Well..

For anybody who wants to read how a guy who's been playing BG2 for 4 years (it's the only computer game I have!) suddenly got tired of it:

I've just (it took me an hour at least, and I read verrrry quickly) finished reading this incredibly long discussion "offtopic Anvil discussion" or something. At G3 forum I belive, don't remember anymore since I dunno visit there. Using such comments/words about each other, banning people from forums because you dunno like what they say...this is ridiculous. I have a strong dislike for people who don't allow other people to express themselves freely and in any way they want. This does not include harsh words however. But those words can be replaced with stars ***** or something. Is that such a hard thing to do? There's no need to EVER remove someone's post, regardless of what he wrote. He lies? Fine. Let me be the judge of that. Or any other player interested, for that matter. I hate when a person makes up a decision for me. I'm not a sheep, and don't want to be traeted like one. Banning is using,actually it's abusing the power a certain individual has. I tought this was 21st century...obviously I was terribly wrong. I am dissapointed when I see what IA, fixpacks, etc. have actually become - just a topic on which people can fight over - on GAMING FORUMS!..disgusting imo. Anyway, this is my last post on any of BG forums. You guys are waaay off-line, with your moralizing/debating/cursing/generaly beeing an ass towards other people. I haven't seen one bit of respect in any of the posts there. Hate, bitterness, worrying, moral right-wrong debates (if there's a thing I dunno like, it's moralizing.) I don't know how many people at that forum actually visit BWL forums, nor do I know who they are. Nor do I care, for that matter. I dunno how they'll interpret this what I wrote. and frankly, I dunno care... Make a forum and name it "bitching" and stay on it writing crap until your keyboard brakes, for all I care. Or at least, consider naming the thread "over 18yrs only".

@everyone
Please do not ask me any questions for the above written. I won't bother answering them. And maybe, this post will be deleted. I hope not since you must give a dying man his last wish. I have one: Don't delete or edit this. It's my post here, and it violates no forum rules.

I dunno how someone feels when he sees his own tombstone in a post. My guess is - not good. (by the way, that's waaay the most...I don't have words to express it..in my native language - "groteskno" post I ever saw. "Grotesque" perhaps? I dunno. If he reads this - this for him ONLY (temijin or something) - man, go get some help. This is not joking, or making an ass of you, this is serious advice from a mental health care professional. I don't know anything about you, I only read your posts, but you seem like a very troubled person. )
Anyway, to make the long story short, take care everyone. There are no "rights" or "wrongs". There are people. Real people. Above everything else.

@Vuki

I'll always remember your current party and your philosophical debating and will visit oft to check how you're doing! Once again (and for the last time ) good luck! You'll need it. But of couse, you knew I'd say that.

@Sikret

I really loved playing your mod. I will continue to play it for sure, but I'm rather dissapointed right now. Not in you, or anybody else, just the community based on a very old computer game... Just please, do make some other classes/kits/equipment more useful than Vagrant and his equipment in IA6. Korgan would really like a good axe, and an armor too.

@Baronius

I dunno why you bother "defending" IA. I really don't. Last time I saw such persistence against hopeless odds was in a movie about the battle of Thermopili or something when 200 Spartan warriors (ancient Greece) defended their homeland from over several thousand Persians (or something). Brought tears in my eyes..
I believe that any player who dissmisses a mod by not even trying it out will not enjoy much of IA anyway, due to a rather specific gameplay style you'll need to develop, which includes exploring, being curious, trying out various things and such.
We have a saying here in Croatia, it goes like this: "Samo se za dobrim konjem prašina diže."
Meaning, if IA wasn't good, people wouldn't be writing about it in the first place. Stay cool man..Not everyone who vistits forums will be brainwashed (by a bunch of people he never actually saw, or heard, or knows anything about them) or is an idiot unable to make a decission.

Well, there is *always* a need for some sort of authority for any such community, whether it is a family, online community, city, state, or whatever. I could give you a very long explanation on why it is necessary (based on real experience with another site among other things) but I don't think it would change your mind.

Of course we're sorry to see someone leave because of all this, and that's exactly why we at BWL are careful (no matter how much we disagree with someone) to keep at least a civil tone. I'm sure you are not the only one to leave because of all the goings on in the community, but most probably don't post to announce their departure. If some were to follow a few basic guidelines in their posts, I'm sure everyone would be much better off. Unfortunately that's not something I foresee in the the near future. One of the biggest problems of this is that the players who *do* leave are the ones that *are* courteous.

Take care, and hopefully you'll be back someday.

know that you are not the only one that has absolutely had it with forum bickering. dont let it tear you from the enjoyment of the game

Dear Kerkes!

I am really sorry that you leave. Fortunately I am really sure that you will come back. Just believe me, you are balduracholic! You know, I have written this text appr. 3 weeks ago:



That what you should do also. Claim that you are not part of any clique and do not care about cliques! BTW, in other BG forums you can see much more politics than here.

So, just think about it, relax a bit and come back!

Sir_Carnifex is right. Moreover, there are a few additional points which are worth mentioning:

1- Having a well-defined authority, based on clear Terms of Use is actually the most honest and civil method to follow (this is what you see here at BWL). There are certain other forums in which your posts won't be deleted, but if you say something they don't like, you will be attacked (and eventually overwhelmed) by a horde of brainwashed trolls. Every single post you send will be replied by 20-30 posts full of jokes and insults and you will eventually decide to quit. This may well be called the dictatorship of majority. At its surface, it looks that they have not banned you, but it's all just a jest.

2- The second point is that every publisher (be it a forum or a journal or whatever) has its own main purposes to follow. For example, if you send a comic story to Philosophical Review or Nous, you can't expect it to be published and if your article is rejected, you can't go around telling people that the editorials of those journals are dictators. By rejecting your article, they have not violated any of your rights, they have rather practiced their own right as the journals' editorial (actually, if they had been forced to publish every article sent to them, then it would have been their rights which were violated). To make your boards useful, informative and clean, you need to have an authority over what you accept to publish. I can of course speak only for IA's forum (not the entire BWL). IA's forum's main purpose is to help players by giving them reliable and true information and to help the mod's developers (= myself and testers) to develop the mod, communicate with each other via the forum rather than messenger or e-mail and to discuss what they do, read suggestions, constructive criticisms and the like. IA's forum has never been intended to be a totally open place for publishing all sorts of material even those which include plainly and intentionally false and misleading information, jokes, insults and et al (I don't have any extra time nor the interest to maintain such an entirely open discussion board; it can't be helpful in anyway). We want the forum to be a clean place in which a new visitor can easily find the useful information he needs rather than being lost among lots of irrelevant materials.

3- Some people have totally misunderstood what 'freedom of speech' means. Your freedeom of speech is restricted by other people's rights. Example:

- Even in less professional journals, such as daily newspapers, you can't write plain lies and accusations. People will sue you and the newspapers' editorials for those lies and accusations if those lies have caused harms to them. The outcome depends on the laws of the country.

4- Private and semi-private environments have their own local rules. Examples:

- If you want to join a club, you have to agree with its terms of use. For example, consider a club whose terms of use states that during your presence in the club's hall or building, you should not use profane language. You are free not to sign up to the club at all, but if you do, you will have to follow the terms of use.

- If you come to my house, you need to follow the local rules we follow there. For example, if I tell you not to walk on my exquisite carpet with your muddy shoes, you should follow the rule even if you don't have the same rule in your own house.

5- The admins of some forums have an argument for not removing trolls and their posts. The argument is not sound, but they keep repeating it. It is as follows:

Trolls and their posts are not removed, because by keeping them, other users will actually see that the user in question is a troll and should not be trusted or taken seriously. The troll actually harms his own reputation more than anything else.

As I said, this argument is not sound, because trolls sometimes hide behind fake nicknames. They use separate nicknames for when they want to be taken seriously. The troll has created a nickname only for trolling purposes. Keeping his posts will only show that that particular fake nickname has a low reputation; but this is not a big deal for the troll, because he has other nicknames for when he needs to be taken seriously. Other users should indeed be protected against trolls.

There are of course other types of trolls who don't hide behind fake names, but they are mostly the adminstrators/moderators of those sites or their close friends. When a moderator is a troll, one can't expect much.



In most cases, I agree with this "let everyone judge for himself" principle, but not always. It has its own sure exceptions:

First, if the lie is published publicly to ruin someone else's reputation or to harm someone else in any way, the publisher should not publish the material or else it can even be sued. As I said earlier in this post, your freedom of speech is restricted by other people's rights. You can't simply spread false accusations and lies about other people (or their products) and then say let other people be the judge. Your lies will affect many minds and among those a very small portion have even the knoweldge to know how to test your claims (sometimes the lie can't even be tested easily for everyone who is not an expert). Let me give you a concrete example:

1- saros (the known liar) writes a lie about IA (he says that enemies summon a different version of fallen planatar than the fallen planatar available to PCs, which is plain falsehood). Link.

2- Some other player (probably affected by the abovementioned lie) repeats the same false thing. Link.

3- My reply.

As you can see, not everyone knows how to test; even among those who know how to test, some don't bother to test and just trust what they read. It's true that I answered to this case and clarified that the claim was false, but there are a lot more similar lies spread around and if we do not have at least a minimal control over it, our forums will turn to be a den of liars (saros has written many similar lies in his posts).

Second, you won't tell your doctor that you don't take the medicine he has prescribed for you just because you want to be the judge, will you? This analogy may be a bit remote and far from the actual case of forum moderation we are dicussing; but I'm bringing up this analogy just to show that there are certain areas in which we are not experts and don't have the required background information to judge things correctly. In such cases, we need to consult experts; otherwise, we can be easily deceived. Most people agree that they need to consult an expert when they are ill, but they just resist to agree that there are many other fields in which they need to consult experts as well.

Third, sometimes each of us has the duty to protect others from deceptions and lies. Example: Assume that someone is trying to tell lies about the beauty of after-death to encourage people to commit suicide. Will you (as a publisher or a forum moderator) easily publish the villain's words and say 'let everyone be the judge for himself'? Will you just stand there starting to offer counter arguments or will you do something more practical to prevent the victims from committing suicide? This may look to be an extreme example, but it surely conveys the main point I have in mind. It's actually related to the other two points explained above. Not everyone has all of the needed information and expertise to be the judge for himself in every situation. Any publisher has a duty to be sensitive to lies and at least avoid publishing them; otherwise, the publisher will also be partially responsible for spreading those lies and their possible consequences.*

*Of course, one can (to a debatable extent) argue that the liar is still free to stablish a new publication institute (say, a new forum) of his own and publish his lies there; but then at least you as a trustworthy publisher have not helped him in publishing them and are not responsible for them, though one can offer the counter-argument that even in that case, others can still sue the liar for what he says even if they are published by his own personal publication organization.

May I be the devil and...
As common curtancy.

How very nice definition.

They seem to regenerate, too!