Successful business is a respectable reputation. Respectable reputation is good public relations. Good public relations is “The customer is always right!” (excluding obvious exceptions).

I can personally attest to how as a customer/client how much I appreciate “The customer is always right” compared to the opposite and abusive treatment by most (big) businesses (insurance companies, banks, gaming companies, and etc) and their websites/forum moderators.

Unfortunately, these businesses are so big, it is almost impossible to do anything about it. They (and especially internet websites) are pretty much completely immune to anything/anyone. Heck, it is nearly impossible to even do your constitution right of protesting and boycotting against them. You can’t complain or expose their bad behavior or bad moderators, as it is almost prohibited everywhere on the internet. And, if you don’t use the internet, your protest/boycott isn’t going to reach anyone, so as to gather people to make it significant and noticed.

Forums should have rules – although they should be kept to a minimum. If someone threatened your life and posted your personal information, would you want that to remain? Surely you’d want it removed? How would this happen if there was nobody in place with the authority to do this?

You then go on to say there should actually be a rule, ‘act civil’ – however, you’d still be dictating this rule onto your members – so you’ve discredited your own argument. In any case, how could you even have this rule if no moderators exist (as you advocate)?

The main thrust of my argument in this article was that forum moderators should be there to primarily encourage conversation – not to ‘police’ the community, In this aspect, I think we are in agreement.

(2) Human beings are innately free; thus, you “should not” be trying to control behavior. We have enough of this through government imposed laws. What are you guys trying to do? Impose a communist online world?

(3) You guys have no power or authority over anyone, and you should not try to dictate ‘your’ rules onto anyone. People will just walk away.

What I cannot figure out is – Why embrace another series of rules? Since our offline lives are crippled by government imposed laws, one would think that online ways of thinking would be existential. Don’t you people think that there are enough laws that dictate our offline lives, and that any online laws would only counterman our push to develop a free and open society?

If you guys have a problem with seeing my perspective, look up the phases Generation X, Hippies, and Metalheads.

I would think that you guys would embrace an open society on and offline. Your number one rule should be “As long as you are acting civil, there are no other rules.”

Moderators should not even exist. Forums should only be altered if the owner sees fit. Nothing else.

I have seen many times where a moderator will ask a member to instigate a problem with someone using ridicule and a lot of antagonism until the member unknowingly being singled out, finally says something that can be seen as “disruptive” justifying a post ban.

Some of the best writers ATS ever had are gone now and all they seem to attract now are smart ass kids. The place is looking more like a pathetic joke and the moderators themselves, I believe it would be un-fair to say they all act like forum police.

in fact they act more like the gestapo especially one clique of vigilante types who believe it is the mission to eliminate certain “kinds” of members and act together in a “you scratch my back, ill scratch yours”, to back each other up in their campaigns to get the rest of us to agree this or that member is a problem until they finally get the ok to ban the unsuspecting member. Fredt, malaria, intrepid, ngc2723, Gaotu, average about 70-80 mod edits the past year but they were very unfair about how they go about it and to whom. We had to get rid of one mod for his bias but in my opinion, the worst ones are still there.

Whats really sad are the biggest ass kissers on the mod staff, say the most disparaging remarks behind the backs of the owners. They all say yes yes great and wonderful to the amigos but behind the scenes, they have their own ideas as to how ATS should really be run and the agendas have been suspected, they are hard to prove and anymore, I couldn’t care less. Let the place evolve into the internet for hollywoods answer the national enquirerer, it has got that ridiculous over there.

Off my soapbox. *huffs and puffs out of breath*

PS: Can you please make the math spam protection a tad bit harder like 10 + 2 = 12?

I almost feel as if they and the site admin aren’t even humans and may be aliens from another planet as part of the goverment cover up! :O

That is the way a Mod should work if I did something wrong and I didn’t know posting a link was bad as I have seen other members more towards the top post which forums they have had bad experience in.

I just posted that I thought the site for Mod X didn’t work and I later gave a humble apology after I caught my error but she didn’t forgive me.

I tried to give her a PM though I may have been a little too critical but I try to be constructive the best I can and didn’t call her any names or make fun of her. All she had to do was read-between the lines as I tend to be blunt or too d—n confusing otherwise.

I did talk to the mod by PM but she didn’t reply and thats when I found out she still didn’t forgive me and I think it’s from the time I thought her site was broken on her signature!

I am autistic so I don’t understand very well how to *approach* to somebody when I feel they have abused their position of power as a result of not body language and reading-between the liens very well.

This is a new thing for me and any *constructive* advice would be appriciated and used to the best of my abilites.

One thing I feel I have learned is if a person in authority have done something bad you cannot repsond back with anger or your experiences will be ignored.

I shouldn’t have made death threats too her but I don’t know how to handle it when a forum administator or Admin *abuses his authority*. I have read sites on how a forum modertor should behave and he didn’t at all treat me like a human and the mods act like robots when someone breaks a rule………………………no matter how small.

I am know as *Triforce of Time* on that board I linked too in case anyone is curious. I don’t know if all my posts were deleted or not. I’ll just tell you the main site instead of the forums.

Vgmusic (dot) com and it is a decent site for video game midis but like I said the staff are like robots and even the FAQ’s expect everyone to be *perfect* like Jesus.