GuitarBizarre

The bottom line as I see it:

1 - Urban is always upfront, but something about his conduct, and others, right now, smacks more of "You criticised someone I like, and therefore you are bad, what have you done that Urban hasn't?", than it does of "This is an established understanding and nobody has ever possibly had grounds to criticise urban about anything ever before"

2 - Ki is acting butthurt with his threats to leave. Whether he meant the thread or the forums I don't care, he replied immediately after I did, so he's a hypocrite either way.

3 - Tore is right on the money here. Frankly speaking, whether or not Ki has a point criticising urban isn't the issue, or at least, it isn't anymore. We all agree Urban isn't deserving of some sort of lengthy personal attack.
What is now the issue is that as much as Ki's first couple of posts were pretty much being an arse, every post against him has beem just as much so, and while I jumped in with the thing about him leaving in the middle of that, at that point I thought the argument had reached a middleground and Ki was just being melodramatic.

Since that point, people have continued to throw barbs at Ki and he's continued to respond to them.

Its all rather childish, frankly. Urban comes off as being a defensive ass and I can't help but read his posts, and his avatar as almost an ad hominem, stating "Look how far above you I am, I don't need to address anything you've said, I'll just make out like you're a whiny biotch. I'm just going to mock you."

On the other hand, Ki comes off as trying to appeal to some sort of crowd as if he's a huge victim in an argument he started, which only makes it look as though the urban crowd are justified in attacking him, despite the fallacy that creates.

4 - The whole thing about the avatars is ****ing stupid, both as a criticism from Ki, and the defense from Urban. Its always been presented as a rule. Outright. Tore even quoted it.

Do I give a **** about 2px larger than something should be? No, not really. In fact I never noticed Urban's avatar even WAS a larger size, and I think Ki trying to make it an arguing point is really, really nitpicky.

But if you're going to argue that you don't have time to resize avatars, that that's too much work for you and too much to expect, then all I end up thinking is this:

Its not a defense to try and act like your alternative is to resize and waste your own time. Your alternative isn't that. It never has been. Your alternative is to just not bloody do it if people can't get their act together and resize properly. There's a rule in there that says outright you don't have to do it AT ALL. Why do you need to basically make one up, in order to "Save yourself the effort of resizing"?

The simple answer is you don't, and I really can't fathom why you'd ever act like that.




Finally, I like the flexible moderation here. I really do. I think it works and I think 90% of the time **** runs fine.

But the rules, the way they're written, and the way I understand them state "Here is a bunch of unacceptable ****, you will get banned for, but we can't cover every eventuality, so we reserve the right to decide ad hoc what else is unacceptable, just in case you think you're being clever by trolling through skirting the rules here"

I don't really understand why people seem to think that translates to "Here is the guideline, but don't take it as read or anything, I'm sure its ok if you step outside of it, we won't say anything at all."

I don't expect people to get punished, or chewed out, or given slaps on wrists even, for resizing their avatar wrongly, or disagreeing with each other or whatever, in fact I don't even reasonably expect that their request isn't approved or their argument isn't allowed to conclude.

But I would definitely expect at least one sentence explaining "Just so you know, you're a little out of bounds here, no worries, just so you know for next time", rather than "Well, we're flexible, so its ok"

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