Why RPGCodex is censored at the ESF

[TheGreatGodPan]

What I didn't understand was why in discussing a parallel to Christianity the Kyoto protocol was brought up.

 

[Data4]

I'm back to wondering why every thread that has some kind of link with Oblivion and/or the ESF around here eventually turns gay...

No, wait... I think I figured that out.

-D4

 

[Hungry Donner]

There are members who have migrated to this site because of it too.

This forum is a known haven for those people who dislike the game, do you really think that pro-Oblivion people who sign up after being banned (or warned) on the Elder Scrolls Forums?


There are plenty of people out there who love the game and do their "fair share" of trolling, most of which is directed at the people who dislike the game. This sort of behavior is as unacceptable as flaming those people who like the game. I've never felt that one side was being specifically targeted, and we've warned and banned plenty of people from both sides of the coin.


We don't keep a close eye on members who dislike the game waiting for them to slip up. Disregarding any moral or ethical issues, we simply don't care enough about people to do that.

Things that do not constitute a Ban but were treated as such. Following 100% the Rules of the forum is kind of a shitty way to treat members. It makes sense to give people the benefit of doubt because 99% of the forumers there do not know the rules. Hence the questionable actions taken by mods and admins on people who tend to have different opinions but do not nessecarily mean to break rules.

Anything that you can be warned for you can be banned for. It's rare to ban someone for an extremely minor offence, we'll usually let these slide once or twice with just a notice that such things are unacceptable. However there are times someone with a 75% warning level will get repeated notices about minor offences, and will eventually be banned for one of them.

And we often give people the benefit of the doubt. It's quite common to post in a thread to explain that something is unacceptable, or to PM someone with the same sort of message. Also, as I mentioned above, with minor offences it's common to let things slide without a warning. However by the time you've been warned these times there is no doubt to benefit from - by that point either you've read the rules or you've decided to ignore them.

 

[Drakron]

In case you fail to notice we have better things to do that complain about Oblivion, we do when we heard about something we disagree with.

We had Gothic and NwN 2 recent released, there are other RPGs (even console) we talk about and most of what the Codex talk is RPGs in a general aspect, we judged Oblivion as a very poor RPG and moved on ... we "bad mouth" Bethsoft because of their design of games that are marked as "RPGs", we have been far harder on BioWare and even Obsidian takes crap from this site.

In short, we will call upon any design decision we disagree and like it or not we will judge companies in their track record.

Yes Troika got much love in here but because their games followed design decisions we agree with, Piranha Bites also gets recognition from the Codex for adding more RPG elements to their Gothic series ... Bethsoft does not because they are watering down the RPG elements in their Elder Scrolls series and because they are so completly arrogant about it.

 

[Nutcracker]

Dont forget their disgraceful act of pulling content out of the main game, then charging for it along with other crappy mods.

 

[Ahzaruuk]

Dont forget their disgraceful act of pulling content out of the main game, then charging for it along with other crappy mods.

PLEASE for the love of all things holy never revive that dead horse. I've had my fill of it months ago and would like to see it stay dead.

 

[whitemithrandir]

Oh god. The Codex has been around long before Oblivion was released, and it'll still be here long afterwards. Can somebody, anybody here, give me a GOOD reason as to why ANY of us should give a shit about this "censorship"? It's pretty simple, really. If you want to talk about Oblivion with a bunch of Oblivion fans, go post on TSF. If you want to talk about RPGs in general and other interesting shit (like Age of Decadence or Tacticular Cancer's strate game commentaries), you come to the Codex.

Not hard, ammirite? Ammirite? Huh? Huh?

 

[Elwro]

Amen, bro!

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Amen, bro!

Then lettuce commence Operation: Retardo Spam.

 

[Sol Invictus]

ESRB rates content within games, but not possible user-created content nor online fansites that may or may not be related to the game, which in any case would come under the same clause as "Game Experience May Change During Online Play". ESF's claim that the censorship is pertinent to the ESRB ruling is complete and utter bullshit.

If someone says "fuck you" in a chatroom in a T-rated game, it has no affect on the game's T rating.

 

[Hungry Donner]

In case you fail to notice we have better things to do that complain about Oblivion, we do when we heard about something we disagree with.

Yes, I know that. However that fact is at best extraneous for a discussion of why the Codex is censored on the Elder Scrolls forums, so I don’t see what why it’s relevant here.

I came here because some people don’t have better things to do then whine about the Elder Scrolls forums. Specifically they were unsatisfied with the explanations they were getting for the censor from the moderators, and I wanted to point out that our explanations are merely speculation and if they want an official response they need to contact the admin directly.

I dealt with this with my initial response and I’ve stuck around to answer some more general questions about forum moderation.



I also realize that most of the Codex users aren’t especially worked up about the auto-censor, and that most of the people who are making a big deal about this are fairly new. But whether you’re outraged or bemused by the whole situation I wanted to help clarify some things.

 

[Nutcracker]

Dont forget their disgraceful act of pulling content out of the main game, then charging for it along with other crappy mods.

PLEASE for the love of all things holy never revive that dead horse. I've had my fill of it months ago and would like to see it stay dead.

Are you saying my statement was false?

 

[Ahzaruuk]

Dont forget their disgraceful act of pulling content out of the main game, then charging for it along with other crappy mods.

PLEASE for the love of all things holy never revive that dead horse. I've had my fill of it months ago and would like to see it stay dead.

Are you saying my statement was false?

No. I just don't want to go back to the days where people were posting several different reasons of what bethesda did, most of which were either fantasy or hogwash. (One noticable one is where they thought that they made the animals attack the horse so that you would buy horse armour for it.)

 

[Data4]

Dont forget their disgraceful act of pulling content out of the main game, then charging for it along with other crappy mods.

PLEASE for the love of all things holy never revive that dead horse. I've had my fill of it months ago and would like to see it stay dead.

Are you saying my statement was false?

No. I just don't want to go back to the days where people were posting several different reasons of what bethesda did, most of which were either fantasy or hogwash. (One noticable one is where they thought that they made the animals attack the horse so that you would buy horse armour for it.)

You realize you picked the wrong place to share something that irritates you, right?

Personally, I thought the Orrery was a fucking ripoff. IT SHUD OF BEN IN TEH GAEM!@!!!

-D4

 

[OverrideB1]

I also realize that most of the Codex users aren’t especially worked up about the auto-censor, and that most of the people who are making a big deal about this are fairly new. But whether you’re outraged or bemused by the whole situation I wanted to help clarify some things.

Which you've singularly failed to do since your idea of clarification is

a) I don't know why the Codex is censored, so I can't tell you anything

and

b) I can't be bothered to find out so that I can tell you something.

I wanted to point out that our explanations are merely speculation and if they want an official response they need to contact the admin directly

Given the way that the Codex is treated like a supperating leper at the ESF and, according to you, it's a decision made by the admins that is the root cause of that: what sort of answer do you think we're likely to get... if any at all?

 

[Darkflame]

Given the way that the Codex is treated like a supperating leper at the ESF and, according to you, it's a decision made by the admins that is the root cause of that: what sort of answer do you think we're likely to get... if any at all?

Probably an instant ban

 

[Blahblah Talks]

What I didn't understand was why in discussing a parallel to Christianity the Kyoto protocol was brought up.

True, I was stretching the analogy, but I was looking for something to represent choice and consequences. To cross the bridge into science in that analogy, it would have been better to use something related to evolution, but at the time I couldn't think of how to tie that into RPGs. <shrug>

 

[Monica21]

Override, give him a break. He came here to tell you what he knows about moderating and he's giving you only what information he can give.

You don't post there anymore anyway, so is it really such a big deal?

 

[Baphomet]

You don't post there anymore anyway, so is it really such a big deal?

I'll never understand what makes this a big deal. If the people running a website are being stupid, I don't spend my time looking at it or thinking about it. (Oops, there I go being well adjusted again.)

 

[OverrideB1]

Override, give him a break. He came here to tell you what he knows about moderating and he's giving you only what information he can give.

You don't post there anymore anyway, so is it really such a big deal?

Only in as much as HD came over here to explain why there was a ban at the ESF on any mention of the Codex, and pretty much hasn't. In fact, his soujourn behind enemy lines has been a complete waste of time vis-a-vis any explaination since he neither knows the official reason, nor cares enough to find out. I fail to see the point of the exercise if he doesn't know, won't ask, or can't say...

As I said earlier in the thread, my only concerns in regard to this are

• The extremely petty and childish behaviour of the admins in their choice of the auto-censor replacement for RPGCodex
• The lack of any coherent explaination for the ban, meaning that it smacks of censorship for the sake of someone's ego
• The fact that, should any of the ESFers want a different take on Oblivion or role-playing games in general, there is no easy way for them to be directed to this site -- which once again smacks of censorship for the sake of keeping the peons ignorant of any differing opinions

I'm perfectly willing to leave it at that point, since nothing said here will change the puerile attitude of the PTB over at the ESF anyway

 

[Darkflame]

is it really such a big deal?

Yes, it is a very big deal. Bethesda has been misrepresenting their product since before release, and have been censoring anyone who tries to make the truth known. Through censorship and the resulting uncontested/disproven hype, Bethesda is able to succeed in the game-market, and not only will this success influence the direction of RPGs, it will also influence the online marketing of games, game systems, and ultimately anything else that can succeed under this new business model established by Bethesda.

Yes, today Oblivion may simply be an overhyped shitty game, sold in bits and pieces to an unknowing and forgetful public. However if we allow companies to misrepresent their products to us in such a manner while silencing our efforts to produce objective analysis and critique where they will be seen by other potential customers, then this problem of false representation is going to perpetuate far beyond simply the marketing of shitty games.

 

[denizsi]

I wonder what other words or phrases are censored. Mods must have (read-only) access to the list of censored words.

The simple and biologic word "penis" is also censored, for instance, to a completely juvenile and absurd word, which I can not remember.

How insecure and cowardly this whole thing is.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

The simple and biologic word "penis" is also censored, for instance, to a completely juvenile and absurd word, which I can not remember.

[censored]?

 

[denizsi]

It is? Well, they've changed it then. It used to be a completely different word. This was over a year ago.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Yes, they used to have "funny" censors which weren't. Now it's all [censored], apart from "motherfucker", which is, for some reason, "chinchilla-hiding".