Rant by Proxy

http://www.petitiononline.com/SotiCoto/petition.html



Ok... I'll start the story from the beginning....





My boyfriend is Aspergian. However, since I've known him (almost a year now), he's been dead set on "seperating himself from humanity". He refuses to acknowledge himself as human, calls people "meatbags" and will only be sociable towards a select few that match up to his expectations of intelligence; myself being one of them. (Just... don't comment on that...)

While I share his frustrations about most people being as thick as sh*t, I've mastered the art of humouring people, of being polite, of allowing people leeway with their flaws, even if their views conflict horribly with my own. I've always passed off his inability to do these things as a characteristic of his condition.

So, with him being anti-social, it's quite strange to know that he plays Guild Wars. O'course, along with playing, he's been a member of a couple of GW related forums. He was banned from the offical forums ages ago (I never asked why) and from GuildWarsGuru a couple of times. Now, since meeting me, my influence has rubbed off onto him a lot. He's more sociable than he used to be. I've seen him take the time out to explain things to people and help them at great length, both in and out of game. Anyhow, the ban from the offical forums was permanent, and he'd got banned temporarily from Guru a couple of times. I won't even mention the amount of times he's been banned from Yahoo Answers...

As I share a PC with him, I was sat here the other night when I saw his little Gmail notifier thing pop up saying there was a message from someone on Guru, laughing because he'd got banned. I rolled my eyes and went to the site myself to see what had happened (I registered an account a couple of weeks ago in preperation for starting my own GWs account). As he was the last person to use the forums on this PC, he was still logged in, so I saw his little ban notice.

A perma ban this time.

For not changing his posting habits.

Now, he's often told me about how corrupt the mods on Guru are, that the site admin never listens to his appeals against their unfair judgements (or those of anyone else who wishes to contest a ban). Basically, we're looking at a load of power abuse here.

Not to take his side totally, I know that he can come off as a total a*se at times. Like myself, he speaks very bluntly. It's part of the reason I adore him. I know that lots of people don't take to it kindly, yet I've managed to never be banned from any forums with my own attitude. I've seen his so-called offensive posts and they're nothing compared to what some people say to others on there. The amount of flaming is unbelieveable, and Robbie's suffered his fair share of it without nothing being done to those who flamed him, despite him reporting the posts.

I asked him many times why he kept going to the forums, and he replied that he uses the place for information. I can understand that totally. It's easy to get into the snare of a forum, asking for help resulting in people name calling, which you end up responding to... Just he always seemed to end up with a ban or warning for his troubles. Last time he was banned, I told him to not bother rising to the bait that people threw at him. So he didn't, but, like myself, the need to defend his opinions always comes to the fore. Which I can understand again. The fact is, I KNOW that he'd cleaned up his act, was talking to people politely, and when things like this happen, it only makes him even more set against "humanity" which, quite frankly, makes me roll my eyes and sigh.

I'm annoyed at the moderating team on Guru for having such a huge prejudice against the guy who had changed how he acted as they asked, and annoyed at him for responding to the flamebait which has lead to his ban. And I'm disgusted that someone actually emailed him to mock him about the whole damned thing.





He recieved the following email after contesting his ban:



Quote:

You will remain permanently banned from this website for an indefinite period of time for numerous infractions of site rules and policies that have accumulated over several months. You have ignored warnings and suffered temporary bans in the past, but continued violate our rules after the temporary bans were lifted. Your posting etiquette is intolerable and requires constant moderation because of flaming or demonstrating aggressiveness to users of this website.



Petitioning ArenaNet about your situation will only get empty replies because this is a PRIVATE site and is not owned or administered by ArenaNet or any of their associates.

To which he replied:





Quote:

So... I am accused of flaming and aggressiveness despite maintaining a consistantly civil attitude toward other users of the site... and have been banned for being the TARGET of flaming through no intended provocation of my own. Aside from all this, several of the moderating staff are guilty of almost constant trolling, harassment, aggravation of other members, flaming and the like... and suffer NO consequence for this.

My conventional "posting etiquette" has been quite thoroughly reigned in recently. Even at my usual it isn't bad, but recently I have been behaving myself enough that it would be within acceptable limits even in such happynicenice boards as the IMVU forums... That in and of itself is well within the limits of Guru, as demonstrated quite adequately by the general populace there.
What you find intolerable is that I am not afraid to point out when the system is corrupt, and have done so several times. What you find intolerable is that I WILL defend myself, while maintaining a civil attitude, against the kind of direct attacks I have received from certain Guru members (including members of staff) over the past few weeks. You will overlook any amount of flaming and abuse by members provided they agree WITH the staff and do not oppose them in their own flamefests in any way.

By all means... if you insist that I shall remain banned then there is nothing I can do about it... but rest assured that until you are HONEST about the reasons, then I will be contesting the fallacies directed against me. Not with A-Net... but with you (plural). Is it that difficult to admit that I wasn't banned for flaming and the like at all, not least because I did no such thing, but rather because the staff of Guru are a closely knit mafia of thugs who don't like that I don't fear them? Admit it. Honesty is always the best policy.

Well, we heard nothing after he sent that and last night, someone sent us a link to the petition in game, where we realised that a few people don't agree with the ban.



Yeah, it's a small thing, but it's the principle of standing up to mods that unfairly ban. Especially as I read on the forums that they plan to ban any members of that forum who sign the petition ¬_¬ All aboard the power abuse train, eh?