Well we do talk nonsense at times. I have avoided the off topic thread myself till I got sucked in recently. Found myself with more spare time and was waiting for other posts I guess, but oh well, you are right in saying the game is dying down a lot, and interest with it since we can't even discuss potential new decks (I want more than 3 deck packs next time!).

Still, and you would be the expert here, at least at the speculation...we should be expecting 2015 in around 3 and a half months, yes? It will pick up again once it's announced in 3 and a quarter months.

The word "one" referred to Cathars' Crusade and was part of a back and forth debating the merits of what is the better card to run out of that and Light from Within if you only run one of them.
The rest of it admittedly is anecdotal train of thought from the nights games. Does it belong in the Bounce and Boon thread?
No.
Did it poison women and children and set small animals on fire?
No.

I read every post in this forum and try to interact with everyone here when possible and in doing that I regularly get sidetracked into more of a social dialog rather that a strict adherence to Magic theory/speculation/practicality as is my nature.

Just an explanation and a word showing that I am aware of this and that I'll try and tone down the off topic statements because I do know where you are coming from. Other than that I feel no need to defend myself and have nothing else to say really.

@Kheldar

"Do not harass other users, including site staff. Flaming, baiting, trolling, and any other disruptive behavior will not be tolerated.
You are allowed and even expected to disagree with other users from time to time, but the moment you go from disagreeing to disrespecting is the moment you cross the line."

Now here's the thing. I believe I politely asked for Moderator Definitions (yours specifically, since you run this particular joint) for "flaming", "baiting", "trolling", "disruptive behavior", and "disrespecting". Personally, I find the definitions of those words/terms to be highly subjective.

Example: "I for one am complimented by the fact that mobius thinks about me so much that he uses my name on a regular basis when I'm not even remotely a part of the conversation."

Now it isn't outside the realm of possibility that I could feel disrespected by that, right? The implication that I think about mjack "so much"? Does the fact that I CHOSE not to feel disrespected (and didn't report this post) change the fact that I COULD have felt disrespected? Did jack "cross the line" there?

Now to your question of "Do you really feel like you are being tolerant of others." If I'm being held to the standards of Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and I guess now the CoC, then no, I guess I'm not. If I'm being held to the standards of your average citizen though? Yes, I am TOLERANT of others. Just because I choose to poke fun and make snide remarks every now and again doesn't make me an INTOLERANT person. Am I telling people to get lost and never post again? I think a truly tolerant person could get through all the prickliness to see the real "think before you post" message at the heart of (most of) my barbs.

Let's flip this for a bit. Do you think you're being tolerant of ME? Sure, I've collected [a few] warnings over some arbitrary period of time. You've already stated that every single warning I've received without a shadow of a doubt is a violation of the Code of Conduct so I guess you've already answered my question. CoC or bust. No wiggle room. No TOLERANCE for non-compliance. I mean, that's fine. If that's the face you want to present to your current and future members so be it. Your forum. Your rules. If I were being completely unreasonable and intolerant, I doubt anyone would even bother to defend me with the "evidence" I've submitted.

I mean, what is the point of banning anyways, really? Is it simply a punishment tool, or do you think my presence here is so cancerous that I have to BARRED for certain periods of time?

Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of the olive branch you're extending to me by not only allowing me to post in this thread, but actively engaging me, and I appreciate that. I'm not trying to get my crimes pardoned or anything like that. I just want the rest of the community to know what happens when you don't tow the party line and what towing the party line actually means.

Splatter, I took mobius's comments not as an attack on any poster at all. What he was attacking was the overall lack of quality strategy discussion and the overabundance of off-topic banter.

I agree with him, because strategy talk is why I joined the forum in the first place, and it's why I followed it over here.

I think the problem is the overall lack of new individuals asking questions that generate discussion that is strategy-oriented. If it's just us talking amongst ourselves, then there really isn't a lot to say. The mana-efficiency of Doom Blade vs. the life-loss of Hideous End is really all we have to talk about at this point, because we're all pretty good at the basics, I think.

It does feel like a bit of a gated community since we came over; I know the gates are open, but if no one walks in then it's just as well they were closed.

And at the end of the day, people who are looking for a forum are looking to talk strategy. Losing mobius's content hurts this forum, plain and simple.

Attack sounds like I'm supposed to be up in arms and offended over it, is that what we're disagreeing about? To me, it was him pointing out how he sees the current state of the forum. My explanation for your confusion over how some can defend him is, from my perspective, that I'm not offended and that I support Mobius's contributions. If we disagree on that point, I guess that's all there is to it then.

He attacked no-one specifically, but the community as a whole. He even admitted to it. You and others are defending him.
I just wanted to make sure everyone knew what was said because it's so easy to say "Mobius was banned? OBJECTION!" while overlooking the fact that he showed a very flippant view of the community as a whole OUTSIDE the Moderation that he was initially challenging.

If you think it's okay that he voiced his opinion of the community as a whole from that vantage point then fine.
I was just seeing if everyone actually read everything he'd said since nobody commented on that little tidbit at all.
(One of the things that draws my attention the most about anything is the parts that no-one else talks about. It's a boon and a curse.)

Which I never claimed. Just that he slagged the DotP community as a whole. I only named the people that were defending him because it seemed either an odd response, or maybe they missed that bit.

Which, as I've said, D14 is winding down, soon there will be virtually no discussion of it at all.
There's only so much strategy to be discussed in a game like this. Evidenced by the fact that we're now discussing "cards of the Day" and "Goldfish kills' more than actual gameplay it seems.
That's not going to change until June. Until then... With interest in D14 slowly and inevitably7 waning, why is it a cross against the community that people are talking about it less?


Mobius' content is an easily controllable double-edged sword. I hope he and the mods and the rest of the community will realize this by the time it's over.
Self-control is a two-way street. It's not up to everyone to take what he says in stride anymore than it's solely up to him to take what everyone else says the same way.

Personally, any issues between Mobius and I have rarely arisen and were quickly resolved when they reared. This isn't me speaking against him or for anyone else. I speak from a realist point of view and I think there are things to be learned by ALL members of this community from this.

This isn't the first time we've had someone on the proverbial chopping block. I'm confident Mobius will endure and come out of this unscathed if he so chooses.

For the record, as stated a bit above, I don't think I was ever defending him. I like his analysis and his commentary. I find his cranky ass humorous, although I feel he probably goes overboard at times on "people." That being said, there are plenty of others that do the same, and with far more regularity (mobius doesn't even have that high a post count here, does he?).

The long and short of it is that the only opinions of his I (or anybody else) should care about are his opinions re:Duels. He can whine and flip out and rag on people all he wants, I just want to know his opinion on things, because he's one of the more informed people here.

The phrase Jackeem33 at the base level, even jokingly, is still an insult to both the person the phrase is directed at as well as the person the name is based off. Because it directly implies that any association with the person the name was based off of is a bad thing, and it displays comtempt for the third party it is based off of every time it is used to insult the second party.

In essence, someone is allowed to take offense at their name being used as a repeated casual insult.

This became a pattern in discussions whenever the person using the insult wanted to insult a specific user.

In addition to this, this particular phrase was directly linked to the r-word as a synonym, which refers to the mentally handicapped in a derogatory fashion and is thus never remotely acceptable, by the person who was using it as an insult.

Taking those into account, every single use of the phrase is the equivalent of calling two people the r-word at this point, whether or not the person throwing it around as an insult intended that. At that point, it is definitely not okay, assuming it was blurry before.




This is completely ignoring phrases like "our resident magic expert", "you can listen to me or the expert above me", etc. that are designed to convey nothing but condescension for another user.

When I personally got a warning from the mods, the highlight of the pm was "you are not allowed to make condescending comments at people". It's something they take very seriously.





The ignore button is the only good way to resolve some situations, and using it in cases where you really need to ignore someone is preferable to most of the alternatives.

That being said, the ignore button is not 100 percent effective and has its own problems. The entire reason mods exist is so that people have to at least be civil to each other. They don't have to like each other, and they don't have to like each other's arguments, but the idea is that they aren't supposed to be openly hostile to each other either.


As for whether or not I personally over-report people, there are tons of things I think about reporting but don't. Like Guardians of Light page 9. I personally make an effort not to do so unless something becomes a pattern with no sign of stopping ever. But after a certain point, I see nothing wrong with hitting the report button.

He's not "making fun of me", he's calling me out for posting content that he found questionable. I thought it was a clever way to go about it.

People really need to just lighten up and laugh a little more. You can either get upset about barbs thrown your way, or you can start trading them.

I didn't think mobius was specifically referring to me, based on his post history on the old forums, unless I'm mis-remembering he's always been actually more friendly to me than some of the much more tolerated regulars.

As for the ignore button being necessary, seriously, why can't you just stop yourself from replying? Do you not have free will? Can't you just gloss over the posts of someone you don't like, do you have no self control? Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm legit curious.

Just like you find some words terribly offensive, some people get offended by different things. And rather than have to see it and deal with it, they just make the choice to eliminate that problem from their life. No problem with that. I wish MORE people would start using the ignore button rather than the report one.

After finding all my decks solid I guess the next thing is to say.
thedevilwuster: PSN for both games.

I'm up for playing 1v1 games but I would really like to see if we can get a few ffa's in to talk card choices and have dialog.

Yes, I understand what the ignore function does, what I'm saying is that an adult should be able to "manually" ignore someone's posts by just skimming by them. If someone can't help themselves from replying, that's kind of sad.

It's not the replying that I assume is the issue, it's having to read stuff like that. If someone doesn't want to read those kind of things (whether or not they both other people), then the best option is just to ignore the other user.

I dunno, just playing Devil's (not Wuster's) Advocate

There's a lot of stuff to reply to, but I'll start here.

To be honest, the irony of the fact that this account should've been locked wasn't lost on me when I replied last night. But it's been good conversation overall, and I'm always in favor of encouraging that.



So, allow me to extend an apology to you. I dug through the logs attached to your name, and I see I was the one who issued your prior warnings, so it was my failure to not send those to you via email. I've asked our tech support magician if he can hack the site's code so that it automatically sends an email as well as a PM when a warning is issued. That way old fogies like me don't have to remember.

Moving on to the warning itself: since you posted it, I'm happy to discuss the matter publicly now. I generally prefer to avoid "quote wars" (I quote a snippet of what you said, reply, another snippet, reply, etc) because they're often ugly-looking and they often lead to nit picking over little things. But I think multiple quotes here will be best, so please forgive me for covering the post with quoted snippets of your post. Before I do that, though, I want to talk about warnings in general.

For the most part, our goal is to attempt to steer conversation back toward "polite" territory. To do so, we use two types of warnings. The first is a "soft" warning. It's analogous to the cop who lets you off with a warning after he catches you doing 37 in a 25. A soft warning will be delivered via PM by the moderator who is issuing it, and it will clearly state that it's a soft warn with no actions against your account. Like the warning you quoted above, it'll quote the post and tell you why we think your post violated the code of conduct. I know you're enjoying the hammer references, first with Thor and now with Donkey Kong, but we issue significantly more soft warnings that "hard" warnings.

And that's the other type of warning - a "hard" warning. These are tracked (by the software) and are used to determine if a ban is necessary, and of what length. To follow along on the analogy of the cop who caught you speeding, a hard warning is like a ticket for speeding. These are issued through the site software, which generates a PM to send the text of the warning along to the user. Our policy - and clearly, I failed at it - is to also send the text via email, for exactly the reason documented here; because otherwise, the member gets banned and doesn't know why.

Sticking with the already over-used speeding ticket analogy, a moderator can - and often does - opt to cut a member some slack when issuing a warning. For example, rather than infracting for each of those above (or even one warning for each thread that was involved), we often lump things that occurred in close proximity together - much like a cop who is in a good mood will give you a ticket for doing 31 in a 25 even though he clocked you at 37.

(And then a final note here: sometimes, a mod will send a PM to a member that may look like a soft warning, but it's really just a courtesy note to let them know we've edited one of the their posts. For example, if Joe Magic makes a post that flames somebody we're going to edit the flame out of Joe's post; if you quoted it before we could catch it and make the edit, we'll then also edit your post to remove the flame from the quote. In this sort of scenario, you didn't do anything wrong, and you're not at all in any sort of trouble. We're simply sending you the PM as a courtesy "heads up" to inform that your post was edited and why.)

So let's take a quick look at the comments we removed, and why. I'll try to be brief because I know this post is already running long. I've typed and deleted this a few times now trying to think of the best way to reply. Hopefully this works out to be brief but clear.



So these are the posts from the Guardians of Light thread. We'll start here. There are some patterns, and we can talk about those pretty easily.

For #1 and #2, you were making a slight toward another member. Yep, it's mild. Had this been your first "offense" we'd be looking at a soft warn, really. But that doesn't change the clear intent of your post - to belittle another member of the community by derisively calling them the "resident magic expert."

#3 and #5 are similar - the entire point was to belittle another member by unfavorably comparing Hakeem to that other poster (mjack). Again, by itself with no previous history this likely gets a soft warn and a request for it to stop. (Side note: I did enjoy the "360 no-scope" reference. )

#4 was, as others have pointed out already, because of the use of retard. I understand that it opens us up to accusations of being PC or too sensitive or whatever else. Yes, I'm aware that words like "moron" and "idiot" have similar etymologies, in that they were used in the medical field first and then flowed into general usage as an insult. "retard," however, is a far more recent occurrence of that crossover, and it does offend people. Just because we, as a society, accepted moron and idiot in the past doesn't mean we have to accept retard now; we accepted a lot of things in the past that are deemed offensive today.

I know you went and found other instances of "retard" on the forum. I'm not surprised. We don't actively go looking for stuff; nobody is sitting in Command Central running searches every 5 minutes looking for keywords like "retard." Most of the time, we see stuff because we simply stumble across it ourselves - reading threads that interest us, etc. For the rest, we do rely on users reporting problems when they see them. But that often leaves a vast number of posts "un-monitored." So if somebody can find a case of "retard" on the forum, I'm not surprised. Much like a cop doesn't catch every speeder on the highway, we can't expect to catch every instance of something that violates the code of conduct; that doesn't mean it's OK to do those things, though. It just means we didn't see it and it wasn't brought to our attention.



And I also want to add your specific comments about these here:



So for #6, you've again opted to make it personal about somebody else rather than just discussing the content of the post. There's no attempt to quell a flamefest here; the only thing being attempted here is to belittle mjack.

Honestly, #7 - if taken completely by itself - may not have even warranted a soft warn. This may be analogous to the cop who also gives you a ticket for a busted taillight after he gives you one for speeding - except the cop is doing it to be a douchenozzle, and we're doing it simply to document.



So, first, I agree with your assessment about the cliques. Folks coming to the same conclusion aren't necessarily in collusion with one another. But that's not the main point of this quote, and it's not why I opted to include it - thereby lengthening my already too long post.

I agree that the latter - dudes and dudettes holding court on Magic Theory - is the far better post to have on a magic forum. Maybe it's just answering a poor newb's question about a card, or helping somebody improve their neat deck idea to stick to a specific theme but improve overall game play, or speculation about the new set whenever it's close to coming out, or a humorous look at a game that went horribly wrong, or whatever else. Those are, indeed, the posts that drive a magic forum to be considered "good." And I think this place has an awful lot of them, really.

The other guys just hanging and chatting? They have some interesting conversations, too, honestly. I'm not so sure those conversations are hard to join; they just don't have much to do with magic. But sometimes, talking about the Lego movie or the Super Bowl commercials or whatever else does help to build a sense of community among the regulars. While I'd like to see some of the stuff from the off-topic thread redirected down to the off-topic room, as a general statement we're OK with folks just hanging and chatting.

In either case, though, what's not acceptable is dissing another forum member. Somebody posted a terrible deck idea? Telling them the idea is bad is OK; explaining why is even better. Telling them they're no better than a baby killer because they thought of the bad deck idea, however, is not OK. It's been over-stated by this point, probably, but any reply you make to somebody should be about the content of their post and not about them. That leaves a lot of room for scathing sarcasm, biting commentary, clever ripostes, and so forth. Basically, we treat these two statements differently:

1. Your ideas are stupid, because that deck will never be able to generate enough mana to power your best combo.
2. You're stupid! That deck doesn't have enough mana to power your best combo.

A is OK. You're taking aim at somebody's ideas. Ideas are made to be criticized and critiqued. That's how they improve. B is not OK, even though you're making almost the exact same point as in A. In statement B, you're taking aim at the poster rather than his idea.

Since my post last night, somebody went and posted "Wheaton's Law" - don't be a dick. That's a pretty fair summary of our code of conduct, really. You can't be a dick toward ideas; you can toward other people.

Hopefully, you've made it down here without falling asleep in your chair. I apologize for the length - I usually run long, but this is worse than usual. If something isn't clear, please let me know and I'll be happy to clear it up. And I'm willing, of course, to continue the general discussion as well.

Depending on who is ignoring who, it could be a convenience thing. Like if I know Im never going to read or reply to something posted by someone as prolific as mjack or devil, then ignoring them is going so save me a lot of scrolling time.

Plus like. As an adult in the real world, if you had a problem with someone which didnt affect you physically, or create any conflicts with work or such, you'd ignore them. Thats all your doing using the ignore button here. Only difference is the system makes it so after deciding to do so once, you never have to make any conscious effort to ignore them again.

A number of you have mentioned that snide remarks or insults have little effect on you, or simply roll off your shoulders. I am not such a person. And I think that's okay. A community is made up of many different individuals, and a large part of the human condition is learning to function as adults within those communities. Maybe it has to do with how I was raised, and maybe it is in some ways a weakness - something I must struggle to overcome - but I often get frustrated by condescension and insults, and prefer that my time spent here not be frustrating. I think the ignore function is designed to allow people like me to enjoy their stay here without being drawn into dissentious conversation, where one might be compelled to breach the CoC against one's normal nature.

Does this make me childish? Maybe, to an extent, and I don't particularly mind being thought of as childish or sensitive, I am an individual in this community and I can accept that. But being called childish (or other potentially derrogatory names) is where I personally draw the line.

Now, I don't hold any grudges against individuals who believe or say such things, but as an individual with free will, I have the right to choose not to interact with such individuals if it improves my experience here. Understand, though, I am not here just for myself - or I would still be a "lurker" like I was on the mothership for over a year - I want to contribute my thoughts and experience to help others enjoy their time here and become better magic players; I find this much easier when I avoid frustrations.

Thanks to the mods for being available for this conversation and working to keep this place a welcoming community.

Without seeking to enter into a debate on the nature of consciousness to separate concepts of identity from that of ideas, it seems to me that this A and B thing is a little pedantic? Isn't someone who lets themselves be offended by one almost certainly offended by the other?

@mulletman, if in reality you actually say "your ideas are stupid", then yes there isn't much of a difference. But there are other ways to go about it like "that's a bad idea" and "that's a bad card choice because" and "I disagree with that; here is what I think should be done instead", etc.

There aren't really a multitude of ways to go about B) without offending someone however. That's the difference.