BGG: Guilt by association

SuperflyTNT wrote: The irony of the link is the link within: the patron saint of boardgaming on the patron saint of board game sites had illustrated that people should spread the word about games and whatnot, but when you do, if they don't like the person talking, you can be banned just by repeating their words.

The implication is this: posting something someone said somewhere else, which is simply REPEATING, word for word, what someone said, is disallowed, of the person who originally said it is persona non gratis. It's like going to a club and being threatened because you simply repeated something you heard at another bar.

Pesona non grata.

they need to reform their policies over there badly.

Persona non gratis - Superfly isn't going to give you jack shit for free.

Did I miss something, Pete? I thought you nuked your account of your own volition. Did you also get a "Don't come back!" on the way out?

That is a pretty blatant over-reaction by the mods there, regardless of who it is or their motivations for why they overreacted.
This sort of behavior there is pretty blatant more and more lately.
I understand that they cannot run a database on just pure flowers and posies, but the monetization of BGG is pretty appalling nowadays.
The sense of community is gone. Maybe it's because I dont fall into the consumerist trap of "gotta catch them all" that the site promotes and is rewarded by publishers for, in a round about way.
Front pages images used to be a hot bed of discussion, now the default being purely "game" has caused a shift to only promoting the newest hotness of KS projects.

I was shocked when a Monsterpocalypse pic I posted a couple weeks ago made it to #1 in the images there since it isnt the newest hotness, or even a euro.

I lament the fact that Pete's contributions are no longer present there, as it causes a void in the database. I understand Pete's position fully, but it still sucks from the rose colored glasses perspective of a board game database.

It's difficult to contribute there, as there was a recognition at one point that even though you dont pay them money, the contributions that you made brought in others who did pay. Now you are 'encouraged' to do both.

Sucks. Sorry to hear that a designer of a game you reviewed is being slagged by a mod there with assumptions that you requested a review to be posted there. Mostly since he is threatened with perma ban over it... jeez. It's just uncalled for.

The designers and publishers could cause far more damage by picking up and leaving than BGG can by throwing petty tantrums over this crap. Hopefully it escalates sooner than later, because that site is ridiculous. The clash over egos will eventually boil over, and the contribution of BGG over the hobby is entirely replaceable.

madwookiee wrote: Did I miss something, Pete? I thought you nuked your account of your own volition. Did you also get a "Don't come back!" on the way out?

I got a permanent ban from posting anything, ever. I took that as "we don't like what you say, and you can't play well with others, so you're grounded for life" which it was. But then I thought, "well, if you don't like I say but are OK with the massive amount of hits I've generated over the years (ad revenue), then let's just ensure that you can't have it both ways" and nuked the account from orbit. I have a real, philosophical problem with being handed your hat by the owner of a restaurant who wants you to keep paying their electric bill after you leave, ad infinitum, even if the contribution is 1 cent a day.

The current deal has NOTHING to do with me, aside from an email from the designer who said he was threatened with being banned for the high crime of simply REPOSTING AN ARTICLE (note, not a post, but a legitimate game review) from a website which is deemed contraband at BGG.

I don't care about BGG. That's not my issue here. This is about their vendetta policy of censoring legit game reviews UPLOADED BY THE DESIGNER, provided it's written by a person banned on the site. That's just fucking retarded. Had he not indicated it was written by me, it would've never been banned. It's sick, on an atomic level, how this designer was treated.

I'm more on BGG's side on this if I'm understanding it right. My apologies if I'm piecing this together wrong.

- You were banned from posting at BGG.
- Somone else copy-and-pasted a review since your banning and posted it in the forums with his own account.
- It was removed by a mod and the person was told not to do it again (probably more harshly than necessary, by the sounds of it, but it's not like the person was actually banned).
- There's still a link to the review on your website on the BGG game page.

Seriously, I don't see the big deal. Personally, I think it's kind of a weird attempt at marketing for the designer to be doing that in the first place.

I can't verify any of it except for the first two, and part of the second. All I know is that I sent the designer a link to the review (which I do for every designer). He asked if he could repost it. I sent a link to my policy on reposting. That was it.

I then a few days later get notified that he was chastized and threatened. That was all that happened on my end. The designer was furious, and I told him to talk to the publisher and discuss the policy, since there is nothing in the policy about reposting a review written by a website outside of BGG when a banned person happened to write it. The funny thing is that I don't write all of the articles (99.9%, to be fair) so it has spilled over to "anyone we don't like doesn't get to have a single written word put on this site."

This is what I wrote Octavian a moment ago:

My link/repost policy:
superflycircus.com/circus-rules-and-methods/

---

Cross-Linking, Posting, etc.:

I post my reviews at several sites such as Fortress: Ameritrash and GMS Magazine, but there are many I do not post at for various reasons, mostly due to time. If you wish to post one of my reviews or a link to one of my reviews at your favorite forum, board game site, or whatever, I HEREBY GRANT FULL PERMISSION TO DO SO, provided you do the following:

Provide either a link to www.superflycircus.com , with attribution to our site, or simply note that it is a “Superfly Circus” review.

If it gets you some kudos, or “likes” or whatever, I’m totally happy to help you do that. If you try to sell it, plagiarize it, or profit financially from it, that’s a different story. If you DO intend to profit from it, don’t link it or copy it, because not only is it immoral, it’s copyright infringement. I’ve never made a dime from this site, and in fact have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars to provide you with free entertainment and enlightenment, so you should respect that ethic and do so not out of greed, but out of love for the hobby.

---

An individual contacted me and said this:

"Superfly Pete should have known better than to ask you to post this article on BGG - he has already been told that doing so can result in the person posting on his behalf being indefinitely suspended from the site."

Let's get something straight: I never ask anyone to post anything here. If you recall, I deleted my SuperflyPete account. With regard to the bids on GeekBay, I again, never asked anyone to post anything. I asked to put in a proxy bid, and the person did that of his own volition. Note that nothing in your Community Rules section regarding moderation indicates that reposting a review from an outside site is an offense. Same thing with proxy bids...there's nothing in any rule anywhere on this site that indicated (at the time, I haven't checked of late) that proxy bidding or private bids are disallowed on your GeekBay setup.

You owe the guy an apology. Not only did he do nothing wrong, but you threatened him with a permanent ban for trying to promote his game here (you do remember Stronghold is an advertiser?) by posting a review, and simply due to "guilt by association". I sent him a link to the review, as I ~always~ do with publishers and designers, and he asked me if he could repost it anywhere. I sent him a link to our policies, and that was the totality of our interaction.

I don't know what kind of vendetta you have against me, but seriously, if you're going to be a moderator, try being moderate. Literally, this guy got shit on with a "guilt by association" threat when there wasn't even an association. If you have even a drop of class, you should apologize. And you should think about clarifying the rules here because it seems like you arbitrarily make them up as you go along to suit your whim at the time, especially when it comes to certain individuals.

Cheers,
Pete

Here's the BGG policy on moderation:

Moderation Consequences

Here is what happens if you do not follow our rules:

Your posts will be flagged for rules violations by the other users in the community - people will not see them.
You may have posting privileges suspended or you may even be banned from the site. We reserve the right to immediately terminate or suspend anyone who fails to abide by our rules. The decision to suspend or terminate accounts will be made at the sole discretion of the site administrators. All account terminations (bannings) are to be considered final.
The length of a suspension will depend primarily on your history of past warnings and suspensions. All things being equal, each subsequent violation will bring a longer suspension regardless of the perceived severity of the specific offense.
Context matters. Individual posts are evaluated in the context of both the thread and other recent posts by the user.
Bypassing a suspension with another account will get you indefinitely suspended from the site.
Threads which degenerate into flame wars will be locked by moderators, regardless of who is at fault.

At one point, I contacted a person who was running a GeekBay auction to put in a proxy/private bid. I explained that I was banned from posting. The person put wrote "Proxy Bid: X$" and then was chastised and threatened. The bid was removed. Again, there's nothing, no rule, that governs GeekBay transactions indicating this was a bad thing, so I didn't know it was "illegal". I brought that up as well. I apologized to the guy and he was totally cordial and agreed that he didn't realize it was illegal either. Now this.

It appears to me that the one line...
"Bypassing a suspension with another account will get you indefinitely suspended from the site."
...really means....
"If you post anything that was written by a banned person, irrespective of their knowledge of you reposting it, you're getting banned here too" and "No private bids are allowed on Geekbay" and probably "At our sole discretion, we will threaten you because we like to control everyone's thoughts and transactions here."

Seriously, I just don't get it. Nobody was hurting anyone. No rules (at least written rules that could be understood by any reasonable observer) indicated that any of this was disallowed.


Anyhow, as to the "weird marketing", if you were a designer or publisher, wouldn't you want the world to read as much good press as possible about your product? It's not weird, it's normal marketing, or as normal as our fucked up hobby's marketing is.

Just asking for clarification here:

When you subjected your account to obliteration, you asked BGG to remove all content you had posted before, correct?

Is it possible that they are considering the removal of any later added content of yours to be part of that request?

Of course, that has nothing to do with the threatened banning/harassment that was given to the person who posted it, but I have to wonder about this in terms of your claims of censorship.

If I'm way off base, of course, feel free to tell me so. Or ignore me.

Edit: After further thought, my theory is proven false by the implication that you asked him to post the article. If they thought they were abiding by your wishes then there would be no reason to think that.

Got a response from Matt. Short version is that I am apparently supposed to tell everyone that I come in contact with that posting my content on BGG is an offense that will get them banned, potentially. That it's not a vendetta, and that similar situations have been handled similarly (rules don't really indicate that well, but oh well), and that asking a person to take private bids is also the same as using a work-around account (again, rules don't stipulate).

He also said that he never threatened the designer. He indicated that he understood that the designer was not aware of the situation, yet that line that the designer sent me from him was not a threat, despite looking, smelling, and walking like one. It was a gentle reminder, apparently, that it's everyone's duty to check with everyone else to make sure that they're in the club over there before reposting because if you don't, you can be banned.

TL;DR: That one nebulous sentence in their community rules essentially are a catch-all meaning that there is a de facto non-communications policy with a banned member except by private mail.