DJ Ms. White

Reading the banned forum is a favorite past time of ours. Though sometimes the knockout punch is the wrong tactic to take. Sucks when you hit the trainer or the "cut man" by mistake.

I love the banned forums. I read um whenever I need a good laugh or a reminder that people on the internet are generally stupid and say stupid things that just get them even more banned.

I read the new banned threads everyday and get a hoot out of at least one of them. I've actually gone back and re-read some of them because the admins in the thread just cracked me up (e.g. dex's dealings with Jet_Lag).

Kinda gruesome at times, not sure the right message is always being sent.. :/
Brian

Sometimes you wish you could say something, but the truth of the matter is you can't. You just have to mind your own business and let the admins do their work, whether you agree with it or not. I try to stay away from the banned forums for the exact reason... it's none of my business. I'm just glad I have the intelligence to follow the SIMPLE rules and not get into any problems.

The ones where people are outright dicks and get smacked down are funny. The ones where it's just a normal person wondering what's going on or not posting in the right format and then getting disrespected by admins make me wonder whether we are putting the community's best foot forward. There are many ways to say "Please answer this question" or "Please post in the right format" without being a jerk about it. I realize that adminning is hard work although in my experience adminning gaming ladders and servers I never found that I had to be disrespectful, especially if I was going to hit the ban button and they were going to be quieted anyway. For the most part I find that admins are very respectful in the banned forums, though, and on the CSS servers they seem very fair. I never brought this up before since I didn't want it to be taken the wrong way, but it's something to think about.

Hah, Draco jerks off to his Unban responses.

I always laugh my ass of on the forums, but ya Toad, i agree with you. Sometimes its just someone who is obviously confused, and then they get yelled at because of it.

More often than not, though, the guy is just a turd sandwich who gets stomped on and then torched just for in case. I lol at those.

SOmetimes circumstances just seem to be taken out of context and too far until GOOD people quit the game. THAT is what gets me. I guess recent events still have me worked up, I don't really find it amusing though :/ Guess I"ll just try to stay off hte radar so I'm not next!
Brian

Originally Posted by Toad

The ones where it's just a normal person wondering what's going on or not posting in the right format and then getting disrespected by admins make me wonder whether we are putting the community's best foot forward. There are many ways to say "Please answer this question" or "Please post in the right format" without being a jerk about it.

Well put. There are some admins that have better "people skills" than others.

What, I have a fan club? You guys are wierd. I thought it was obvious that I'm pretty unpopular around here.

Everything in the banned forum has a reason. Nothing is done in haste, or with hatred in heart. Maybe it's not the way you would treat people normally, but it's required to the job properly. Good cop, bad cop. A lot of banees are the crack whore spread-eagle on the hood of a cruiser: they'll say and do anything if they think it will get them out of trouble.

We could treat everyone nicely and say please and thank you, and hand-hold them through the whole ordeal. But if we did that, we'd unban everybody and the process would lose its meaning, and it would be chock full of people who lied to us, who didn't care, who didn't understand the server rules. And those are the kinds of people you would be playing with. The griefers, the cheaters, the lone-wolves, the TKers. The admins have the task of separating the wheat from the chaff, and the forums are our sieve.

It's nice to hear what an admin has to say about this subject. I was waiting for an admin to post on this blog. Nicely put and I understand completely. You see a completely different angle when your on the other side of the wall, which regulars do not get to see.

lol, an admin started this blog.

With all due respect, I don't think that repeated disrespect is required to admin properly and I've seen it work just fine without disrespect in the past on TPG, other games, and the real world.

I've seen admins on TPG admin without disrespecting people and get good results. For instance, T_Rattler handled this superbly, and with respect: http://www.teamplayergaming.com/show...earless-banned
Vafa is always very chill and respectful as admin. He is not afraid to use the whuppin stick, but waits until he knows someone deserves it. In this case he waits until the banned person starts acting up and only at that point gives him the smackdown, as it should be.
First thread here: http://www.teamplayergaming.com/show...om-CS-S-Server
Second thread here: http://www.teamplayergaming.com/show...but-I-m-BANNED

It takes 2 seconds to ban someone again if they get back on a server and stop following the call for a second time, then poof, that's it. I took 2 examples from CS:S admins because I know for a fact that the CS:S servers are extremely well run, and are examples of the best that a CS:S server can be, as far as I've seen. They're not full of asshats and people not following calls. They're full of happy players who respect each other, and we want more potential teammates to keep the servers popped and full of new faces. If someone doesn't follow the call once and gets banned we don't have ill will to them... they deserve to be able to see the error of their ways without someone treating them like garbage. It seems that sometimes certain admins like to see if someone will accept being disrespected, and if they don't accept being disrespected then they've got "attitude" and are themselves disrespecting TPG, and stay banned.

But in reality, who should have to accept someone talking down to them like they're some kind of idiot or criminal, when many times they haven't done some capital crime but just made a little misstep? We've seen it said many times by admins on the boards "We give a ban here or there just to wake people up to how we play at TPG and many regs/admins started off in the Banned forum" and then some other people treat everyone like a convicted felon who they have full permission to crap on. I thankfully don't really see it with CS:S admins and I only really play CS:S.

Also, my comments were not directed solely at you, Draco, please don't take it personally. If I'm not supposed to talk about this stuff let me know and I'll stop.

Sorry for the long post, apparently it's a 1000 char maxlimit in blogs. Not trying to spam you here Mr. White

I wouldn't call intentional team killing a small miss step. I have never seen someone treated with "disrespect" who didn't deserve it. People who sell out their team and either act ignorant about it or play the "my kid brother did it" card deserve to be treated roughly. It's called giving them a wake-up call.

I understand what Toad is saying, but it's not like it's THAT hard to NOT get banned here. Follow the calls, work together, simple shit. It's stuff you WILL do in your life eventually, you think you can work on a team at work and just fuck around? Heh, nope, your boss will fire you quicker than you can say ban hammer.

The people who get banned usually deserve it, and usually when someone gets banned it's after one or two kicks from the server. The kicking of someone is a warning, they don't heed the warning, they get the ugly stick. That's usually how it works. So don't worry Draco, we appreciate what you and every other admin do for us, keep up the good work everyone.

And I apologize for my sailor mouth, I have nerd rage.

I can't comment on the Source side of things, because their admin style is different because of the speed of the game and game mechanics. On the BF2 side, bans are usually the last resort, and are only handed out with clear violations of rules or situations that need to be resolved quickly. Most problems get handled with with warnings and kicks.

Like Wats says, it's not hard to follow rules, and it's not hard to fill out an unban request properly, either. People who follow procedure usually get moved onto a vote quickly and without a lot of drama. That's saved for people who cop an attitude, or lie, or expect us to do all the work, or don't care enough to put some effort into the process.

And yes, we could re-ban people easily. But a ban is supposed to be a way to teach a lesson so that the problem doesn't happen again. It would be worse to just keep letting someone make the same error over and over with no reinforcement other than the ban. Our first job as admins is to educate.

Not really. ..Well, that's not entrirely true.. Sometimes I do.