Well if you insist I'll reply.
In raw numbers, how many people were banned over the years? What percentage of your "logged in that year" userbase were they? What did they do to "have it coming"?
Since 2012, 7 people, not including bots and alt accounts. All for either harassing moderators or admins, outright naming calling an admin for stating the rules weren't being followed, harassing other members, or posting inappropriate (in most cases, sexual) content. No, I'm not giving you more info than that, since its not really your business. You seem to think you know things that you don't. So, explain to me who you think was banned that shouldn't have been. There have been no recent bans aside from bots. There have, however, been a couple warnings. See below.
I pointed out earlier that I'm more than capable of making my own editing tools and given the apparent results of the current administration's tenure I don't need an antagonistic relationship with them to attract a larger active userbase. All I need to do is focus on hacking, research, and tool development, without the random purges once every 2 or 3 years. So your threat that "it's not a good idea to start name calling an admin" is toothless because you have nothing to harm me with, I pose more of a threat to you than you do to me, and I'm willing to be reasonable if you meet me halfway
Okay, so now we've established that you didn't actually read what I wrote, as the namecalling an admin bit, was referring to the people who had been banned here in the past, it had nothing to do with you. However, no, I'm not threatened by you in the slightest. I'll let that go because you are clearly triggered due to completely misunderstanding or outright not reading what I actually said.
You think you can do all that? Then do it, go on, have at it. There is nothing saying you can't have your own community. Let us know how that works out for you. You totally seem like an approachable, easy to have a normal conversation with, person.
Going by the visible dynamics, you're the enforcer and Xifanie is the policy-maker. I have no real issue with you because from what I've seen you go by the tone set by others. Your arguments aren't well thought out, which lends credence to this theory.
Or maybe you just have trouble comprehending what I'm saying, as you are seeing this from a user side and not from the side we are, you don't see the PMs, you don't see the private interactions, nor do you get the complaints from other members regarding these types of things. You are basing everything on what you see on the forum, not even IRC or any of it's channels. How you see me isn't something that bothers me at all, because you only see what you want to see, but don't act like you know what goes on behind closed doors.
It not who was lost that mattered, it's who was lost that would become someone that mattered. If you kick off every stupid newb that doesn't know how to act, they will never grow. Newbs serve a purpose - they are playtesters, bug reporters, cheerleaders, documentation writers, and marketers. Those with an aptitude for something more involved usually find it and graduate, but the networking effect of having a large group of newbs is greater than the sum of their efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
Scale matters. You don't have the same interaction dynamics in a village of 150 as you do in a city of 150,000,000. By the same token, progress occurs faster when large groups of people are around to feed on each other's energy and keep one another motivated. Look at how many releases and code rewrites occur at communities with a handful of active members vs those with hundreds of active members.
By banning every poorly socialized no-nothing you hurt yourself. It's better in the long run to call them out in an open, neutral fashion, and then encourage them to learn more.
Yeah, I'm sure the 7 people who were actually banned over those years for being extremely inappropriate, would've been a huge help. You seem to be a big fan of GameFAQs, so go ahead and tell me how Lockeadon would've had so much benefit for this site. You seem to be confusing a ban, with a warning. Before ever being banned, you are put on a warning and if you continue the behavior, the warning amount increases and eventually you have your posting privilege suspended for several days (usually between 3 and 10), AFTER that, if the same thing continues THEN you are banned, except in very extreme cases. In these cases, the warning blocking the person from posting for a few days is almost never the first warning they received. This, again, is all based on the severity of the offense.
And look at where FFH is now, where the people who do things are allowed to do whatever they want to the people who can't yet do things.
This one I find pretty funny, since it makes no sense at all. Again, it seems like you didn't read what I said. Anyone can do whatever kind of patch they want. But, if you ask a question thats been answered a million times on the site, and/or literally has a stickied topic to help with said question, you can expect that to be pointed out to you. Not everyone here is treated the way we treat you, because not everyone here asks questions that bare no relevance to this site, and then doesn't come back to thank anyone for the info they are given. That's mostly just you.
And look at how much your userbase has shrunk in that decade. Part of it is due to people growing up and moving on, but that's not sufficient. FFT had releases on PSP, iOS, and Android. On GameFAQs there's a surge of activity whenever a game is ported, remade, or rereleased, but here? Almost nothing.
Nah, I'm calling BS on this one. If you really think the GameFAQs community for ANY game is that valuable than I have some serious questions about you. Half of GameFAQs forum posts are nothing but bitching, or elitist crap.
What the reality is, is that we do get a bunch of traffic here whenever there is a port of the game. People realize soon that we don't support those ports, nor do we plan to make tools for them, and then instead of doing so themselves, they move on. The people who do things here, don't like the way WotL was done, and since all those ports use that version of the game, they have no interest in making tools for them. So why haven't you made the tools for them yet, since, ya know, you want to contribute to the community, or at least make it seem like you intend to.
Well someone asked a question and I answered it. If informing people of my background is an ego problem, what is Xifanie's use of chat and the forum as a way to publicly play out her BDSM fetishes? Granted it's her forum, but she should be aware of the consequences that her behavior will have on the userbase.
Would you be willing to admit that something makes you uncomfortable or seems wildly unrelated to the stated goals of this forum when random newbs get banned for being newbs? Or would you quietly ghost?
And where were you during all this, Elric? Too focused on making things to be honest to the person who needed this feedback the most?
Oh, you mean the time before I was an admin? The time where I was going from being a lurker, not even on the site, to joining and starting my project, Jot5? I'm not sure where you are going with this. When I first actually joined the forum in 2011, I read every post here, and saw little to nothing regarding BDSM on the site itself. Yes, there was some on chat, and that was no worse than any other off topic stuff that was talked about in IRC over the years, at that time included.
If you'd cared to do your homework, you'd have seen my post here on the forum from when I left the FFH IRC channel, as I felt it had little to nothing to do with actual FFT modding. It wasn't until much later that I went back to that channel, instead of only sticking to Jot5 chat.
I'm seeing a bit of a pattern here with you, and all of it is coming from assumptions you are making, rather than actual fact. You can deduce whatever you like from what you think you know, but truth be told, you don't actually interact with any of us, partake in anything we do, or really anything else here. You pop in once in a while, make a (usually) completely irrelevant post, and then disappear without response, so yeah, excuse us if you aren't a favorite person to help.
If we were really such tyrants, as you paint us out to be, then why are you still here? You've never gotten a warning to my knowledge nor banned, yet by what you are saying, seems like we would have done that several times over by now, no? I've never had an issue with you other than the things I've mentioned above, as I think those things are kind of annoying, but before you start making any more assumptions about who we are, or what we do, you really need to get your facts straight.
EDIT: i used the wrong quote in one part and am now at work, so i cant fix it, but you should be able to figure out where that was and what part of your message i meant to quoteEDIT 2: Fixed