Moderator Bias

And now we know why every time I post a comment that is in favor of doing away with "instance blocking" in Elite Dangerous, some moderator comes along and deletes my post and often follows up with a ban.

Note: this is the same, hypocritical, moderator featured in this post. What a surprise.

FDev's SJW Mods

 

Criticizing Abuse of a Game Mechanic Gets You Banned

Elite Dangerous allows any player to block any other player for any reason they choose. It isn't just comms blocking which every MMO does. It is also blocking other players from instancing with you.

The following post on Frontier Development's Elite Dangerous forums got me banned. Why? Are they really that hateful against people who point out the flaws of their game? Really?

But it makes sense. They perma-banned an earlier account of mine for using this as my forum signature:

For this one I was banned for "trolling". I guess it was a little bit trollish. But was it really deserving of a permanent ban? 

Created a new account and made a bunch of posts freely for days. But as soon as I made this comment, BOOM, perma-banned AND the post was deleted:

So what's my beef with Elite Dangerous' player blocking feature? It's this:

Blocking not only blocks comms\messaging between players (which is cool, all MMOs do this), but it also removes the possibility (for the most part) of the blocked person from ever instancing with the blocking person again. 

FDev has allowed players to block each other whenever they want and for whatever reason they want. As a result blocking is used as a punishment and is heavily abused. I have only been blocked once as far as I know and it was for not o7ing someone enough. That's absurd. Furthermore, whole squadrons of players get blocked by others because they interfere with their ability to freely do what they want. Some people on the forums have even admitted to blocking others for the ugly ship paint they chose, for disagreeing with them in the forums, for "kill stealing" in CZs and RES sites. Etc. The second image in this post lists actual reasons that people have admitted to as to why they blocked someone.

But the most egregious thing to me is that PvPers get blocked for PvPing. It is an ED meme that everyone who engages in PvP is a "ganker"... that's how carebearish the ED community is seen. But why this is egregious is that ED allows players to interdict each other, fire upon each other's ships, hatch break each other, heck even some weapon experimental effects only work against player ships. It makes no sense to me to allow people to block people for engaging in PvP in a game that allows players to engage in PvP. Not wanting to engage with PvP is literally one of the reason why Solo\PG modes were created... so that people could play the game without worrying about being PvPed. Yet people insist on playing in Open, where PvP can happen, and block people who engage in it. 

And what's equally infuriating is that anyone who makes this point is called a "disgruntled ganker\griefer" because, hurr durr, 'you must be a griefer if you don't like the blocking functionality'.

And remember, before calling someone a griefer, ask yourself whether the PvPer is deliberately using aspects of the game in unintended ways in order to irritate and harass other players. If not, they are not griefing.
 

Woke Outrage

 Then this happened (not to me) on the infamous Elite Dangerous forums today:

(Note: in the LGBTQ+ thread that is mentioned, someone is asking for a ship paint job in the style of the rainbow flag. Thankfully, there is a lot of pushback but the moderators are letting that thread live. 'Get woke, go broke' I say.)

Here is the link to the second thread.

I asked him if he wants to contribute on this blog. Note: This is my very first post on the Elite Dangerous forums with this new account.

Well, the above comment by me did not get me banned. It was, however, removed by the moderators... can't let others know that FDev's moderation abuse is being blogged I guess.

Spamming = 1?

I only posted the site URL once. I guess for the Elite Dangerous moderators one post is the new definition of "spamming". Good to know.

And by the way, I've had numerous Reddit accounts due to banning, so ban evasion seems not enforced there.

Moderator Hypocrite

A moderator on the Elite Dangerous forums (Frontier Developments) was participating in a thread about "ganking". The moderator wrote this in response to someone else:

I thought that bit in the middle: "So yes, I laugh at those players..." was very hypocritical considering he is a mod. I thought it showed the true motivation of forum moderators and demonstrated that they are no better than the people they moderate:

Yup. I was permanently banned for "moderator abuse". I guess abusing us, the forum peon, is OK.

Salty Carebear

I had been posting just fine for literally years on Frontier Development's Elite Dangerous site. I then decided to use the following image as my forum signature because it is funny.

I was told that my signature image was not formatted correctly and was directed to a page that explained how to format it properly:

It was clear from the signature rules that my image was too large in terms of KBs and I had not embedded the image URL into a table. So I did that and updated my signature.

I was again told that my signature violated the rules (but this time they did not say in what way I had violated the rules) and was just directed to that same page that I show in the above picture. I double checked to make sure my signature was in compliance. It was. I responded that I already made sure my signature is in compliance with the rules and re-enabled the signature.

BANG! PERMA-BANNED! 

I guess FDev just didn't want to accept that they are whiny, little, vindictive SJWs and just admit that they didn't approve of the subject matter.

About This Blog

I started this blog because I have had enough with abusive web forum moderators. I wanted a place to vent and point out some of the absurdities that we, as forum visitors, are sometimes subjected to with effectively no recourse.

For now, most of my posts are in regard to the Elite Dangerous forums. There, the moderation is some of the worst I have ever seen. Fortunately, it is quite easy to create new accounts on their official site (I have had more than I can count) so it is a never ending fount of moderation absurdity.

Why do I keep creating new Elite Dangerous forum posts? This is why:

When I first tried to create an account for the Elite Dangerous forums my account was permanently banned within 24 hours after account creation for "spam".

Now, this was my first account. I had not made any posts or threads at that time so there was no way I was "spamming". All I had done by that point was "like" a few comments made by other forum users.

I contacted Frontier's Customer Support and asked what was going on and they said that it was because my IP address was changing. I realized that the IP address was changing because I use a VPN. CS said, 'yes, that is a limitation of our software. You need to create an account and not use the VPN'.

So I turned off the VPN and tried to log in. I couldn't, of course, because my account had been banned. So I created a new account like CS said I needed to do. Within a day that new account was permanently banned for "duplicate accounts are not allowed"!

Nice Catch-22 FDev!

I followed up with CS but they said that 'yes, duplicate accounts are not allowed'; there is nothing we can do'. 

So here I am, creating new accounts right and left, some of which get banned within a few days and some which last for months.

NB: Incidentally, I am very well aware of the methods Frontier uses to identify duplicate accounts. Let's just say they are easy to bypass. The reason why they catch me (sometimes quickly) is because I make it too obvious it is me who is making the account (because I tend to go back into a discussion I was previously taking part in and saying the same things I was saying before). For the accounts that I keep for months undetected it is because I do something that "deserves" a ban because I think it is worth it (like when I pointed out the hypocrisy and agenda of some moderators).

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If you have some juicy forum moderation abuse tales to tell, please feel free to send them to me. I might post them here!

Send to me via my email (be sure to remove the "nospam_" bit from my email address):

• All of the textual context, 
• Images (be sure to obscure all names and maintain people's privacy),
• The name of the game and publisher, 
• How you want your attribution\credit to appear,
  
• Anything else you deem relevant.