The Exodus of Posters...

Wow it seems that over the weekend a ban storm of epic proportions rolled into the Games forum taking out a few members with it. GFreeman, WHF, and co. for those who don't know. Also several threads were shut down or deleted by the mods. In a way we could all sort of see this coming whether we all wanted to admit it or not. Though WHF and GFreeman have bumped heads with all of us every now and then I guess most of us had some type of understanding that it was all for fun, nothing serious. But in a way this whole "stepping on eggshells" situation we are now in can somewhat be contributed to all of us. No one is deserving of all the blame but can anyone of us say that either party is partially guilty in this whole affair.

To some degree the attitude shared by WHF, GFreeman, and others could be contrived as a feeling of being somewhat "above the laws" and the posts to mods when they intervened in threads were not exactly civil in tone. Some of the blame can be put on the mods as well, it seems that their is a bias towards this section of hype whether or not you guys want to admit it. It seems anytime a poster asks why the games forum is beeing treated in such a harsh manner you guys claim the defense that "this part of hype is a lawless place where you guys think you can get away with anything and it has to stop" or "you gamers have this clique mentality that you use to defend your behavior".

Though I dont want to sound like a broken record but gamer fans are quite different from your average fan, in my opinion they are almost comparable to sports team fanatics who support their teams enthusiastically. Ever since the genesis v. snes days this has been the tone set for video games, for most video game enthusiasts die hard support for one of the big three is seen as normal behavior. So when you see a poster go all out for nintendo or sony for the regulars here its acceptable, but for an outsider it can be seen as unusual or obsesive. Which leads me to my next point, the mod and poster communiction in this forum is poor. What is seen as fair game to posters is often seen as a threat or insult to mods. What can be done to rectify the situation, at this point it's a toss up right now a huge game of "point the the finger" seems to be on everyone's agenda.

We as posters are partially to blame as well, by allowing things to get out of hand at times we effectively proved to the mods that we don't have an opinion or are able to plan a course of action on how things are done here until something drastic in nature happens. And quite frankly it's sad, we often play a game "catch up" telling the mods we don't like how thing are done until the ban hammer is being swung if you didn't like how thing were being done why wait now to speak up. We also contributed to the situation we are in by never taking the time out to explain how things are done in this forum in a noncondecending manner, if you want proof of this think back to when Matt was first assigned as mod to this forum. More posts had a tone of "this are how thing are done so just deal" or "you've try this before and failed thing will be back to the way they were just watch" instead of giving more insight to how the gaming culture works.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all have to own up to this mess. I'm not saying I'm perfect...hell I'd being lying if I did, but I try however miserably I fail at it at times to be fair, respectful, understanding, and openminded. And I'm sure most of us want to hold ourselves up to a similar standard. We're not perfect and we can often be rowdy and crazy as hell in this part of the hype, but at the end of the day we can all agree that we enjoy videogames and the videogame culture. I know that not everyone's going to agree with me and that's fine I have my opinions you have your own. But we can all agree that we don't want widespread bans and we don't want our forum closed.t: