Banned: Fenryder Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Fenryder has been banned due to his behavior in the We Need a Stickied Thread To List All the Mods topic.

A summary of the thread contents for those who do not wish to read the thread in its entirety:

• Fenryder requested a sticky thread where mod authors could post links to their own mods
• The request as expressed was denied
• He was told that a mod list that is compiled and maintained so that the mods listed there are summarized and introduced to give an idea of what they are like would be welcome
• Fenryder did not find this acceptable and restated his demands
• Argument with various posters ensued, involving also accusations of misconduct on the part of the moderator staff and Illwinter wrt his request for a list
• The rationale behind the counter-suggestion was explained again and Fenryder was warned to behave
• Fenryder continued to escalate the argument and repeating the same accusations, which had already been addressed.
• Fenryder was banned.

Anyone who wishes to see the whole chain of events is free to go and read the linked thread. If you feel the sentence was unduly harsh, please post in this thread. I believe in transparency and accountability and in this way everyone can check the events and form their own opinion on the basis of the evidence. We will not have unexplained Star Chamber courts on this forum, because the only thing they accomplish is fomenting mistrust between forum staff and normal members.

Note that moderation decisions such as this may be appealed to Illwinter, but there should be clear evidence of staff misconduct before doing so.

If you feel the sentence was unduly harsh, please post in this thread.

Are you also interested in posts supporting your decision and saying your eminantly reasonable and an excellent person overall, or just dissenting opinions?

Quite frankly after looking at the thread I feel that the ban was justified. If you want to be snarky it will catch up with you. Play nice...

Thank you Edi. I am glad you responded firmly. The history of the Dominions community is full of drama so it's very reassuring to find a clear statement of the problem behaviour, a clear warning, and then a firm action.

Ikeren wrote:

If you feel the sentence was unduly harsh, please post in this thread.

Are you also interested in posts supporting your decision and saying your eminantly reasonable and an excellent person overall, or just dissenting opinions?

This thread was left open so that people can post if they feel they have something to say. Whether in support or in dissent.

However, it is an important distinction to also give the opportunity to voice dissent without needing to fear that there is going to be retaliation for disagreeing. That is too often the case on internet forums, which is why I spelled it out specifically.

Thank you Edi.
No one is denied any rights, as long as there is someplace they can be practiced. Some restrictions to make a friendly place is to be expected in THE OFFICIAL Dom4 FORUM. I offered him plenty of options elsewhere publicly and privately. There is no reason to be so forceful trying to change everyones opinion on their own forum.

Is he permabanned? He was acting like an asshole. but maybe later he might realize this and apologize. I say err on the side of clemency.
Also, his idea was pretty cumbersome. Later, when more mods have been developed, hopefully someone will compile a nice list (I'd do it myself, but I'm useless) that doesn't involve going through multiple pages with an unreliable categorization (better to sort by what a mod does than by whoever made the mod).
Edit: I'm not useless after all! Here's my compilation thread

Edited by: brxbrx

brxbrx wrote: Is he permabanned? He was acting like an asshole. but maybe later he might realize this and apologize. I say err on the side of clemency.

Anyone can have a bad day and post something they later regret. But Fenryder moaned for two days straight that neither Edirr or a kind mystery volunteer (yourself by the looks of it brxbrx. Good job on the mod list!) would do what he wanted.

Edirr gave him a fair and clear warning to cease his current approach, but a few days later Fenryder returned and continued moaning in a carbon copy manner ignoring Edirr's warning. That is not someone having a bad day that is someone who cannot handle not getting what they want like a spoilt child. Also at no time did Fenryder apologise for his manner despite having several days to reflect on his attitude between his warning and banning. Zebras don't change their stripes and I do not see why the whole community must suffer that kind of attitude while hoping one day for a miracle of nature to happen.

Thank you Edirr for acting swiftly and not letting the problem fester (the clear and transparent reason for the banning is also excellent and preferable to keeping matters behind secretive closed doors)

Edited by: SixHereEightThere

Edirr wrote: However, it is an important distinction to also give the opportunity to voice dissent without needing to fear that there is going to be retaliation for disagreeing. That is too often the case on internet forums, which is why I spelled it out specifically.

This is very much appreciated. As a muck-raker (in the progressive and hopefully positive sense), I approve.

Edited by: Morsigil

The problem in my opinion is that at some point of the thread there was no necessity to continue answer more, and then the thread would have died naturally. But mods or other figures wanted continue learn him the right behavior and the right way to see the problem posed by the thread. But was it useful?

In my opinion the ban should have been avoided by stopping answer him some posts before the ban. One point isn't fully clean at my eyes, it's on start some of first posts let feel there's a community against him and that help nothing.

Now for the suggestion of the thread itself, yeah as explained in the thread if nobody is maintaining the first post to recapitulate mods posted in the thread, then it's not a solution. And if there's nobody to do it you can't force anybody do it no matter their reasons.

Edited by: JustForDownload

Excellent points.
I feel that him wanting a list with nobody maintaining was for his mods to be listed first and never move.

JustForDownload wrote: The problem in my opinion is that at some point of the thread there was no necessity to continue answer more, and then the thread would have died naturally. But mods or other figures wanted continue learn him the right behavior and the right way to see the problem posed by the thread. But was it useful?

In my opinion the ban should have been avoided by stopping answer him some posts before the ban. One point isn't fully clean at my eyes, it's on start some of first posts let feel there's a community against him and that help nothing.

Now for the suggestion of the thread itself, yeah as explained in the thread if nobody is maintaining the first post to recapitulate mods posted in the thread, then it's not a solution. And if there's nobody to do it you can't force anybody do it no matter their reasons.

This is a misrepresentation of the action. amuys made a very short post linking a resource:

amuys wrote: There's Sombre's MC Compatibility which has most of the major nation mods.

This is in no way someone pushing an agenda but it received a nasty reply from Fenryder. Prior to that, some people, including myself had been finding Feynryder's posting to be rude and aggressive in numerous threads. But those were not what caused the final banning. It was caused by his very excessive response to amuys after a few days of quiet (when no one posted and perhaps like me wanted to let it die down.)

JustForDownload wrote: The problem in my opinion is that at some point of the thread there was no necessity to continue answer more, and then the thread would have died naturally. But mods or other figures wanted continue learn him the right behavior and the right way to see the problem posed by the thread. But was it useful?

In my opinion the ban should have been avoided by stopping answer him some posts before the ban. One point isn't fully clean at my eyes, it's on start some of first posts let feel there's a community against him and that help nothing.

I had considered the matter closed by the end of the second page when Fenryder started up the exact same thing again.

The only thing that might have helped would have been locking the thread and giving him a warning. However, he entirely ignored the fairly strongly worded and public first warning he had been given, so giving a second one would have served no purpose. Locking the thread in conjunction would only have kicked the problem down the road until things would have flared up in another thread later.

Furthermore, he chose to deliberately lie about and misrepresent my position on the moderation policies and management of the modding forum here, after I had already explained, in detail, why I did not do as he demanded. When he was warned the first time, the possibility of being banned if he does not change his behavior was specifcally brought up as the most likely outcome.

When someone so blatantly behaves like that, I'll ban them without a second thought. As well,giving a warning and then failing to carry out the promised retribution for continuing the offending behavior only serves to encourage further violations.

In my experience, anyone who behaves like that is never going to change their behavior. The Dominions forums (here at Desura, at Steam and at Shrapnel) are not the only forums I have moderated, though they have a thankfully small share of real trolls. In other forums where there have been a lot more, I have seen behavior like his more often than I care to count, in both more subtle and more blatant varieties. The one consistent thing about all those cases has been that it never ended until the offender was banned.

Does it feel good to finally be allowed to moderate your own games' forum?