Signature gets me a ban-hammerin'

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

So here I am, a regular on umptyscrunch.com (obviously not the real name of the forum) and I opted to change my signature to something silly.

Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascanna.

For those who do not speak Irish Gaelic, it reads "My hovercraft is full of eels."

It's a line from a Monty Python sketch and in my .sig I include the YouTube link to it as well as the link to the site that has that phrase translated into more languages than I can shake a stick at.

So as anyone on umptyscrunch.com can see my .sig looks like...

Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascanna.
http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=G6D1YI-41ao

Which is within the rules of the site governing signatures. It's less than the maximum character count, is three out of the allowed 5 lines and has two out of the three allowed links.

Got me ban-hammered. Harshly and with extreme prejudice. The email I got from the site Admins (yes, I got admins and not just moderators) basically was the text version of getting a foot broken off in my ass.

So I send the admins an email back asking what was so offensive about a popular Monty Python line that says nothing that is against the Terms of Service for the forum and in a foreign language and posting two "safe for work" links.

Especially in light of the fact that two of the moderators post YouTube vids in their own signature line. One links "The Cheese Shop" sketch and the other links "Always look on the bright side of life" from "Life of Brian".

Turns out that someone reported me to the mods and admins complaining that it was something very sexually explicit and that neither the person reporting nor the staff at Umptyscrunch could be arsed to look at the links.

Administration apologized and stated that I could create a new account. It would seem that they didn't just lock the account, they deleted it and every post that I had ever posted.

Oh and I now have their blessing to reuse that signature when I do.

Glee.

Anyone else have a forum go ballistic on you or someone you know for equally stupid reason?

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sounds like the admin at the old Kissonline forum. They'd banhammer people for speaking out of turn, or posting something that the admin or mods didn't agree with. The admin even tried to get one poster fired from his job, and another was regularly harrassed on his own forum for ages by one mod.

Which is why I and a group of people from a rival Kiss forum did a forum invasion of that place, resulting in a zillion accounts including band member impersonation. You see, the admins never IP banned; they just banned the email address. So it was quite easy to make a dozen accounts there.

[Andara Bledin]

I've never had that happen to me.

I did have a mod at an info site kind of similar to Wiki from back before there were wikis that didn't like me and managed to scrap a couple of my write-ups, giving the green-light to inferior offerings. It notably chilled my interest in further contributions.

But, seriously, they actually nuked your account? I'm not sure I could ever go back to a place that did that over something so asinine.

^-.-^

[TheHuckster]

It's not a forum, but there was a server on a Tribes server that was very strict in its swearing and offensive policy. I got kicked for uttering "wtf," among other things. I basically made a game out of it, just how much did they enforce this policy?

I came in as Dr. Lipshitz. If any of you are familiar, Rugrats, which was not only on Nickelodeon, but Nick Junior for a time, had a character by this name, spelled exactly like that. I was given the banhammer for that name.

Same goes for Shih Tzu, WhatTheFark, SexyChik, and BoobTube. It was quite amazing, and they gave you no warning about it either. Keep in mind, Tribes is a rated T game, and while I'm fine with having some standards on decency and cleaning the chat of stupid juvenile taunting, they took it to a level where people who even agreed with that idea were getting unceremoniously banned just for choosing a seemingly innocuous name. The examples I gave above were just myself testing just how strict they were. There were many players who came in with names like that not knowing they were breaking some draconian rule and finding out too late.

[HYHYBT]

I'm as surprised they actually admitted an error as I am that they went that far with a ban in the first place.

[Amanita]

On the cosplay forum I'm on, there's one troll who calls himself variations of "proud asian". He's of Indonesian descent, and completely and utterly HATES whites and westerners. Especially white people cosplaying as characters from Anime. He posts some of the most racist, xenophobic, hate-filled rants about white people who cosplay, and the mods refuse to IP ban him, they take forever to do anything whenever he shows up. I think they justify it by "letting us play with him", but I feel that this only gives him attention.

This is the same forum I got completely toasted on, for a skit idea of mine, where one of my characters fights and kills a black-clad, generic villain. Even though my skit makes no mention of anything at all pertaining to that day, I got accused of making jest of 9/11, and worse. One of the mods has a special bug up her ass about that subject, and has appointed herself sole arbiter of all that's allowed to be said about 9/11, abusing her mod's powers to censor opinions and ideas that she personally doesn't like, even if they have nothing to do with that.

[Rapscallion]

Anyone else have a forum go ballistic on you or someone you know for equally stupid reason?

We've been accused of it. Been accused of being a bunch of 'stormtroopers' marching up and down the forums. I can't think of anyone we've had banned who didn't deserve it. I'll also admit that we looked at your signature, did a google search, shrugged, and forgot about it until now.

Being an admin or a mod does bring great responsibility. One particularly persistant offender found out that the hard way when his alter-ego tried to make out that he'd been unfairly IP-banned and I was able to 'apologise', mentioing in the process that they were obviously at the same company (named it), and that said person ought to look out for them. Based on their typing skills and style, the malefactor obviously had eyes that were too close together, making them obvious at first sight, and that further attempts to regain access to the forum would result in contact being made to various people in the hierarchy at that place of employ.

Life became far calmer at that point, I can tell you. I love being me.

Rapscallion

[TheHuckster]

I'll also admit that we looked at your signature, did a google search, shrugged, and forgot about it until now.

And it is crazy that the mods at the OP's forum didn't do the same, and instead went by the second hand "knowledge" of a few idiots.

As a moderator at another forum, I feel for you Raps. Sometimes it's a very thin line between being trollish, but not enough to warrant mod action and being a troll that's truly destructive to the discussions.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I also remember a very young mod (age twelve) at this forum I go on who was awful; she kept locking threads for no reason other than not agreeing with what people were saying, deleting topics for the same reason and telling people off quite nastily for spamming when they weren't.

On that forum, mods under sixteen are no longer appointed. All cuz of her.

[Nekojin]

I was once banned from a forum for trivial shit. The site offered downloads of game mods and tools, but they had a posting requirement before you were allowed to download. So, I did what any rational person would do - I went looking through the forum for threads to post to, and posted on-topic replies. A Mod interrupted me by dragging me into a Chat session with a, "What the hell are you doing?" message, and accused me of spamming. I argued the point, and got banned for daring to argue with the mod.

Needless to say, I found a different source for the items I was looking for, and never looked back.

[HYHYBT]

So... how do you tell from the way someone types that their eyes are unusually close together?

[Rapscallion]

You don't. I knew it was him and it was a great way to get a jab in.

I have an easily amused streak a mile wide.

Rapscallion

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

We've been accused of it. Been accused of being a bunch of 'stormtroopers' marching up and down the forums. I can't think of anyone we've had banned who didn't deserve it. I'll also admit that we looked at your signature, did a google search, shrugged, and forgot about it until now.

I can assure you that it is neither Fratching nor Customers Suck that I'm kvetching about. And frankly I honestly can not recall ever using that as a .sig here.

Could be wrong. Likely am wrong. But if I had I would have remembered if anyone even asked about it much less did anything about it.

It was a forum dedicated teardrop camping trailers that I'm on about.

But, seriously, they actually nuked your account? I'm not sure I could ever go back to a place that did that over something so asinine.

Trust me...I've no intention of ever taking them up on their offer of rejoining the forum. I've found a much better site so they kinda did me a favor.

Still @#$%ing pissed though.

[Rapscallion]

Hmm, might have been someone else using the signature in that case. Could easily have assumed it was you based on this thread. As I said, we shrugged and got on with enjoying ourselves

Rapscallion

[Peppergirl]

That's ludicrous!

I'll admit - we mods and admins (here) do make mistakes, but if we're wrong, we apologize and go on with life. We've been known to reverse infractions for much grayer areas than this.

I know you're okay with being gone (don't blame you), but do you feel better to have vented a bit? That tends to help me.