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Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

Has the truth struck a nerve? Are you offended by a made up contamination between numpty and bumpkin that does not even hold a well-defined meaning? I do not care to be popular with censors and dictators; if you suppress freedom of speech – and I’m not implying that YOU are – then you are nobody’s friend, and in fact serve no purpose in life.

The reason for my suggestion is this. This account is slightly more than one week old, and I am already fed up with having posts removed that are completely inline with the terms of service. To make matters worse, I can’t even attempt at avoiding this from happening again because I have no clue who removed them or why.

I appreciate your taking up the discussion and requesting people to edit, rather than putting words into their mouths by editing. Kudos.

No Time To Play4 years ago(+1)

I have to remind you that this is a private venue, where we are allowed to speak at the discretion of admins; if they decide to silence us, that's not censorship; it's out host showing us the door. And in my experience, people who cry censorship in our community invariably turn out to have disturbed others by being insulting or spreading hate. Which, as it turns out, is in fact against out terms of service. Hope this helps.

By the way, a quick look at the moderation logs for the past two months doesn't find any post with your name on it.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

You don’t seem to understand what censorship means. If the host decides to open up a public forum, it is not up to him to decide who can say something and who cannot say the same thing. Observing your attitude and carelessness with vocabulary, I have little doubt that I will have a run in with staff soon enough, that will hinge on an interpretation of the terms of service. But I assure you the multiple posts that have been removed so far, whether this moderation has been logged or not, were not against the terms of service. I take exception to the generalisation that people who call out censorship on a platform notorious for harboring woke SJW developers who have been spit out from all other platforms, are “invariably in your experience” insulting or hateful. That seems like rather an insulting and hateful generalisation to make… Then again, it relies on what little real “experience” you may possess.

No Time To Play4 years ago

I understand very well what censorship means. It refers to the suppression of speech by the state. Itch is a private venue. You're on somebody's private property here. And the host can show you the door without having to give a reason.

I never claimed the deletions weren't recorded. Not all log entries include the username. And I qualified my earlier statement with "in my experience", without referring to any specific people. You on the other hand have found it appropriate to insult me, our admins and pretty much all other creators on the platform.

You're on thin ice here. Don't mistake kindness for weakness.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

I know very well what censorship means, and it extends well beyond the state. There are some interesting lawsuits ongoing about whether or not FaceBook and Twitter as private companies providing public fora can censor people. You would do well to take note.

Another example, there used to be many restaurants with home rules, such as ‘no shirt, no tie, no service’, or ‘only whites’. Notice how in most countries this is no longer allowed. As soon as you make your private property a public forum, you relinquish the right to discriminate who gets to speak there within the law. Even assuming you can enforce, the terms of service as law, it is not up to moderators to apply restrictions to speech in keeping with the terms of service.

I have not insulted anyone, yet, though you really would love me to go there, wouldn’t you?

Don’t mistake my patience for bootlicking, I know which one of us is playing with fire.

No Time To Play4 years ago

Funny that. We're neither Facebook nor Twitter. Restaurants where I live can and do select their customers. It's apparently fine under EU regulations, which if anything are stricter than in most places. And you're confused about the role of a moderator: keeping the conversation civil is exactly what I'm supposed to do. This, too, is part of free speech. Not that you have a right to free speech in what is, once again, a private venue.

Also, you don't seem very patient, or aware of who's playing with fire here.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

There are many things you seem to be significantly less aware of. Try me.

Free speech absolutely applies in private venues. And you would be hard put, to find any country where you are allowed to remove someone from a restaurant because you don’t like the colour of their skin, for example.

No Time To Play4 years ago

One is however allowed to remove anyone from anywhere for being a disturbance the way you are now, in any civilized country. Even from a state institution.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

Absolutely not. Quite the contrary in fact. You should go out and try it from the opposite perspective sometime. You might enjoy it, and at least find it informative.

All this shilly-shallying is all quite cute, but it does not help me any further with the actual crux of the matter, only expose one or other of our semantic shortcomings.

I do not mistake your “kindness” for weakness, there is nothing to mistake. You have shown not one iota of goodwill or even the faintest interest in performing your job as a moderator as of yet, which is to uphold the terms of service – not to enforce whatever whim you may feel at any given moment. Such as the absurd notion that I am disturbing the peace.

What you are going to do now, is dig up the logs of all moderations of any kinds to my user content. And then we will walk one by one through each, to see whether they are justified under the terms of service. And if they are not, you will restore my posts. You will then pass on the message that there needs to be significantly more feedback provided when dismissing/addressing reports and when moderating content.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

I appreciate that digging through the logs may be taking you some time, especially if no user identification is tabulated therein. Since I have more entertaining ways to waste my time than waiting around though, feel free to post the relevant logs here or send them to me. Or if you have a strong preference, you can also make an appointment to look them through with me live.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Let me help you with your job. Here are three examples of removed items all pertaining to the same game. Is that a complete overview? No, far from it. But it does serve as a nice example of something fishy going on, since it all pertains to the same game.

At this location, you should find a question about why the executable is asking for additional admin permissions while installed inside a sandbox. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet it is not there…

In this topic, before null’s post, you should find a post showing scan results marking that same games executables as potential malware. Note how I made clear that I am not sure that it is malware, only that the program behaves unexpectedly, shows up as a bad actor in both Norton and MalwareBytes, and is too big to upload to VirusTotal. This post is also mysteriously missing.

Finally, my review of that game went missing, in which I pointed out the above hurdles in getting it installed. This also got removed, rating and all.

Assuming there is nothing wrong with the executable, that is all well and good, because you do not want to alarm people unnecessarily. But wouldn’t it make more sense to reply dispelling doubt. Or if you delete it, to at least respond to my report. But no… And so it goes frequently in my short time here. Not a promising experience. Combined with your blasé arrogance, very off-putting, in fact.

No Time To Play4 years ago

Right. The first link points at a game's comments. We don't moderate those; creators do. You'll have to take it up with them. As for the second link, someone reported a post in that topic for unjustly accusing them of spreading malware. I didn't handle that report. Guess one of my colleagues was more firm. Speaking of which, null is right: you should report a game through the proper channel if there's a problem with it.

Either way, I see you continue to insult the stuff with every post you make. That can only make everyone less and less inclined to side with you.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

Well, if your job is so loathesome to you, better get back on the dole, hadn’t you? Or perhaps learn a real trade? Or simply manners?

So what you are telling me, is that you do not keep a log of the moderation creators apply? That is a recipe for disaster. Worse still, you do not keep logs of what your fellow moderators have done, such as deleting a post for false flags? Worse and worse.

No Time To Play4 years ago

I don't know if there is a moderation log for game comments. I said we don't moderate those. For the community we do have a log that preserves all moderation actions. It's just that not all entries record the name of the affected user. Please pay attention. Not that we're under any obligation to keep any kind of logs, or review them.

Theotokos Derzhavnaya Bless Putin4 years ago(+1)

Article 5 of the GDPR actually would seem to suggest you are accountable for any content you host and any decision as to its moderation. Would this not require some form of logging?

Is there any user identifying information whatsoever stored in the community log, that would link post on which actions are performed to the user who originally made them?

Null may be right about the appropriate procedure of reporting, however he is not right in removing selectively my comment but not Dr-Flay’s for doing the same thing.

No Time To Play4 years ago

I did say, twice now, that moderation logs record who performed the action. Not always who made the affected post. And other users haven't been causing a disturbance. You have.

Speaking of which: seeing how you seem intent on telling us how to do our jobs, I'm going to do just that and put an end to this farce. Have a good day.