Forum:Off-topic blog comments 2012-08-11 (profanity policy backlash)

Discussion archived from here

Jonny Manz replies
Yeah, fun, if you enjoy having your freedom of speech trampled and an adminship that consists of a bureaucracy that claims to listen to the community yet doesn't.

Take the advice of a senior user. Just... stay away. - DMSwordsmaster 20:33, August 11, 2012


 * Not to open up old wounds, but you had the perfect opportunity to make your voice heard in that forum, and possibly get some compromises. It's easy to check to see when there's a forum going on, especially on this wiki (stuff doesn't disappear off Special:WikiActivity anywhere near as fast as on our sister).


 * Frankly, I don't see why you insisted on not voicing your opinion in the forum, and then complained afterwards when things didn't turn out how you wanted them to.


 * We're nowhere near as strict as on the FiM wiki; if you can't deal with being able to swear like a sailor in the comments section taken away, then your loss, I suppose. - Jonny Manz 20:47, August 11, 2012


 * I was unable to at the time due to family reasons. I was not able to get any internet until the day it was released. If I had known about it and was able to, you damned right I would have complained. Since I was unable to make my voice known then, I will happily make my voice heard now. And I have no intent to stop.


 * And otherwise, you took the action in the complete wrong direction. If you are making a massive change to the wiki, you should make it FAR more obvious that you're going to do so, thus allowing the community to voice. Simply relying on people to see the forum title on Recent Activity (and assuming they know "wiki talk") is flat out bad. No regular guy on the internet would have guessed that the title meant you were going to actively censor the wiki. I did, because I know wiki talk, but I was still unable to due to the aforementioned family reasons.


 * In short, you seriously took this the wrong way and made it as hard as possible for the community to voice their opinions. - DMSwordsmaster 20:54, August 11, 2012‎


 * Well, maybe if you'd brought that up in the first place instead of complaining about how we admins are so corrupt, and the new rules stink, we would've extended the forum. Even if you had posted it the day of, like you said, I'm sure it would've taken Tulip some time to get the proper script loaded into AutoWikiBrowser, and so we could've delayed it some, because then it would've been clear that the discussion was not yet resolved.


 * But to be fair, it's not our responsibility to keep tabs on all users at all times; if people don't respond within a certain time limit, sometimes we just have to assume that it's because they don't want to respond.


 * And as for your other objection... perhaps we should've put it in Community Messages. That I could agree with. - Jonny Manz 20:58, August 11, 2012


 * Granted, I will flat out agree that I should have acted a bit more mature about the situation. I acted similarly to how the Mane6 acted towards the alpha leak. However, even then, I was able to get my internet the day the bot was released and started to work. Not the day the decision was made. Thus, I was pretty much at a lose-lose situation.


 * I understand the second argument. You don't have to keep tabs on all users. I, being an admin of several other wikis, understand that. However, you should try and take necessary steps to ensure that people do know about major decisions you plan for the wiki itself. Whenever we, on a different wiki, are about to make a big decision on something, we post it in the community messages and make damned certain people know about it, thus giving them time to voice their own opinions. We take things slowly, yes, but it's to ensure everyone gets a chance to speak. Granted, this may have taken a week to decide, but it was still handled in a way that made it very difficult for people to voice their opinions.


 * I'll also freely admit that I enjoy discussing this with you far more then i did with Tulip. ...Don't even get me started on that.


 * As for the FIM wiki... I wouldn't go there even if they offered me free admin. I fear if I make one wrong touch on any page whatsoever, that it would be like unleashing a swarm of flesh eating beetles that would devour me and leave me as a bleached-white skeleton. - DMswordsmaster 21:15, August 11, 2012‎


 * Oh, it's not that bad, just trust me, any sort of swearing gets you into some hot water, (even swearing of the censored sort).


 * And next time we make a forum this sweeping, one of us will make sure to post it in Community Messages, for sure. I think none of us were expecting it to be so.... controversial. - Jonny Manz 21:16, August 11, 2012


 * Like I said, I would not go onto that wiki if someone offered me free admin. If I got angry at this wiki, I would probably go on a flat out berserk assault on that one. And stll, you only censored the "major" swears. Minor ones aren't, like hell or damn. And I'll live with that.


 * To be honest, you should have expected something of the sort. This is the internet. People come on here to do stupid stuff and swear as much as they so desire. And usually, no one would care. I don't think that they'd enjoy being forced to stop cussing. Thus, with an internet dweller like myself, I reacted very negatively towards it. - DMSwordsmaster 21:20, August 11, 2012


 * Yeah, I figure minor swears are ok; the kind that anyone could hear on broadcast TV (in the US, as that's the experience I speak from), at the very least (hell and damn, like you mentioned).


 * And I can see what you mean; I mean, I swear a lot in casual conversation with my friends over Skype. I dunno about Tulip (I won't claim to speak for him) but I think a lot of my failure to see how major this could turn out to be had to do with me also being an admin over on the FiM wiki, and so being used to pretty strict language rules (or rather, the contributors being used to it).


 * Well good, it looks like we have a better understanding of each other now. :) And that's something I was hoping for from the start of this conversation. - Jonny Manz 21:33, August 11, 2012


 * That just makes your decision to make censorship here seem even more bizarre. I've always found the comments to be sort of like conversation. That's what I've always used them for. Conversing with other people. But that just may be me missing the point entirely, which would not at all surprise me, given how much I surprise myself with my own thickness at times. Might be because, on other wikis, that was pretty much what we used to converse with each other without having to deal with PMing.


 * I'm still never going there. I have made that very obvious. I've only posted about 3 comments there.


 * Hm, somewhat, I guess. - DMSwordsmaster 21:37, August 11, 2012‎

Tulipclaymore replies

 * A little bit of perspective on the whole "no opportunity to respond" charge: The forum thread was started 18:29, August 1, 2012 (UTC). There was no more activity in the thread starting on 08:23, August 3, 2012‎ (UTC). I enabled the filter and announced bot use 03:31, August 7, 2012. The bot was not turned on and the About page was not changed until 18 hours later.


 * You were online and posting on all but one of those days.


 * You claim you would definitely have said something had you known (though you claimed something different a few days ago); whatever. You've had your say. There's no reason to pop up on random pages and user blogs and poison others against the wiki just because you have a beef with me. - Tulipclaymore 22:13, August 11, 2012


 * I quite like how I start to enjoy speaking with an admin, relate with him somewhat, and generally understand the situation, and then the other one comes and just turns that all on top of its head. Congratulations. You have now turned my sympathy and understanding back into general hate. It surprises me how completely inept people are at keeping their mouths shut. If you would have not said a damned word, I would have continued my activities with a smile. And now, you come and do this. Congratulations. It's almost as if you're actively trying to drive me away.


 * You're doing a damned fine job at that.


 * And since you brought that up, the situation involving internet was something I didn't elaborate on a lot. I was unable to post on the forums due to intenet problems. It's complicated. I could do stuff like comment and whatnot, but was unable to accomplish major edits due to the internet issue. Now then. - DMSwordsmaster 23:16, August 11, 2012‎


 * That's the third or fourth time you've changed your story. Whatever, I don't even care; maybe your previous statements were victims of poor wording and easily misunderstood. I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt. That's not even the point. The point you continue to dodge is that from the get-go, the problem with you has been your unwillingness to self-moderate and your self-righteous attitude whenever you or someone else was called out on it. No, you are not entitled to free speech here; this is a private website owned by wikia, they have rules, and the wiki has decided how to interpret those rules in a fashion you dislike. Either get over it or start a new thread in which you propose a repeal or amendment or a process change.


 * This, today, is just another demonstration. You go to the blog of a new user whom you don't know, and instead of welcoming him (or, you know, not saying anything since you claim to be done with the wiki), you piss all over the wiki and the administrators, the latter of whom (but really just me, right) you accuse of lying. In the conversation that follows - a conversation that would have rightly been deleted on the vast majority of other wikis for being off-topic and vindictive -, you repeat the complaints you've already made public and passive-aggressively take a shot at me. And then you complain when I respond, because how dare I?


 * I'm not trying to make you leave the wiki. I let you curse like a sailor for months despite my misgivings because that's the kind of laid-back guy I am. I haven't deleted the above discussion (I have moved it here, but that's because here is where it belongs, since XXTenderTacosXx has nothing to do with this). I haven't banned you. I engaged you in the past week and I'm engaging you now despite the fact that I really ought to go to bed.


 * This is the kind of comment I have no problem with. But I've had it with being tolerant of behaviour that could be very damaging to the wiki, and whether you want to see it that way or not, that includes profanity and it includes dehumanising comments. Stuff like this? No more. And if I see any in a similar vein, I'll censor or delete them. If you think that's outrageous and a terrible violation of your god-given right to be mean to other people when you don't have to say it to their face, be my guest. But I think it's time to demand a modicum of civility and decency because clearly, being super-tolerant of this kind of behaviour hasn't worked. --Tulipclaymore (talk) 01:53, August 12, 2012 (UTC)