How to cancell membership

[Slartibardfast]

Please inform me how to cancel my membership.

Cheers.

[Papewaio]

But but you're an aussie aren't you?

To cancel membership, I suppose one just stops posting...

[Slartibardfast]

Yes Papewaio I am an Aussie and like most of us, that are not politicians, I tend to call it like it is.

It's on a matter of principle and probably childish in some eyes.

I'm no stranger to controversy. I like stirring the pot, it sometimes gets people to re-evaluate entrenched patterns of thought which sometimes leads to a better understanding between peoples and possibly a better world because of this. I'll take the flack I cause from stirring said pot, and I'm not beyond giving a public apology when I do cross the line into full John Cleese mode, which being a Grumpy Old Man with PTSD happens more often than I'd like.

Whilst trying to provide helpful info to a fellow forum member in a particular thread, (and I stress we were not debating a perceived point of history, or the human condition, I was simply recommending a mod for a popular PC game and providing the reasons for my recommendation,) another forum writer made what was an obvious, unprovoked, needless and thoughtless personal attack on the quality of my intelligence. (Which I admit, like all people, is questionable at times as I've done my fair share of very stupid things.)

Making an observation of the situation I had an oblique go at this person in what under habeas corpus would be seen as the rite of reply and I was well prepared to take any punishment metered out for my comments (A severe warning with 2 points as a result.)

However the resulting public dressing down by the forum moderator (in contravention of accepted managerial and administrative practices) and the editing of my rite of reply, so any readers are made unaware of the nature of my grievance and the context of my reply, and thus why I was being dressed down, smacks of railroading censorship.

A Kangaroo Court and that's just not cricket is it?

If the moderator in question had of done his job and addressed the original obnoxious and needlessly offensive remark, old farts like myself wouldn't be offended a week later and post our old fart equally offensive observational replies.

Enough winging!

On the bright side with the form Viduka has been in we're going to flog the Danes next week. (Apologies to any Danish readers for being so presumptuous and any offence this may have caused.)

Still want to cancel my membership though.

The comments made by Slartibardfast are his own and not endorsed or held by The Guild, it's officials or administrators.

[KukriKhan]

Heh, sorry to see you leave, mate... looks like you'd be an asset to the joint, after you'd bought the tw.org mantra of: "respectable guys, respectfully offering respectful critique".

Pity ya never got that far. Best of luck to ya.

[Warluster]

Aye, we lose another Aussie from the Guild, we will miss ya!

[sapi]

Sorry to see you go.

In the interests of being nice, i won't express the doubt i feel that our soccer team will win a match, nor will i be the spelling and grammar nazi i usually am.

But losing another aussie is always sad :(

[frogbeastegg]

If the moderator in question had of done his job

Her job Hence the avatar, signature, and being called "lady frog" and whathaveyou.

As you have made this public I take it you do not mind my reply being public? As you did not give me chance to so much as read your PM before posting.

I shall address the aspects I find easier to answer first, looping back to tackle the harder ones later. If I may beg your indulgence for a tired frog struggling onwards with a (lousy) computer not her own, trying to explain herself without sounding overly ... unpleasant.

the editing of my rite of reply, so any readers are made unaware of the nature of my grievance and the context of my reply, and thus why I was being dressed down, smacks of railroading censorship.

If you look about the arena you will find posts with swearing edited out and a comment by me about language edited into place. You'll find a post with most of the content ripped out and replaced with a comment about our PG policy and how it applies to graphic pictures. You'll find a few others with abusive comments vanished into thin air and my remarks on them, and some more about emulators and links to so-called abandonware games. There's at least one about copyright and how it applies to scanned magazine pages. In short, yours is far from the first or only post to be treated so. It is my established habit and method of working, for three years and more. This is the first complaint - nay, the first comment.

Two reasons:

1. If something is not appropriate and breaks the rules then it has no place here.

2. It means the issue cannot snowball. In this case it means that the person you were addressing those remarks to did not (I hope) have chance to see those remarks; I know that he hasn't been able to respond specifically to them. If I'd left them intact there'd almost definitely have been a flamewar. I will not have flamewars in my forums.

In this case number 2 is the vital one. In the case of swearing and such number 1 is the reason. Though, to be honest you're caught fair and square by number 1 too.

I try to keep editing to a minimum. I remove all swear words. I remove all content which is too graphic. I remove all content which breaks copyright rules. Beyond those limits I use my discretion; I let smaller things go unedited (noy, however, that I find the post you replied to should have been edited. That I shall come to in due course) though they do get hairpinned. I cannot and will not let streams of abuse go unedited. The post you made was the worst I have ever seen in any of my forums; that's five forums across 4 years.

There's a loosely related point 3 here. I prefer to be a hands off mod; I step in only when it is clear something has gone off the rails. Before that point I trust to the sense and maturity of patrons to keep a civil dialogue going. This approach rarely fails, else I wouldn't use it. The thread in question is one of the very few times it has failed, and it failed because I had to edit a certain abuse-filled post which occurred days after this comment.

I leave remarks because it is instructive to others; a post visibly edited for swearing is a not-so-subtle hint that swearing is not allowed. It also means people not involved know that something is being done, thus sparing me from a spate of PMs and reported post emails from concerned patrons.

another forum writer made what was an obvious, unprovoked, needless and thoughtless personal attack on the quality of my intelligence. [...] If the moderator in question had of done his job and addressed the original obnoxious and needlessly offensive remark, old farts like myself wouldn't be offended a week later

I did not do anything to the comment in question because I did not - and still do not - see it as any slight to your intelligence or playing ability. If I had taken it to be so then rest assured hairpins would have flown over it. Indeed, I did take exception to a later comment he made, and hairpinned.

I saw - and still do - it as a comment on the game itself, and how it is intended to be played. The mod you mentioned allows the player to bypass a significant aspect of the game, and gain a result the developers never intended for. It's not meant to be possible to gain all of the influence options with each party member; you are meant to play through several times and work on different characters each time, if you wish to discover all their backstory and subplot. Playing as light, dark, male and female characters. It's part of what the game is about. Therefore if you're playing it using the mod perhaps you don't know this. Or perhaps you do know and simply don't care, or don't want to have to play through multiple times. Which is fine. There are calm, civil ways of pointing this out. A great many calm, civil ways.

You see, there's one detail about the point of view I hold on this which proves significant: the poster himself can't claim to be playing the game properly - he apparently used a walkthrough to get the same effect as the mod. Therefore his comment applies equally to himself in the context through which I view it. Let us assume the very worst, and that he is calling you a bad player. He is also calling himself one.

To support my viewing this as a non-abusive post, the same poster later commented that his own first game was a mess because he hadn't passed the learning curve.

But the important thing here is this: you say you know better, and you say you knew at the time it would get you warned. Yet you still chose to come back after a week and post that. You said you knew you would be warned, and accepted that. Yet here we are.

public dressing down by the forum moderator (in contravention of accepted managerial and administrative practices)

Actually there are/have been several mods here who edit comments into posts, fancy colours and all. It's where I got the idea from I've done it in the past, too. I'd copy Pape and his horde of smilies, but alas, I don't have the necessary panache.

The real irony is the moderator used a personal attack to repremand myself for a personal attack.

I'd like to hear what that was.

I also fail to see how quoting someone's own words with out further comment can constitute a personnal attack.

You definitely did not quote without further comment. You opened a quote dialogue and changed all of his words into a derogatory statement. A copy of your original post is preserved in its entirety; perhaps, if you wish and with TosaInu's permission, it could be brought out so people can see just what you did and did not say? As this appears to be one of your grievances.

I've called someone a wanker previously, using it in the right context, without repercussion.

Right context? You used it in an insultive and pejorative context.


I confess I do not really see what the issue is here. Forgive me for being so dense and backward. As I see it, you knew you would be warned and admit is was "a fair cop" and say you "do not dispute my decision"; I acted according to my long established method and dealt the warning you expected, therefore you are unhappy and disputing my decision because ...? Because you don't like the way I carried it out? Because I didn't dispose of a post which you did not have to respond to in this manner? I must be very stupid not to see something so obvious

[naut]

panache

My most favourite of words.

On topic: It's sad to see so many of these types of threads appear recently.

[caravel]

On topic: It's sad to see so many of these types of threads appear recently.

My thoughts exactly. It is inevitable though that the .org won't be able to "please all of the people all of the time".

[Papewaio]

Actually there are/have been several mods here who edit comments into posts, fancy colours and all. It's where I got the idea from I've done it in the past, too. I'd copy Pape and his horde of smilies, but alas, I don't have the necessary panache.

Whoa before I let the glory go to my head and the idea of being saintly

I tend to use the smilies
a) When my mood is bright , light and mature.
b) on forums I'm not a moderator in.

In the forums I moderate:
I will edit posts and nuke people with warning points... even people I like a lot, including myself (but I'm not sure if I like or dislike myself)....I've edited and then tried to warn myself for rants ...btw kids apparently moderators cannot give themselves warning points, they just get to emotionally whip themselves over ranting.

For minor offenses I might, just might PM the person to edit it. For something that is a direct attack on someone else the shears come out and the comment gets deleted.

For me I'd rather just chat and see everyone , it's when they don't get along that I have to resort to

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Omanesus Alexandrapolitesus theus Idiotus

Nah, definitely not!

[KukriKhan]

Please inform me how to cancel my membership.

Cheers.

Start>Search>All Files and Folders>'cookies'

Find the one that contains "Totalwar.org"; right-click, select 'delete', left-click. Done.

Should you accidentally return, the site won't remember who you are.