The state of NeoGAF

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After a couple of days, I need to speak up. I wanted to gather my thoughts and write this without being angered or confused by the chaos on this website. Everything in this post is probably already said, there’s probably nothing new, but I needed to say it myself. Not to wake the flame, not to troll or end with a blow, I need to say this because I don’t want to stay silent.

I don’t want to talk about NeoGAF as a website, the complaints about strict moderation, its culture or its future. I’m aiming my comments at EviLore. First off, I want to say that I’m generally a person that wants to hear all the facts before drawing to a conclusion, it’s something I learned throughout the years on NeoGAF, initially as a lurker, later as a poster, and I’m happy about that! GAF brought me a lot, it taught me about social issues I’d never heard of before, gave me windows into other people’s lives and views, in short: it broadened my spectrum.

Then came last week. The allegations came out and chaos ensued on this very forum. Honestly, most –if not all- of the allegations and newly found information were completely new to me, so I was in shock. But like I said before, I want to hear all the facts, give everybody a chance to make statements and share information. This by no means is a nod to ‘both sides’, but rather a way to base my conclusion on all the available information. So I didn’t grab my pitchfork, I waited. And waited.

EviLore, it took you three days to give a statement. Two, if you want to count your comments to Klepek for his Waypoint article. I can’t even imagine what was going on in your head, no matter what the truth is. The panic of losing your life project, watching your team run off, the confusion, the possible anger. All this time I was waiting, and then you came with your statement, as seen on this first page.

That is your story. I’m angry. I know that NeoGAF isn’t synonymous with EviLore, but you are the leader, whether people like that or not. With that leadership comes a responsibility to keep your community together, because without a community there is no NeoGAF. You knew everybody in this community would read that statement, you had to anticipate their reaction. Maybe you did, but if you did, your view of your community might be different from what the community expected of you.

Nowhere in your statement do you refer to the recent allegations in detail. You don’t mention the shower allegation, the way we were told you reacted, details about those nights, facts about your supposed relationship, counter stories, any way to prove that what is being said is incorrect. Even worse, you only choose to attack, instead of explain. Look back at your statement, only the first paragraph (2 lines) are dedicated to your side of the story. The other 26 lines are dedicated to behind the scenes information, damage control and future plans. In those two lines, you claim you have evidence, but you provide none.

So here we are. I’ve been patient, I wanted to hear your story, but you didn’t say anything. At all. Now, this is happening. People, including me, are drawing conclusions with the available information. Either way, I do blame you, because if –and only if- you are in fact not guilty of anything, you do have yourself to blame for the consequences of your (in)actions and (lack of) statements.

It’s been a really sad couple of days, watching this community fall apart. I don’t know what will happen, if I’m allowed to even say this without being banned, if the community will survive, but I can do one thing. After being approved, I started making gifs, because animating is my life. If this is my final message, I want it to end with one of my first animations, but updated to reflect this situation and how I feel it has been handled. Full circle. I do mean it when I say this: thanks for all the great years.

C3NCkjc.gif
 
If you think I could have posted something akin to "Join this new forum because this current place sucks" prior to the drama you are being intentionally obtuse.

If you want to get into tasteless behavior...

im thinking we have our wires crossed here. i am talking about reset e r a, they are apparently banning any discussion of neogaf. and EL. the reasons for its existence.
 
I just wanted to clarify something. I think it's ridiculous that when debating as a junior member, some folks will take the easy way out and ridicule the junior member status. I wasn't sure how I came across.

"Don't be a dick" is a good moderation tenet, and it should be consistent at any site. Unfortunately, removing all topical discussion removes tho need to even meet opposing viewpoints halfway. In time, this forum will become as much of an echo chamber as it purports others to be. There is no such thing as a pure gaming forum, especially now, because doing so is implicitly casting its lot with a certain viewpoint.
 
People that post on both will be shamed to death I imagine.
that would reflect poorly on the person who chooses to judge based on where you speak and not what you actually have to say. I have no qualms dismissing such attempts. And I am very much in control of who receives ad revenue and support from my browsing habits.

"I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me."
 
im thinking we have our wires crossed here. i am talking about reset e r a, they are apparently banning any discussion of neogaf. and EL. the reasons for its existence.

Oh, I thought that was going on here. Either way I don't see an issue. I can understand the reasoning either way.
 
You mean that over the weekend bots somehow cracked the forum and flooded the OT with thousands of threads devoted to calling him out? Because that's how many you would need with modern servers.

He could have kept one thread open and left it all there.

He could have explained to his moderators or gotten temp mods to handle the situation.

He could have used any number of forum tools to just lock any thread that referenced him.

You have dozens of options available to you as admin.

I suppose. At the rate things were going, I can understand how it could be too much to handle in the middle of that chaos.
 
Come out and say what? Are you going to pretend that moderation never went beyond content and instead frequently crossed over to tone? That people weren't frequently dogpiled on and baited? That nobody ever caught a ban they didn't deserve? OT was fucking bizarro land during election season.
Will you stop beating around the bush and say what you want to say?
 
NeoGAF has never filtered community Discords where people can organize, play together and chat, but now they do, which is ridiculous, to say the least.

That's probably because the forum is littered with Discord requests now. So not that ridiculous when taken within context to the current state of GAF.
 
Really? Why don't you go there and try it. See how long before you are kicked out.
I don't need to try, I've done this with multiple businesses and spaces. I use yelp before ordering, I pull up Amazon while inside Best Buy, and compare prices at the farmers market with other locations.
 
"Don't be a dick" is a good moderation tenet, and it should be consistent at any site. Unfortunately, removing all topical discussion removes tho need to even meet opposing viewpoints halfway. In time, this forum will become as much of an echo chamber as it purports others to be. There is no such thing as a pure gaming forum, because it is implicitly casting its lot with a certain viewpoint.

I would actually like to see a social forum that is essentially what GAF's OT was. I disagree with the great majority of people's opinions on GAF, though I never thought it was my responsibility, nor was I ever interested in changing minds. With that being said, I always felt like the vast majority of users were respectful in their exchanges with one another, in a way you certainly wouldn't see on GFAQs, 4chan, or even Reddit.
 
That's probably because the forum is littered with Discord requests now. So not that ridiculous when taken within context to the current state of GAF.

Trying to block people from sending discord links won't stop people from talking about it. It's another stupid thing that just makes things worse. Let the people who want to join other communities leave. That's the very least he owes people after destroying like half of this website at the very least and fracturing almost every community
 
That's probably because the forum is littered with Discord requests now. So not that ridiculous when taken within context to the current state of GAF.

Didn't realize you can "litter" PM inboxes, that's quite interesting, that sure would take a tole on the servers, having a link on a PM.
 
Will you stop beating around the bush and say what you want to say?

I have no idea what you want me to say, or expect me to say. I am someone gravely disappointed with what has happened, how it was handled, and how things are playing out. But I'm not going to leave and cede GAF to GG types. Make up your mind about how you want to proceed and follow through, the same as everyone else.
 
I don’t understand how we lost OT and political discussion as a result of the scandal. What do they have to do with each other?
 
I popped in here for one purpose, and that is to leave a message for the mods who have had to manage this forum these past two days.

It's best to just ask a mod directly.

On top of that PM's no longer allow links & have a 10 min timer, assumedly to shut down discord information sharing so people can hook up with their old communities, disappointing to see it coming to this. :(

I don't know about links being banned in PM's. Possible theres a word in the link thats blacklisted, not sure.

Can we have the Star Trek Discovery thread moved to Community so people can access it again? Thanks
It's best to ask a mod directly, probably. Ban-related things might be more important at the moment though, so who knows how long it takes.

I don't understand how we lost OT and political discussion as a result of the scandal. What do they have to do with each other?
For the moment? Lack of moderation.
 
I don’t understand how we lost OT and political discussion as a result of the scandal. What do they have to do with each other?

Absolutely nothing. He used it as a scapegoat to deflect criticism away from himself and unsurprisingly because people had a huge beef with poligaf it actually worked
 
It's best to just ask a mod directly.






It's best to ask a mod directly, probably. Ban-related things might be more important at the moment though, so who knows how long it takes.


For the moment? Lack of moderation.

What mods? They are all anonymous now. You can't ask anyone.
But nothing is stopping them from leaving.
People want to leave and go to the communities they have helped built all these years, but they can't leave if they can't get into the communities because Evilore is supressing any and every talk about them in any way, in such a way that people can't even invite others for game groups to organize matches and use voice chat.
 
To clarify one thing, links have been banned from Private Messages for a while. This is potentially a security feature. Either way, nothing stopping users from sharing emails in PMs and then taking discussion off site.

That's probably the best way to go, so whoever decides to remain and put up with the shenanigans here can at least have room to breathe outside all the migration talk. Then maybe the forum can go back to focusing on the underpinning of what most of this drama was inspired by besides the actions of its leader: to reclaim gaming from all the minority groups and interests that have "invaded MY hobby" in the last few years.

That's about all I have to say about that. Peace.
 
For a while meaning, at least a year ago. I noticed when trying to organize something completely unrelated.
why can I say reddit without it being censored?
Illuminati.gif
I've gotten links via PMs several times over the last year.
I don't post much anymore, so I can't say if this is something that is periodically deactivated or not. The last time I tried was probably at least a year ago.
 
I don't understand how we lost OT and political discussion as a result of the scandal. What do they have to do with each other?

This would look bad for any forum, but it looks worse for GAF since we have a reputation of standing up for women and banning sexist speak. Where those discussions became most heated was in OT. OT allowed GAF to appear much more political. This is why so many other sites are having a field day with the news. Removing OT is an attempt to prevent discussion of this and other controversial topics and get the board back to some sense of normalcy. Of course, not everyone will agree that it is the best move.
 
Okay maybe a dumb question but...

Like evillore or not, why is the knee jerk reaction to take the allegations as true from the get go?

Shouldn't there be a stage of investigation and getting to the bottom of things? Seems like in this day and age, a woman can accuse a man of sexual assault, and whether he did it or not doesn't matter, the accusation enough is to condemn him.

Not saying these women are lying, but it's possible that some are for a quick buck. Sexual assault is horrible, but just because someone is accused of something, no matter how horrible, doesn't mean they did it.

I don't know the details, just seems like a knee jerk reaction alot of the time, and people wanting to condemn someone regardless of the validity of the info being provided. Smells like a lot of confirmation bias and people just waiting for a crusade to jump on as long g as it fits a certain narrative...

My observation as a casual member. I have no stake in this.
 
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