cvx has replied here, and I'm sure there will be a good resolution on the RE6 issue. WE ARE FRIENDS AGAIN! I'll be out of town for the next while, so another mod is going to take point on any other moderation stuff related to the RE6 thing.
Now, for the other stuff...
(Although I'm not the mod involved) I'm sorry on behalf of moderation generally that there was a breakdown in communication or that anyone felt or perceived that people were doing "favours" for others. No one is owed anything.
There's a bit in the terms of service: " Please keep in mind that there is no tenure granted on this forum--your post count or association with other posters does not protect you from being banned." -- the same goes for other non-banning stuff; just because you've been here for a long time or you know people does not entitle you to anything different than anyone else. I can't say that there's never ever been a case of someone being treated differently, but we try our best and I hope you'll trust me personally that
by and large our moderation is pretty even-handed and moderators police each other.
As far as I can tell this situation was mostly a failure in communication rather than any kind of deliberate abuse. If you perceived it was the latter, that's our fault and I hope in the future we do a better job. I spoke with other mods who were available this morning to try to figure out where to go from here. If, in the future, a moderator seems to contradict any of this, please politely point them toward this post and encourage them to consult with other moderators.
This post can serve as a general policy for future OT disputes (unrelated to the RE6 issue):
-
It is important that people work together on OTs. No one should claim an OT because they feel they are owed it. No one "deserves" it more than someone else. People should work together. If more than one person wants to do it, users should sort out
amongst themselves who does the thread primarily, and should be willing to take contributions from other users. If a user really, sincerely feels that things can't be worked out with other interested parties (if one person is not responding or if two users have very different ideas for a thread and are not willing to post them both with one as an "alternate" OP inside the OT), they should contact a mod. User-to-user communication should be the first step.
- Some people have claimed OTs as a sort of historical matter; either they claimed it before this thread was created, or they didn't know about this thread and claimed it somewhere else, or they did an OT for a previous game in the series and want to follow up but didn't know they had to make it explicit. This is going to happen. People who "get their first" are not "owed" the thread, but neither are people who "officially claim it in here". This whole thread should be viewed as a platform for communication with other users, not a way to exclusively claim something.
If a conflict comes up in who should work on something, please work together.
- Please don't feel hurt if you have to work with someone else. It doesn't mean you love the game any less, and it doesn't mean your contributions to GAF or to that thread aren't valued. It's a big community. Besides, if you feel like you have something to add that doesn't fit into the |OT| of the game, you can always reply with content; like, if you make some forum avatars and they don't end up included in the |OT| OP--no reason why you can't reply to the thread with them.
If in the future the size or nature of GAF shifts in such a way that anything I've said here is out of date, I will do my best to update or remove this--if I'm not around, another moderator or administrator will do the same. I worked with several other mods to come up with this, but not every mod was available at the time, so others might have some input or additional pointers. If you have questions or comments, please reply here. Moderators including myself will delete future replies which are primarily "venting" about moderation or gossip-type stuff--you guys can do that off-site, there's no need to derail this thread.