Please, for the love of your deity of choice, start moderating the goddamn forums.
Yes, you ran into some sticky ground when you went berserk with "moderation" many moons ago, and I applaud your efforts to not touch them since then. Conversation without fear of being arbitrarily censored is pretty damn awesome.
However, there's at least one painfully obvious case where moderation should be applied. We've got a user here who is blatantly trolling and is intent on spreading malice and ill will, and you aren't doing a damn thing about it. The very fact that this user continues to come back to Customize.org and spew his crap in the forums indicates that, at the very best, you're really fucking lazy. Yeah, I'm calling you out.
Sure, you could say that it's up to the Customize.org userbase to deal with rogue users, but fuck, everyone knows we've all done our very damn best to talk some sense into this kid, and it's pretty evident nothing good has come of it.
Don't even get me started on ignoring malicious posts- this is a site about art and skinning, and not the spreading of mindless bigotry and hate. Telling us to ignore hateful users is the same as telling us, "I'm too damn lazy to actually do anything about it, so shut the fuck up or get the fuck out." That isn't a good way to keep people around.
And before you say it: no, I don't give a flying fuck when EVO is going to launch; as far as I'm concerned, EVO is nothing but a myth, just as much as the Invisible Pink Unicorn is. Delaying action until EVO hits is another sign of pure, unadulterated sloth, and none of newfangled features EVO is blessed with will make trolls go away- they'll be here before, during and after "the launch," just like the rest of us.
We did our best- now it's time for you to do something. Please, do us all a favor and do your job. Ranking submissions can't possibly be the only thing you're responsible for.
With love, advent
P.S.: Don't forget, if you have time to silence me, you have time to silence other "disruptive users," too.
I recall members of the current staff locking threads that turned into heated political debates in the past. Their reasoning at the time was that it was not related to the purpose of the site and that it was disruptive to the purpose of the site. Its as simple as locking a thread. It takes all of half a second.
"...and not the spreading of mindless bigotry and hate"
had you guys thinking just to ignore him? If you don't pay attention to his "flames" "hate" "blah blah" then there won't be the need to argue with him.
Don't feed the god damn troll, and he won't bite you. Whenever this user whom you are talking of, posts another one of his "hate threads", don't reply to it. When he realises that no one wants to listen to his mindless ramblings, he will go away.
I agree with advent. I do remember a time (maybe a year ago) when to me, customize.org was at its peak, when there was the most activity, with awesome submissions... and almost everyone got along with the occasional ass (and he was delt with). I remember one time I put my hurtful opinion out there and I got silenced for a while, and it taught me a lesson. Where as now, anyone can basically say anything and no one does anything... customize is slowly slipping down and down.
If you are going to have the rating system include very low scores, DON'T DELETE REVIEWS THAT GIVE LOW SCORES. Either let them stand or make the min. score 30 or whatever.
Ideally, ratings should be done away with completely. A "favorite" system like the one at devart would be much better. It would end people's complaints about ratings being too high/low.
