So did all the 19 players leave twinkinfo?

[Kincaide]

Blizzard also put their chips into "new subscribers". Now look at their subscription trend, small blips after the x-pacs, but overall much lower numbers of subscribers since the q4 2010 peak of 12 mill. Anybody who runs a WoW-centric site in 2015, banking on NEW members, is making an illogical business decision based on emotions rather than actual numbers. As stated by previous posters, 19s (and twinks in general since 2006) THRIVE on e-drama. You can make the decision to drive your base away, but you'll eventually end up with drastically less eyes seeing your "knucklehead accounts" banner ads, which wouldn't even be there if the site earning money was a non-factor. Not telling anyone what to do here, just pointing out what the numbers are saying.

The implication here is that asking people to follow the CoC--to not curse and directly insult each other--is going to drive people away. If asking for common decency and a non-hostile environment is enough to drive people away, what would that say about those people? That they can't function unless they're allowed to be vicious to each other?

I've said several times, I believe it's possible to have all the drama and ego flexing you guys want, without creating an environment that is toxic and hostile. You can see above that other 19s have pointed out that they didn't want those highly toxic people here. As a new staff member looking at this with fresh eyes, I do think that there were missteps in moderation that were driven by those toxic people making an effort to drive a moderator past a point that any person should be expected to endure. I really think that going forward from here, you guys can have what you want within the boundaries that the CoC requires.

But don't take my word for it. Just go on and be. I'm gonna kind of let things run themselves here and see how it turns out. I think you guys know when something is beyond acceptable; you're mature people. I don't need to be talking this up anymore, let's just let experience be the judge and just go forward from here and do your thing. My inbox is open if anyone wants to give feedback or express concerns, but unless it's really critical, let's move away from talking about the issue here, and just living it here on your forum and seeing how it goes.

 

[Nicozy]

I hear what you're saying, but you have to understand. What happened in the last couple of days has nothing to do with anyone on the staff having a beef with those users. Indeed it was those users who had a beef with the staff, which they could not let go. However interesting or important they were to the community, that isn't going to give them a free pass to continuously and egregiously violate the CoC. The mods are just doing a job, Some people go out of their way to make that job difficult.

The users who got banned, and several others disagree that members of staff treat everyone the same. Sure the mods are "just" doing a job and some people do go out of their way to make that job difficult. However users could argue the same regarding certain members of staff, that they go out of their way to ban and infraction people, especially in the 19 section and they enforce the CoC much heavier on certain individuals.

You're right that it's no coincidence that we got DDoSed and BISNation opened its forums. Think about what you just said. We have evidence that the people who were banned were responsible for that DDoS. What you may not have seen is they also horribly spammed our forums--every bracket's section--with vulgar posts calling TI bad names and posting a link to BISNation. I do not know if BISNation is behind all this. I suspect that it's just these four or so troublemakers taking these actions on their own volition, but by associating BISNation with their actions, they are bringing a very dark stain over to a site that a lot of people respect. I believe that Yoube and Hunnybuns would be horrified to learn that their new friends on their forum were responsible for these morally bereft actions, but they haven't come forward to say anything yet.

"You're right that it's no coincidence that we got DDoSed and BISNation opened its forums.Please tell me this is some sort of joke? We at Bisnation opened up our forums late august last year, however we actually made it public 5 days ago. Bisnation would not like to get involved in some drama/banwar between members of TI, a forum the staff at Bisnation use as privatemembers and have enjoyed thru the years.

I would like you as a mod to refrain from posting such suggestive stuff, for you to even suggest that some users that Twinkinfo banned is bringing a dark stain over Bisnation is laughable at best if not just sad.Bisnation has nothing to do with this and we would like it to remain that way. Also when you refer to "four or so" troublemakers, are you saying that they all ddosed this site and you have proof of this? Or are you just bunching together "four or so" very different individuals who all where banned for seperate rule violations? Personally I think Staff should be very careful of talking about fresh banned members who do not have a forum to defend or contest your allegations. It is poor taste and should not be said unless you are willing to lay out the so called evidence publicly and be ready to let the banned users defend themselfs.

So clearly these people who got themselves banned by their own actions (threatening Shane, attacking the site, etc) are NOT role models that your community wants to look up to anyway. Whatever problems those guys might have had with one moderator here, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Overall, TwinkInfo has been very good to your community, and I'm here now doing my best to help forge a new accord with you people who remain, who I believe to be more reasonable and mature than the kind of people who would literally try to destroy the place that harbored them and let their community grow here for so many years.

"Overall, TwinkInfo has been very good to your community" I think this quote speaks to what members have talked about, sure it is true that site itself has been good to it's community in the way that it lets users across the world communicate, however something you forgot to mention and is much more important is the fact that THE COMMUNITY has been very good to Twinkinfo, the enormous ammount of guides/creativity/discussions/traffic that actually made this site for what it is or used to be. You should embrace this fact and feed it as much as possible.

The only thing that this site asks, in return for hosting your community and letting it prosper as much as it has in all these years, is that you simply follow the CoC's guidelines of mutual respect and lack of open hostility. I still believe that that's not too much to ask, for all the good our site has done for your community's ability to organize and grow. Seriously you guys, work with us here. We're on the same side.

Claiming to be on the same side is great however this sentiment has not been true for a lot of 19s for a while.The 19s section has within the last few years seen multiple threads regarding moderation/bans/falsebans in the section(more then any other section by far). People have felt that the people moderating have no feel for the community or that they are to heavily invested in certain people, ignoring others. This has not exactly breed the feeling of "we are all on the same side" for a lot of users.



I hope this thread can facilitate this discussion without the need for a lock or permabans given out. That would be disapointing.


One question offtopic, If I as a normal user have more questions regarding another users ban, is there anyway I can adress this?, maybe a PM to a moderator who can tell me more? I would be really keen to understand why a particular individual was banned and I have no clue based on previous posts by this individual.

 

[Redrum]

holy shit íts nocizy

 

[Sketchbag]

TI lost a bunch of truly unique individuals who will be missed dearly..rip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCDWYgVyps

 

[Apnea]

When users' entire forum activities revolve around being snide, elitist dicks and trolling under the guise of "stirring up drama", a ban is a wholly acceptable course of action. Some of you people go way too far with your antics, especially the skids who think downloading a LOIC and trying to take users and sites offline is their idea of fun.

 

[Kincaide]

(A lot of things)

Nicozy you said a lot of relevant stuff, and as I tend to be long-winded myself, I didn't want to try to address your points in quote by quote so let me just say a few things free-form.

I hope I was clear that I did not think BISNation themselves were responsible for the DDoS. I don't think you're like that, and what I know of HB (the only person I'm personally familiar with) I agree that they wouldn't want to be associated at all with those actions. Sadly, the people who did it also spammed all our sub-forums with messages that TI was a shithole and that everyone should leave it and go to BISNation. That means that someone was carrying out those acts thinking that it was what you wanted, and those "people" are in your ranks over there now. How you want to deal with that situation, being known for having spamming, DDoS'ing trolls on your roster, is completely up to you. My point wasn't to make people think you were behind it. My point was to send a message to you guys over there about what kind of people you have among you. BISNation has a good reputation and I'm sure they don't want to be associated with those sorts of people.

As far as the opinions of what has gone on in the past on these forums, I have to apologize that before I became a moderator, I've spent these last three years pretty much contained within my own native bracket. I told Shane that you guys might respond well to getting to talk to someone with a fresh view who was from outside your community, so I can't really form any opinions on what went on here before. I know from talking to Pizza a few days ago that you guys have felt like you were overmoderated. I can't speak with any personal experience about who had a beef with whom, I can only do my research into our records of infractions and bans, and see what they were for, and go back to the original threads to see what was actually said, and I have done that homework. So I have a historian's/researcher's point of view at best.

Which is why I have been heavily emphasizing how I would like to assist your community in moving away from thinking about the past and looking to the future. Sure, I completely understand if some of you are still bitter about how you have felt up to now, but I can only offer solutions moving from now into tomorrow. To that end, I've told the community that A) the staff is going to try backing off this forum for a while, as long as you guys can keep within the CoC, and B) that I was going to encourage any staff who looks in to this forum to treat any issues with communication first, and infraction only afterwards. I think one of your concerns has been that what was acceptable and not acceptable was a gray area for you, that you only learned about where the line was when someone suddenly got infracted or worse. I get that, and (as you can tell) I'm a talker, so my habit is (when possible) to talk it out first and explain when I see something that I think is over the line. I hope that these changes reassure all of you.

Having said that, we're still going to protect you guys if someone comes back spitting toxic vitriol again, which, as several of your own community above have stated, -was- going on with the members that were recently perma-banned. I would like to encourage you all to remember Wheaton's Law: "Don't be a d*ck". If you feel like maybe you're being a d*ck to someone, then there's a decent chance someone's going to come around and talk to you about it, And I do believe that you guys can have all the competitive environment you want, without having a hostile and toxic environment. I get that some of those guys wanted to be able to have a hostile and toxic environment, but by the responses above, it's clear that the whole community didn't share that outlook, and we're responsible for making the whole community feel safe, and included, and their perspectives valued.

To close, yes I do think that TI and the 19s community have shared a collectively supportive and mutually beneficial relationship for years, and I think everyone wants that to continue. I hope that we together are laying the groundwork now for that to continue to be possible, because as an outside observer, I feel bad that no one's really completely happy, and I feel like with a little communication and compromise all around, that can be accomplished again.

 

[Kincaide]

One question offtopic, If I as a normal user have more questions regarding another users ban, is there anyway I can adress this?, maybe a PM to a moderator who can tell me more? I would be really keen to understand why a particular individual was banned and I have no clue based on previous posts by this individual.

I forgot to address this question. We've been working on more transparency as far as that is concerned, by including an accessible database of people who have been temp and perma banned. Those can be found here:

Perma bans sorted by date

Temp bans sorted by date

Since the new staff came on and we've had more hands, we've started to try to be more descriptive in the posted reasons so that people can have an idea of what's going on. We are limited, however, by privacy concerns for the banned member. We were hesitant at first to publish these for fear that the banned user would feel like we were publicly shaming them, but the consensus from the populace was that you guys wanted more information so you knew what happened. We agreed that that was relevant and we owed you that much. Beyond what we post there, though, again for privacy reasons, we're really reluctant to talk in depth about a given user's situation. This is why that old "don't talk about moderator actions" has been in place: not because we want to hide what we're doing or keep you blind to what's going on, but because we have to think about how it's going to make that person feel if we talk all over the place about what they did. That concern comes straight from Shane. Anyway if I can further address that question or any other, as I say, my inbox is open.

 

[Pitter]

Hi everyone.

You all have good days.

 

[Nicozy]

Nicozy you said a lot of relevant stuff, and as I tend to be long-winded myself, I didn't want to try to address your points in quote by quote so let me just say a few things free-form.

I hope I was clear that I did not think BISNation themselves were responsible for the DDoS. I don't think you're like that, and what I know of HB (the only person I'm personally familiar with) I agree that they wouldn't want to be associated at all with those actions. Sadly, the people who did it also spammed all our sub-forums with messages that TI was a shithole and that everyone should leave it and go to BISNation. That means that someone was carrying out those acts thinking that it  what you wanted,  those "people" are in your ranks over there now. How you want to deal with that situation, being known for having spamming, DDoS'ing trolls on your roster, is completely up to you. My point wasn't to make peoandple think you were behind it. My point was to send a message to you guys over there about what kind of people you have among you. BISNation has a good reputation and I'm sure they don't want to be associated with those sorts of people.

and a bunch of other sentences that I will not adress since you skipped over several of my questions, because you know thats easier.

I think you are overthinking the actions of a few people that were upset with the staff of Twinkinfo that had just banned people/deleted threads, something they obviously did not agree with and then decided to post their feelings regarding Twinkinfo or Bisnation, it truely does not matter

I highly doubt these individuals was thinking: "oh this is totaly what the staff at Bisnation want" which u are implying, and as such I resent your view of this whole matter, which is something I adressed in my previous post, a staffmember like yourself should know better then to insinuate.

"those "people" are in your ranks over there now."

What the F does this mean? You banned some individuals on your own forum, how can you equate this to "they are now in your ranks" because they mentioned another website. I resent this fully and I think you are making yourself look like an utter fool by claiming this. You have to seperate the banned accounts on TI from whoever or wherever they decide to go or not go next.
You have no clue if they are members over at Bisnations forum(I dont even know that, no one does) or not and it truely does not matter.

"How you want to deal with that situation, being known for having spamming, DDoS'ing trolls on your roster, is completely up to you."

This is beyond ludacris(rapper) You claiming that this is the case is beyond stupid and insulting because you have no knowledge of this. You/TI banned these members, claim that they have all ddosed you, which I find incredible btw and now you are trying to somehow point at Bisnation for having these members on our "roster". For you to even bring this up in this thread is shocking.

If you are truely concerned regarding Bisnations forums then how about you send over some evidence of the ddosers privately(we have multiple ways of contact on the website) so we know what to look out for, you know as a curtesy one forum to the other if you truely are concerned.As of right now Bisnations forums have yet to have any ddos issues or trolling issues in its five day uptime.
Do not post rubbish or make conclussions unless you are planning to back it up somehow, which in this case would be impossible. You are a moderator on the website Twinkinfo, act like one.
What you are doing right now is disgraceful. This is my own opinion , I only speak for myself and not an entity.

Now on to something even more important.

As I understand(I was sleeping when this supposed DDos happened) there where several members of the 19 community that was banned either before or after this. My concern is your willingness to bunch them all together as Ddosing trolls. You would have to be 100% sure of them all ddosing you in order for bunching them up like this and I fear that this is not the case. Which means that some of the people who were banned, for whatever disciplinary reason(which should be public to an extent atleast in my opinion) are now being vilified as ddosing trolls and have no way of speaking up against it and defending themselfs.

This is the true tragedy. You are in a position to brand a user on this website. You should think twice and be 100% and willing to showcase evidence if you are going to claim these things.

 

[saxxon]

Remove mocha as mod he's corrupt as fuck fuck twink info

 

[Nicozy]

I forgot to address this question. We've been working on more transparency as far as that is concerned, by including an accessible database of people who have been temp and perma banned. Those can be found here:
Permabanned list
Banned list


Since the new staff came on and we've had more hands, we've started to try to be more descriptive in the posted reasons so that people can have an idea of what's going on. We are limited, however, by privacy concerns for the banned member. We were hesitant at first to publish these for fear that the banned user would feel like we were publicly shaming them, but the consensus from the populace was that you guys wanted more information so you knew what happened. We agreed that that was relevant and we owed you that much. Beyond what we post there, though, again for privacy reasons, we're really reluctant to talk in depth about a given user's situation. This is why that old "don't talk about moderator actions" has been in place: not because we want to hide what we're doing or keep you blind to what's going on, but because we have to think about how it's going to make that person feel if we talk all over the place about what they did. That concern comes straight from Shane. Anyway if I can further address that question or any other, as I say, my inbox is open.

The first ban I see in the permabanned user list is regarding a user named Arkant having the ban reason being " I made myself clear"

You understand that this says absolutly nothing regarding the actual rule this individual broke that warranted him/her a permaban. If you are going to have a ban reason it needs to have a claim of what the user did that was a permaban worthy offence otherwise this whole system is a charade.

What action did the user Arkant do to inflict on himself a straight permaban after previously having 0 infractions, using TI's established infraction system. This must have been some of the most serious rule breakage we have ever seen. Please enlighten us.
Because right now all we see is that a user called Arkant was banned on the same date as the ddos incident and we have no clue why, not a single idea.

 

[Sketchbag]

like even dorigon?

 

[Kincaide]

Alright man, I feel like you're taking what I'm saying all wrong. The facts are that A) people were banned here, B) those people DDoSed us and posted all over our forums that Ti was shit and everyone should go to BISNation, C) those people now frequent your forums, which means that D) your forums is now known for having on it the type of people who would shit on and cyber-attack TI.

This has nothing to do with my opinion, or TI's opinion, ot BISNation themselves. I've already stated several times that I don't think they were involved. I only said that the people who -were- involved were advertising for, and now reside on, your forums. I have said from the outset that I'm sure you didn't put them up to it and I'm sure that you wouldn't want to be associated with such actions. But I'm not associating you with those actions... their actions are associating you. They literally said their name. That's on them, man, don't get mad at me for just letting people know what's in the contents of those deleted posts. I'm just presenting you a logical stream of actual events. Clearly you are mad about the implications, but THEY are the ones who implicated you by bringing up your name: I on the other hand have said from the beginning that I didn't want to believe that you were involved.

You are protesting very vehemently to me against an implication that -they- made by spray-painting your site's name all over the forums. If you're mad, get mad at them for doing that. It wasn't fair to either your site nor ours. As I said throughout, my purpose was just to raise you guys's awareness of the type of people who are nesting on your branch now. I have no idea at this point what Shane's planning on doing regarding the illegal cyber-attack, I can only say that if I found myself in your shoes, I would be dropping those cyber-criminals like a hot rock, not defending them.

I can't really have a conversation with you if you're going to be one of those people who twists words and makes unbased implications, such as that I was conveniently dodging some of your questions. I've been doing my best to answer everyone's concerns and making peace here, and you coming in with a hostile attitude is probably disturbing to the locals. You don't trust people, fine, I get that. But don't come at me like I have some secret ha ha agenda here. The 19s forum needs an advocate and someone who is trying to make things better. Don't motivate me to go back to my bracket and leave them to themselves. We were making progress here. If you need to get something off your chest, PM me, or PM Shane.

 

[Kincaide]

The first ban I see in the permabanned user list is regarding a user named Arkant having the ban reason being " I made myself clear"

You understand that this says absolutly nothing regarding the actual rule this individual broke that warranted him/her a permaban. If you are going to have a ban reason it needs to have a claim of what the user did that was a permaban worthy offence otherwise this whole system is a charade.

What action did the user Arkant do to inflict on himself a straight permaban after previously having 0 infractions, using TI's established infraction system. This must have been some of the most serious rule breakage we have ever seen. Please enlighten us.
Because right now all we see is that a user called Arkant was banned on the same date as the ddos incident and we have no clue why, not a single idea.

Sure, but as you can see, the person who processed those bans was Shane, so you're going to have to ask Shane. I was offsite playing War Thunder when that went down, so only he is going to be able to answer that question.

We're human beings man, we're not machines, we don't know or see everything. You need to just calm down and act civilly if you want your questions answered then approach these questions with some chill. The only heat in this thread is being brought by you. Someone said earlier that they hope that this thread could be conducted without having any mod actions, so, per my promise to talk it out first, I'm asking you to take it down a notch.

 

[Kincaide]

Actually, here: I need to take care of some other things, I can't be glued to this thread forever, so I'm calling a breather, we're going to step away from this issue for a while. I can't stop you from continuing to post but I'll tell you that I won't be replying for a while. From everything you've said, I think your best bet is going to be to start a conversation directly with Shane. You want to know answers that only he is going to be able to give.

I'll check back on this thread later, but I think you, me, and the whole bracket need a break from this. The great majority of us want to work towards a solution, so any conversation that isn't actively working towards a solution is just going to have to take a back seat for a while.

 

[Nicozy]

Alright man, I feel like you're taking what I'm saying all wrong. The facts are that A) people were banned here, B) those people DDoSed us and posted all over our forums that Ti was shit and everyone should go to BISNation, C) those people now frequent your forums, which means that D) your forums is now known for having on it the type of people who would shit on and cyber-attack TI

This has nothing to do with my opinion, or TI's opinion, ot BISNation themselves. I've already stated several times that I don't think they were involved. I only said that the people who -were- involved were advertising for, and now reside on, your forums. I have said from the outset that I'm sure you didn't put them up to it and I'm sure that you wouldn't want to be associated with such actions. But I'm not associating you with those actions... their actions are associating you. They literally said their name. That's on them, man, don't get mad at me for just letting people know what's in the contents of those deleted posts. I'm just presenting you a logical stream of actual events. Clearly you are mad about the implications, but THEY are the ones who implicated you by bringing up your name I on the other hand have said from the beginning that I didn't want to believe that you were involved.
You are protesting very vehemently to me against an implication that -they- made by spray-painting your site's name all over the forums. If you're mad, get mad at them for doing that. It wasn't fair to either your site nor ours. As I said throughout, my purpose was just to raise you guys's awareness of the type of people who are nesting on your branch now. I have no idea at this point what Shane's planning on doing regarding the illegal cyber-attack, I can only say that if I found myself in your shoes, I would be dropping those cyber-criminals like a hot rock, not defending them.

I can't really have a conversation with you if you're going to be one of those people who twists words and makes unbased implications, such as that I was conveniently dodging some of your questions. I've been doing my best to answer everyone's concerns and making peace here, and you coming in with a hostile attitude is probably disturbing to the locals. You don't trust people, fine, I get that. But don't come at me like I have some secret ha ha agenda here. The 19s forum needs an advocate and someone who is trying to make things better. Don't motivate me to go back to my bracket and leave them to themselves. We were making progress here. If you need to get something off your chest, PM me, or PM Shane.

C: You have no clue if members that you banned are on our site our not. Just because you found some names that are the same does not mean that they are the same users and it is no proof of it being so, anyone can sign up to Bisnation forums using any name(already ran into a fellow who claimed his name was taken and we are currently looking into it), It could literaly be anyone,so you as a moderator on Twinkinfo should not try and claim these sort of things.Talk about what you know.D: Once again with your own simplified and wrongful statement again. You truely do not understand the implications and it saddens me.

Why would I get mad at some users who received bans talking about Bisnation before they got banned for other actions? Would I have liked them not to do it since obviously people like yourself jump to some hefty conclusions, yeah probably, but I don't rly care. People talk, people do what they want especially if they think they are getting banned, they do stupid stuff.
"I can only say that if I found myself in your shoes, I would be dropping those cyber-criminals like a hot rock, not defending them." Please tell me you are joking. I am flabbergasted. Best troll moderator yet. How you come to this conclusion and not realising how insulting and wrong this is on so many levels is beyond me.

"The 19s forum needs an advocate and someone who is trying to make things better. Don't motivate me to go back to my bracket and leave them to themselves. "

I am in tears of laughter.

Wow.

I will not post anymore because I can see it is pointless.
I think I made myself clear.
Peace out homeboys/grills

 

[Conq]

This argument that drama is 19s seems like a cop out to me, i'm sorry but the people who help lead this community have for the most part grown old with it, they should be capable of maintaining a bracket without acting like children. On the other hand, if it were me I might allow some back if they were to behave themselves, thats just me tho.


I have no issues with BiS Nation at all but the layout of the website/color scheme make my eyes bleed

 

[Kincaide]

C: You have no clue if members that you banned are on our site our not. Just because you found some names that are the same does not mean that they are the same users and it is no proof of it being so, anyone can sign up to Bisnation forums using any name(already ran into a fellow who claimed his name was taken and we are currently looking into it), It could literaly be anyone,so you as a moderator on Twinkinfo should not try and claim these sort of things.Talk about what you know.D: Once again with your own simplified and wrongful statement again. You truely do not understand the implications and it saddens me.

That's a real stretch. It sounds like you are really invested in defending them. For that reason I'm changing my original suggestion to talk to Shane, and instead I'm going to have [MENTION=5141]Shane[/MENTION] come talk to you. This is over my pay grade, you need to speak with my supervisor.

To the rest of the community, we'll keep working on a better future, I can see some people are still holding on tightly to the past, but I feel like the majority of you are mature enough to want to work on actual solutions. I'm closing this thread as it has more than served its purpose, but feel free to PM me if you want to talk more about how to repair and renew.