Do we come here because every other forum is a wasteland?

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Mon Aug 02, 2010 5:15 pm

I came here for the "journalism", i.e. I got involved with an Eclipse Phase one-shot, remembered that I'd heard something about Catalyst going bankrupt due to fraud, and followed the Google trail here.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Aug 02, 2010 5:50 pm

I have found on this board, usually you don't gain any more new information past page 3-4 on a thread.

Although the people here might know math and whatnot, this forum still suffers from the fact that people on the internet will rarely admit they are wrong even if it's 100% clear that they are. Arguments devolve into "Nuh-uh!" "Yeah-huh!" "Nuh-uh!" just as fast as anywhere else on the internet.

The first couple pages? Usually some good points thrown around. After that, there is nothing new being discussed.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Mon Aug 02, 2010 7:05 pm

Ah, but the fights get so much more entertaining past the first few pages. I've often gone back to read some of the more heated arguments just for the fun factor. You know, like every thread that ever involved Elennsar. Or the threads about 3d6 vs 1d20.

Good times.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:20 pm

Zinegata wrote: Again though, Mel's pretty sane compared to other people I know. Including people here in the Den.

Mel or Meg? WotC_Mel is a different person than Meg/WizO_Autumn. I've met WotC_Mel once, seemed like a real nice lady from our brief meeting.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:46 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
Roy wrote:They had an ok forum for a while. Then Meg decided that she really didn't want a place for open and honest discussion (even if being honest meant telling them to suck a barrel of cocks). She wanted her little podcast thing. And apparently people being mean on the internet about unrelated subjects were costing her listeners. Even though the podcast people rarely if ever actually posted in the rest of the forum, and very few of the optimization people gave a damn about her podcast.
Yeah, there was a pretty dramatic shift when it went from being "339 where you can say what you want" to "play nice now except for arbitrary exceptions where podcast listeners get preference".

They drove a lot of people away, and I think others converted to 4E.

I learned basically never to engage Meg or Josh in direct conversation (particularly Josh). Although, none of them have posted there in months, so I don't know what that is all about. I know they had a kid, so maybe RL considerations took priority.

Yeah, a lot of people downgraded their games and their brains with 4.Fail. I remember one of the last(?) things I did was blasting the God Wizard guy because he wouldn't stop going on about how 4.Fail is actually an amazing game. Or was that Pathfinder? It might have been both. But there were definitely conflicts with 4rries involved. And that ultimately led to its downfall as a source of quality information.

Zinegata wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:
Zinegata wrote:
Her dad was really sick when WoTC decided to can the Optimization Boards. And they decided to have Gamer_Zero tell her the news.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that was particularly shitty. She was like that before that episode though.
I only really knew her from that episode, and I didn't really sense any of this from her. The WiZos all seemed real sane to me, personally, albeit the one I liked the most was the late great Autumn.

Gamer_Zero had... pretty major issues with me. Largely because I kept calling him out on his real dumb moves. The other WoTC face seemed to like me though as I kept pointing out she was the competent one who cleaned up Gamer_Zero's disasters.

Again though, Mel's pretty sane compared to other people I know. Including people here in the Den.

WizOs? Sane? Nope, they're guilty of the same bias and bullshit as everyone else. Remember Sunic_Flames? A very long thread, specifically dedicated to violating multiple parts of the CoC remained up despite the violations piling up, and many reports being filed. Why? Because it was targeting me. If it were anyone else they'd have done their fucking jobs. See: Any of the tamer threads targeting Aelryinth and others that were removed in minutes. This was very shortly before they completely and epically failed with more Gamer Zero BS, forum shuffling, and generally ticking everyone off.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Aug 02, 2010 11:54 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:
Zinegata wrote: Again though, Mel's pretty sane compared to other people I know. Including people here in the Den.
Mel or Meg? WotC_Mel is a different person than Meg/WizO_Autumn. I've met WotC_Mel once, seemed like a real nice lady from our brief meeting.

Sorry, Meg. Mel was the chief WiZo, yes.

Also, I think I meant WiZo Kayne in the previous post (the nice WiZo who died). I'm getting old and I was sleepy when I posted.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Aug 02, 2010 11:59 pm

Roy wrote:WizOs? Sane? Nope, they're guilty of the same bias and bullshit as everyone else. Remember Sunic_Flames? A very long thread, specifically dedicated to violating multiple parts of the CoC remained up despite the violations piling up, and many reports being filed. Why? Because it was targeting me. If it were anyone else they'd have done their fucking jobs. See: Any of the tamer threads targeting Aelryinth and others that were removed in minutes. This was very shortly before they completely and epically failed with more Gamer Zero BS, forum shuffling, and generally ticking everyone off.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but given that you say it's very shortly before Gamer_Zero, I think you didn't really interface with the WiZos.

Well before G-Zero's arrival I didn't see any bias. Just before he showed up though the WiZos were put out of their moderation job and it was supposed to go to Community Management. Which was one of the most biased bullshit admin groups I've ever seen.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:48 am

It's hard to say, really. The bias may look worse to Roy because he was one of the offending parties. From what I remember, they wouldn't prune some of Ael's flaming, but he also wasn't nearly as antagonistic as Roy. That, and he didn't usually start the fights.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 1:06 pm

RobbyPants wrote:It's hard to say, really. The bias may look worse to Roy because he was one of the offending parties. From what I remember, they wouldn't prune some of Ael's flaming, but he also wasn't nearly as antagonistic as Roy. That, and he didn't usually start the fights.

False. Aelryinth frequently started fights, and if you aren't counting the carpet bombing was just as offensive. The whole Sunic vs Aelryinth thing was started by him in the first place as he went from simply being wrong (claiming AC builds are relevant in D&D) to lying (continuing to make this claim after it was proven wrong with math and numbers) to trolling (most of his comments thereafter).

I was actually a very nice person on that board until Aelryinth started his months long trolling campaign (and other trolls, but he is the biggest reason why I crack down hard on imbeciles to this day... it's the only valid way of dealing with them).

When Aelryinth mostly stopped posting (which came some time after me exposing him on BG, and him getting himself banned, or voluntarily leaving or whatever he did that made him stop posting there) a bunch of other trolls took over his job. Like the Pun Pun guy. Who has been in bed with him for a while anyways.

And I said it was before more Gamer Zero Fail, not that it was before Gamer Zero. Remember the green revamp thing everyone hated? It was a little before that. In other words Gamer Zero had already been fucking things up for a while.

Oh yeah, and one of the rules about mods is they don't read or respond to private messages. So if you message them with say... a forwarded PM that grossly violates the CoC far worse than I ever did (which one of the trolls kindly sent to me, and even specifically mentioned that forwarding it is a waste of time, because the mods won't do shit) they won't do anything, but it's perfectly ok to delete almost every post I ever make, regardless of if it actually violates the CoC or not. That is a fucking bias. Full stop. I probably still have some of the fail emails I got for ban reasons somewhere, but not all of them. On no less than a half dozen occasions I got a ban for something like telling someone they are wrong without insulting them in any way, or making an idle comment that in no way violates the CoC, or even for no reason at all (literally, the reason was blank).

And that is a fucking bias. Full stop.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 1:25 pm

What I was getting at is that most of them probably don't care enough about the math of the game to care who's right in the sword and board argument. From their point of view, it's just opinion. This certainly doesn't make them right, but when they make moderating decisions, they just don't care if Ael is dead wrong in his maths. They care about who's being blatantly rude or violating the CoC.

Also, Ael was better at politely pushing your buttons and saying just enough to make you go into full rant mode. Sure, he was gaming the system, and that system was biased, but I don't think it was specifically an anti-Sunic bias. It was just an anti-blatant-rudeness bias.

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:13 pm

Roy wrote:
WizOs? Sane? Nope, they're guilty of the same bias and bullshit as everyone else.

If everyone has bias and bullshit, then having bias and bullshit is by definition "sane", and not having bias and bullshit is insane.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:28 pm

Let's not open that semantic/epistemological can of worms, Count.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:34 pm

RobbyPants wrote:What I was getting at is that most of them probably don't care enough about the math of the game to care who's right in the sword and board argument. From their point of view, it's just opinion. This certainly doesn't make them right, but when they make moderating decisions, they just don't care if Ael is dead wrong in his maths. They care about who's being blatantly rude or violating the CoC.

Also, Ael was better at politely pushing your buttons and saying just enough to make you go into full rant mode. Sure, he was gaming the system, and that system was biased, but I don't think it was specifically an anti-Sunic bias. It was just an anti-blatant-rudeness bias.

If he's hiding behind passive aggressive BS to not be moderated, that still means there is a bias. It might not have been specifically biased against me, but it certainly was biased against 'people they didn't like'.

He also did a number of blatant things that were never moderated. So yeah.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:39 pm

Uh, the Wizos were literally no longer allowed the moderate the forums the moment Gamer Zero stepped in. They were moved to some kind of weird customer service job where their primary job was to answer calls on WoTC games.

Moderating was supposed to be Gamer Zero's job, although because he was such an incompetent nitwit they retained the WiZos for the task of actually pruning threads. However, WiZos could only prune threads under Gamer Zero's direction - they couldn't actually choose which threads to prune.

So all this WiZo whining is honestly directed at the wrong people. Of course they're gonna ignore your e-mails. It's literally not their job anymore at that point, and from what I understand one of them was fired for trying to do his old moderation job by Gamer Zero.

That was one of the major reasons why many of us were calling Gamer_Zero a moron - because he was apparently one of the people who pressed for this, and it blew up on their faces, and instead of manning up to the mistake he fired somebody who was trying to help.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:09 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:If everyone has bias and bullshit, then having bias and bullshit is by definition "sane", and not having bias and bullshit is insane.

No. Bias and bullshit is unproductive, thus insane.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:12 pm

Starmaker wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:If everyone has bias and bullshit, then having bias and bullshit is by definition "sane", and not having bias and bullshit is insane.
No. Bias and bullshit is unproductive, thus insane.

Everyone has bias. When they let the bias turn into bullshit it becomes insane.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:21 pm

Who are Gamer Zero and Aelyrinth?

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:27 pm

For Valor wrote:Who are Gamer Zero and Aelyrinth?

Gamer Zero was the guy 'reorganizing' the WotC forums when 4E came out. Aelyrinth is just another guy arguing that there isn't a problem with fighters.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:45 am

Hey, I'll admit to being biased in my brief time as a WizO - the Count should have totally gotten at least an official warning and not merely a "dude chill" PM.

But I, and those WizOs who I was in contact with were painfully aware that the APPEARANCE of bias would only discredit our authority and we took pains to avoid it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:52 am

As much as I hated Meg when she was a WizO, and took pretty much every moderation decision as a tyrannical slap to the Mature board...

She seems much nicer outside of that. Having talked to her over IM once or twice and listening to the BG podcasts (yeah, yeah, I know... I enjoy them), I kind of understand what was going on there a bit better

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:01 am

I'm beginning to suspect most people here all had rap sheets with the WoTC moderators.

That's not a good thing.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:08 am

Zinegata wrote:I'm beginning to suspect most people here all had rap sheets with the WoTC moderators.

What on Earth would make you think that? It couldn't be our abrasive posting styles, could it? (Though, truth be told, I never had any particular grievances with WizOs.)

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:17 am

Zinegata wrote:I'm beginning to suspect most people here all had rap sheets with the WoTC moderators.

That's not a good thing.

Um, I think anyone who didn't have a rap sheet on wotc has a problem.

I mean, Frank has a rap sheet for repeatedly contradicting 3.0 sage rulings, and being right about it, so much that skip through a fit.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:19 am

Zinegata wrote:I'm beginning to suspect most people here all had rap sheets with the WoTC moderators.

That's not a good thing.

I don't. I just got sick of people getting mad that I said their class wasn't good or something in it didn't work the way they thought it did. I didn't insult I was just blunt.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:21 am

Kaelik wrote:I mean, Frank has a rap sheet for repeatedly contradicting 3.0 sage rulings, and being right about it, so much that skip through a fit.

I'm pretty sure Frank's "rap sheet" is due to him being an ass about it. We can try and pretend that there's this giant conspiracy by WotC to silence the naysayers and keep down the truth, but that's a load of crap and you know it. I fully admit the reason that I got banned from the WotC forums is because I acted like an asshole. It's not because I hate 4e or because I think the majority of posters on there are retarded shills. It's because I was a doodoo head poopie-face to the other posters.

That doesn't bother me in the least, but I'd hope that the rest of the people who have run into WizO problems are willing to admit that their issues stem from them being jerks.