Treasure SMUncensored

[Sailor Moon]

You never realize how great things are, until things get sour. This happens to me a lot, where I may think "Ahh... this is awful", and then long endlessly for the thing that was so awful, since what ends up happening is something worse comes along,a nd you want that awful thing more then ever. Well, this situation nisn't that big of a deal, since it's only the internet, not real life like a lot of situations. First of all, I used to think that the SMUncensored mdoerators were a little harsh, I'd never say so, and I knew exactly why they were, but nevertheless, I thought that. Well, I was on a board, I made like three posts, they wer enot really repetetive, two of them were basically a sentence, but the very first psot I made, I mentioned I was friends with a certain person, whop the mdoerator hated, and I mentioned I had an opinion on a certain character, and the moderator had the opposite opinion on that character. So the moderator disagrees with my opinion. So what do they do? First of all, you should know, that if a message is edited, on this board it isn't shown, it doesn't say edited. So a moderator can get away with heavily editing a message, and it won't even say edited by the moderator, or edited by so and so, so of course the moderator can abuse their power.

So, the moderator sees that we have contrasting opinions, and that I was friends with someoen they didn't like, and they know that if you edit a message, it doesn't sa it's edited by a moderator, or edited at all, so they decide to abuse their power. They edit my message, channge all my opinions to opinions I didn't have, put lots and lots of profanity and curse words in my post, constantly write the word "penis" plastered around my post, edit the way my post was structured to make it look crappy, change all the stuff I said and put in false information and edit all the content, put in false opinions I didn't have, make me look really stupid, make my message full of profanity, and ban me before I can do anything about it. Then they reply acting oturaged by my "message" I didn't write. They pretend to act all shocked. Then everyone who repsonds acts all disturbed by a message I didn't write. So of course they thought that that was a legimate reason to ban me, because of a message I didn't freaking write.

Of course, the administrator approves of their edit. But of course I realized who edited it. So, what do I do to try and retain the dignity on the messageboard? Something really stupid. I am not thinking clearly at this point, I am too much in shock. So I stupidly e-mail the owner of the board. I am very, very, very repetetive in this e-mail. I just can't think. I spend about six hours on this e-mail, basically, beginning to knwo what I did wrong, and here's the kicker, I actually asked if I could have my account back. How stupid is that? I would never beg for my account back. That's just so annoying. I regret it and feel stupid. So I saved it to a draft. I later edit it and send it. Now, this was the very first time I realized that when you edit a draft, it doens't send the edited version, oh no, it sends the version you saved to the draft. This is, of course, the first time I realize this, so all my life I had been sending the actual draft. So I panic, and do soemthign stupider, I send another e-mail saying that the message I originally meant was like thirty paragraphs.

I mentioned the alst paragraph ebfore in a previous topic, but this topic is totally different. So the lesson here is to respect the courtesy SMUncensored shows. They do not have manipulative moderators, they don't ban you because you have contrasting opinions on certain video game characters, they don't edit yours message to make your opinions the opposite and they don't edit your messages, making it look like you wrote a bunch of profanity. SMUncensored also gives out warnings and stuff. So, people, treasure the wodnerful security system you have here. Please send in message baord horror stories to show what a great security system their is here.

[Tempest]

-_- Some people should not have moderator powers. Especially if they are going to abuse what power they have acting like such a child. The point of mods editing posts if it's something they NEED to censor or edit. It's not a toy to be played with. Perhaps she's not mature to handle responsablity. No matter how much I dislike someone or how much of a jerk someone is being, if I pulled a stunt like that I'd deserve to have my power stripped.

2 Things could come from this. 1)The Admin will handle it in your favor. If said Mod has done this before or has know to do that in the past, then it won't be hard to see a pattern. Like if more than one person has been banned in the past due to similar posts. 2) The Admin may not care, especially if the Mod and Admin are close friends. Friends or not, if the Admin doesn't do anything about such disgraceful abuse of power, then S/He has no business running a forum.

Without proof (Like IP tracing), it may not go well in your favor. All you can do is wait for a response from the Admin, and hope their is a pattern to certain bans. If not, just don't go back there. It's not worth going to a forum where someone is so insecure with conflicting opinions that they have to degrade themselves to make other's look foolish.

As for Forum horror stories, I really don't have one. Alot of the forums I've been to have had decent people. I know some forums I didn't like, but I can't remember why.

[Cardcaptor Takato]

A girl I know opened up a message board called "NightStorm." Since a friend of mine was an admin of it, I decided to check it out. I read around and found a lot of the threads and posts to consist of rude swearing and insults. The owner of that board added me to MSN and we had an interesting conversation about what respect is and how to gain it. She said that you gained respect by insulting someone and that I had insulted her board because of my hatred for it (since I did hate the ugly insults and foul language and bashing that went on almost constantly at it). So, I asked her if I had gained their respect for insulting them and she said I didn't.

I then copied and pasted that conversation with her and made a thread about it at their board, asking how you could get respect from insulting someone and why I hadn't gain their respect even though I had insulted them. She felt like her image had been hurt and being the owner of the site, proceeded to edit almost the entire conversation out and changed my dialog to say that I had cussed at her! Everyone thought I was acting very immature for cussing at her (even though they cuss all the time), when I hadn't and so I copied and pasted the real conversation to everyone who had responded to that thread that I could.

After a lot of arguging with her and my friend who luckly is an admin there and one of the few nice people at that board, she edited my thread back to normal (although she claims it's because the arguging was getting out of hand) and eventually deleted it. I'm still very pissed off at her and that entire freakin' board and I don't intend to post back there for quite some time. I really appreciate the excellent work here at SMU and even though we may have arguments and different beliefs, people at least don't edit your posts and not every single freakin' post consists of a cuss word or insult of some sort.

[Sailorasteroid]

This sort of thing goes to the heart of the quirky nature of the Internet. There are places where and people for whom respect is gained through a show of aggressive nature. And there are people who just enjoy insulting people. Generally, this is not beneficial in life, but not particularly bad on the Internet.

I think one of the reasons the Internet can be the most social-changing medium since the Guttenberg press is that communication on the Internet is just as much about the sender as it is about the reciever. There are people who write, not particularly to get a response but simply to get the message out of their brains. There's a certain satisfaction in putting your thoughts down on some kind of permanent medium. (I am not entirely innocent of this!) This is also typified with the proliferation of blogs and personal pages. I also think this sort of thing should be encouraged in the name of honesty and individuality. But it does lead to the sort of unpleasentness and bad blood you see on unmoderated or poorly moderated fora.

Which is one of the reasons I like the SMU forums so much. The mods and admins here call things tight and don't allow the posters to descend into the sort of selfishness that occurs elsewhere. The tone is a lot more like that of an offline discussion group. I still say there's a need for both civilized discussion and say-and-do-what-you-want anarchy, but this kind of forum takes a lot more work and effort and I certainly appreciate it.

[Tiff]

Which is one of the reasons I like the SMU forums so much. The mods and admins here call things tight and don't allow the posters to descend into the sort of selfishness that occurs elsewhere. The tone is a lot more like that of an offline discussion group. I still say there's a need for both civilized discussion and say-and-do-what-you-want anarchy, but this kind of forum takes a lot more work and effort and I certainly appreciate it.

And we appreciate comments like that. Sometimes it seems our (and by "our", I include both admins AND chibimods in there) hard work is for naught, but it's times like this I really see how it pays off.

Now for my story. As mentioned before, Dan, Bob and I met through an SMS to English Campaign (*shudders*) about five or so years ago. There was a message board there, and the three of us were part of the Big Four, which meant we were leaders of some sort over the campaign. We didn't really have any real mod abilities on the forum..at least, I didn't. The guy who ran the site was a real dickface, to say the least. He was completely power hungry, and threw that power around like a whip. In fact, I shall henceforth refer to him as "Dickhead."

I remember one incident in particular..I had just become one of the Big Four, and was thrilled about it. My name back in that day was KawaiinoSenshi, and there was a big block of text on the main page announcing my new status. I was modest about it, and didn't even mention it to anybody. Then, there was a new post by one of the members congratulating me, so I replied with a "thank you! I'm happy that it's happened" sort of post. A few more people replied with congrats, and again, I modestly replied with some thank yous.

There was one member in particular who was infatuated with Dickhead, and she hated me. When she saw the thread congratulating me, she responded that I was bragging and how rude that was. Dickhead immediately took her side, and verbally lashed out at me in the middle of the thread. He was cruel, and I remember crying after reading it. And everybody told me over AIM and through PMs that they were on my side..but yet, everybody was too scared to defy him.

Being on that team and forum was pure hell. All he did was use me for the graphics I made for the site, and he took every chance he got to abuse me. I finally grew some balls (heh. irony.) and made a post announcing my departure, to which everybody replied, "Yea, you're right, this place sucks..but i'm gonna stay." That disappointed me, but I left anyway.

Of course, Dan and Bob soon followed suit, and we created what you all know of as SMU. Needless to say, I recently was IMed by Dickhead, who apologized and apparently has no friends left. I told him I didn't hate him, but I can't forgive that kind of cruelness. Inside, I thought "good riddance to you."

[Celexa]

The one thing I hate most on boards is when people abuse their power like in these horror stories. I'm admin of my own board, and I'm taking a few tips from this post to avoid making the mistake of being a crappy admin.

My own horror story isn't about a mod who abuses their power, but mods and admins who don't do ANYTHING. I like looking through the forums on a certain Harvest Moon site, and I only looked at one part, particularly one thread about 52 pages long. I looked around the board more, and I found that the only one who really did anything was the creator of the board, who only edited a few posts. There was chaos everyone, repeated threads (It would be like five or six "Favorite Sailor Moon quotes" threads on this board) huge images everywhere, tons of rule breaking, and not one moved topic when it should have been. (Harvest Moon 3 stuff was in the Harvest Moon 5 For Girls section) The only bit of law and order there were the older members who would try their best to keep the board in order.

Another thing I didn't like at that board was how they treated new members. People would diss new members all the time, calling them "Nieve" (sp) "Unknowing" and "Maybe if we have a block feature they'll read the rules". That's one of the reasons I never signed up there. At least here at the SMU forums everybody gives new members a chance and doesn't automatically assume they're stupid just because they're new.

[NameGoesHere]

At least here at the SMU forums everybody gives new members a chance and doesn't automatically assume they're stupid just because they're new.

That's exactly why I stayed here with SMU. I always hated being the "Newbie" at other boards because I always got treated like crap. Just because I was new I was tagged as being stupid, and nobody would talk to me. My posts were deleted/edited constantly, and the members and Admins were condescending so I quickly took my leave.

I was actually afraid to join SMU at first because of all of my previous experiences, but now SMU is the only forum for me. The Admins and Chibimods never abuse their power, and the members are pleasant and intelligent. Plus, I've been glomped! Who could ask for more?
…Well, I could ask for a cookie. But, no.

[Jusenkyo no Pikachu]

Agreed on all counts.

I think the only time I have ever had any form of anger towards the mods was when Tiff locked one of my threads. I had indeed broken the rules, but it was a minor infraction that could have been edited, I'm sure (and I'd be happy to edit it myself). I think Tiffu was just stressed that day.

Other than that, I have only two other complaints:

1) Links are indistinguishable from plain text. I do believe I was almost accused of spamming because of it.
2) You guys don't have a trout smiley. Pity. I love the trout smiley.

(NOTE: For those who are absolutely confused, it's a two-face smiley that has one face thwapping the other with a fish and then breaking into the mrgreen smiley)

[Sailorasteroid]

Other than that, I have only two other complaints:

1) Links are indistinguishable from plain text. I do believe I was almost accused of spamming because of it.

That irks me somewhat too, so I usually slap a tag around the link along with the [url] tag

2) You guys don't have a trout smiley. Pity. I love the trout smiley.

XD That I can do nothing about.

[Neo Dead Moon]

I was actually afraid to join SMU at first because of all of my previous experiences, but now SMU is the only forum for me. The Admins and Chibimods never abuse their power, and the members are pleasant and intelligent.
…Well, I could ask for a cookie. But, no.

*nods in agreement* Well, except for the "only forum for me" part. I'm also part of another anime forum, where I'm a moderator.

Still, that's a lot more than I can say for another anime forum I once was a member of, where my first message was "Get the fuck out" by one of the more active posters. Mind you, he tells people this kind of thing all the time, and commonly refers to people by vulgar names. AND HE NEVER GETS IN TROUBLE. Would YOU stand for that? I couldn't, and I'm glad the people here don't, either.