Roketsune

Well, my name was invoked. Thus. I must respond. You actually invoked my name on my birthday, so you deserve a present of some sort. *looks around, grabs a leftover Cadbury egg as that's the only presentable object* Have this as a prize! Anyway, I had been monitoring the thread, and I never got the impression they believed you were the one who argued that. I'm pretty sure they only saw me as the disagreeable asshole with crappy opinions (I imagine it's a relatively common impression by those who get too close to me). So, have no fear! I'm going to actually do the exact reverse of what I had generally done here months ago and endorse the admins. Chaos and confusion are fun, anyway! Well, only when they afflict other people are they fun. Anyway, I suspect your friend had to be either unintelligible or obstinate to be banned over grammar, if that was the underlying cause at all. I assert this because certain staff members' visceral dislike for me and my ideology was quite palpable, and yet even with me they seemed to follow this doctrine of least aggressive moderation. I never even got a warning for the censorship matters in question. If *I* am granted that sort of magnanimity, then certainly they are extremely averse to banning people save for certain things like bot spam and deliberate sabotage and the like. While it's possible the staff went all Stalin-like while I was away conducting a relocation and a discrimination complaint with the former landlord and too many other things to recall, it seems unlikely to me your friend is innocent. He had to have done a LOT to be permanently banned.

Hail Satan! *prances effeminately*

You want to feel welcomed? What, do you think we're a bunch of ponies and followers of Celestia? *looks around and at his address bar* Oh, wait, we are! Welcome to the forums! I'm sorry to hear you feel so defensive and afraid. I have learned that engaging in any repression is spiritually very destructive, and thus such should be kept to a minimum. I actually am openly a furry and brony femboy, and dress at a furry con the same as I do when getting groceries. I honestly get hostile perceivable reactions extremely rarely, and those who are closer to me are genuine friends and allies since they know of these characteristics and don't judge me negatively for them. So, just be openly a brony and your social condition will ultimately improve, even if there is suffering and rejection while those who weren't suitable recoil

I'm reasonably sure the developers are aware of furrydom and the appeal it will have there. That being said, I find the assertion this was made primarily for furries to be absurd.

Who the Hell are the Fine Brothers? I've never heard of these buffoons before.

I wasn't even convinced necessarily that most of the laudable ideas were being rejected, or that you were especially rude about rejections. I was merely stating why the complaint about the attitude and number of rejections seemed plausible to me. As you say, you should not be dishonest in the name of diplomacy, and some ideas I'm sure are not feasible. I don't accept this argument, and I will explain why. I am not disputing that you indeed behave this way to people privately and are not consistently an anal and humorless dick all the time. However, I and probably the majority of bronies do not immediately pal around over Skype or PM with the majority of other bronies. Thus, the vast majority of us are only going to have your public observations to base an impression on. You, by your public correspondence, do not strike me as particularly easygoing or involved with the community on a basic level. A great amount of posts from you are moderation posts or answers to staff-directed questions. Practically the only time I have seen you insert yourself in a conversation was to issue a command, or to respond to people here. Now, am I saying what we need is total anarchy and for you to never be in business mode? No, obviously not, though I fear you think that's what I'm agitating for. What I am getting at is, you carry on as our superior far more than our equal. Yes, you are authoritatively our superior and people should know that, but you don't seem publicly very inclined to act as a regular brony. You seem detached and primarily focused on administration/overseeing. You are not the only one I have observed this trait in, and I have observed the reverse tendency in other admins and lower staff. I should not be expected to know you are a goofball privately because that is private behavior. Now, you can reject my impression or not, but, as a user of this place, that is my impression, and I am telling you I believe this is a problem. Since you felt it necessary to go there, I'm not going to be very gentle. Your comment also demonstrates how warped your perception of multiple things is. You will remember, I raised a concern to you about censorship. You refused to respond and I asked again for an answer. You stated you were too busy to respond the first time, and your hostility was perceivable. The other three admins were invited to the conversation after I made my displeasure with your unprofessionalism obvious. Yellow Diamond was the other one to respond. You seem to have a selective memory, because I told you, after I extracted the reasoning for censorship that I should have been freely given in the first place, that I found the reasoning to be sound. There were two primary things about that encounter (which was cut short on your end and not mine, despite my attempts at prudence and courtesy) that turned me against you and the senior echelon. The first was the one you just repeated: that I was advocating there no restrictions at all, that there should be open season on all members if we want that, that we should do blatantly erotic RP on MLPForums. I was advocating for nothing of the sort and merely told you I found that legitimate political/social discourse should be allowed if at all feasible. The second reason was your and Yellow Diamond's offense at my statement that honorable leaders should demonstate transparency freely, and to explain their reasons for this or that upon request. This was the most troubling attitude and behavior of the two. The other two refused to respond at all and thus it is reasonable to assume they endorsed the views of the other two. That is an utterly revolting attitude to take as administrators, that we don't have the right to even ask why this or that is being banned. I will never fully trust someone who has such an arrogant and self-insulating view of governance, and thus this was a major reason I just don't trust the admins of this site. I also have changed my mind about the real reasoning behind the actions in question and don't feel it's the primary cause after all, but to help keep you focused on this I'll avoid commenting on that for now. When the lot of you take umbrage at the view transparency is a moral obligation of just leaders, when you act overwhelmingly more as a lord than a commoner on the forums, when you just announce changes with no input from the userbase, then you are setting the stage for degeneracy from the top down and give me little reason to trust the senior staff. Again, the lower staff I observe being more social and acting as commoners, and little of my grievances are aimed at them. It is at you two in particular, and the four admins in general, that I am criticizing. Now, I have excoriated you for your failings, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out there are substantial acts of governance done properly. Even with me, someone you clearly dislike personally for my opinions, you invoked the very mildest form of moderation. Staff in general seem to do this, and I praise them for such a light-hoofed approach to moderation that seems woefully uncommon. I have not seen a place that so massively fosters interaction between the users by culture and design, and that is very laudable. Even in these extremely controversial threads, the amount of combat was minimal. And, as much as I like to condemn you, you all DO allow the vast majority of political discourse in the Debate Pit. So, don't take me for some whiny and short-sighted anarchist that is butthurt at moderative action. I want to go away from you for a bit to address a couple of other reasons for concern. Again, one of my complaints is users don't seem to be asked what they think of a planned change to rules or whatever. For example, before I arrived here there was a substantial rule change on how suicidal threats and repeated whining in status updates are handled. Now, I am somewhat indifferent on at least the threat part since compelling arguments can be made either way and it seems generally a wash either way. The welfare of the site was the motivation for the increased controls on certain behaviors. Correct me if I am mistaken, but, I believe the userbase was never consulted before a decision was made. Yes, you all spoke at length amongst yourselves, but the average denizens were never polled, were they? As our welfare was a primary concern, did none of you think to ask how we felt on the matter? No, you saw no need to. Again, you all are detached from the general population. The second thing is the founder of this site, Feld0. To be blunt, I have no god damned idea who he is other than he's the founder and 1st in command of this place. He's like this mysterious deity who everyone speaks of and who occasionally brohoofs something, once in a great while will make a post about servers or developer requirements, and otherwise is completely unseen. I understand he's somewhat preoccupied with his own job AND maintaining Poniverse, but, the only time I have seen him make a post here was when he announced changes to the servers and expenses recently. I can't relate to him at all either as a fellow brony or as a leader of the herd because he never speaks to us. This doesn't inspire any confidence at all. Maybe he's a swell guy, maybe he's competent at technical stuff but otherwise doesn't give a damn about the average brony. Again, this is evidence of detachment from the userbase at the highest levels, the Ivory Tower that you rejected so vehemently. Now, you all can do as you like, obviously. No law mandates you allow this or that, we are obviously powerless to compel change aside from moral authority derived from the popular will of the site. You can make this place even greater than it is, or progressively raze it to the ground. That is not what I am contesting, and I'm getting tired of people responding as if the reverse is true. I have merely told you somewhat indelicately what I perceive as the worst problem this place faces. Until you all decide condemnation of leaders is verboten, I have the right to express those concerns, and whether you like it or not is not a consideration. Wow, over 6k characters? My tennis elbow is never going to regenerate at this rate.

I don't alter clothes and don't generally buy from a thrift store. However, I do have unusual outfits. I have a large artificial raccoon tail, a shirt with an image of my fursona printed on both sides, and I have very colorful articles from a variety of places. I'm a very colorful raccoon femboy generally, especially when I'm outside the house. To me, every day is a good day to dress like I'm going to a furry convention!

@@Jokuc, I don't know how difficult coding for forums is, and they probably don't have much money to work with beyond what is necessary to keep the forums operational. Thus, I'm not prepared to say they are not sufficiently motivated to implement improvements, though maybe it is a factor. The problem I have observed is they just seem generally detached from the userbase, and have the belief that they know what's good for us and don't need us to advise them. I'm reasonably sure, if any of the admins have actually looked at this, their general impression of this criticism of them is, "Well, the peasants can say what they want. But, we know better and don't need their input." Thus, any improvements or suggestions they themselves don't conceive are more likely by default to be rejected. While it's nice they have set up this sub-forum and don't ban people for criticizing them, that kind of attitude and approach to governance doesn't facilitate the adoption of ideas or concerns from the general userbase, for good and for bad. The best way I can describe it is a strange sort of authoritarianism infused with various brony ideals. This same attitude I've observed also manifests itself in other ways, and reduces how welcoming the place appears. One major example is this tendency I have observed for the staff to judge how much potential a thread has for general discussion, and unceremoniously lock those which fall below some threshold in their minds. Threads which received multiple responses in rapid succession have been locked for not being appropriately facilitating to popular discourse. I highly doubt allowing them to remain open would piss a reasonable person off or otherwise be a detriment to the site, but it doesn't meet their arbitrary standards and they thus see the need to intervene. I don't know whether this is a recent development or they have been doing this for years. Either way, it's just another pointless act of control which makes the place seem less friendly than it could be. This and other questionable acts of control also, I believe, naturally encourage more of the same, and I very much fear they will keep adding things to their Do Not Allow list in the name of decorum and slowly kill the site. Or maybe the reverse is true and they have become less controlling over time. I only joined a year ago and only have that experience to go by, but that experience troubles me. While people are generally foolish and thus a massively democratized form of governance here might be foolhardy, it would be nice if the userbase was offered a somewhat larger role in the decisions that are made. I feel it would be useful if the populace was at least asked to discuss planned changes to rules or staff or functionality, rather than keep having new edicts issued from on high with no consideration of the popular reaction to them. This Ivory Tower kind of distance and snootiness I've observed is pernicious and antithetical to innovation and tolerance. If this site ever enters a period of decline and decreasing relevance, probably the progression of this attitude will be the cause of it. If the leadership of Poniverse in general operates similarly, then this is a major concern for all of bronydom because of how many brony resources fall under its umbrella. I really don't want to see the subculture enter a period of decline due to stagnation and intolerance at the highest levels.

I have posted some pictures of myself. Why wouldn't I? I'm a moderately pretty femboy (my fursona is far prettier, though) with resplendent clothes. I'm fabulous!