy cannot think about "him," does "he" exist?

"I" "say" "we" "kill" "him".

Can anyone give me a refresher course on what exactly happened re: thucy, YJ and also the difference between the old webdip and the 'new and improved webdip' with reference to forum and mod rules?

Ah, so first, in this recent episode, in Mujus's daily bible thingy thread, a debate took hold regarding the whole "spare the rod, spoil the child" thing. Eventually, it became a simple forum war, and at one point, Thucy and YJ made certain comments. "I say we kill him" , and an affirmative response. While not actually a credible threat, it is against forum rules, and it was responded to with a silence. We are now debating the silence in a broader context: old vs. new webdip.
Old webdip was sort of chaotic, and prone to flame-wars, threatening comments and stuff like that. Essentially an unmoderated wilderness. You had krellin, Draugnar, mapleleaf, blankflag, SYnapse, some people I wasn't even around for, and others, a lot of whom are still with us.
The new, improved webdip came with the appearance of a number of rules for the forum, and moderation based on those rules. Those rules were stricter, and there was community protest. Soon, people who didn't adapt to the rules were being periodically silenced, and potentially even banned. Some left either the forum, or webdip on their own. Others got used to the new system, mostly.

And some of us have become bitter assholes. And then we joined webdip.

Isn't krellin still around?

That sounds like the intro monologue to a really terrible TV show.

The New Forum, starring Jesse Eisenberg as jmo, Woody Harrelson as zultar, and Peter Dinklage as bo_sox.

Yeah, krellin is still around, and tends to avoid volatile topics. So, one of the people who adapted.

I would totally watch any show that had Peter Dinklage as bo. He's webdip's own little lion.

Fascinating!! Haha.
My own two penny bit - I am of absolutely no doubt that the mod action was excessive. Both YJ and Thucy's posts were clearly meant in irony/jest - particularly Thucy who uses the "Lets kill him" line often including in global press in games.
That said - I am completely in agreement that their should be a basic framework of rules in place to regulate the forums and prevent anarchy. Unfortunately, any regulatory framework anywhere in the world will suffer from the subjectivity of the regulator. In this case I disagree with jmo's ruling but I do not question jmo's authority to make that ruling.

To make an analogy - the supreme court fucks up sometimes because of subjective interpretations of the judge. It would be foolish to demand that the Court be abolished because of that. One has to accept the Court's judgment while the Court also has to accept the litigant's right to protest the judgement as he/she sees fit - in this case YJ has the right to use this forum to protest his perceived unfair treatment. In fact, it is perfectly legitimate for the rest of the forum members to raise a hue and cry about it (without violating any more rules) to deter excessive excessive but legitimate use of mod powers in the future.

My point basically is that jmo's action was both excessive as well as legitimate.

This game is full of serious real-life threats. I always assume that if someone in a Diplomacy game suggests that I "attack" one of the other players, he means I should track that person down an assault them in real life.

Am I getting it wrong?

Surely if they only meant I should move some little on-screen counters around, they'd say "I think you should move your little counters towards that other guy's part of the map"...

(It's a real story I'm lying)

Simply put, our rule doesn't permit joking threats either. Nor do we allow joking multi accusations. The reason being it is hard to convey jokes across the internet and in this case several members believed both users to be serious in their threats.

As I've said before, and will hold too, no member should ever have to consider their real life safety due to anything on this site. As yellowjacket has been previously warned for making a member concerned about the safety of his underage children due to vivid sexually disgusting comments, and at that time agreed to stop any comments regarding member threats, this was simply unacceptable.

And as I do every time this question comes up, I will mention that before I implemented the silence I discussed the issue with other mods via THE GOOGLE, and we came to the joint determination that a silence was warranted to discourage anyone from making threats (joking or legitimate) against other members.

I do apologize for those of you who think you should be able to joke about threats, but until *both* Zultar and Kestas decide they are comfortable allowing those types of comments on this site, I and the other mods will continue preventing them.

Personally I think it's a bit silly, if the worst thing you see happening here is jokes about hurting members being prohibited then I'd have to say you're just looking for a reason to complain.

For those who are honestly concerned about that policy then I recommend emailing the site owners to discuss it.

^^ what a steaming pile of crap. I didn't threaten anybody, joking or otherwise. You're a ridiculous person maintaining a ridiculous position.

@shadow

Well put. I think you've basically captured the essence of what the issue is.

The problem is that individual moderators aren't held accountable. If you have a problem with a specific ruling or decision you are forced to engage with a mod who didn't make said decision. This combines to bring confidence in decisions down, prevents learning and creates major dissonance.

For instance when I questioned zultar about his apparent support of racist and sexist views in the forum, he suggested I would not get a response unless I emailed the entire mod team not just him. Its consistent with his points above.

However, all I was able to infer from the interaction was that my opinions are not worth his time and that he did not deny being a horrible racist and sexist pig. As such, my opinions of this creature are worsened and I have no confidence he can act kn a way society deems appropriate let alone moderate a forum.

Then leave?

@zultar well played. I wish I could close threads because I "don't see the point of them." Go ahead, you hero, you.

"For those who are honestly concerned about that policy then I recommend emailing the site owners to discuss it."

This isn't correct jmo. If you email zultar directly he is likely to throw a conniption fit abd scour the forum for a reason to silence you. Source: past experience.

^^

Right. I have absolutely no confidence that any headway on this issue would be made through private channels and discussion.

If I wasn't clear before, let me be clear now:

This is not a court of law. There isn't a trial and a jury and a litigation process. I am not willing to have the mob adjudicate nor the mods defend themselves endlessly as we have done in the past. This is a waste of time for almost everyone involved. This is a gaming site and the mods are going to spend the vast majority of their time modding games or helping with site coding, not wasting their time on the forum debating. If you disagree with a mod's decision, then email the mods and another mod/admin or me will look at it. We are not debating this and we are not doing this on the forum.

YJ, if you still have issues with jmo's decision, feel free to email us again. Lando, you are changing the story about what happened. I have very clearly written to you about why you were silenced in PM as well as in email and on the forum.

This thread isn't serving any other purpose, so I will close it.