Dear Sir,
Normally I wouldn’t concern myself too much, I gave up on RPGnet as a bad job some years ago when my personal account was banned and only kept a company account there for the sake of posting adverts and promotion. That was, apparently, fine until recently. One of my more recent games garnered a bit of attention and so, figuring that some three or four years had passed since the original ban, that there’d been no problem with the company account and that others in a similar situation had been allowed back onto the site (ref: Gareth Michael Skarka of Adamant Entertainment) I engaged with the banter about Agents of SWING and answered people’s questions.
Until that is someone, I believe Darren MacLennan, whose name will come up a lot, suddenly decided this was an issue and banned the account.
Correspondence regarding the ban has been rude, accusatory, unprofessional and insulting – when there’s been a response at all.
Take this response from KilFalcon, showing the rot goes as high as the administration level:
********
Hi,
The ban will not be lifted, for the following reasons:
1) You were banned from the forums.
2) Banned users are not permitted to post.
3) You posted on the forums, while banned.
This is called ‘evading a ban’, and as clearly stated in the rules, this has a penalty of immediate permaban on all accounts involved.
I do not give a flying fuck why you broke the rules, either the sockpuppetting or the long period leading up to your original permaban.
I know you broke the rules, you have admitted you did, and the penalty has been applied exactly as laid out in the rules, and so shall it remain.
Goodbye.
– Killfalcon
RPGnet Administrator.
*************
Frankly, a company account does not constitute sockpuppeting and as pointed out was, apparently, considered to be just tickety-boo for some time. It’s not like I was hiding who I was or what I was doing but apparently that makes no odds. False accusations strike me as being personal attacks, which are against the forum’s own rules.
Various people then posted to support me and, to be fair, against me, though their arguments – where existent – were rather weak. Rather childishly anyone supporting me was apparently accused of being ‘another’ sockpuppet.
You can track that nonsense here:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?577137-GrimJim-Proxy-Troll-Terms-of-Service-and-Moderator-Accountability
The very title of the thread has been turned into a presumptive insult, not to mention a breach of the Data Protection act in revealing Ross’ full name without his permission.
As you can also see there your moderators and their support pack drove off at least one other user, perhaps more.
That culminated with the banning of my wife who had posted in support of me and while later reversed, that was rather jumping the gun – Darren again.
His rather inadequate climbdown and apology can be found here:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?577044-Kostika-unbanned…
Frankly, the rest of the Trouble Tickets forum reads like a laundry list of bad moderator decisions, dogpiling and finding excuses to ban anyone who disagrees with a moderator decision. This is not a healthy environment and many of these people shouldn’t moderate a children’s tea party, let alone an RPG forum. Here I am particularly thinking of Darren MacLennan and Cessna, but also Sethra007 who can be found victimising an associate of mine here:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?576320-Ian-Warner-72-hours
There are other examples, such as an Actual Play thread being pulled because it would attract trolls… isn’t that rather backwards? Shouldn’t the people trolling be held accountable not the original poster?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?502068-Hell-for-Leather-Sh*tting-on-the-ancestors-ADULTS-ONLY
I can’t help but think that nobody at Skotos knows what’s going on.
Despite a shift in demographics and use of the internet RPGnet remains an important and visible keystone of the RPG scene and it’s horrendously unwelcoming and badly moderated by abusive provocateurs who form a closed loop of self-congratulation and rarely and grudgingly, if ever, admit that they’re wrong. This is not a way to maintain a forum, nor is it a good way to represent the RPG scene, nor – as we can see from people leaving and from the number of RPG companies and professionals who have come to regard the site as a bad joke.
If, and I presume you do, you wish RPGnet to remain an important destination for online RPG discussion and activity you need to do something drastically.
Personally I think a clean broom needs to come through the moderation with new appointments and perhaps at least one person with a paid position so you’re not relying on volunteers (who can often become a little crazed with perceived power over others).
I’m not particularly bothered personally about having access to the forum, as I said I hadn’t used it for anything much in years due to the abusive and toxic environment, however I would appreciate that someone in a position of genuine and uncorrupted authority took a look at this issue. Even a brief googling will turn up many, many other people and even entire forums that have issues with RPGnet. It’s in danger of becoming an irrelevance.
Ideally the result of this complaint would see…
1. A better apology to my wife.
2. An apology to VOID for breach of his privacy and personal insult.
3. A serious review of policies at RPGnet.
4. The firing of at least one moderator, Darren MacLennan, who has consistently and for years been a problem, far more than any of the people he has banned.
5. The restoration of access for a company account for my company, limited to announcements and discussions of our own products (which is all I would want anyway).
Sincerely,
Postmortem Studios 
Banning From The Hip
Hell for Leather, as you mentioned above, was banned because they predicted a bad reaction to the posting. That kind of predictive censorship is pretty harsh and, possibly, a nasty stride away from free speech. In marketing Hell for Leather, I poked fun at RPG.net by including a ‘sticker’ on the back cover. Playfulness aside, I was pretty blown away when the ban was put in place, and it kind of upset me (considering the bad mouthed Actual Play reports from other ‘child friendly’ RPGs). It’s a strange, controversial and fuzzy line they’ve crossed, I admit, but it’s a line nonetheless.
Re: Banning From The Hip
It seems like the only thing all sides of the RPG ideological divide can agree on is that RPGnet sucks vast amounts of dead penguin dick.
Re: Banning From The Hip
It seems like the only thing all sides of the RPG ideological divide can agree on is that RPGnet sucks vast amounts of dead penguin dick.
Re: Banning From The Hip
It seems like the only thing all sides of the RPG ideological divide can agree on is that RPGnet sucks vast amounts of dead penguin dick.
Re: Banning From The Hip
It seems like the only thing all sides of the RPG ideological divide can agree on is that RPGnet sucks vast amounts of dead penguin dick.
Re: Banning From The Hip
Free speech does not apply on rpg.net and there is no reason except courtesy, shy it should.
Re: Banning From The Hip
I don’t believe anyone mentioned free speech though professionalism, courtesy and being an effective discussion platform do all come into play.
Re: Banning From The Hip
I don’t believe anyone mentioned free speech though professionalism, courtesy and being an effective discussion platform do all come into play.
Re: Banning From The Hip
I don’t believe anyone mentioned free speech though professionalism, courtesy and being an effective discussion platform do all come into play.
Re: Banning From The Hip
I don’t believe anyone mentioned free speech though professionalism, courtesy and being an effective discussion platform do all come into play.
Re: Banning From The Hip
Free speech does not apply on rpg.net and there is no reason except courtesy, shy it should.
Re: Banning From The Hip
Free speech does not apply on rpg.net and there is no reason except courtesy, shy it should.
Re: Banning From The Hip
Free speech does not apply on rpg.net and there is no reason except courtesy, shy it should.
Banning From The Hip
Hell for Leather, as you mentioned above, was banned because they predicted a bad reaction to the posting. That kind of predictive censorship is pretty harsh and, possibly, a nasty stride away from free speech. In marketing Hell for Leather, I poked fun at RPG.net by including a ‘sticker’ on the back cover. Playfulness aside, I was pretty blown away when the ban was put in place, and it kind of upset me (considering the bad mouthed Actual Play reports from other ‘child friendly’ RPGs). It’s a strange, controversial and fuzzy line they’ve crossed, I admit, but it’s a line nonetheless.
Banning From The Hip
Hell for Leather, as you mentioned above, was banned because they predicted a bad reaction to the posting. That kind of predictive censorship is pretty harsh and, possibly, a nasty stride away from free speech. In marketing Hell for Leather, I poked fun at RPG.net by including a ‘sticker’ on the back cover. Playfulness aside, I was pretty blown away when the ban was put in place, and it kind of upset me (considering the bad mouthed Actual Play reports from other ‘child friendly’ RPGs). It’s a strange, controversial and fuzzy line they’ve crossed, I admit, but it’s a line nonetheless.
Banning From The Hip
Hell for Leather, as you mentioned above, was banned because they predicted a bad reaction to the posting. That kind of predictive censorship is pretty harsh and, possibly, a nasty stride away from free speech. In marketing Hell for Leather, I poked fun at RPG.net by including a ‘sticker’ on the back cover. Playfulness aside, I was pretty blown away when the ban was put in place, and it kind of upset me (considering the bad mouthed Actual Play reports from other ‘child friendly’ RPGs). It’s a strange, controversial and fuzzy line they’ve crossed, I admit, but it’s a line nonetheless.