The problem in the case of eldotom is not what he said initially, but rather the fact that he completely ignored any evidence presented against his claims even when it quite strongly disproved them as "just coincidence" and then continued to insist on them despite completely lacking substantial evidence himself.

A number of people have complained in private about this kind of anti-intellectualism recently, and I know of a handful who have been driven off the forums entirely because they did not want to put up with it anymore, and since it was obvious that this thread would just go in circles from that point forward, I shut it down.
The reason why I was so harsh is because I wanted to counteract that. EGF is supposed to be a place for more in-depth, analytical discussion and people come here for that exact reason, so for the sake of preserving that atmosphere and not have this become another r/evangelion where no real progress is made and the same topics with the same non-results are discussed every two weeks in an endless cycle, we have been trying to shift the conversation back towards the more in-depth end, and retreading the same argument that has been had thousands of times on the internet is anything but that.

I wasn't gonna say anything, Buster had more guts than me there. So I feel motivated too.
I also think that topic/tangent split didn't go too well.

I think we're all a little stressed out eith the pandemic and all this stuff, but I think, especially with something as complex and imprtant to people as Eva, an acknowldegment that views will vary greatly is important.

I think eldotom might not have started off with the best tone there liking Reichu's theories to comspiracies, but other than that his opinion was valid. We aren't all gonna think the same. This is a franchise whose last film (3.0 I mean) was preemptively described as able to "divide the fanbase" by its director.

I think we all need to relax a little

Thank you guys for your feedback. I very much appreciate it.

The issue with eldotom is that he specifically called out other users by their username, rather than just arguing against the ideas they presented. This can make for a pretty hostile environment in which to discuss ideas regarding Loop/Sequel Theory. I am all for discussing Loop/Sequel Theory, even if I find them to be the unlikely scenarios in NTE. However, problems start when the arguments for Loop/Sequel Theory have been repeated and debunked several times already. Unless someone can properly "un-debunk" the arguments or provide a new, previously undiscussed angle on Loop/Sequel Theory, many proponents for the theory find a difficult uphill battle when trying to resurrect the discussion in their favor. While I understand that this is difficult for supporters of the theory, calling out individuals who argue against that theory and trying to start some sort of needlessly heated verbal battle isn't quite what we're looking for in the quality of discussions on EvaGeeks Forum.

Please understand that we're trying our best to ensure the best quality discussions (whether they be serious debates or fun banter) regarding Evangelion. Personally speaking, I certainly don't want to hamper Loop/Sequel Theory discussions, but unless new ideas supporting the theory enter the thread, not much can be done on the part of the staff here to ensure the quality of these discussions. (God knows we don't want the Loop Theory thread to be stuck in a loop.) There's also been a history of somewhat aggressive mindsets debating the issue, and eldotom's form may have reminded the staff of those type of mean-spirited discussions, and feared their return, hence the quick and firm tone expressed by the staff when addressing the issue.

Feel free to discuss Loop/Sequel Theory all you want! But if aggressive tones take the place of new ideas and constructive conversations, we might have to lock the thread until after the release of Shin Eva.

I thought the response to eldotom was appropriate as he was basically attempting to hand wave away interesting lore discussion based on faulty logic.

It was when Blockio called people "idiots" for arguing for the loop theory that I thought it was a bit aggressive and not a good look for the mods. Even if the guy's posts were coming off in bad faith, mods should try to keep their cool if you're in that role.

I agree, and there are plenty of mods now so that mod can pass off responsibilities to the other if they feel too wound up by the particular discussion at hand to treat the situation properly. I can assure you that we all feel as though we should be hung by our feet and tickled for a solid 5 minutes whenever one of us drops the ball in any way. We'll attempt to do better in the future.

hui43210 wrote:It was when Blockio called people "idiots" for arguing for the loop theory that I thought it was a bit aggressive and not a good look for the mods. Even if the guy's posts were coming off in bad faith, mods should try to keep their cool if you're in that role.

I won't deny that it was the wrong choice of words, but I feel the need to clarify that the point I took offense with was not the fact that they believed in the loop theory, but rather that they more often than not refuse to back down from their position even when all the arguments have been thoroughly disproven and instead opt for dismissing counterevidence, as eldotom did.
The problem is not the thesis itself, the problem is the mindset that the thesis has to be correct, no matter how much proof is shown against it.

Blockio wrote:

hui43210#911773 wrote:It was when Blockio called people "idiots" for arguing for the loop theory that I thought it was a bit aggressive and not a good look for the mods. Even if the guy's posts were coming off in bad faith, mods should try to keep their cool if you're in that role.

I won't deny that it was the wrong choice of words, but I feel the need to clarify that the point I took offense with was not the fact that they believed in the loop theory, but rather that they more often than not refuse to back down from their position even when all the arguments have been thoroughly disproven and instead opt for dismissing counterevidence, as eldotom did.
The problem is not the thesis itself, the problem is the mindset that the thesis has to be correct, no matter how much proof is shown against it.

Oh I absolutely agree. The arguments are terrible and rely on ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But once a mod starts to throw around words like idiots, it gives the impression to the average user that you are trying to belittle people rather than encouraging intelligent discussion which is the actual goal.

Don't get me wrong, the user came in with a terrible attitude by declaring all the "experts" would be wrong and so on, but I just don't want to see people inadvertently give the anti EGF crowd any fodder because I do like the overall direction you're trying to achieve.

BusterMachine4 wrote:
But then Zusuchan and Blockio came in, made a complete strawman out of his argument, added a snarky title, cussed him out, told him to go back to Twitter, and then locked the thread.

I sincerely apologize to eldomtom2 and anyone who thinks I acted improperly for a mod in that particular thread. I must say I personally didn't really think I was being so nor do I think so now. I pretty much just said that because the lore wasn't thought-out doesn't mean it's not important, I certainly didn't think I was making a strawman out of his argument. If you think I was, then could you please say how? Because I'm sorry, I just can't see it. At all.

∆ I see no issue with your post there. But the title of that topic (I don't know who named it) was really one sided. I still fail to see how this is this clear as day thing. In fact I'm more inclined to agree with eldomtom. But that's not what it is about. I just mean it's an opinionat the end of the day, others might agree with, etc.

I think you gotta keep it open to all interpretations. You also don't have to agree with what the author's intent. There's just so much to potentially unpack there.

I'm personally all for multiple interpretations and ideas, but like I've said, giving opinions in a public place also comes with the possibility those opinions will be criticized-regardless of whether or not those opinions are subjectively falsifiable. It just comes with the territory, so to speak.

As for the topic title, no, I did not name it-that's all I will say about that, however.

Zusuchan wrote:I'm personally all for multiple interpretations and ideas, but like I've said, giving opinions in a public place also comes with the possibility those opinions will be criticized-regardless of whether or not those opinions are subjectively falsifiable. It just comes with the territory, so to speak.

This feels a bit dishonest. The point of contention isn't that eldomtom was disagreed with, it's that a moderator expressed his disagreement with giving the thread a snarky title, cussing him out and locking the thread. Ignoring that and attempting to rationalize the behavior feels like hand-waving the issue. I certainly don't think either person conducted themselves ideally, but shouldn't moderators be held to a higher standard? The goal of the forum is to provide fans with a pleasant, mature and productive place for discussion, right?

I'm not attempting to rationalize Blockio's behavior or ignore it-I think he's more equipped to give his reasons (which he has done). I was thinking kuribo was saying that "opinions are opinions" and therefore there's no point in criticizing them, probably a mistake that arose from feeling tired and due to having a similar conversation in another thread to which kuribo also contributed.

I won't defend nor condemn Blockio's actions right now-there is some internal discussion over the business and it is ongoing, that's all I'll say.

Zusuchan wrote:I'm not attempting to rationalize Blockio's behavior or ignore it-I think he's more equipped to give his reasons (which he has done).

I won't defend nor condemn Blockio's actions right now-there is some internal discussion over the business and it is ongoing, that's all I'll say.

Understood, sorry if I was presumptuous.

baldur wrote:This feels a bit dishonest. The point of contention isn't that eldomtom was disagreed with, it's that a moderator expressed his disagreement with giving the thread a snarky title, cussing him out and locking the thread. Ignoring that and attempting to rationalize the behavior feels like hand-waving the issue. I certainly don't think either person conducted themselves ideally, but shouldn't moderators be held to a higher standard? The goal of the forum is to provide fans with a pleasant, mature and productive place for discussion, right?

I still stand by what I did in the locked thread. Again the problem with eldotom was not the opinions he held, but his refusal to acknowledge counterproof when presented. The thread started out as a tangent on a thread about an analysis blog with eldotom expressing in a rather malicious way that he hopes all of the analysis done is proven wrong, because nothing means anything in Eva, using misquoted interviews as "proof" and dismissing any evidence to the contrary.

That is neither good faith nor productive to the forum, and the exact kind of attitude that drove Reichu (and others for that matter!) off the forum.


The loop/sequel thread is a different matter with a different topic. While I had my reasons at the time, that does not change the fact that I did overstep there.
I have no problem with being judged for that, I without question did fuck up there; however I do ask to not bring seperate matters into this when they have no bearing on it.

baldur wrote:
Understood, sorry if I was presumptuous.

You certainly weren't.

Blockio wrote:

baldur wrote:This feels a bit dishonest. The point of contention isn't that eldomtom was disagreed with, it's that a moderator expressed his disagreement with giving the thread a snarky title, cussing him out and locking the thread. Ignoring that and attempting to rationalize the behavior feels like hand-waving the issue. I certainly don't think either person conducted themselves ideally, but shouldn't moderators be held to a higher standard? The goal of the forum is to provide fans with a pleasant, mature and productive place for discussion, right?

I still stand by what I did in the locked thread. Again the problem with eldotom was not the opinions he held, but his refusal to acknowledge counterproof when presented. The thread started out as a tangent on a thread about an analysis blog with eldotom expressing in a rather malicious way that he hopes all of the analysis done is proven wrong, because nothing means anything in Eva, using misquoted interviews as "proof" and dismissing any evidence to the contrary.

I agree that the user expressed his disagreement in a pretty malicious way. I fail to see how you were any less malicious or immature, though, and that counts extra when you're a moderator. Even in this thread I think you're still strawmanning him. I understand that his close-minded demeanor bothered you, I can sympathize with that. But is it wrong to expect better of moderators than to stoop down to that level? I don't think it is.

baldur wrote:I agree that the user expressed his disagreement in a pretty malicious way. I fail to see how you were any less malicious or immature, though, and that counts extra when you're a moderator. Even in this thread I think you're still strawmanning him. I understand that his close-minded demeanor bothered you, I can sympathize with that. But is it wrong to expect better of moderators than to stoop down to that level? I don't think it is.

The key to that lies in the last of my lines: Long-standing members have left the forum because they felt like this kind of behaviour was being tolerated and/or encouraged too much. This kind of posting has caused measurable damage to the forum.
And for what it's worth, I don't think that I am strawmanning him; he did respond to pretty hard evidence presented against his claims with "that's just a coincidence that doesn't proof anything" - which is also the time where I locked the thread and called it a waste of time.

Again, I am not saying anything about the main loop theory thread, no question that I messed up there.

Blockio's behavior as a mod has consistently been unprofessional, especially on the Discord server, where it is typical for him to explode at members simply because he is annoyed with a particular topic or user. And maybe those topics or users might be annoying, but I expect mods to handle that with maturity and not dive straight into cussing at and belittling posters/members.

The fact that the rest of the moderation team consistently chooses to publicly ignore this behavior is disheartening.

Glor wrote:And maybe those topics or users might be annoying, but I expect mods to handle that with maturity and not dive straight into cussing at and belittling posters/members.

I can't attest to all that since I don't have much experience on this forum myself (and no experience on the Discord server), but I will say that I completely agree with this point.

I feel the need to clarify some things here in regards to Glor's post.
For starters it feels rather disingenuous for you in particular to talk about this sort of thing - multiple people on the discord have messaged me about their grievances with you while you were on there, using such colorful language as "that pretentious dickhead", "assholes like Glor" and "just because he's written some decently popular fanfic he thinks he can act however he likes". It's not that I have something out for anyone disagreeing with me, it's that the discord at large took issue with your attitude, and I happened to be the one who called you out on it.

Second of all, this is the conversation in question:

Me: I used to respect both of you, but that is increasingly fading
Glor: This is odd behaviour for a mod
Me: I'm not one to put personal differences over professionalism. If I were to ban everyone I think is an idiot, things would look a whole lot different

It is true that I was annoyed at the topic at hand, but I made pretty clear that the reason for my first statement is not because of an isolated incident, but rather a gradual decline of the respect I at one point had for you.
You can certainly make a case that my choice of words was uncalled for. However, you can also not ignore the two rants you had afterwards on the same server while I was away. Both of those contained less than polite and equally uncalled for names for me and other staff who had nothing to do with the issue; these were deleted by you around the time when you left the server a day or two later.

I find it rather bad faith of you to accuse someone of misbehaviour such a short time after doing the same, especially since you went to the effort to carefully erase all evidence for it.