It's disappointing to see that the "top dog" at twoplustwo has no people skills. You jumped the gun on this one and deep down you know that. DN never has been and never will be a serial spammer. Your actions have actually created more spam than anyone on this site, hence this 20+ page of garbage (but maybe that's secretly what you wanted to achieve). Ultimately you guys are going to lose out here and fully deservedly so.

Hi dtrii:

I want to follow up a little more on your post. We have approximately 150 volunteer mods, and they are essential for this site to function well. In addition, we in 2+2 management are grateful for the help they give us.

But is our moderation system perfect? No it's not, and we do review our general guidelines for moderation every so often. However, except for these general discussions, it's unusual for me to get involved with direct moderation. That authority is delegated to Mat Sklansky. The only reason I got involved at all concerning Negreanu is that the specific mod who did the actual banning, who I know well, called me at 2:00 am Wednesday morning to get my approval since it was a person important in poker.

I also want to address the benefit we get from Daniel Negreanu posting here. Over the past year, we got approximately 7,000,000 posts. That's a lot. Daniel Negreanu made, by my count, a total of 57 posts. So while I agree that in terms of what's good for our overall traffic, a Negreanu post is worth more than a typical post, in the overall scheme of things, I think he's over estimating his total value to 2+2.

Even if we were to give a Negreanu post a weight of 100 relative to a typical post, it still comes out to 5,700 versus 7,000,000. That's not much.

However, what Negreanu does do is to create a lot of interest in many things poker. He does this through many of the other things he does and then our users do post about some of this. So in this sense Negreanu is important relative to what appears on the forums, especially News, Views, and Gossip (which is this forum). But wouldn't this be happening anyway?

Best wishes,
Mason

has it been mentioned that right about now is a good time to start up a brand new poker discussion forum?


with the ridiculous policies of this board getting more and more strict. DN is gone for good and others will follow. ( i notice viffer agreeing with DN publicly)

this place pretty much sucks with 99% of the stuff total trash and awful jokes.... not exactly user friendly due to the dumb rules....

somebody take advantage.

I believe you're making assumptions with no foundation to make those assumptions. First, we rely on our moderators to make these kind of decisions. So when a moderator, especially one we know well, contacts me (which by the way is highly unusual since I don't normally get involved in the moderation) and explains to me what is happening, we usually go along with what the moderator recommends because we trust the moderator to be accurate. But in this case I did tell him to reduce the ban from three days to only one.

As for whether Negreanu would be posting a lot of ads if we allowed that, this is something I don't know. I've met Negreanu but hardly know him at all, and have never had any sort of real conversation with him although we did exchange some emails over ten years ago.

But I do know that when people self promote, it's our experience that if we don't stop them most (of them) will continue to do so. Now this doesn't mean that would be the case here, but we don't know that. Perhaps if I knew Negreanu better my conclusion would be the same as yours.

However, from listening to the QuadJacks show, Negreanu claimed that he did not understand our rules were being violated. But our moderator indicated to me that Negreanu had received and read the pm that was sent to him after the first post that was deleted went up, and we assumed that it should be clear to Daniel at that point in time that our rules were being violated. So I assume this is where the disconnect occurred.

Anyway, to finish, I have sent Negreanu a pm with a proposal that I think can bring all of this to a conclusion. So we'll see what happens.

Mason

PS: I want to ad one more comment. In 1987 I self-published our first book, and at that time, we were a tiny company. Today, approximately 25 years later, we have grown into a very successful publishing company as well as a successful Internet company, and during all these years, I have had to work with a lot of people. This includes 20 different authors, employees and independent contractors involved directly with 2+2, lots of people who represent other businesses that we deal with -- we've been with the same printer for 19 years and have done a huge amount of printing with them, plus they now handle our digital books as well, we've had the same account for many years, the same attorney since 1987, and so on. So I suspect that if my people skills were as bad as you proclaim, it's unlikely that all of this would have happened, or else I just got incredibly lucky.

+1.

All 2p2 mods are saying it's a slap on the wrist and way less than a normal spammer would get, yea well then why do it anyways if it's so meaningless?

All posters are not equal period, and having high profile posters post here definitely drives some traffic to 2p2, and the matter could've been handled privately.

Hell I'd give him a small advertising package for free for contributing to me website so he isn't breaking the rules if it's such a slippery slope that mods can't not ban him.

This Joe guy had no argument. He was babbling like an idiot. LOL

Edit: Daniel should never post in 2p2 again.

Yeah, people like DN get banned for posting relevant stuff while hundreds of forum member continue to keep posting non-sensical and boring things like "Tree-Fiddy", "in b4 lock/ban", "Its problem", "First", "Second", etc... Why don't these people receive automatic month-long bans?

And I do believe DN's impact on these forum is just a tad over 100:1 to an average poster...

Well, lots of $$$'s tend to attract a lot of friends rather quickly...

Hi Todd,

You should read the Terms and Conditions of TwoPlusTwo.

Find them here:

http://www.twoplustwo.com/terms.php

-Joe

Just cos you have a successful company doesn't mean you automatically have good people skills. It normally means you have a good product.

It's a widely held belief that you don't have good people skills. There is a thread in NVG titled 'Why is Mason Malmuth so hated in the poker industry?'
And in fact in this very post where you claim to have those good people skills you exhibit poor people skills.
It is a clear example of poor people skills to refer to DN repeatedly as 'Negreanu'. Perhaps say 'Daniel' or even DN. They are both shorter and more polite. You do realise it's not good people skills to refer to people by their surname, right? Particularly at a time when you are trying to reach out to them.

you sir, have smoked yourself ******ed.

My God, your posts just amaze me.

It is also telling that he uses examples of lengthy business relationships from service providers as proof of social skills. They aren't your friends Mason. They like your money and put up with your ego and personality issues in order to obtain it.

OMG A THREAD WHERE WE CAN DISCUSS BAD MODERATION on 2+2?

This forum would be SO much better without all the excessive modding.. infractions.. post deletions.. etc. That's what drove me to stop posting here.

I'd love a reddit up/downvote system instead of a few fascist individuals deciding what is appropriate.

funniest thing ever on these forums

LOL @ anyone ever giving a **** enough to ever read all that garbage.

This was clearly a bad decision. The impact should have been obvious before making the banning decision, why not just delete the offending posts and ask mods to delete until the message gets through in a few days. I'm not going to argue this issue itself is massively important relative to the scale of 2p2 but IMO the advertising aspect of the business is beholden to the 2p2 community. I think the community should come first and clearly this decision was at the expense of the community. Make this decision a few more times (and this certainly isn't the first time it has come up) and it really might be a problem and that would be a shame. Look what happened to Digg:

http://www.michikono.com/2007/05/01/...andal-summary/

The idea that any poster, much less someone like DN, would actually read the TOS is a bunch of crap. 2+2 has it there so that you can point to it when needed (and for legal reasons), but everyone knows full well that no one ever reads the whole thing.

On QJs, both you and ProfessionalPoker sounded like company stooges when you were trotting out the "its in the TOS" line of reasoning.

Actually it is more polite to use someone's last name when referring to them in print or speaking of them in public. You'll notice that even before Barack Obama was elected president, he was referred to as "Obama," or "Barack Obama" not "Barack." Using someone's first name indicates a familarity which clearly doesn't exist in this case.

For example, do you think the writers of Wikipedia's entry for Daniel Negreanu's are being deliberately impolite because in every paragraph the first usage of his name is "Daniel Negreanu" or "Negreanu?" Go look it up for yourself.

LOL at the whirlwind. 5 star thread.

Don't worry, Mason is going to utilise his people skills to resolve the issue with 'Negreanu'. He's sent him a pm. It will be humble and chock full of excellent interpersonal skills.
DN will be back soon.

The writers of DNs Wiki do not presumably know DN so its ok to use his surname. I wouldn't say it's more polite, just it's more appropriate.
But MM knows DN, he's met him. In this case, it would be appropriate to use first names imo.
I appreciate that this is a relatively minor point but don't you agree that MMs post would read better if he used 'Daniel'? I work in an area where conflict resolution is utilised and I don't think 2+2 is particularly good at it.

I'm just a bit confused.
You have stated many times that you could not be sure if DN was going to go on a spamming spree at 2am. Correct? You have now stated DN posted 57 times all year. Correct? So basically, a VERY respected poster, VERY important part of the poker community, averages 1 POST PER WEEK, and you AREN'T SURE if he's going to go on a spamming spree?
Mason, you are clearly a smart guy but your adamant refusal to admit any wrongdoing is very unhealthy behavior. Do you know how much more respected you would be on here if you manned up and admitted, "Okay, I guess I may not have been thinking clearly since it was 2am and I should have realized it was Daniel Negreanu and factored in his very respectable track record. It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction and I apologize to Daniel."
Why would that be so hard for you?

DN may have posted only 57 times in the last year but he had picked up his pace considerably over the last month or so.

I was being facetious by replying to Todd (who has a legal background) about his reply to banning KevMath for posting the QJ interview.

Mason's point about Negreanu's post count of "only" 57 is short sighted. He (Mason) is profiting from FREE content from perhaps the most famous poker player in the world.

To ban the most famous person in your industry (even temporarily) after they've provided you with free content for your website seems odd, unless it's blantant spamming. Daniel posted a link to his personal blog; it wasn't an affiliate link to a site selling male enchancement pills.

This temp-ban leads to a slippery slope: If Phil Ivey were to post a link to his personal blog and happened to mention he's joining PokerStars, and that everyone should play there, would he be temp-banned? If he wears a "Nike" hat, or a "Aria" shirt, is that pushing the boundries?

It seems obvious to most everyone that the value of having Negreanu's name, along with the benefit 2+2 receives in free content from a respected pro outweighs the need to remove his posting privillages for linking to his own blog.

You're right, 2p2 needs more pictures of menstrual blood and stories of you raping women.

This thing is blown way out of proportion by both parties and it's now pretty much impossible for them to come to an understanding without one party losing face. A little bit more mutual respect would have gone a long way.