Mods & current rules = trash & kill the community

Community General Discussion
1

<mark>Do not post about forum moderation or flame/attack others. This includes forum Monitors.</mark>

Let me describe to you what I mean.

I have rarely been involved in a forums, or any online communities besides social media, however have played halo since CE on PC and am a huge halo fan.

I was recently reading the initial trilogy of books, getting all hyped for halo infinite, when I came across an interesting line. I dont need to spell out the details here, but basically it lead to a deep lore theory about sgt Johnson. I was hype. I wanted to share this cool theory with other halo fans!

What happened?

Well I immediately sign up to the halo forums, of course! Eager to get my ideas out there and the discussion going. This is where problems instantly occur.

The poor forum setup means I cant just see all the post of a topic I want, but have to sub categorize endlessly. Ok, no biggie though. I find a forum topic involving sgt johnson, but… its locked? You can’t post there because of… age? If people want to follow or ignore something, they can do that themselves! We dont need gate keepers!

But fine, I find a post that is not locked and relay my sick theory. The very first post is someone telling me this thread SHOULD be locked, and that I’ve violated a clearly arbitrary rule, ending the discussion there and locking the thread himself AFTER I was able to post.

WTF?

Ok, so still not a huge problem, I can keep looking. And thats what I do. Finding an almost new sgt. johnson thread. There I post my theory and… YES! A response from the thread creator telling me “What an interesting theory!”. Finally! Validation, community, HALO!

But wait… the vultures are circling. Immediately after, a post is made telling me i’ve again broken some arbitrary rules by going “off-topic”. Again the thread creator enjoyed the post of my theory, about Sgt. Johnson, in a Sgt. Johnson thread.

Oh but I guess the forums are overflowing with comments so veering off by one degree is blasphemous and incomprehensible? Give me a break! Thats BS. But then what happens? A mod comes back and RETROACTIVELY blocks posts that THE THREAD CREATOR liked. That was the last straw. Absolutely poor mods and guidelines.

If that is not pure STIFLING of discussion and killing of the community I dont know what is. Mods should be ashamed for whipping their -Yoinks!- out with no regard for community engagement or forum longevity.

Alright rant over. Your experience?

2

We don’t normally like to air dirty laundry but I’m going to make an exception here. Let’s review your…whopping 6 posts on these forums. That means that everything I’m about to describe encompasses your total and complete participation on these forums. Ready? Okay good, let’s go.

Your first post:

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/82841d11296340069f6b8e3ccbfcee11/topics/could-sgt-johnson-be-alive/70a03b94-602c-4cad-9974-4c73a9353f98/posts?page=2#post40

Not bad in and of itself, only thing was that the thread was a bit old. No harm, no foul. That’s why stckrboy just said, “Hey this is old - don’t do that in the future.” That’s pretty standard and generally necros get a “oops, don’t do that anymore” and a thread lock.

So far so good - off to a decent start!

Next post:

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/82841d11296340069f6b8e3ccbfcee11/topics/bungie-didn-t-care-about-sgt-johnson-in-h3/5fb8bf5c-b7a3-4d03-a174-de423fa96340/posts?page=1#post3

Now we’re at the part you’re talking about in here, the one where someone thought it was an interesting theory. The only problem is…you couched this in a super inflammatory way and rather than just post your theory here, you instead railed on about the mods being mean because we said we’d prefer you don’t post in old threads.

Then, you did it again in your third post:

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/82841d11296340069f6b8e3ccbfcee11/topics/bungie-didn-t-care-about-sgt-johnson-in-h3/5fb8bf5c-b7a3-4d03-a174-de423fa96340/posts?page=1#post9

Now, I’m sure people have realized that neither of those posts contain their initial offerings anymore and that’s because you went back and decided to throw a literal “screw you” towards us for editing your posts after you broke the rules. (And remember, the rules are pinned at the top of each section for easy finding and easy reading.)

So now, not only have you had two posts discussing moderation, you’ve also changed a mod’s content and flamed us in those same posts. Really, we’re at a 4:2 for infractions: post ratio. Pretty impressive for someone with 3 posts on the forums thus far. Onward!

Your fourth post:

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/82841d11296340069f6b8e3ccbfcee11/topics/bungie-didn-t-care-about-sgt-johnson-in-h3/5fb8bf5c-b7a3-4d03-a174-de423fa96340/posts?page=1#post12

You must have posted this about the same time you edited the last two so really, we’re up to 5:3. Still impressive. Moving right along here.

Your fifth post:

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/82841d11296340069f6b8e3ccbfcee11/topics/bungie-didn-t-care-about-sgt-johnson-in-h3/5fb8bf5c-b7a3-4d03-a174-de423fa96340/posts?page=1#post13

By now you’ve been personally provided with a copy of the rules twice so you’ve had ample opportunity to review them. Surely you can understand that cursing at the mods, calling us “crybaby children” in a feeble attempt to insult us, and then discussing moderation are all against the rules by now?

Alas, that brings me to your sixth post.

That’s this one. It is abundantly clear by now that you actually HAVEN’T read those rules and are still misunderstanding the whole, “our house, our rules” thing. That also means that of your six posts, 5 of them have been edited for breaking the rules. That’s a lot of work and time that we have spent on your behalf. Time we would rather spend posting on the forums, playing video games, or underwater basket weaving.

I genuinely recommend you read through those rules on your current vacation and encourage you to direct any questions you may have in a polite/constructive manner to myself or one of my other mods. Do note that the operative words there are “polite” and “constructive”. If you send more messages along the lines that you’ve already sent Comedic Hermit then I would not anticipate receiving any communications in return.

Hopefully that clarifies a bit!

3

I’ll be honest here; I’ve tried being nice. I’ve tried pointing out that your behavior is and has been the issue. It really comes down to one thing,
.