Listen, is anyone able to access the forums at all today? I’m still interested in reading them, even if I can’t post, but I can’t even pull them up. Have I been banned that hard?
I was a member of their forums back when they were Hissyfit, and saw the progression that led to their extremely restrictive rules. Basically they cannot stand anyone who appears to be immature. Now, if it’s a particular kind of ‘adult’ immaturity then that’s okay. But if it’s teenage self-involved angst, they get sick of it pretty quickly. This led to rules that felt like they were the crazy cat lady who refuses to give the kids their football back.
Almost all the members of the forum at that time had melded into a homogenous lump of annoying bitchy geek women that were indistinguishable from each other.
I left long ago and don’t miss it.
I got banned from Fametracker (run by Wing Chun, down at the moment, much better discussions IMO) and just left it for a while and then registered under a new name (same email). I’d imagine it’s sort of shooting yrself in the foot to announce you were banned a short while ago! Agree with some of the grievances about TWoP, although as a general rule the sycophantic posters are much more annoying than the mods.
psychobunny, I’d just ignore that rule in most cases, really. No-one’s going to know if you haven’t read something on page 1 that is completely irrelevant to page 353.
I post over there a lot. The “read before posting” rule has been changed with the new forum in which they don’t have to purge anymore. Now it says
I think that’s pretty fair. As a regular reader it gets kind of annoying to see the same question/comment over and over. However, it isn’t always strictly enforced. I have seen someone post “how come nobody has mentioned X” when someone had posted about X a mere five hours previously and that previous post appeared on the same page as the second poster’s post!
Rilchiam I pulled up your posting history and couldn’t see any reason why you should have been banned. The mods there are pretty capricious though. Still, they usually have some sort of reason. It used to be you could go to the Troll Patrol thread and read reports, but lately they’ve started deleting the entries as soon as the problem is taken care of so no one knows what is going on.
Unless it’s really egregious (which I don’t think any post of yours that I saw was, I didn’t see anything even approaching rude by you) they will usually warn you. However, they will often delete posts so if you posted something rude it could have been deleted. Did you post something rude? (I know I’m new posting here, but I’ve been reading for some time and you really don’t seem like someone who would post something ban-able to me, you seem really nice!)
For anyone who may decide to start posting over there, I cannot stress enough READ THE FAQ first! They are incredibly strict about it.
I go there for the forums and the recaps. A little while ago, I made a mistake in an AI thread(even if you read/know the rules, sometimes you make a booboo every once in awhile) and I got a warn for it. I could live with that. But, a couple days later, I found myself banned and the post was deleted. I made that mistake once after two years of posting/lurking there, but I guess sometimes once is all it takes no matter how long you’ve been there.
When I found out I was banned, all I did was create a new username. That’s all. If you don’t mention who you previously were, you should be okay.
I used to read the Amazing Race and L&O: Crime & Punishment forums, but I gave it up pretty quickly because:
A.) the default display is a ridiculously small number of posts per page, and there’s no way to increase it. I don’t have broadband and got really tired of hitting “Next” (and waiting for the stupid ads to load) fifteen times for every thread.
B.) they’re (or were) way too quick to purge old threads. The last time I visited the site, the Crime & Punishment section had vanished completely!
I’ve been registered with TWOP for about a year now, and other than one brief violation of the FAQ that someone warned me about fast enough that I could edit it out of my post, I haven’t had too many problems. One mod and I hate each other on sight, but I tread carefully around her petty and capricious rulings pretty carefully and give her zero ammunition to do away with me. Which I’m sure annoys her even more, which is one big reason I do it. 
It’s a good place to find out THE most obscure details about a show. But the rules are definitely arbitrary and often enforced arbitrarily. The recaps are terrific, however, which makes up for a lot.
I don’t know of any way to appeal a banning; wait a few weeks, re-register under a new email address with a new ID, and you should be okay. Or register from a different computer altogether just to be safe. But that’s no guarantee against yet another banning, obviously.
Did anyone else, when enquiring as to the reason for your ban, get the old form letter:
You were banned in an undesirable poster purge. We regret to say that there is no recourse. In addition, any other e-mail again asking, why you were banned, shall be ignored.
Blah blah,
The Admin or whatever.
I simply started posting over at Smile and Act Nice and then a couple of months later, found the SDMB.
I go there, but I rarely post . I go read the One Tree Hill and Everwood boards, and read recaps for serval other shows.
Yeah, something like that.
Based on this thread, I decided to check out the TWP site. I registered and read their FAQ and it seemed pretty reasonable to me. Yeah, they’re harsh but it keeps out the useless bullshit. Then I read through the Sopranos forum because that’s the only current show with its own forum that I regularly watch. First off I was impressed. These guys know their shit. Still, it was only incrementally better than the Sopranos episode recap threads that we have over here in CS every week and ours are one tenth the size. I doubt that I’ll spend a whole lot of time over there. The main thing is that it gave me a flavor of what the culture is like over there.
Rilchiam, I pulled up your posting history over there and it was very obvious to me why they banned you. In something like 16 posts, you screwed up three times. I am not going to get into an argument with you over the minutia of this. It’s my opinion and I am not taking sides.
Here is where I think you screwed up:
- Two posts in a row which is against their rules. They allow editing over there.
- A hijack about the colors of clothes that you like to wear which was only slightly relevant to the discussion.
- A silly joke where you changed the lyrics of a song to make it a tribute to an American Idol contestant. That doesn’t fly over there. They seem to only like “serious” discussion. It’s probably takes getting to be a regular to be able to figure out when and how you can make jokes.
It was obvious also that the regulars over there were getting annoyed with you. Knowing how quick to ban they are it was only a matter of time.
Guin, if the way you posted there was at all similar to the way you used to post here (I have noticed that you have made a very good effort to tone it down lately), then it is no wonder that you got that email from them.
I hope that no one is insulted. I have no horse in this race. I probably won’t ever go back to that board again.
Haj
This does make sense.
- Double posting is a major no-no. If you do accidentally and don’t go in and edit out the second one, you’ll make them very, very unhappy. With editing enabled, it’s really not an issue. (Posts close together are allowed IF it’s in the context of an ongoing discussion, but only if editing an earlier post would make no sense or make following the train of the discussion impossible.)
- Hijacking is just plain not allowed. It’s a strictly on-topic board. Which is fine if you want to discuss just the topic. If I want to stray, I go elsewhere online. Or go to the general discussion thread in each forum which is where you can talk about anything you want.
- Jokes are great – if they’re in the joke/game section of the forum. Each forum has one. Some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever read is in a “Letters to the Apprentices” thread, for example. Jokes aren’t forbidden, just meant to be in the right home.
As I said, they’re pretty unforgiving of rule-breaking – but in fairness, they do post the FAQ prominently, fellow posters will often warn you if you break a rule to give you a chance to fix it, and pretty much the same rule applies there as here, don’t be a jerk. I’ve found it a quite fun place to hang out as long as I’m willing to play by the rules; I’ve had some really intriguing discussions and seen some very powerful points of view from posters there.
The thing is, they’re not so unforgiving when it comes to just getting a new username. It’s doubtful that the mods would bother doing IP checks.
I just think that if they’re going to have a “warn” system, then a person shouldn’t be banned until they get five warnings. Otherwise, why bother having a warn system?
Plus, while fellow posters do warn you, I personally post at TWOP, but then don’t go back for hours or even a couple days. It would be too late then to do anything even if I ever do get any warnings from fellow posters. :\
I have to disagree with hajario. I’ve been posting at TWoP for several years now, and none of the things he(?) cited are “ban-able” necessarily, unless you make a practice of double and triple posting. But you’d still get a warning first, IME. And only serious discussion? No way! There’s all kinds of joking going on over there. From glittery hoo-hoos to the pixel challenge. Seriously [monkey].
Rilchiam did anyone say anything to you? Usually when a new person makes a mistake, someone will say something to them. For instance, when someone doesn’t read the forum and posts something that’s been hashed out before, someone will come along saying (usually nicely, IME) “hey, we discussed that on pp x-x. You should probably read the FAQ before posting, it will really help you out.” (Or something along those lines.)
I just can’t recall seeing someone banned with no warning unless they were really being obnoxious. Calling other posters names, etc. And I can’t see Rilchiam doing that! Note: I don’t read the threads in which you were posting, so maybe that particular mod has an itchy trigger finger?
No one said a word, on the boards or in e-mail.
hajario, I honestly don’t see how anything you named was a bannable offense.
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I’m sorry I posted twice in a row; I forgot about the editing feature because it was new to me. But is that such a mortal sin?
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I talked about the colors I like to wear as part of a discussion about a contestant’s choice of costume. It was relevant.
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The song parody was in a thread **consisting entirely ** of song parodies.
Sounds like you were a victim of an arbitrary mod, then. And trust me, they do have them. What was the mod’s name who banned you, perchance?
People post on other message boards?
Why?
I honestly do not know.
It just bothers me that I wasn’t given any warning and opportunity to change my ways. But perhaps I have just too much of an SDMB mentality to fit in over there.
Actually, I found out I was banned because I said that I thought another poster was acting immature for making fun of someone’s name.
Or something like that.
shrugs
Well, it is Television Without Pity, so it looks like you broke two rules in one, Guinastasia – commenting directly on whether it’s right or wrong for another poster to hold their opinion (everyone is allowed to have an opinion without criticism, which actually isn’t a bad rule; it means that everyone can feel free to express their own view), and making fun of peoples’ names (on shows, not other posters) is practically an art form there and regularly participated in (by everyone, including mods). Disagreeing with other posters’ opinions is allowed; insulting them isn’t. And there’s no equivalent of the Pit there, so if you want to criticize someone, you’re pretty much out of luck. Although you can criticize their ideas all day long as long as you’re civil about it.
Like I said, the rules are strict, but they do allow for some really interesting discussions, as well as a great source to learn every detail, no matter how trivial, about shows – if you’re interested in that much detail, of course!