Of course my ridiculous week long ban from the whole forum has further aggravated me but I was already thinking along these lines before it happened.
First of all the spoiler policy is way out of scale. I can see why it's done and it's justified to very high degree but too much is too much. Most blatant cases:
NemZ's ban for innocious, impossible to get without context generic namedrop
IO's week long ban for using material from film booklet for avatar
NemZ's case was already touched on in locked thread and since mods seem to be unwilling to discuss it I'll let it be for now
IO's week long ban was twice worse and twice more full retard. Okay people, I get the ban on using booklet material because concept art obviously feature spoilers here and there with mechanics, revised character designs for some cast members, new characters et cetera et cetera. It's good general rule. That doesn't mean things shouldn't be evaluated case by case basis because it's beyond stupid construing use of some images as spoilers and IO's avatar definetly falls under this category.
IO used cropped pic Rei's head as his avatar. The same old Rei everyone here knows how she looks like and has looked like since 90s. The spoiler value in that picture was ZERO and if maintaining hardline rule when there's no reason to is more important than having a bit of common sense about it why not just delete the avatar and remind him of absolute ban on use of that material?
Giving a long ban for that is such ridiculously overblown measure all I can do is shake my head stupefied.
Concept art of characters when they're free of spoilerific redesigns are just that and don't tell/reveal anything at all for those unspoiled. I was considering asking if I could use similar mugshot of Pinkie-chan from the booklet carefully cropped because the trailer crop I've used for most of November (though I intend to change it soon) is hardly ideal. The mugshot crops I was considering would contain zero information about her looks and character we didn't know from trailer (pink hair, lipstick, Diebusterish look).
Well good thing I got myself banned via other routes so I didn't need to bother asking stupid questions.
Here's example of concept art I was considering cropping:
"spoilers" for clinically paranoid SPOILER: Show
If you're telling me the fact she apparently has hand in addition to neck and face is a spoiler I don't even
As it's own category I could also mention Bagheera's Q subforum local ban for bickering that for some reason didn't extent to his partner in crime but apparently that's "case closed" too.
Okay, that's for spoilers. Then there's the whole draconian off-topic policy which in its causticness has got many stupid bans underway - twice for me.
It's not that there's something wrong with trying to maintain order etc. but some limits, people! Q subforum has hardly been chaotic after the initial 60+ page spoiler summary thread was all that existed in it. There's maintaining a policy for sake of keeping things something fit for discussion and then there's policy that smells of OCD. Very few of the dreaded OTs in Q discussion were anything out of ordinary or line for this forum in general and discussion on topics like ones covered in most Q threads are naturally sprawling ones and to be frank I think it's legitimate to question if every little OT mention in larger context is worthy of going through process of searching for the precisely "correct" topic and thus creating meager, meaningless discussion there instead. Answering short OT question in context of larger post is more sensible than spamming short comments in bazillion threads that won't likely create worthwhile discussion.
Secondly what the hell are you expecting from the subforum? Some sort of massively interconnected hub with field of discussion in every subpart defined with anal accuracy?
This makes posting stressful and pain in the ass more than anything and there are some things which I never brought up anywhere because
- they either touched on too many strictly limited topics (durr split up your post) to fit under any single topic comfortably
- they weren't worthy of becoming new topics or informative enough to generate much discussion on their own.
Also excuse me for considering discussing the crucial differences between Rei and Asuka and what they represent in NGE relevant for understanding the differences in how they're portrayed and the role they play in the story of NME. That whole tangent that got Reichu all bothered again wasn't even fully Ot to begin with and to be frank clarifying some of these things many newbs populating Q forum probably never get to digging up from ancient Discussion threads is good in itself. It was not shipping bullshit.
Last but not least even if Q's OT rules weren't overblown and ridiculously draconian next to forums in general that wouldn't mean they're entirely justified. It's not like the subforum is THAT busy for example next to Completely Off Topic subforum and if that subforum can go by without such policies so should Q.
Secondly the actions seem more or less arbitrary on occasion. I'm not asking for bans for them too (I don't think they deserve those anymore than I did) but why folks like Azathoth who were just as active in OTing the shit out of Asuka thread got no punishment while I got a week long ban? Hello?
Last but not least even if with all above mod policy is justifiable the punishments are overblown regardless. I got banned for whole week for daring to answer quickly some question by Shinchan (IIRC) immeaditly after the draconian rules got reinstated again in one topic instead of replying in another topic because to be frank I thought it was such minor matter bringing it up in other topic was not worth it as it could be tidily answered there without fear of tangents popping up from it later.
Sorry but week long ban for OT posting is in any case moronically overblown punishment. Is this case of use of hammer making everything look like nails or what? It's hard for me to see how OT as innocious as has gone in Q subforum could be reason for any global ban in any case but a week is simply too stupid.
Also if you absolutely have to ban people for these horrid OT crimes why not make it local ban from Q subforum? That already solves the issue and doesn't involve using cannon to swat a fly. You already did that with Bagheera so no bullshit about such thing being impossible to do.
Posting OT in Q is no reason to deny access to forum as a whole.
One doesn't and shouldn't take too seriously the average /a/ shit talk about other boards in general but y'know, after this debacle I find it a bit harder to simply chuckle about anon remarks about "enjoying your nazi mods" next time EGF randomly pops up in discussion there.
