Cave-Stg.com is now closed down?

[sh00g]

Highly unfortunate that it went down. It was my favorite place to visit.

[StarCreator]

I really don't remember to be honest; why were you banned?

I was banned twice, really; back in May, I copied a translated blog post or something from the public section of the Cave-STG forum, crediting the translation to "EOJ from Cave-STG". The next day, I find this message waiting for me at Cave-STG:

2 week ban for copy-pasting a translation I did but not linking to the original thread. You've done this more than once, hence the ban. Read the forum rules, please.

This was the first I've heard of this from him, with no warning whatsoever, despite the fact that I had read the rules multiple times but had not noticed that there was a requirement to link the URL of the source, and since I was banned, I was unable to read the rules to check on this. I sent EOJ a PM here in response, which I have kept private until now; but in the interest of full disclosure, this is what I wrote:

I started writing this on the forum, but figured I at least owed you the courtesy of contacting you privately.

Quite honestly, I'm a little incensed at being banned. I realize it's your forum and you can do whatever you want with it, but I can't help but feel it's unfair to be banned (temporarily or otherwise) with no warning at all, for something I feel is mere technicality. I always take great care to cite sources, and call out people who do not - I do recall you witnessing me do so on your own forum and commenting on such. Anything I've pasted, I've always credited at the very least the author and the site from which it was posted.

I admit I messed up and forgot whatever rule you put down to use when citing material (the exact rule I cannot read at the moment due to being banned), but I quite honestly don't understand why it is being enforced in this way when it should be clear I had no malicious intent. I can understand quite easily why this rule would be required if someone is going out of his way to claim others' work as their own, but in this case, I made sure people knew you were the author and where it came from, and my only intent was to see to it the most people can benefit from your work. Call it the Wikipedia mentality or whatnot, but I feel that properly cited information should flow freely to those who would benefit from said information. It was never my intent to pass off your work as my own (and I hope you at least acknowledge this), which is what is most likely the spirit of the rule you are now enforcing.

I can only feel such technicality driven enforcement of rules is counterproductive and only serves to alienate people who would otherwise be perfectly compliant members of whatever community you wish to build. A warning would have very easily sufficed if you wanted me to follow the rules to the letter - which I do apologize for clearly not doing so.

Just my two cents.

I never received a response to this. And upon the expiration of the ban, I checked the rules, to find they had been edited sometime after my banning. So, EOJ is the only one who knows the rule I was banned under even existed at the time it was enforced.

Fast forward to a week or two ago, when many of Cave-STG's forums were made private. There was a thread in the Off-Topic forum discussing the previous incarnation of this thread (now locked). EOJ posted this late in the thread:

While I haven't read the shmups thread, some people have told me that posters there are venting their rage at me, calling me all sorts of nasty things, comparing me to all sorts of crazy internet guys. I find it really interesting that by just closing my forums, it exposes the true, rotten core of some of the shmups posters. Prior to this, when I posted on shmups forum, I never had any anger directed at me, except for the crazy fuckwits like Elixir and Icycalm, of course.

It's a shame, as if the shmups mods/admins actually moderated their forums, I probably wouldn't have left. As it is now, you pretty much have to beat up a mod or admin's little sister in order to get banned there. Otherwise, pretty much anything goes, and it's really hurting the forum's image.

Also interesting to note is the fact that the admins haven't locked the 'cave-stg flame' thread - in the past, even when someone started a flame thread for someone like Icycalm, they locked it long before it reached 150 posts. This makes me think the admins want the vitriol toward me to flourish, at least for the time being.

Anyway, I don't care really (after all, I'm not reading any of it). I just find it all pretty interesting. Smiley

This post actually irritated me, as EOJ is seen passing judgement on people over posts he admits to not having read in the same breath. I decided I couldn't let it stand, so I wrote this in response:

As someone who HAS read the thread, I don't think any of the posters there are rotten at all. Perfectly valid points are brought up. I think this was just the straw to break the camel's back.

To label a large number of people from a forum as rotten, over posts you haven't even read, is somewhat insulting, IMO.

Also, wow, I have a lot more posts there than I thought I did.

The next time I checked, my account had been outright deleted. Some volunteers shared EOJ's response to this, since he hadn't left me with a means to read it myself:

If you really think this, then you're better off there, than here. See ya.

I'm not even sure if he grasped the main purpose of my post, which was calling out how unfair it was to judge people without having the courtesy of personally reading what they have to say. So, in essence, I was purged along with hundreds of other undesirables for not having an opinion in lockstep with EOJ's.

Anyway, that's my story. Do let me know if you think at any point my actions were out of line, but as of now I have no regrets I stuck up for my principles.

[system11]

I don't think we need this to continue.