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Where are the nice people online?

anaron

Member
What restriction from talking about it? You're talking about it right now.
People have been talking about it in other threads. Nobody is stopping you in general, but standard thread derailment rules apply. It doesn't make sense to go into a "x game announced for Switch" thread and pretend you're in the comments section of a YouTube video. But if it comes up, it comes up. Particularly in community threads. The only thing we said was that we're not going to have a "HOLY SHIT AMIR0X IS A PEDOPHILE" megathread.

But wouldn't it make more sense to have such a thread so it doesn't have to discussed in the corners of gaf so we don't have to shit up other threads about it?

(And I hope my posts don't come off at some bitter banned poster, I'm just genuinely appalled by the news and still confused about things/would like to discuss it more freely)
 
For a poster that the staff supposedly all hated, he sure did get treated with kid gloves.

After being demodded, Amir0x was banned a total of 11 times (not counting yesterday) from 9 different moderators with a mean ban duration of 3.4 weeks. His most recent ban (again, ignoring yesterday) was for 3 months and came with a perm warning. Although several earlier bans were given for being generally rude, the lion's share of bans were obtained when he started having full scale meltdowns about the 2016 US presidential elections.

The record for "most bans for a user who is not permed" is 23, with 19 in second place. Amir0x would have clocked in at around #35 on that chart.
 

Omnipunctual Godot

Gold Member
His history of being an awful human being does not erase his right to not be labeled a pedophile if in fact it turned out that he was not one. Just like literally anybody else.
I would normally agree, except that if you read the court documents, he literally admitted to downloading child porn for his own urges. He just thought it was okay because the children weren't engaging in sexual acts. Would you like a link to the court documents?
 

duckroll

Member
I would normally agree, except that if you read the court documents, he literally admitted to downloading child porn for his own urges. He just thought it was okay because the children weren't engaging in sexual acts. Would you like a link to the court documents?

I'm not sure what this has anything to do with what she said. Did you have trouble comprehending the sentence you quoted?
 

Omnipunctual Godot

Gold Member
I'm not sure what this has anything to do with what she said. Did you have trouble comprehending the sentence you quoted?
I may have misread it as a statement about waiting until the verdict to decide whether he should be labeled a pedophile or not, if that's not what was being said. If that is what was being said, he already admitted as much.
 

Media

Member
I'm a kind person.

You are the best kind of person.

I may have misread it as a statement about waiting until the verdict to decide whether he should be labeled a pedophile or not, if that's not what was being said. If that is what was being said, he already admitted as much.

I believe what she is saying is that the first thread, which just contained a link to a news article and a picture comparing them, couldn't be verified at the time because none of the mods on at the time knew that much about him, so they deleted it rather than risking someone getting inadvertently slandered as a pedo.

Now, however, they know it was him and he admitted to it, so the other thread was allowed to continue for 4 pages before evilore made a statement condeming his actions and locked the thread.
 

duckroll

Member
I may have misread it as a statement about waiting until the verdict to decide whether he should be labeled a pedophile or not, if that's not what was being said. If that is what was being said, he already admitted as much.

No one is waiting for a verdict. He is already permbanned on this forum. He is not welcome here because he admitted to owning child porn to the authorities. There is no room for doubt here, no one is twiddling their thumbs going "hurrr maybe..."

When the first thread was created, it was not possible to immediately verify if the person was indeed Amir0x. The thread was created to be inflammatory and could cause grave damage if it was untrue. As such it was deleted because we don't take a chance with stuff like that. That is the only thread which was delete in this process. Subsequent threads which were locked were locked because instead of shitting on Amir0x, people cannot help themselves but to want to debate about how moderation is shady, or should have known, or how we could have handled this better, blahblahblah. It's incredibly hard to have this "discussion" without it being a "let's shit on NeoGAF moderation" thread because honestly there is nothing to discuss. Amir0x turned out to be a bigger shithead most people expected. It's fucked up. I guess that's all there is to say? I dunno!
 

Dsyndrome

Member
Being civil online is unfortunately not a given. The last two years have heightened both sides regardless of whom is actually in the right.

Regarding yesterday, Amir0x could've been permabanned far before it came to what happened, dude got more fucking chances than most folks can think of getting. I'll never understand the leeway that motherfucker got that folks that were legitimately uninformed or asking questions were not given.
 

Fuu

Formerly Alaluef (not Aladuf)
Wow @ the Amir0x thing. I didn't know him personally, but it feels bizarre to see that kind of article regarding someone you saw and interacted with for years in threads of a forum.

On topic: nice people have better things to do than to waste their time on unmoderated comments sections. When my father started using the internet he noticed that by himself pretty quickly. He'd consider replying and clarifying things, until he realized it was a fool's errand.

Because comment sections are basically guaranteed to be toxic, so the toxic people flock to be toxic and the not toxic people stay away.

Toxic people are much more motivated to spread their filth than good people are to bother trying to clean it up.

Good moderation and from the media companies is how to disinfect but no one wants to pay someone to do it so here we are
That sums it up nicely.
 

Aeana

Member
I would normally agree, except that if you read the court documents, he literally admitted to downloading child porn for his own urges. He just thought it was okay because the children weren't engaging in sexual acts. Would you like a link to the court documents?

I may have misread it as a statement about waiting until the verdict to decide whether he should be labeled a pedophile or not, if that's not what was being said. If that is what was being said, he already admitted as much.

Let me be very clear about this, because there seems to be a lot of confusion or perhaps wilful ignorance:

At the second the thread was posted here, there were no court documents available online yet. All we had was that one source from a local paper. In my post, I am speaking strictly of verifying a) the authenticity of the report, and b) the identity of the person named in the report. These two things did not happen immediately.
 

Trouble

Banned
After being demodded, Amir0x was banned a total of 11 times (not counting yesterday) from 9 different moderators with a mean ban duration of 3.4 weeks. His most recent ban (again, ignoring yesterday) was for 3 months and came with a perm warning. Although several earlier bans were given for being generally rude, the lion's share of bans were obtained when he started having full scale meltdowns about the 2016 US presidential elections.

The record for "most bans for a user who is not permed" is 23, with 19 in second place. Amir0x would have clocked in at around #35 on that chart.

Damn, I've got some work to do.

I've never been banned.
 
i think it's important (in this moment of self-reflection) to take a moment and really praise the people of this board who make it, and by extension the world, a better place. i love you guys, you guys are a positive influence on my life and I'm so happy that i can interact with so many of you on a regular basis.

some people use the internet for bad things, but i think if you strip away our argumentative nature and slavish adherence to logic that you find a lot of good people on our message board, and only a few bad people.
 
Let me be very clear about this, because there seems to be a lot of confusion or perhaps wilful ignorance:

At the second the thread was posted here, there were no court documents available online yet. All we had was that one source from a local paper. In my post, I am speaking strictly of verifying a) the authenticity of the report, and b) the identity of the person named in the report. These two things did not happen immediately.
You all did the right thing.

That kind of allegation, no matter if the person in the article admits to guilt or not, needs to be verified before you let the masses run away with it.

I figure you'd do the same in any circumstance for the rest of us.

It's a fucked up sitch. Amirox parting gift.

Thanks you degenerate son of a bitch.
 
i think it's important (in this moment of reflection) to take a moment and really praise the people of this board who make it, and by extension the world, a better place. i love you guys, you guys are a positive influence on my life and I'm glad to interact with so many of you on a regular basis.

some people use the internet for bad things, but i think if you strip away our argumentative nature and slavish adherence to logic that you find a lot of good people on our message board, and only q few bad people.

Yup.

Honestly, the Mods are trying to do the job to the best of their ability. If this means having to wait until something is verified when it comes from outside the forum, then so be it. We can't devolve to witch hunts at the slightest tidbit.

Yeah, what happened yesterday did turn out to be real, and it's appalling, but we shouldn't pin the blame on the mods or anything for acting like they did.

I love you mods

you do you

fQZGqXe.gif
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
A newspaper posts an article about increased fees for being in the EU, the comment section is a dumpster fire, with people going all in with conspiracy theories and nonsense.

Someone posts a video on YouTube, and all the comments are the same.

Someone Tweets on Twitter, same thing.

How come it seems that you never see, or hear, from the people on the other side of the spectrum? Go to an Hbomberguy video, and his comment section is like 30% idiots that's mass disliking his stuff, but if you go to a Sargon video, you never see Hbomberguy's followers doing the same.

Why is this hate so one sided online?
its all explained in the last season of South Park
 

Van Bur3n

Member
What the fuck did I miss...


OoooooOOOOOOOH WOW. I gotta delve deeper into this shit.

Me oh my, dear oh dear, I missed out on quite the fun journey. What a shame. But those thread bumps, pure gold. But back on the real topic at hand, nice people are definitely a thing, OP, I can assure you that! Like all of the very interesting people on GAF. Everything is so very interesting here. OP, this site is your answer. Truly. Beautifully so.
 

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
I have made a lot of good friends from the Destiny GAF community. We are on Google hangouts/discord etc and it's an absolute joy to chat with them. I mean I'm only active on GAF and don't really visit other places so maybe I have not had much interaction with, let's say, "not nice" people.
 
there's no nice people. accept it and you can join us in the sun. we're enlightened.

After being demodded, Amir0x was banned a total of 11 times (not counting yesterday) from 9 different moderators with a mean ban duration of 3.4 weeks. His most recent ban (again, ignoring yesterday) was for 3 months and came with a perm warning. Although several earlier bans were given for being generally rude, the lion's share of bans were obtained when he started having full scale meltdowns about the 2016 US presidential elections.

The record for "most bans for a user who is not permed" is 23, with 19 in second place. Amir0x would have clocked in at around #35 on that chart.

there are people with that many bans and they weren't perm'd? i'm not saying i'm smart or anything but, like, after 10 it should be obvious they don't fit well? not saying i know the history or anything but doesn't this scream of preferential treatment?
 
After being demodded, Amir0x was banned a total of 11 times (not counting yesterday) from 9 different moderators with a mean ban duration of 3.4 weeks. His most recent ban (again, ignoring yesterday) was for 3 months and came with a perm warning. Although several earlier bans were given for being generally rude, the lion's share of bans were obtained when he started having full scale meltdowns about the 2016 US presidential elections.

The record for "most bans for a user who is not permed" is 23, with 19 in second place. Amir0x would have clocked in at around #35 on that chart.

Top 35 out of (I'm taking a guess from all my time browsing this site) thousands of bans sounds like kid gloves to me tbh. I never understood why he wasn't perm'd much earlier, he was incredibly toxic and very often so.
 

Staccat0

Fail out bailed
After being demodded, Amir0x was banned a total of 11 times (not counting yesterday) from 9 different moderators with a mean ban duration of 3.4 weeks. His most recent ban (again, ignoring yesterday) was for 3 months and came with a perm warning. Although several earlier bans were given for being generally rude, the lion's share of bans were obtained when he started having full scale meltdowns about the 2016 US presidential elections.

The record for "most bans for a user who is not permed" is 23, with 19 in second place. Amir0x would have clocked in at around #35 on that chart.
That's really interesting. I'm not gonna lie, he was definitely on a sort of informal short list in my head of people who can seemingly say whatever the fuck they want. I don't doubt that I was wrong, but the perception was there for some reason. Dunno why.

I don't think we ever even had an exchange though.
 
Top 35 out of (I'm taking a guess from all my time browsing this site) thousands of bans sounds like kid gloves to me tbh. I never understood why he wasn't perm'd much earlier, he was incredibly toxic and very often so.
GAF feels like an old boys club in some regards. Regular well known members get a whole lotta leeway in their posts. They can be rude and hostile when they wish, but get no punishment because of how long they've been here. I've seen people get banned for telling someone to f off, yet watched a regular curse someone out and get nothing. I know the mods don't mean to show favoritism, but it just naturally happens in any forum.
 

besada

Banned
That's really interesting. I'm not gonna lie, he was definitely on a sort of informal short list in my head of people who can seemingly say whatever the fuck they want. I don't doubt that I was wrong, but the perception was there for some reason. Dunno why.

I don't think we ever even had an exchange though.

He was a shitty asshole of a person, who thrived on being obnoxious and in your face. I didn't like him before I was a mod, and I didn't like him after I was a mod. I was a user here when he scammed GAF and punched his mom. I'd have been okay if he'd been permed, but, like a lot of people who deserved to be permed, he was given extra chances, presumably because he went to rehab to try and improve. We have lots of old users -- people who have been here since before GAF was GAF -- and those old users accrue what appear to be ridiculous numbers of bans compared to modern users. It's because moderators try to take into consideration the frequency of bans, not just the number.

If guy A gets 3 bans in one year, and guy B gets 10 bans in ten years, guy A is a lot more likely to get tossed, regardless of the total number of bans. The process is holistic and includes looking at a poster's performance over a long time scale, not just one post. This is a thing a lot of people don't get. They look for the post that got them permed and say "this is much less obnoxious than that other thing" and completely ignore that it's their ninth ban for the exact same sort of behavior. And the thing is, if someone really tries to improve, we're usually willing to give them another chance. There are dozens of people using alts right now that we know about. And we've left them alone because some time passed and they grew up a little, and came back and didn't repeat their old habits. Some people can't manage that.

As a long time user, Amir0x was at the end of this process. I banned him last time for three months and warned him that if he acted like a shit head when he returned, I'd perm him regardless of how long he'd been at GAF. I've done that with a lot of older members that can't wrap their heads around the fact it's not 2001 anymore and GAF is not a hundred people who all know each other anymore.

This was, of course, before anyone had a clue that he was a fucking pedophile. Like a lot of our posters, we just thought he was an asshole. Like everyone else, we were wrong. It feels awful. It also feels pretty shit to see people using it as a way to attack people because they got banned off a video game forum and there's a lot of that going on. Amir0x was not popular before this, as anyone who ever clicked a youtube link from here ought to know, so it's become quite a holiday for those guys.

Which is part of the reason not a lot of mods really want to have a deep discussion about this. Because they're as bothered as you that he was among us. But they're not willing to take the blame for shit that someone else did. And they don't want to get dragged into the ranting and raging being done by the closet psychopaths who read GAF more carefully than I do so they can cry to each other about how terrible the place is a decade after they got banned. We don't get paid and we have no interest in putting up with that shit. If people want to talk about amir0x and their shock, that's one thing, but it's another when shitbags with an axe to grind use this hideous crime as a weapon.
 
we can shout fuck amir0x from the cheap seats until the cows come home, but we let him exist with us.

I'm not saying we should have known the extent of which he was a piece of shit, but he was posting along with us, and we have to deal with that.
 

Ryaaan14

Banned
I leave nice YT comments but they don't get the same amount of likes as when I say something about blame space having five year old Big Macs under his drivers seat
 

D_prOdigy

Member
I can't emphasize enough how noticeable it is when someone on here, or other boards I frequent, are simply nice. There are so many posters I have such high opinions of because they are always really friendly and are never ever disrespectful. You never really get a suitable opportunity to say "I really enjoy reading your posts because you always seem like a stand-up guy/gal", but such posters really stand out. I really try to keep that in my mind whenever I contribute to a discussion online.
 

weekev

Banned
No one is waiting for a verdict. He is already permbanned on this forum. He is not welcome here because he admitted to owning child porn to the authorities. There is no room for doubt here, no one is twiddling their thumbs going "hurrr maybe..."

When the first thread was created, it was not possible to immediately verify if the person was indeed Amir0x. The thread was created to be inflammatory and could cause grave damage if it was untrue. As such it was deleted because we don't take a chance with stuff like that. That is the only thread which was delete in this process. Subsequent threads which were locked were locked because instead of shitting on Amir0x, people cannot help themselves but to want to debate about how moderation is shady, or should have known, or how we could have handled this better, blahblahblah. It's incredibly hard to have this "discussion" without it being a "let's shit on NeoGAF moderation" thread because honestly there is nothing to discuss. Amir0x turned out to be a bigger shithead most people expected. It's fucked up. I guess that's all there is to say? I dunno!
Sounds like it was handled admirably, no time for a POS like that and this is why Neogaf is one of the best places online. 4chan will welcome him with open arms.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
A newspaper posts an article about increased fees for being in the EU, the comment section is a dumpster fire, with people going all in with conspiracy theories and nonsense.

Someone posts a video on YouTube, and all the comments are the same.

Someone Tweets on Twitter, same thing.

How come it seems that you never see, or hear, from the people on the other side of the spectrum? Go to an Hbomberguy video, and his comment section is like 30% idiots that's mass disliking his stuff, but if you go to a Sargon video, you never see Hbomberguy's followers doing the same.

Why is this hate so one sided online?

Plenty of smaller YouTube channels I frequent have very civil comment sections with kind people posting. Really just depends!
 
Honestly, there's plenty of nice people online. I myself, even buzzed AF ATM, try to be nice/decent. Same way even IRL. Even when silver.

It's just that the most hateful among us have the loudest microphone, and thus, most people pay attention to them. It's the worst among us that ruin it for everyone else.
 

Socreges

Banned
Let me ask you a question:

What if someone made a thread that accused you of being a criminal? Not just a criminal, but of being guilty of one of the most heinous crimes. Would you prefer us to leave that thread there while the story has not been verified, potentially ruining your life or your reputation? Or would you like us to perhaps do some due diligence before allowing a forum post to ruin your life?

We would do this for anybody, because information spreads like wildfire on the internet, and even incorrect information has a habit of sticking around. At the time the thread was posted, we did not know if it was accurate, and it was a very serious, life-ruining charge. We took the time to verify that it was real, and since it has been verified, we have allowed people to discuss it reasonably.

As for why there is no ongoing thread for people to simply post "UGH" "I KNEW IT!" "WHAT A PIECE OF CRAP!" etc. Honestly, what's the point?
Name, location and pic had all been matched in that thread, I think, but I can understand it being deleted. You want to be 100% sure that it's accurate; otherwise it's a perfect case of doxing gone wrong.

That said, having one thread for this seems appropriate to me. For one, awareness. Many who were inactive during that short period of time who would consider this newsworthy won't know. And the other thing is that for those who did find out in time, and want to discuss, they end up using the various corners of GAF.

There's an appetite, I'm sure, to move on immediately and not deal with it too openly. What good can be done? I get that.

there are people with that many bans and they weren't perm'd? i'm not saying i'm smart or anything but, like, after 10 it should be obvious they don't fit well? not saying i know the history or anything but doesn't this scream of preferential treatment?
I've been here since (and before) NeoGAF's inception. 13 years, I guess. And I've got at least 12 bans. But only a few of those, imho, were warranted. Strangely enough, one of my bans years ago was for calling Amir0x "pathetic"!
 
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