For those unfamiliar with the Elitist Jerks website, comments such as this one appear periodically in other World of Warcraft related forums, and are a facet of the quandary currently facing the community.
Generally speaking the authors of such comments made a post on the Elitist Jerks forums and received an infraction informing them of a forum rule they had violated. The moderators of these forums include a remark regarding the nature of the violation with every infraction, and these remarks are often sarcastic. Infractions are public, and you can see Aestu’s here:
It is not uncommon for the recipients of infractions to take issue, resulting in confused or angry private messages to the moderators, or condemnations such as Aestu’s comment. Angry would-be contributors rarely return to the website.
The quandary facing Elitist Jerks is to what extent is it worthwhile to make the website more accessible. This is a nontrivial question for a website that has intentionally used harsh rules, harsh enforcement and harsh words as filters to maintain the quality of their discussions.
First off, Montegomery, you’re contradicting yourself: if the goal is to “maintain the quality of the discussions” then why do you bog down moderation with “sarcasm”?
Your strawman to the effect that anyone who disagrees with EJ’s moderation style is an “angry would-be contributor” is nonsense. It also amounts to circular reasoning, and the very fact that you apparently think it’s a worthwhile goal to make “would be contributors” “angry” both contradicts your putative goal of “making the site more accessible” and boils down to a rationalization for e-punkery.
Which is, of course, what this is really all about: an immature bully who is now crying that he doesn’t have anyone to play with.
This nonsense about EJ’s desire to “make the site more accessible” or “change the format” is nothing more than red herrings about style what is really a question of intent: how EJ’s desire to annoy and harass the community has run headfirst into its ability to appeal to that community and keep it coming back.
It’s not specifically because I was infracted that I harbor a certain viewpoint about EJ. Surely, my observations are far more detailed than would be the case was I motivated merely by some sort of grudge.
I would also like to point out that I posted under a completely different username on EJ than I did here (because that post, which I barely even remember, was made about four years ago) and there is no information specifically connecting the two usernames. So I’d like to know: exactly how did you make the connection between the two?
And more to the point, why did you go to the trouble of doing so?
For those unfamiliar with the Elitist Jerks website, comments such as this one appear periodically in other World of Warcraft related forums, and are a facet of the quandary currently facing the community.
Generally speaking the authors of such comments made a post on the Elitist Jerks forums and received an infraction informing them of a forum rule they had violated. The moderators of these forums include a remark regarding the nature of the violation with every infraction, and these remarks are often sarcastic. Infractions are public, and you can see Aestu’s here:
Infraction for zeida
It is not uncommon for the recipients of infractions to take issue, resulting in confused or angry private messages to the moderators, or condemnations such as Aestu’s comment. Angry would-be contributors rarely return to the website.
The quandary facing Elitist Jerks is to what extent is it worthwhile to make the website more accessible. This is a nontrivial question for a website that has intentionally used harsh rules, harsh enforcement and harsh words as filters to maintain the quality of their discussions.
First off, Montegomery, you’re contradicting yourself: if the goal is to “maintain the quality of the discussions” then why do you bog down moderation with “sarcasm”?
Your strawman to the effect that anyone who disagrees with EJ’s moderation style is an “angry would-be contributor” is nonsense. It also amounts to circular reasoning, and the very fact that you apparently think it’s a worthwhile goal to make “would be contributors” “angry” both contradicts your putative goal of “making the site more accessible” and boils down to a rationalization for e-punkery.
Which is, of course, what this is really all about: an immature bully who is now crying that he doesn’t have anyone to play with.
This nonsense about EJ’s desire to “make the site more accessible” or “change the format” is nothing more than red herrings about style what is really a question of intent: how EJ’s desire to annoy and harass the community has run headfirst into its ability to appeal to that community and keep it coming back.
It’s not specifically because I was infracted that I harbor a certain viewpoint about EJ. Surely, my observations are far more detailed than would be the case was I motivated merely by some sort of grudge.
I would also like to point out that I posted under a completely different username on EJ than I did here (because that post, which I barely even remember, was made about four years ago) and there is no information specifically connecting the two usernames. So I’d like to know: exactly how did you make the connection between the two?
And more to the point, why did you go to the trouble of doing so?