Bannable Offenses (updated 12/20/11) AND GENERAL READ THIS INFO (updated 8/20/14)

[Cow_k]

I frequent general some, but honestly, spam users and every thread turning into a religious argument ruined it for me due to all the trolling so I mostly check it once every few weeks. People still seem to forget that this is first and foremost a final fantasy online message board, everything else second. Last I checked, social boards are a dime a dozen. It's not my fault that people who used to play the game quit and couldn't bring themselves to leave.

And before people go: "SPAM KEEPS TEH FORUMZ ALIVE", funny how the site becomes it's busiest during times of Final Fantasy related news. I don't see people banging the doors down to see the latest troll thread in spam, general or anywhere else.

[Conrad]

I don't think anyone ever said that Spam was responsible for the site's survivability. The closest insinuation to such a claim would have to be when a couple mods messed with and destroyed Spam, bringing BG down for a short while and losing out on various ad revenue and income from post counts. Spam has its place, as does General: The phrase is not a thread that necessarily originated in Spam, as I don't remember it there at all. It was simply a response from users who frequent both General and Spam to the 5 or 6 threads per day about someone doing something relatively unintelligent and getting themselves killed. It was funny until it became a fad, was overused, and now we have a questionable ban against the word.

If you'll notice, the only "Spam leaks" that occur, for the most part, are either spam users blatantly trolling in an attempt to bait either universally hated posters or infractions from mods, or spam lurkers that use the memes outside of their source. This rule in particular seems hastily made and poorly thought-out, hence all of the resistance you're currently seeing.

[Beckwin]

Believe it or not, "spam users" isn't some homogeneous group. there are people who still play ffxi, people who quit willingly, people who quit unwillingly, people who are mods, people who are shitty posters, people who are good posters, people who never really post outside of spam, and people who contribute non-spammy posts to the other sections of the forums.

Bagel is practically BG-sus.
Tyche hangs out in spam a bit, is a pretty good mod, and does a lot of sports stuff/posts pictures of his cute kids.
Ryko is an entertaining poster who is largely responsible for the Brawl action on bg.
BRP, Kiarax, Charismatic, and a few others contribute quite a bit to the gaming section, and media.
Kuya and Guartz make political threads and/or make them interesting shitfests.
Miz adds a lot to threads about science, blackness, and the science of blackness.
And so on.

I don't necessarily like all those people mentioned or have much of an interest in what their posting fortes are (brawl comes to mind for "couldn't care less") but there's little denying that they bring something to the table. There's general posters that I don't really get along with (Correction, Plow, Demos11, et al) or just don't like and I'll argue like hell with them or ignore them, respectively, but they're still here and are hardly 1-dimensional posters. I hope you're picking up what I'm throwing down.

You don't like general because of "spam users" and religious arguments; I don't like general at times because of retarded livejournal topics and "celebrity" death topics. The difference is I don't actively complain to the admins/cheerlead obnoxious rules. Why? Because if the forums actually got restricted to the point where only a fairly homogeneous group of people used them, it would be boring as fuck and you'd be better off just subscribing to a relevant RSS feed.

[Sonomaa]

this isnt specifically about the word, this is about every argument being given the simple one word response. its the same thing as tldr, as ibtl. Its a non-response instead of a valid one. Its trolling or postcount spamming, whatever you want to call it, it simply adds nothing to the topic at hand.

[Sera]

name me one worthwhile thread that has been "killed" by the single post of "Darwinism".

correction stop being a cocksucker.

I said asskisser, but I like your style

yeah your mods have such a great track record when you let them think for themselves, don't they?

it's funny, the mod I spoke to blames the admins, the admins blame the mods... quite the clusterfuck

[Cow_k]

The overall point is, there's a million forums out there, these ones belong to BG. If they said that the word Marshmallows was offensive to them and was a bannable offense, I'd either put up with it or go somewhere else. This feeling of entitlement that seems to permeate everywhere is ridiculous to me. You can keep fighting the power, but consider what you're fighting for. Everywhere you go can't always be tailor-fitted to your specific needs. There are places for it, and BG has even offered it to members, so all the people whining about it just seems pointless and annoying.

I guarantee you there's more places that will arbitrarily restrict you in ways you don't want to be restricted than otherwise, sometimes by force. Out of everything out there, complaining over something as pointless and temporary as this, especially when people know it's stupid is just... stupid. Everyone more or less knows what's accepted and what's not here. Some people just like pushing buttons more than others.

If you want to say that General is just for mindless sheep all following the beat of the same drum, fine. Leave it to rot and go enjoy your preferred conversations where they belong like I did. I avoid threads involving religion as best I can since I know it annoys me and you can too. Some people actually enjoy talking about livejournals, religion and sports. And yes, you can do that without spouting meme's every 10 seconds.

tl;dr There's always the spam forums or 4chan if you want absolute freedom. Stop worrying about restrictions placed on a board that's obviously moderated for content.

[Sera]

The overall point is, there's a million forums out there, these ones belong to BG. If they said that the word Marshmallows was offensive to them and was a bannable offense, I'd either put up with it or go somewhere else. This feeling of entitlement that seems to permeate everywhere is ridiculous to me. You can keep fighting the power, but consider what you're fighting for. Everywhere you go can't always be tailor-fitted to your specific needs. There are places for it, and BG has even offered it to members, so all the people whining about it just seems pointless and annoying.

I guarantee you there's more places that will arbitrarily restrict you in ways you don't want to be restricted than otherwise, sometimes by force. Out of everything out there, complaining over something as pointless and temporary as this, especially when people know it's stupid is just... stupid. Everyone more or less knows what's accepted and what's not here. Some people just like pushing buttons more than others.

If you want to say that General is just for mindless sheep all following the beat of the same drum, fine. Leave it to rot and go enjoy your preferred conversations where they belong like I did. I avoid threads involving religion as best I can since I know it annoys me and you can too. Some people actually enjoy talking about livejournals, religion and sports. And yes, you can do that without spouting meme's every 10 seconds.

tl;dr There's always the spam forums or 4chan if you want absolute freedom. Stop worrying about restrictions placed on a board that's obviously moderated for content.

You sound just like the people who say "IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WAY AMERICA DOES THINGS, GTFO" -- doesn't work that way, homie. I'm sure these guys talk big now, but who will be singing the blues when this wordbanning bullshit gets out of hand and they have no community anymore? I wonder.

[Sera]

i'd like to add that I find sono's current avatar lolworthy, considering the circumstances

[Cow_k]

I already addressed the whole 'don't like America then get out' statement. This isn't your home, you don't need BG to survive, it doesn't cost thousands of dollars to move to a new forum and there's millions of different options available at your fingertips as well as an option that exists on these very boards. General has it's own flavor, so does spam. If you don't like the rules in general, how about you go and make spam (A place with everything you want) a more worthwhile area so you don't feel the need to permeate out into the controlled areas that you seem so drawn to, yet despise.

[Sera]

Oh no I'm here to troll you, notice how I don't post in any other thread. Spam > the entire rest of this board

[Beckwin]

this isnt specifically about the word, this is about every argument being given the simple one word response. its the same thing as tldr, as ibtl. Its a non-response instead of a valid one. Its trolling or postcount spamming, whatever you want to call it, it simply adds nothing to the topic at hand.

it only happens once in topic. you don't get pages of "tl;dr" style stuff with "Darwinism." nor do you get a bunch of postcount+1 "ibtl" style stuff from posters who otherwise would not post in the topic.

If things were at that point I might have an easier time seeing your reasoning for banning this (would still probably disagree, but less so), but frankly it's just not at that point. Again, I'd like to see a thread that was killed by that single "Darwinism" post.

[Beckwin]

I already addressed the whole 'don't like America then get out' statement. This isn't your home, you don't need BG to survive, it doesn't cost thousands of dollars to move to a new forum and there's millions of different options available at your fingertips as well as an option that exists on these very boards. General has it's own flavor, so does spam. If you don't like the rules in general, how about you go and make spam (A place with everything you want) a more worthwhile area so you don't feel the need to permeate out into the controlled areas that you seem so drawn to, yet despise.

why don't you stay in Advanced, which has it's own flavor instead of permeating out into areas where people talk about non-ffxi stuff and the rules are looser.

[Cow_k]

Oh no I'm here to troll you, notice how I don't post in any other thread. Spam > the entire rest of this board

Well, you just single-handedly invalidated much of Beckwin's response earlier in the thread.

And edit: Beckwin, what you just said makes absolutely no sense considering your argument is that the rules are too restrictive. I have no problem with general being moderated any way people see fit. I could understand people being upset if they started modding spam since by definition it's a place where people can do nearly whatever they want. And for your information, I do stay out of spam 99% of the time. You don't see me going in there telling people they're wrong for posting spam in the spam section.

[Beckwin]

also the longest running traditions of General are porn and random image threads; can we stop pretending like one word replies are ruining what would otherwise be topics upon topics full of high-minded discussion?

[Beckwin]

Well, you just single-handedly invalidated much of Beckwin's response earlier in the thread.

her existence compliments my point about not calling the mods over people/things/words/whatever that you personally do not like or find entertaining.

did I mention that there are shitty spam posters? I believe I did.

[Cow_k]

Alright, I concede to your point that spam people aren't necessarily bad; I'm mostly jaded because of my numerous run-ins with people who frequent spam who spill over their trolling such as Sera. It's fine to troll or do whatever in the appropriate places, but I don't see why people should be expected to put up with it in other sections, and spam has a notorious reputation for trolls.

Stereotype? Sure. But it seems to be held in high regard there.

[Mojo]

Comparing this to civil rights is silly, it's not that deep. Darwinism was a funny joke. Unfortunately, like everything else that's funny, it got ruined by randoms spamming it in every thread. The same joke is not funny the 500th time you tell it, especially when 400 of those times the context is weak and generally unfunny anyways. When every thread in the forum is immediately spammed by the same meme, they become unreadable. Nobody likes seeing the same uncreative unfunny shit over and over, it's disheartening. Most people would simply stop visiting the forums if it wasn't kept under control.

[Shojin]

You can't compare "Darwinism" to "ibtl" and "+1".

The funny thing about this is Darwinism is actually an appropriate answer to half the shit that gets posted in General. A drunk guy kills himself by falling on to the train tracks? Natural selection. An air show pilot loses control of a jet and slams in to the ground after an extremely low fly-over? Again.

The Darwin Awards

[Pro]

I don't get it-

I read thread, said thread contains the word "Darwinism", I continue scrolling down.

I just don't see how people get all worked up over a word...it's not like it happened 20x per thread. At the most I'd see it twice in any particular thread.

Let's hope this shit doesn't get out of hand ;<

[Ryko]

I don't get it-

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but if you died to it it was probably da--but WORDS SHOULD MAKE YOU RAGE AND THATS MUCH WORSE.