Since I'm all about controversies and ethics
I might as well bring this up, even though I
have a feeling it will be closed even though
it does not break any of the rules...

Topic
I've seen two threads closed after two people were
speaking about something relevant to their interests.

One thread showing what they do on Graal
when they are bored, which others might
have responded as to what they also do on
Graal when bored. - Thread closed...

I've seen another thread closed because
it was talking about Graal staff members
hiding information from the public, which
in a lot of games happens. It it were about
power abuse I would actually agree, however
they still had their own right to their opinion.
- Thread closed...

Justifying the Violations
Here are the forum rules, lets compare and contrast.
http://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4

Be Nice:

1. We want these forums to be an enjoyable experience for everyone involved, so all bullying is off limits.
   
   Was anyone bullied by this these posts? I don't think so.
   
2. Don't take disagreement badly, see it as an opportunity to comfortably share your opinions--this means you need to allow others to comfortably share their opinions as well.
   
   Was there disagreement?
   Yes, one thread was about disagreement, the other was not.
   
   Were they taken badly?
   I should think so since both threads were closed...
   Due to both threads being closed, it doesn't seem like either thread creators opinions were comfortably shared.
   
3. However, opinions that put down race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation are not permitted.
   This did not relate.
   
4. Sharing other members' personal information without consent or otherwise involving members' private lives in forum affairs is strictly forbidden.
   
   Well, I would consider one thread as sharing a conversation private.. However that program may have been public, therefore voiding my last statement..

They seemed to have followed the rules in this category.

Be Relevant:

1. Try to keep this in mind when posting, so you avoid posting spammy, useless or irrelevant things.
   
   I believe this concerns the posts after the starting posts. Didn't seem useless, irrelevant, or spammy to them, and it didn't seem spammy to me at least.
   
2. please try to keep thread titles meaningful and to the point.
   
   Well.. one post was to the point, however hiding things, or not telling things that the public does not need to know isn't really having to do with trust...
   Someone might think the title fits... I don't feel it as much. Honestly I can't say a lot of titles do fit.

The rules weren't broken in this category unless you believe it was named wrong.


Be Appropriate:

1. we cannot allow adult material to be present on the forums. Content containing illegal activities and sites with pornographic, grotesque, or violent material are not to be posted or linked here under any circumstances.
   
   Both posts did not seem adult like to me..
   
2. whining about your in-game conflicts with staff and discussing bans is not appropriate here either.
   
   Neither post had to do with in game conflicts, one did have to do with an out of game conflict however (Actually two out of game conflicts if you include the picture, and the post). Neither post discussed bans.

The two threads seemed to have followed the rules of everything.


Freedoms of the People
So lets see where closing the threads went wrong.

Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas via speech. - Violated, opinion was closed. Ideas of ?boredness were closed.

Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials. While such freedom mostly implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state, its preservation may be sought through constitutional or other legal protections.
In this case it is basically freedom of speech since we are on two forms of media..

Freedom of information - Long list, Violated.
I believe game companies have their own rights. They don't need to tell anything to anyone, and are allowed to make up their own rights. It seems like Pix did the right thing, I don't see any lies in his statement...
Counter Violated (Not Violated).

Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests.[1] The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political freedom and a civil liberty. - Violated, assembly closed off (to the public) could have been done via messages I suppose...

In games, freedom of assembly can actually help
more than hurt and tell game creators what might
need to be fixed.


Closing
In the rules it states to contact the forum moderator,
so I will respectively do so.

I see either the rules need changing,
or moderators aren't taking the rules
under consideration.

I believe forum rules can go against
freedoms of the people, however so
far the violated threads did not have
rules justifying their closure...

Of course we could always go with
moderators are allowed to do what
they want. But then why have rules.

Discuss what new rules should be added,
what rules should be changed,
or what rules are not being followed.  

uhm yeeah.  

We don't need to discuss it. You've said it all o-o.  

Sorry, there is no to long redo or to long do shorter.

This is one thing that had to have grounds for to vindicate two
threads that I honestly don't care about...

The only problem is I don't feel they were reasonably closed...

Posted by Kiwi.

We don't need to discuss it. You've said it all o-o.

I am not perfect, someone might be able to find
some error in my judgement.. Or want to discuss
something in the threads nature. o.o

One might even discuss the new rules that may
need to be implemented so that others don't feel
their threads were closed unreasonably..

I think many people might go off topic but that
isn't up to me to moderate.


I do not go against power,
however I do go for ethics.  

Compare the ways things are moderated here to what is expressed in this thread
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134266407  

Higbey's thread deserved to be locked, so does this one, but Emera's didn't and I don't understand what was up Rufus' ass at that point.  

Posted by Emera

Compare the ways things are moderated here to what is expressed in this thread
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134266407

Haha I'll try... It seems like they have tried to make it lawyer like and confusing as such..

--------------

Even thought this is not a playerworld, nor is it the Graal Online Communication Center forums, I'll give it a go...

New Playerworld Rules Added - 5/9/2012

I have added the following rules to the Rules for Playerworlds. These rules have been unanimously approved and agreed upon by the rest of the PWA.

• third-party website that is advertised on the server (through NPC-Server PMs or otherwise) must enforce the following

I don't know if this website is advertised but:

• Third-party Graal-related websites (and their legitimacy as third-party websites in relation to a server in question) are judged based purely on the opinion of the Playerworld Administration.

I suppose most Playerworld Admins would believes this is a legit website . So I guess this website is judged to be an official Graal thread.

That makes me assume anyone going against the rules of the website is also going against the rules of Graal. So any player or moderator going against the rules should be sent to jail or banned. :C That was a tough one to decipher.

I haven't actually checked ">> Click here for the full rule set <<" since the way things moderated there aren't too relevant to this post, except the punishments for going against the rules might be expressed on server...

Posted by Pazx

I don't understand what was up Rufus' ass at that point.

Be Nice:

• Show respect to your fellow Graalians, even if you don't believe that they deserve it. We want these forums to be an enjoyable experience for everyone involved, so all bullying is off limits.

Be Appropriate:

• The forums are rated PG-13 because we want to cater to as large an audience as we possibly can. In the spirit of this, we cannot allow adult material to be present on the forums. Content containing illegal activities and sites with pornographic, grotesque, or violent material are not to be posted or linked here under any circumstances.

You should probably not try to aggravate a moderator.

Posted by Pazx

deserved to be locked, so does this one,

I believe it will be locked,
however not so sure it deserves to be.

Unless you can tell me the rule it breaks.  

Posted by David K?

Since I'm all about controversies and ethics
I might as well bring this up, even though I
have a feeling it will be closed even though
it does not break any of the rules...

Topic
I've seen two threads closed after two people were
speaking about something relevant to their interests.

One thread showing what they do on Graal
when they are bored, which others might
have responded as to what they also do on
Graal when bored. - Thread closed...

I've seen another thread closed because
it was talking about Graal staff members
hiding information from the public, which
in a lot of games happens. It it were about
power abuse I would actually agree, however
they still had their own right to their opinion.
- Thread closed...

Justifying the Violations
Here are the forum rules, lets compare and contrast.
http://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4

Be Nice:

1. We want these forums to be an enjoyable experience for everyone involved, so all bullying is off limits.
   
   Was anyone bullied by this these posts? I don't think so.
   
2. Don't take disagreement badly, see it as an opportunity to comfortably share your opinions--this means you need to allow others to comfortably share their opinions as well.
   
   Was there disagreement?
   Yes, one thread was about disagreement, the other was not.
   
   Were they taken badly?
   I should think so since both threads were closed...
   Due to both threads being closed, it doesn't seem like either thread creators opinions were comfortably shared.
   
3. However, opinions that put down race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation are not permitted.
   This did not relate.
   
4. Sharing other members' personal information without consent or otherwise involving members' private lives in forum affairs is strictly forbidden.
   
   Well, I would consider one thread as sharing a conversation private.. However that program may have been public, therefore voiding my last statement..

They seemed to have followed the rules in this category.

Be Relevant:

1. Try to keep this in mind when posting, so you avoid posting spammy, useless or irrelevant things.
   
   I believe this concerns the posts after the starting posts. Didn't seem useless, irrelevant, or spammy to them, and it didn't seem spammy to me at least.
   
2. please try to keep thread titles meaningful and to the point.
   
   Well.. one post was to the point, however hiding things, or not telling things that the public does not need to know isn't really having to do with trust...
   Someone might think the title fits... I don't feel it as much. Honestly I can't say a lot of titles do fit.

The rules weren't broken in this category unless you believe it was named wrong.


Be Appropriate:

1. we cannot allow adult material to be present on the forums. Content containing illegal activities and sites with pornographic, grotesque, or violent material are not to be posted or linked here under any circumstances.
   
   Both posts did not seem adult like to me..
   
2. whining about your in-game conflicts with staff and discussing bans is not appropriate here either.
   
   Neither post had to do with in game conflicts, one did have to do with an out of game conflict however (Actually two out of game conflicts if you include the picture, and the post). Neither post discussed bans.

The two threads seemed to have followed the rules of everything.


Freedoms of the People
So lets see where closing the threads went wrong.

Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas via speech. - Violated, opinion was closed. Ideas of ?boredness were closed.

Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials. While such freedom mostly implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state, its preservation may be sought through constitutional or other legal protections.
In this case it is basically freedom of speech since we are on two forms of media..

Freedom of information - Long list, Violated.
I believe game companies have their own rights. They don't need to tell anything to anyone, and are allowed to make up their own rights. It seems like Pix did the right thing, I don't see any lies in his statement...
Counter Violated (Not Violated).

Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests.[1] The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political freedom and a civil liberty. - Violated, assembly closed off (to the public) could have been done via messages I suppose...

In games, freedom of assembly can actually help
more than hurt and tell game creators what might
need to be fixed.


Closing
In the rules it states to contact the forum moderator,
so I will respectively do so.

I see either the rules need changing,
or moderators aren't taking the rules
under consideration.

I believe forum rules can go against
freedoms of the people, however so
far the violated threads did not have
rules justifying their closure...

Of course we could always go with
moderators are allowed to do what
they want. But then why have rules.

Discuss?

Not to get spammy but
http://i.qkme.me/7jw3.jpg (Unsupported image host)

I understand that you're trying to get professional in a way where admins will really approach and understand the situation but this is about forum rules where admins don't have the time to listen to or pretty much ignore the complaints/whines over a free pay-to-play MMO game. Sometimes, they even put their own frustration upon it.

Feedback is absolutely needed but when its mostly negative: They have the right to put their frustration upon it unless it is something that ruins the game. Most of these negative comments are mostly based on optional content while some are talking behind admin's backs and start spreading rumors/complaints regarding them. This makes pretty much one of the strongest reasons why admins lock/avoid topics that complain against iClassic basically

Now let the insults and raging upon me begin for basically missing half of what this is based upon (or correct me if im wrong... either one)
 

Posted by Maikeru

Not to get spammy but
http://i.qkme.me/7jw3.jpg (Unsupported image host)

I understand that you're trying to get professional in a way where admins will really approach and understand the situation but this is about forum rules where admins don't have the time to listen to or pretty much ignore the complaints/whines of certain members over a free pay-to-play MMO game. Sometimes, they even put their own frustration upon it

Feedback is absolutely needed but when its mostly negative based on optional content, it makes pretty much one of the strongest reasons why admins lock/avoid topics that complain against a certain amount of optional content

:x
If they don't have time to listen to forum rules, or abide by them, why have the rules...

And I wouldn't think this thread is negative, honestly trying to get the rules changed or obliged I'd assume would be positive. o.o;; (Not sure what the optional content is though so I cannot relate further)

I'm a whistle blower, if I feel someone is doing something wrong I will show it, community or staff member. Although I've only reported one player a few weeks back.. And this has happened twice already in the last day or two so I believe it is of concern.

But you are correct about staff getting frustrated against other members they disagree upon though... Not that their reaction would affect my Graal experience at all, but my point was already stated and I have no reason to further discuss it I suppose.

Unless someone brings up something relevant that I can void my whole thread with of course. I guess I'll let everyone else discuss freely.


Edited since more content was added:

Posted by Maikeru

Now let the insults and raging upon me begin for basically missing half of what this is based upon (or correct me if im wrong... either one)

Don't worry, I try not to insult, nor rage for the most part. And I think you were semi spot on, I was and am confused by optional content though. o.O

Also, the rules stated "if you believe that a mistake has been made in their moderation don't just tear up over it. Contact us constructively, we're here to listen! " They have been contacted with this thread, which is also a discussion.

So I assume they 'might' listen.
Which doesn't mean they will
actually take action after listening lol...


I'll try to stay out of the discussion now. :]

Unless someone brings up something relevant that I can void my whole thread with of course.

Has anyone ever quoted themselves in the same post?
I think this should be considered an accomplishment. o.O

I do however have a suggestion of one rule that 'might' benefit the moderators in the future.

The number one rule on the forums
is not discussing rules in the forums.

All rules could be discussed via message.
(However, then would probably be shot down.)  

Example of Optional content:
http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash2/149400_447271501953460_112813492065931_1911353_1258853238_n.jpg (Unsupported image host)  

Oh, no, this thread is about the rules.
I believe two threads were improperly
closed.

This thread is using their threads as examples,
not pertaining to what their threads are about.

The point:
It seems some rules may have been
broken and perhaps because of it rules
may need to be added and/or need to
be changed.

I could care less about Graals content
as long as it is not explicit or of a bad
nature towards children...  

This place is a ****ing Oasis in the Sahara compared to the official forums.  

Posted by Dusty

This place is a ****ing Oasis in the Sahara compared to the official forums.

anywhere without Unixmad and Stefan and Darlene is a Oasis in the sahara.  

This is amusing. It's been a long time since I've made a post like this!


'THREADS CLOSED OMG!!'

You can describe the threads that were closed however you want to. You can list the forum rules, pitch the closed threads against them, and that's fine too. These things do not, however, remove the fact that they are closed for a reason. Nor will it change anything.

• A thread is started regarding a situation whereby people were punished in-game for an activity that they otherwise shouldn't have been doing.
  
  
  • The thread was closed because, as mentioned by the moderator, we don't talk about bans. That rule is not limited to bans alone. With some common sense you should also be aware that it covers other in-game punishments as well.

• A thread is posted with the intent of being funny through providing terrible graphics.
  
  
  • The thread was closed because, as mentioned by myself, we have no interest in non-discussions on this forum. It is not hard to identify the true intent through people's posts/threads and I have had enough of this kind of litter on the forums.

'FREEDOMS TO WHAT?!'

I understand that you are quoting the First Amendment as though some laws were broken in the process of these two threads being closed. You are completely wrong. I can't believe that someone who is British is the one who needs to point this out, but the First Amendment of America does not describe your 'political rights' on this website. The First Amendment outlines congress' inability to create laws against or control the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition in public areas. No, this does not mean the Internet, rather, places such as on the street, in a park, or at any public buildings. What you've outlined does not have any hold on a privately owned website; you are bound by their rules, and we are bound by real laws.

Given this, I'd say you've named this thread very appropriately.


Conclusion

I understand how it feels to be a part of something that you've invested time into, only to see it gradually turn into something that is broken. However, Graalians.com is still a pretty new community and website. You can easily cut your 'investment' here, stick to Facebook, use the official Graal forums, or even make your own. You are not forced to participate, so if you dislike how things are, go elsewhere because it is not going to change.  

Posted by Higbey

anywhere without Unixmad and Stefan and Darlene is a Oasis in the sahara.

Darlene's gone soft and Unixmad never goes on the main forums. Stefan very rarely deletes messages. VERY rarely.

Please stop complaining just for the sake of complaining.

Posted by Rufus

Conclusion

I understand how it feels to be a part of something that you've invested time into, only to see it gradually turn into something that is broken. However, Graalians.com is still a pretty new community and website. You can easily cut your 'investment' here, stick to Facebook, use the official Graal forums, or even make your own. You are not forced to participate, so if you dislike how things are, go elsewhere because it is not going to change.

Agreed.

As a member of this community, I find it highly annoying when people post things to slander staff. As Rufus has said before, the goal of these forums is not to express your grievances against staff as these forums are unofficial and staff don't technically have to answer you if you post here. So... if you're going to slander a staff member or make useless threads, this isn't the place with you. I'm not saying this to suck up to Rufus. As a member of these forums I do find it highly annoying and I think Rufus has good judgement by not allowing it.