and i think this subforum is unnecessarily limiting the potential for forumposting to be good or interesting art by limiting thread topics to a box the size of The Palimax's imagination.

i like the moderation discussion thread, though.

*fans self* Is it me, or did it just get hotter in here?

Rapinis obsessive moderating takes the community out of the twoplustwo community. Discuss.

Wrong forum? Rapini moderates the forum over --------> that way.

Don't you know? The Palimax is really a Rapini gimmick account!!

Lee

I don't believe it; if Rapini's mod skills were that good, he wouldn't be screwing up so badly in B&M.

This is incorrect. By definition, big moderation, like big civil government, is bad. The best moderation is no moderation, or as little as possible.

Therefore, the absence of moderation is the best moderation.

"By definition"???

You're wrong.

Have you ever been part of a non-moderated Internet Forum?

They are cesspools. Feel free to go to one and start your inane threads and see how you're treated.

The lack of moderation - and the minor "nudging" I do from time to time - is a combination of low traffic, mostly good posers, and a reasonably lax attitude.

You're allowed to be a little stupid here. Just don't get full-on dumb or rude, stay fairly close to topic, and I'll leave you alone.

Right now, the occasional "play nice" reminder has kept the peace.

Moved here for discussion. -Max

Gotcha. No vague stereotypes in threads identifying droolers.

...

If you are playing at a table where the blinds are 1 and 2, it is likely that nobody at the table is terribly sophisticated about the game. And while I'm sure you have you reasons for playing, be it the casual approach you take to the game, the table selection in your area, or the amount of time you have to drive to get to the casino.... I posit that if you were the type of player who had played and studied and put in the grind in order to achieve the skills and bankroll required for a more advanced game, you'd have done so already. The reason I feel this way is that you can't build the bankroll without putting in the time, and if you put in the time, then you've built the bankroll and, more importantly, you've networked enough to get into games that might not be at your favorite casino. Those who will move up will move up, regardless of circumstances.

That better?

Palimax thinks we're a bunch of posers...

No. And you knew that when you wrote it. It's flat out rude to out the bulk of all recreational NL poker players as drooling idiots, even if you feel it's a valid observation. Drop the sentiment and move on, please.

We prefer our bull-busting vague, and our story-telling graphic.

Your original post was called to my attention as the result of it having been reported -- earning it a spot in a tiny minority of all posts here. It got all it needed -- "Hey, be nice." -- but since that doesn't seem to be enough, here's your explanation:

I don't think it's nice enough to meet the tease/taunt/annoy criteria for trolling outlined in the rules linked below:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...-12-a-1125549/

Lighten up, Francis. Sometimes, a joke is just a joke. Nobody was targeted.

Oh, c'mon, give Palimax credit for more class than that.
Just a simple spelling error.
I'm sure he meant to say "poseurs"......

Yes, my mistake...

Deleted a bunch of TomGoogle's new threads, as they were all but one endless rehashed previous threads.

Ship the censorship hate.

For one thing, this forum is not exactly hopping. The front page contains threads that are fifteen days old. It's not like a new thread is going to knock some hot topic off the front page.

And all internet forums have rehashed topics. They are otherwise known as the most important, most talked about, most relevant topics. That's why they come up frequently. It's about the situations people commonly experience. To squelch these topics is to squelch the forum's bread and butter.

And usually, each of these topics is brought up with a twist. A different location, casino, or circumstances etc. Rarely is a situation, and thus a topic, exactly like a previously discussed one.

So what now, is to distinguish this forum from the other one from which this was spawned, because people were sick and tired of overbearing moderators who micromanaged the forum and did things like close their threads?

It appears the moderators of this forum have succumbed to the very same disease the mods of the other forum suffer from. Boredom. When mods look closely at a forum every day, and find little to nothing wrong with it, they have to look harder, and find things to do, in order to justify to themselves the inordinate amount of time they spend looking.

The message they wind up sending to people though, is find something better to do than post on either of these forums.

When a lot of people get that message, and participation drops off, and it starts to affect ad revenues, maybe the management of these forums will take notice and try to do something about overzealous moderators. It is clear all these mods could use some training on what is good for a website, and how to moderate, or more accurately, not moderate, a forum.

If the owners of 2p2 chose not to invest in training these people, they will pay for it anyway in reduced traffic from disgruntled and abused users who just leave.

One of the problems is that the drop off in user participation is hard to quantify or find a reason for. Most users, unlike myself, will not complain. They just leave quietly and rarely come back. I'm sure there are already many thousands of people who don't frequent either of these forums anymore because they became disallusioned and disgruntled with some unnecessary action by the mods.

It is very disheartening to the average person to have a mod remove their thread. It is a statement that says: "What is important to you is not important to us. We don't care about what you care about, and we're not going to even give you a little bit of space or bandwidth to discuss it. Even though we have plenty to go around. Go search for a generic answer to a similar situation."

It usually doesn't take many instances of that to turn somebody completely off. People don't have to put up with abuse. There is a great abundance of alternative activities available to everyone nowadays. There are so many websites and B&M establishments competing for people's attention. It's amazing that this website is turning people away without good reason.

I don't look at the M&B forum every day, and in fact look at it very rarely and just kind of let it run on its own. I respond to post reports, and that's exactly what happened here. Another user reported your posts saying it was strange that you suddenly made a bunch of new threads and posts, all near no content or rehashed content.

I looked, agreed with the report, and deleted the threads posting you a nice PM saying why I was deleting them. No warning or infractions were given, which is unusual.

I spend about a total of 10 minutes a day on 2+2 lately. I'm not hunting down your posts. I'm not out to get you, or anyone. You should take a moment to consider that what I am doing is responding to requests for action that come from other users. Not from me. Other users felt your posting was a problem.

This forum did not spawn from people being sick of their threads being closed. They were sick of the moderators deleting their slightly off topic or non-thread enhancing posts because hey wanted to be a little more jovial and buddy buddy with each other, and the other structure was too rigid. Which I do allow; I think Matt has deleted more posts in here than I have.

Its ok to rehash a topic. I mod OOT and it has its share of it. Its not ok to post five threads of one line each asking a question that anyone using search could have answered.

It really feels like you are trying to create those threads to generate discussion. I appreciate that, even thought I'm sure it doesn't sound it from the rest of this post. Its just that this isn't the way to do it. Find new topics, or article to discuss, or even do something more than a post that is one to three five word sentences long. In general, if what you have to say fits in a tweet, its likely not a good new thread. I would love for you to help generate traffic and to create some new discussions.

It's my natural desire to respond with sarcasm, but I'll skip it.

It's fairly quiet in here, and people are mostly well behaved. I don't know what the post/moderation ratio is in here, but (sitewide spammers not withstanding) Ray and I have have combined for ONE actual warning in this forum. [Two? Meh. Who remembers...]

What little moderation I do is almost always in the form of, "Please stay on topic," "Please be nice," or "Offending item redacted due to sitewide policy."

Ray and I have slightly different standards, but I trust him implicitly to make whatever decisions he feels are best. If he deleted a bunch of posts for trying too hard -- then I figure they were worth deleting.

That said, if you feel something that was deleted is important, something you want to discuss -- then open it back up with a little more meat on the skeleton, and we'll see where it goes.

...after looking around, I might un-delete the amusingly (if not somewhat racist) titled "Tipping the Asian Bus Hostess" thread, and merge it with the other tipping nonsense thread.

I guess we now have a tipping containment thread

I didn't even realize RayPowers had closed my "Tip the Asian Bus Hostess" thread. That was not one of the 3-4 threads I started yesterday which Ray said before was the focus of his deleting attention. The Bus thread was from a few days ago, and it was already actively being responded to (as far as what passes for active in this forum.)

So now it seems, if my email notifications are correct, that thread has been combined with another tipping thread (apparently by Palimax, based on his statement above.)

The initial deletion or closing is a most egregious, outrageous, unwelcome, inexplicable, and indefensible action. The reopening makes sense, but to combine it with another thread is not an adequate remedy.

There is no legitimate or logical reason to censor these threads in any way. This forum, if anything, is so slow that one would think any reasonable discussion would be welcome, and any person participating here would be treated with respect and courtesy. And by respect, I don't mean the superficial respect of writing pleasant notes to them telling them their threads are closed. I mean a significant respect. One that honors a persons experiences, thoughts and ideas, and gives consideration to them. That that means not closing their threads.

This is a direct insult to me, and to the person who started the other thread. You have told both of us, in effect, "Your particular situations are unimportant. We'll just lump them all together into a generic discussion." Palimax even terms the other thread above as "nonsense." Way to encourage more participation here, pal. I wonder how that thread starter will feel if he happens to read that assessment from the head moderator. '

I have taken a look at the combined thread.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...opics-1156892/

It currently has 92 replies, indicating a considerable interest from all readers. However, the two topics, aside from being about tipping, have nothing to do with each other. Combining them has created a nonsensical mish-mosh. Effectively, in this configuration, both threads are ruined. This is bizarre.

The mods here, especially RayPowers, are clearly cut from the same cloth as the overbearing, micromanaging moderators this forum was ostensibly set up to get away from.

The mods here are clearly far too active. They are simply taking actions just for their own sake. For their own apparent amusement or desire to kill time, or something similar. It also is becoming increasingly apparent they have become so enraptured with their own judgement, as they rule over this little fiefdom, that they have come to think their opinions are superior to everyone else's. One thing their actions are clearly not for, is for the benefit of the posters or other readers.

Frankly, I am disgusted and disappointed.

Jesus. Get over yourself. Your threads were terrible. Just because this part of the Forum is slow doesn't mean you get Carte Blanche to make it suck. Although I do find it somewhat humorous that your bitching is a little reminiscent of the Rapini bashing. I don't post in this part of the Forum for personal reasons, but it is still part of the 2+2 community and has standards.

You use words like "clearly" and "indefensible" as if you are the final and best arbiter. You aren't. Other posters and the Mods are.

Your criticisms and long winded complaints are self serving and vapid.

Want respect for your posts?

...Post better.

Ironically, if Tom had put anywhere near the effort in his new threads as he had these posts, they would all have stayed.