I wasn't going to keep this thread alive with a response since my opinion was stated elsewhere and remains unchanged, but just to echo what evil_d just said, the only person who saw the entire drama unfold was Brad. The mods saw most of it, some more than others. None of the users saw the e-mails and pms that led up to and after the banning.

I'm still in the Boinky-was-funny-camp, and I always enjoyed chatting with him on irc, but that is no defense for either his actions or his lack of remorse following his banning.

my rapidly filling favorites list attest to it

thanks i'll check them out just as soon as i finish his strip creator comics in 2078

[hr][hr]

you cant throw that in at the end of an encyclopedia britannica post and expect to get away with it. still i'll defer and post a greatly abridged version of my original response

me:

you:

Brad:

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what if nigger meant kite

CHRIST! WHO GIVES A SHIT, ANYWAY!

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peddling the funny around since 09/24/2002

Mandingo, apparently.

Rules are rules, Boinky broke 'em, I don't understand why people continue to have difficulty understanding this very simple concept.

From the FAQ:

quote:

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What are the rules on Stripcreator?
Don't fight, don't flood. If you must fight, do it in the Fights Go Here forum.

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Both Boinky33 and CHUBBY fought all over the forums.

Strike 1

quote:

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What should I do if someone is being annoying on Stripcreator?

You should email a complaint to me at brad@stripcreator.com. Please make the complaint detailed and provide links to the offending content so that I can get an idea for what's going on.

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Boinky33 and CHUBBY were relentless in PMing/e-mailing brad whining about how they were being abused by the other.

Strike 2

quote:

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What happens if I break the rules?
I'll delete your comics and ban you.

Donating does not protect you against this. If you donate and are an idiot on the site, you're still gone.

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Strike 3

Everyone who's argument is "I like his comics" should be grateful that brad decided to leave them there.

The only thing Boinky33 and CHUBBY were concerned with was getting the other banned, they both got their wish.

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Dad was flammable

(and various other posts along these same lines)

Imagine you have two dogs that like to fight a lot. Sometimes it's entertaining and you might throw out a "Go for his head, Rover!" and encourage it. But when you settle in on the couch to play Grand Theft Auto and they start the fighting right infront of the television monitor, you start to get annoyed. When they won't quit and get out of your way no matter how much you hit them with a rolled up newspaper or yell at them, it gets infuriating. Had they kept their fighting to an area and time that you had accepted for them, you might not be so angry now, however they decided to disturb you, while you are trying to do something else that you enjoy--which you never encouraged or asked for. The same applies to boinky33 and CHUBBY. Had they kept their fighting contained to Fights Go Here, harmony likely would have ensued. Instead, they decided to spread it everywhere, to the point where it was totally impossible not to have to read at least a percentage of the nonsense in a thread that is nearly impossible to fight in -- yet they found a way and it's annoying and disrespectful.

I'm in the "I could care less" crowd, mostly. But when people are arguing in every thread that the other person happens to post to first, there's a real problem. And I don't find it pleasant having to wade through the junk just to read things that actually relate to the seemed-so-harmless thread about yarn or whatever.

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Mediocrity at its most average.

i doubt they do. its just more complicated when you start asking rules for who made by who. if its rules by the few made for the many despite what the many might think, it becomes more complicated. on one hand you can say its the users community and their say that matters most. on the other you can say well it is what the users want that matters most but since what they want most is the site to be here next year we're taking steps to ensure that long term goal at the price of their short term ones. but then you have to ask if sacrificing what the users want now is worth it to prevent something that may not happen at all anyway. i dont know the answer to that but whatever it is it isnt as simple as you make it

understandable. and i'm sure its important to you that the site cares about what you think

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what if nigger meant kite

A quote from the Breakfast Club is appropriate here:
"If he gets up, we'll all get up...it'll be anarchy!"

I wanted Boinky to come back. He had good comics. Chubby did too, until he wigged out. I thought it was a pretty minor scuffle until the ugliness towards the end, but then again, I don't know the entire story.

But...I also realize the need for boundaries to be set. Basically, if you start bending the rules for certain people...if the rules that are laid down aren't enforced completely...others will notice and see how far they can push things. Evil_D mentioned it briefly when refering to "community of trolls". When trolls start seeing that others can get away with breaking the rules they'll try it too.

Pretty soon, you'll have a whole bunch of trolls roaming around here at once, bugging the hell out of everyone else. So in a way, this is best for the entire community.

Plus, if a troll gets the axe for their misdeeds after someone else got away with text murder, they'll go off on Brad, with an argument like, "WELL YOU LET SO-SO DO THIS AND DO THAT!"

Just my two cents.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

Let me be possibly the first to say this:

old hat.

no one cares.

non-story.

slow news day.

All this talk about trolls reminds me of the billy goats gruff. No one ever talks about them these days.

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I think, therefore I make comments on a forum.

Damn goats. After they ousted the troll they just became the new bridge bullies, head-butting and kicking anybody that didn't pay them a bale of hay per axle and a fresh apple for motorcycles.

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It was such a waste of everyone’s time and money that even the Tokyo stadium’s rape robots apologized– something they were programmed specifically never to do.

what about the idea of a community policin itself? i know i'm not shy about firing back when attacked and it doesnt seem anyone else here is either. hand someone their nuts enough times and they'll 'troll' somewhere else

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what if nigger meant kite

what about the idea of a community policin itself? i know i'm not shy about firing back when attacked and it doesnt seem anyone else here is either. hand someone their nuts enough times and they'll 'troll' somewhere else

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Until it escalates to such a point that the community is getting trashed in the crossfire. And that is to a large extent what was starting to happen.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

I couldn't disagree with this more. Saying anything back to a troll just encourages it even more. The more you do it the worse they get.

I maintain that one cannot, in fact, take this attitude. In some matters, certainly, but not in all.

If you understand why we don't let the public vote on whether or not to let convicted criminals out of prison, then you should understand why it doesn't matter who wants boinky back.

People handing other people their nuts all over the site is precisely what we would like to avoid.

Besides which, even if one could expect that tactic to be successful -- which, as crabby points out, one cannot -- the burden of waging a protracted campaign of disempowered aggression just to try to convince problem users to leave should not have to rest with any of the overwhelming majority of users who would ordinarily have much better sense and manners than to plague a web site they like with that kind of garbage.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

I couldn't disagree with this more. Saying anything back to a troll just encourages it even more. The more you do it the worse they get.

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i know this is true for some. that ones that are just articulate enough to piss you off even though you can tell their main goal is just to piss you off. i also know the other kind where if you let them walk all over you they will just because they like the sounds of their own voice (#2 of that wonderful little that's "just plain unpleasant" link page also advocates self-policing)

I maintain that one cannot, in fact, take this attitude. In some matters, certainly, but not in all.

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when you said 'The other people in this thread are right. It isn't really worth all this discussion.' i thought i was doing the nice thing by abridging my response to your lengthy post and letting the conversation die. but since your now repeating and building on a previous argument i would have already addressed, let me give you the longer version.

quote:

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Mostly I'm saying that we can't go by who speaks up.

First, because we have no way to tell if/reason to believe that it's representative.

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this is somewhat asanine. its black and white to the extreme, ignoring degrees. its the simplest thing in the world to see that listening to what your users are saying is MORE representative than not, and frankly its a sad thing that i have to be telling a moderator this. there's no reason whatsoever to think that outspokenness is somehow more aligned to one side or another on the boinky banning, or on any other issue for that matter. outspokeness will be randomly spread out among people of both opinions, so listening to what people at the site have to say IS more representative than not doing so

this attitude is the entire problem in my opinion. yes its nice the moderators are donating their time for nothing. its dam nice. but if you think what the select few moderators want is more important than what the comunity of regulars wants, as you clearly state, or what thousands of visitors to the site want, you don't understand the role moderators should serve

the public may not get to vote whether or not to let convicts out of prison but they DO get to vote on the laws that make people convicts in the first place. you don't have to understand any more than this analogy to understand the heart of this discussion

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what if nigger meant kite

Actually, people rarely if ever get to vote on laws that turn others such as themselves into convicts. Most such laws never come to refferendum, and are decided by the ruling bodies instead.

Hooray for tangents.

Mandingo, son, please sit down and listen for a moment. Boinky33 and CHUBBY caused brad (the guy who CREATED and RUNS this site) endless hassle by constantly e-mailing him requesting that the other was banned. This was not seen by any other user, not even the moderators. We discussed the situation at length in the mod forum. Both users were given countless warnings and last chances which they blatantly ignored. Eventually it came down to a final super ultimate totally-the-last-chance warning that they shouldn't provoke the other into a fight.

Boinky did not adhere to this.

Once Boinky was banned, there was an instant uproar from the other users who all hated CHUBBY as they felt, if someone had to be punished, why not make it him since more people liked Boinky?

This is not the correct way to run a website, a user breaks the rules, he is punished, regardless of who he is.

A week later CHUBBY was banned for basically being insane. Other users saw this as some kind of get-out clause for Boinky, they seemed to think that since CHUBBY was proven to be an idiot, Boinky, his enemy, clearly must be the opposite and therefore innocent.

This is not the correct way to run a website.

Boinky remains banned because he didn't apologise at all for his actions. What probably crippled his chances of a return more than anything were all those users rallying around brad and the moderators to get him back. It almost seemed to be assumed that if enough people complained and complained constantly that brad would just forget about all the hassle.

This is not the correct way to run a website.

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Dad was flammable

Remember the turkey fun fact I told you about in the True Confessions thread? Just let boinky go, he's living peacefully a foreign comic land. There will be another boinky. Eventually a new user will come to the site, be quirky and funny and evolve into a "new boinky". Let's just hope the next one doesn't get banned.

What I'm saying is, is boinky like the GREATEST, FUNNIEST guy of all time? In my opinion, no. He was one of the crudest, though. So I'd rather appriciate the people that are left, praise them for being funny AND respecting the rules at the same time, than whine over a turkey that wandered into the hunter's gun.

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Mediocrity at its most average.

Simply listening to what the users are saying is not at all what you appear to be advocating. You appear to be advocating allowing an arbitrary subset of users to dictate policy even if their desires defy common sense.

If you are concerned that none of the moderators have even considered the fact that there are some Stripcreator users who want boinky to be unbanned, I can tell you that such is not the case.

this attitude is the entire problem in my opinion. yes its nice the moderators are donating their time for nothing. its dam nice. but if you think what the select few moderators want is more important than what the comunity of regulars wants, as you clearly state, or what thousands of visitors to the site want, you don't understand the role moderators should serve

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The moderators (of any web site) are not the users' servants. They're not there to make sure the users get everything they want. They maximize how available and easy to use the site is, and they use their own judgment in so doing. I'm sorry if you feel like any of us owe it to you, or to anyone other than Brad, to run things the way you want, but that's not how it works -- primarily because, as I tried to explain, it can't work that way.

Here's the bottom line: when someone doesn't like a web site, they stop visiting it. If Brad -- the sole owner and programmer for Stripcreator -- doesn't like Stripcreator, and he therefore stops visiting it, then it doesn't matter one bit what the rest of us do or don't think or like or want, because the site will disappear and there won't even be a community. Brad feeling like Stripcreator is worth his time is vital to the site's future. Brad getting rid of people who make him feel like his own site is not worth his time -- even if nobody in the community agrees with him, which of course is not the case in the present example -- is perfectly reasonable. You don't have to like it, and I can understand why you might not, but that won't change anything.

So, again, the feelings and opinions of the people in charge of a web site are more important than the feelings and opinions of the other users: not because those people are smarter, or better, or more entitled, but simply because a lack of interest on those people's parts renders everything else moot. This is, of course, different from how things (ideally) work in the offline world.

Drexle addressed this. There's also the fact that "people shouldn't do what boinky and CHUBBY did" is not exactly a controversial rule.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

seems like people vote more often than 'rarely if ever' on issues like medical marijuana and assisted suicide. and in a democracy the ruling bodies are going to be made up of representatives voted into office by the public, or people that those representatives appoint, so unless im missing some subtlety it seems like semantics

a debate killer

yes i can see how your community rallying around something would be the crippling factor in making it happen

to tell the truth, theres more than enough funny people here that i really don't care if he does come back. (especially after hearing how he was trying to get some one else banned). right now im basically just in response mode

the truth is Brad and the moderators wanted him banned regardless of what the community wanted. its been more than amply stated that what the moderators want is more important than what the comunity wants which is what i was saying in the first place. so like i said, now its just response mode, arguing against things that detract from that explanation, or that seem self serving, like why listen to what the community wants - how can that be representative.

what i'm advocating is that you listen to not an arbitrary subset, but the most representative sampling you have of what the majority wants. and you let these opinions be a guiding force in the sites evolution

this attitude is the entire problem in my opinion. yes its nice the moderators are donating their time for nothing. its dam nice. but if you think what the select few moderators want is more important than what the comunity of regulars wants, as you clearly state, or what thousands of visitors to the site want, you don't understand the role moderators should serve

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The moderators (of any web site) are not the users' servants. They're not there to make sure the users get everything they want.

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i wasnt saying anything that grandiose(though i will take a cofee). what i was saying was that on healthy forums what the users want should be important to the moderators and that what the users want should be more important to Brad then what the moderators want

like it? i've already agreed with it a couple of times. i called it a debate killer. not sure why it was necesary to make the point again

that was a pretty big jump from Brad to the moderators especially when you consider that current regulars would be willing to step in as moderators were some to leave

Drexle addressed this.

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Drexle adressed this, i addressed Drexle, you referenced Drexle, and meanwhile, over in General Discussion, ivytheplant just knighted him

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what if nigger meant kite

I'm sure when Brown v Board of Education went before the U.S. Supreme Court, there were plenty of citizens screaming, "Us white people are the majority of the U.S. and we don't want our children going to school with negroes." Still, nine Supreme Court justices agreed it was wrong and made the right decision that has since affected every member of the community since 1954.

So who was correct? The loud majority who voted for segregationist laws and politicians or nine men deciding what was just for everyone in the community even if those who had a stronger voice disagreed?

At some point, we may need to declare this discussion at an impasse. I think it's pretty clear that Brad and those mods who have stated an opinion are pretty much all aligned in this matter and we haven't seen an argument yet that compels us to reconsider. I think we're getting tired of re-hashing the same points over and over and we probably only kept it going this long because it was a useful exercise for the SC community to get a sense of what goes through Brad's and our minds when we're presented with such an issue.

Just to clear up a few misconceptions that have come up in this discussion:

The mods do not have votes on issues any more than the users as a whole do. The moderators are experienced and trusted users that Brad sometimes consults for advice when he needs help in making a decision, and they help to enforce certain site policies that Brad has set up, so that he doesn't need to babysit the site 24/7.

Secondly, the mods never voted, nor, as I recall, came to any consensus regarding boinky33 or CHUBBY. Provide input, and debate his case from various viewpoints, yes, but eventually Brad made his decision and put it into effect.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

that was a pretty big jump from Brad to the moderators especially when you consider that current regulars would be willing to step in as moderators were some to leave

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Just to clarify, I meant "people in charge" in the abstract, and wasn't referring to SC moderators specifically. As probably the least active moderator here, I'm well aware that I can be replaced.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

and they based that decision on the consistency of currently existing laws, which were voted on by the public, and the constitution, which can be amended by congress, whose members are voted in by the public. same point made before

like i said i tried to let it die and am just in response mode now. most of the re-hashing is on the moderators part

or that deep deep deep down you know i'm right. don't you. don't you father. i can sense the good that's still in you. your thoughts betray you.

i'd say the mods think the mods who've spoken here have all been of a consensus, and that likely made itself known at the time this was going on. if theres a disenting moderators id be happy to hear from them.

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what if nigger meant kite

since that last paragraph is bad even by my standards, let me fix it:

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what if nigger meant kite