The Graal-Wyzak effect

Mephisto_Helix said:
I think what's got me riled up about it is a member who has contributed and been a member for a while now has been shown the door while the aggravating turd is singing happy days. That's the kind of treatment that makes the more valuable members piss off until you're left with 'newbs'.

1 - There should really be a flame thread for everyone to get it out of their system with no consequence - enter at your own will kinda thing.

2 - Resorting to banning 1 person for using knob and blasphemy (really, blasphemy, pathetic) on someone clearly trolling should never be in place at MyGaming.


P.S - Graal and I have had some handbag shit but we got past it and I can even tolerate him ........ in small doses, heh.
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Dan explained to me that this has been escalating for a while now and despite making requests to tone things down, it continued. It is also not solely linked to the flame-fest in the SimCity thread (which Dan has been diplomatically monitoring by deleting flame posts that drove the thread off topic). I have no reason to doubt Dan on this and he is a long-standing moderator on the forum.

Suddenly there is shock when there are repercussions for not taking the advice of the mod. The ban isn't permanent either.

As many long-standing members know, engaging with me directly on issues is a good way to go - I have helped out many people posting in this thread.

We are extremely lenient on most of the rules because we don't want an autocratic dictatorship vibe going on, and unless posts are reported by members, there is not always a need to step in and start issuing infractions and bans.

So now there is an infraction system in place that will track if users go so far as to become problematic, and create a record of this so that any temp bans can be backed up by a history of trouble-making.
 
James said:
No insulting other members and avoiding foul language have been rules from day 1.

We typically let the harmless stuff slide.

Tirades of insults, flame-wars, and foul-language lead to a negative environment and escalate to the situation we have seen today.
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And if you'd stepped in in the first place and told Wyzak to stop his spam/trolling it wouldn't have escalated to what we saw today either. How many people complained about his constant, never-ending stream of shitposts in the SimCity thread? He's got an opinion, nobody has an issue with that, but the way in which he presented the opinion was grating on a lot of people.

Seeing as you used a real-life example, let's use one here too. Imagine a group of people discussing the new VW Polo. Now imagine there's another person who doesn't like the new Polo. Instead of giving his opinion and then stepping out of the discussion, he constantly shoves it in everyone's face. Everyone already knows everything he has to say or will say, yet he continues to do so non-stop. How do you expect people in a real-life situation will react? He'd be lucky if the group simply quietly dispersed and he didn't get a punch in the face.

That is essentially what happened here today. People were starting to get fed up with Wyzak, I got a little over-aggressive, Dan stepped in, I neg-repped Dan for doing a rubbish job, after which Dan banned me.

There's a lot to be said about moderation being too strict, but there's also a lot to be said about moderation being so lenient that users can get away with spam and trolling that aggravates other people. I remember two years back when the comments trolls were here, multiple trolls registered on these forums and despite everyone knowing they were the trolls, you did absolutely nothing. You realise it got so bad at one point that they actually dug up my email address and sent me pictures of my parents, telling me how they were going cut their eyes out? And yet here the trolls sat, protected by MyGaming's lenient moderation policy because they weren't technically doing anything wrong on the forums. At least, not according to the moderation policy.

Anyway, that's a bit of a different tangent, but the point is that while you might think differently, a moderation policy that is too lenient can be just as disadvantageous as one that is too strict.
 
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James said:
Dan explained to me that this has been escalating for a while now and despite making requests to tone things down, it continued. It is also not solely linked to the flame-fest in the SimCity thread (which Dan has been diplomatically monitoring by deleting flame posts that drove the thread off topic). I have no reason to doubt Dan on this and he is a long-standing moderator on the forum.
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Do you not question the chain of events?

10AM - Dan deletes my flame posts, tells me to take it to PM.
around 10:30AM I neg-rep dan with the message 'because you're doing a shit job.'
11AM - I try to visit the forum only to find I have been banned.

Why wasn't I banned immediately following Dan's moderation at 10AM? Why only an hour later and only after I neg-repped Dan? Why? Because I got banned for the neg-rep, not the flame post. That's why.
 
I remember prior to today, stepping into the SimCity thread to request that everyone tone it down. I know Dan has done the same.

Repeatedly ignoring a moderator who tells you to stop flame-posting, then disrespecting the moderator. I would also have temp-banned you.

As to your remarks about the troll users who were directly attacking you a few years back, I remember it clearly, as I worked with you directly to weed them out and ban them, not only here but also on MyBroadband, both in the forums and on the comment sections.

Your continued misrepresentation of events that I remember clearly, undermines your argument here against your temp-ban.
 
Zoop said:
And if you'd stepped in in the first place and told Wyzak to stop his spam/trolling it wouldn't have escalated to what we saw today either. How many people complained about his constant, never-ending stream of shitposts in the SimCity thread? He's got an opinion, nobody has an issue with that, but the way in which he presented the opinion was grating on a lot of people.

Seeing as you used a real-life example, let's use one here too. Imagine a group of people discussing the new VW Polo. Now imagine there's another person who doesn't like the new Polo. Instead of giving his opinion and then stepping out of the discussion, he constantly shoves it in everyone's face. Everyone already knows everything he has to say or will say, yet he continues to do so non-stop. How do you expect people in a real-life situation will react? He'd be lucky if the group simply quietly dispersed and he didn't get a punch in the face.

That is essentially what happened here today. People were starting to get fed up with Wyzak, I got a little over-aggressive, Dan stepped in, I neg-repped Dan for doing a rubbish job, after which Dan banned me.

There's a lot to be said about moderation being too strict, but there's also a lot to be said about moderation being so lenient that users can get away with spam and trolling that aggravates other people. I remember two years back when the comments trolls were here, multiple trolls registered on these forums and despite everyone knowing they were the trolls, you did absolutely nothing. You realise it got so bad at one point that they actually dug up my email address and sent me pictures of my parents, telling me how they were going cut their eyes out? And yet here the trolls sat, protected by MyGaming's lenient moderation policy because they weren't technically doing anything wrong on the forums. At least, not according to the moderation policy.

Anyway, that's a bit of a different tangent, but the point is that while you might think differently, a moderation policy that is too lenient can be just as disadvantageous as one that is too strict.
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I don't think Graal likes Wyzak.

Just be careful of jokes. A mybb member made a joke about my face being ugly and some poor soul was so horrified that they reported him on mybb and he got an infraction. Be careful of the joke situations.
 
You helped me in two instances, I'll grant you that. Once, when someone on MyBB registered a troll account under my name and another time when you offered to ban the name 'Graal' from being used in the comments here on MyGaming. My memory is a bit better than you might expect.

http://mygaming.co.za/forum/member.php/6102-Anonymous

http://mygaming.co.za/forum/member.php/6034-Hurdur

Notice the Banned tag under their names? No, me neither. Hurdur even admitted to trolling me in a PM once. I'm sure the PM is still in my inbox somewhere, which I now cannot access because I got banned for having a spat with a forum moderator.

As for the flame post this morning; what did you do when other members of the community politely asked Wyzak to stop trolling with his spam? Because it was starting to piss off a lot of people. Don't you think it's equally detrimental to a forum to allow members to shitpost to the point where other members don't want to take part in a discussion?

As Mephisto said, I get banned, Wyzak can continue his aggravating spam and the longer-standing members continue to trickle away.

I would just like one question answered before I go? Why did it take an hour for Dan to ban me for a flame post and why did it only happen after I sent him a neg-rep? If I was banned for the neg-rep, why not be upfront about it? Why tell me and everyone I was banned for the flame post?
 
MyGaming forum user infraction levels

Personally I feel the wrong guy got banned, it looks like your cutting leaves rather than tackling the root but that's just my view.

Hopefully the new system will prevent this in future
 
Ike_009 said:
Personally I feel the wrong guy got banned, it looks like your cutting leaves rather than tackling the root but that's just my view.

Hopefully the new system will prevent this in future
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I'm not going to pick sides in this, but from what I saw, while Wyzak was being extremely annoying and persistent, he was never rude or insulting. I haven't read all the threads though, so I could be wrong.
 
So what have we learned from all this today? You're allowed to be excessively annoying on the MyGaming forums, as long as you don't insult members.

Anyway, looking for a response here seems to be a waste. James likely told all the MyG staff to stay out of the discussion, like he usually does when things get a bit hairy. Pity.

If you take anything from this at all, at least listen to my comment about MyGaming's recent loss of quality content. I don't mean it badly when I say you don't cover nearly enough news, and when you do it comes across as regurgitated news taken directly from other news sites. In a case such as that, I might as well go get the news from the original news site.
 
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Eugene said:
I'm not going to pick sides in this, but from what I saw, while Wyzak was being extremely annoying and persistent, he was never rude or insulting. I haven't read all the threads though, so I could be wrong.
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But I'm sure you could tell it was gonna build up to a breaking point which could have been avoided? Graal wasn't the only person getting fed up.

However past is past and let's learn and move on.
 
Troll pathetically long enough to piss off a bunch of people and something will break. That the trolling twats never get told to quit it and then members who snap get into some kind of shit, makes a mockery of things.

There is a clear side to this saga, read the thread in question and see the childishness of a troll.
 
Dan has openly stated his reasoning here: http://mygaming.co.za/forum/showthread.php/68-MyGaming-suggestion-box?p=747665&viewfull=1#post747665

To reiterate, your temp-ban was a result of an accumulation of issues, not discounting the disrespectful "shit job" insult.

As Dan described it, and as he has discussed with me, he tried to mitigate the situation by removing the the back and forth flame posts (which you were taking part in, also resorting to repeatedly insulting another member) and when that was proving fruitless he resorted to a temp-ban to get his point across.

You could have approached me directly about this to get it resolved but instead you dragged it into public, where the details about you disrespecting a moderator also came to light.

Banning isn't taken lightly by the moderation team and a user will have to repeatedly aggravate us to reach this point.

We have now enforced a stricter infraction system as leaving matters to be sorted out among the community is proving problematic. Reporting posts that are disruptive or otherwise offensive will aide us in resolving matters effectively.

Finally, to try put all this ugly business behind us, I will unban your Graal account and hope that we can move forward positively.
 
There's been plenty of "So and so hates so and so" over years that has fizzled out because it's been handled behind the scenes and until now, handled well ......... I think that just this fact will keep that relative peace here - Trolling needs to be dealt with harsher so that situations like these don't come to a head. After action is bad.

Also, I'm glad James has offered the mature olive branch at the end of the day. I hope that the more senior members which this site needs can and will get more involved with moderation because that's a sure fire way to keep things checked ;)
 
EDIT: Ah, I see James just said it for me.

Move along, nothing to see here.
 
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Mephisto_Helix said:
Also, I'm glad James has offered the mature olive branch at the end of the day. I hope that the more senior members which this site needs can and will get more involved with moderation because that's a sure fire way to keep things checked ;)
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I've always been for this notion as I feel us senior members know pretty much the in's and outs of the forum and have always felt that should a new kid or general member not understand something or need assistance to approach us to help level out a situation (No I'm not saying gang up on someone) just to lighten the mood of things.

It's been an effective method in the past and it's put a lot of people's minds at ease.

On a lighter note, I enjoy poking trolls with a stick just to get a reaction out of them when they try to yank chains and piss people off. :p
 
Yes, I don't mind moving forward positively, but I do feel the issue which led to this whole thing needs to be addressed. If a user trolls enough that he invariable starts making people fed up, why is nothing done? If a moderator stepped in and asked him to done it down, we wouldn't have reached this point in the first place.

It's not even that I'm angry about the ban. In fact, looking back at the post quoted in the warning you just sent me, the ban was warranted. I was more surprised it wasn't a permanent ban. However, look at the circumstances that led up to the ban. Someone was continuously trolling the Simcity thread, people were getting fed up and nothing was being done about it. The trolling should not have been allowed to get to the point where it started making people fed up.
 
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