Alright, so I am going to add a couple of cents to this since it seems to have been a big deal lately. I also want to say that none of my opinions are personally directed towards anyone. I don't have any personal beefs, really. I consider a lot of people in here my friends and I want it to stay that way. I don't want to lose anyone over some nonsense. But I just want to say that I've found the recent change on this forum to be somewhat disappointing.
[quote="MalibuTrashDog"]Yeah honestly I haven't even personally attacked anyone since being let back. I was banned for making an inside joke to Amanda in the crush thread.[/quote]
Basically this is my whole problem with how things have been handled lately, and I don't know that this is even a fault of the entire staff as a whole but regardless I find it odd and really rather disconcerting that we are banning people for things like this when there's so many other things we could be doing and other important problems (including the person Malibu mentioned who was banned for some pretty serious crap despite posing as a "normal" member). To my knowledge nobody was offended by her comment and it was obviously a joke. That's not causing trouble and imo it was not deserving of a temp ban.
And again this all kind of cycles back to the whole Braveheart nonsense with the chatbox: sometimes people want to talk to each other and talk about things and nobody is forcing you to be a part of it. If you're not a fan of such jokes then don't join in. It's not really that complicated. There's no need to make a big deal out of it unless someone is deliberately being unwelcoming or hostile. I know that a lot of other people on this forum are friends with each other offsite and want to have discussions within their groups and honestly I'm fine with that, if it doesn't involve me then I just don't join in.
That's what a forum is. It's for talking. And if there's not any interesting conversations, then honestly, why bother?
Also to be fair, I haven't seen Amanda be deliberately hostile to anyone that didn't deserve it and things seem to have been pretty civil between most members. The only thing that maybe could have been construed as hostile was towards one member in particular who isn't exactly innocent. You're claiming that she's "harassing" him but so far nobody's really given any attention to how his behavior in the past has been harassing and he's still allowed to hang around without any real repercussions. In fact, people seem to be taking his side which I find confusing and kind of backwards. She might have gone a little far in all fairness but considering that nothing's really been done about him... yeah, of course things are going to be a bit tense and really I can't blame her (or anyone else) for that. In any case, it's a petty thing to ban someone for, in my opinion. Claws was not causing issues and in fact contributed quite a bit when I restarted the Fan Artist contest, but was banned over something from four years ago. Malibu was unilaterally banned over one post that really wasn't as bad as some of the things I've seen on here over the years. And etc.
If you want to get rid of people who are causing trouble then focus on the ones that are actually causing problems and who are actually causing issues between members. I don't think Amanda's it. In fact, her and Claws and Malibu have made this forum even more enjoyable for me and to several other members as well. I don't know who these people are who claim that they find her/her friends threatening but I just honestly don't really see it, sorry.
Lastly I just want to say that this isn't anything personal against the mod staff. Half of you I consider my friends and the other half I'd say I've gotten along well with in the past. I know that I am not a mod myself but I've been close to enough former and current mods to know how this site works and I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed in everything that's gone on lately. I know you all are great people, I'm not going to tell you how to do your job but you can do better than this. You shouldn't ban a contributing member over a personal beef and then let actual offenders who don't contribute much of anything to the forum stay. I don't find that fair and I don't think that reflects well on this site.
Again that's just my opinion. It's not personal, it's just the way I see all this. Regs brings up a good point, he was a former mod and I think he talks a lot of sense (and so has Flip - basically he summed this all up pretty well).