These boards cannot retain the City of Heroes community

[Septipheran]

I feel that I stumbled upon a very unique opportunity to make a very unfortunate point.

TonyV, I have been a critic of you in the past. I feel that in many cases, you have handled the responsibility innately placed upon your shoulders in a very bad way. But you still handle the responsibility. I know that you loved this game just as much as I did, and I have nothing but respect for you and your efforts.

I can understand that you have a tight ship to run here. We are all here for the same reason- for the love of a game that meant quite a bit to all of us.

I know that the staff here didn't ask for this responsibility. The Titan mods and TonyV must be feeling quite a bit of pressure being the default forum go-to for COH refugees, but in my mind that simply does not excuse your actions.

I'm going to directly link to this thread here for posterity.

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7776.msg102434.html#msg102434

I've always felt comfortable being open and honest on the official COH forums. Many might have called me a unicorn, but I'm willing to bet that for every one person who hated me, thirty people either copied my builds, PM'ed me for advice or both.

Since the announcement of the closure, I've felt that the community was binding together, working for and with one another in order to help preserve at least some semblance of what made our game great. In that spirit, I've reached out to the community as a whole with my personal information that I'd never previously revealed, as evidenced in the thread above.

And yet, I'm told that using words that can apply to me in context is against the rules here. That I cannot speak candidly and treat this community as I would any other structure that I have a vested interest in being a part of.

I am essentially being cut off from the remaining COH community because of arbitrary disagreements with my vocabulary.

You can put your mods on a pedestal for all eternity. A lot of these people are the same folks who always had strong opinions in the "general discussion" forum on the COH boards, but never got their hands dirty adding up maths for survivability or DPS chains in the Archetype forums.

You are pandering to the lowest common denominator, pinning stars on their chests, and allowing their subjective and scarcely relevant opinions to reign supreme. This is unacceptable, and it's something that would never have seen the light of day on the official forums.

I appreciate the effort, but this is ridiculous. You are essentially representing a very small portion of the game's community as the brand of City of Heroes. I'm posting this to say that our game was not a tyrannical bureaucracy, and that this mentality is doing more to push refugee's away than to unite the community.

[FatherXmas]

Dude, using a word that general society considers derogatory is bad form.  It doesn't matter if you routinely apply it to yourself or if your race/ethnicity/sexual orientation/medical condition social group is okay with it being used by other members of that group.  It's widely considered derogatory, you can't use it here.  You can be self deprecating with your friends but simply not here.

Honestly how hard is it to self censor yourself.

[Septipheran]

Dude, using a word that general society considers derogatory is bad form.  It doesn't matter if you routinely apply it to yourself or if your race/ethnicity/sexual orientation social group is okay with it being used by other members of that group.  It's widely considered derogatory, you can't use it here.  You can be self deprecating with your friends but simply not here.

Honestly how hard is it to self censor yourself.

It's arbitrary. It's like saying that I can't wear jeans on Wednesdays, because well... No one else here wears jeans on Wednesdays. Except in this case, I happen to own a jeans company.

Editing to dig a little further...

 In the context of the discussion where I was 'reprimanded,'  the thread was closed because I used the word retard in response to an article about a kid whose delusions were being encouraged by people who simultaneously discouraged the use of the word retard, since the kid in question happened to be autistic. I'm autistic. I called the kid a retard because he was acting like a moron. Diagnostically speaking, he's no more retarded than me. We have the same "condition," which is really an advantage in almost every sense, aside from the tedious social terminology hysteria.

So it's okay to perpetuate the idea that people like myself and the retarded kid in this article (context, people)  are incapable of registering, processing, accepting and utilizing layman's terminology? The 'normal' people can all sit back and observe pixel characters on a monitor and subsequently prohibit their use in order to feel morally absolved, without realizing the intellectual and moral failure that goes along with protecting perfectly capable individuals from not only shrugging off but ultimately utilizing arbitrary terminology? I find this not only offensive, but divisive also.

[FatherXmas]

It's arbitrary. It's like saying that I can't wear jeans on Wednesdays, because well... No one else here wears jeans on Wednesdays. Except in this case, I happen to own a jeans company.

Well guess what.  There are a lot of social conventions that are arbitrary but the rest of us understand that to keep the peace we avoid violating them because otherwise society will start looking upon us unfavorably and actively avoid you.  It could be something as simple as facial piercings or tattoos or unusual hair color or style or choice of clothing or hobbies or simply the language you use.  The choice has always been accept the social consequences of bucking the norm or learn to adapt to where you are and behave acceptably in that environment.

Sorry, that's how society works.  You may disagree with it, consider it unfair and capricious but that doesn't change the fact that's how it is.

[Septipheran]

Well guess what.  There are a lot of social conventions that are arbitrary but the rest of us understand that to keep the peace we avoid violating them because otherwise society will start looking upon us unfavorably and actively avoid you.  It could be something as simple as facial piercings or tattoos or unusual hair color or style or choice of clothing or hobbies or simply the language you use.  The choice has always been accept the social consequences of bucking the norm or learn to adapt to where you are and behave acceptably in that environment.

Sorry, that's how society works.  You may disagree with it, consider it unfair and capricious but that doesn't change the fact that's how it is.

See my edit.

Also, I've always had a great deal of respect for you, so please don't take this the wrong way. But how old are you and where do you live? I'm a 23 year old economics student in New York. I have visible tattoos and my nose is pierced. My hair is 'long,' and I also like "the rap music!" I also have a 4.0 GPA, I wear a suit when it's required and I never experience any negative reactions to how I choose to represent myself at all.  I feel like you're reacting from a sort of time warp that only existed in generations that empowered bigotry through very irrelevant and tedious standards. I get more crap for being a Republican 'robot' than I do for wearing skinny jeans, but I digress.

[Aggelakis]

I just want to respond that I got several PMs thanking me for stepping up. So while you are on one side of things, there are more who are on our side.

Retard != moron. Full stop.

[TonyV]

It's really simple.  The term is offensive, and we don't allow it.  I've also censored black people on Faces for using the word "nigga" for the same reason.  If someone says "that is so gay" in the context of something being stupid, I don't stop for even a millisecond to ponder whether or not the poster is actually homosexual, thus making it okay.  I don't care if you're autistic or Joe Normal.  I don't care if you think it makes me and Agge forum Nazis or insufferable PC prudes.  I don't care if I get 5,000 PMs from people swearing they're not offended and debating the merits of allowing the word to be used in the context in which you used it.  I really didn't have to, but I even indulged you in posting a link to demonstrate that the decision wasn't as capricious as moderating for wearing jeans on Wednesdays, having tattoos, or coloring your hair.  It's not like we just made this crazy notion up on the spot to make your life difficult.

The simple fact of the matter is that I've talked to enough people who consider the term offensive, and they've convinced me that they're right and it is.  The moderators and I allow people a much wider berth in expressing themselves here than they did on the official forums, but that doesn't mean that it's a free-for-all where anything goes.  If we feel that someone is using a term that categorically denigrates a class of people, especially one who can't just choose to fit in with everyone else even if they wanted to, we're going to moderate it.  Period, end o' story.  That's how we roll.

If you can't express yourself without using derogatory words, then I'm sorry.  I don't know how to say this tactfully, but that's your problem, not ours.  If you can, then do, and everyone--you, me, the moderators, and everyone else in the community--will be happy and you won't have to worry about getting posts edited or threads closed again.  Problem solved!

Edit:  And because of your little PM stunt, and because I'm putting my foot down and not letting people attack our moderators, I'm locking this thread too.  Short version: If you screw up and post something you shouldn't, you'll get moderated.  Don't do it again, and life goes on.  But consider this official notice: If you continue pushing the rules of what little moderation we do here, we will bring the hammer down.