Wow, you really can overreact. Again, I'm not suprised by this. I did not attack any of your moderator decisions, I stated that because of your bigoted views and desire for censorship it was worrying that you are in fact a moderator - you're unable to be impartial over this issue and that is not a good quality for someone who is to moderate others. Your reaction over what I posted is proof you are not, in my eyes, a good choice to moderate.
You are not getting an apology, you are certainly overreaching yourself and I welcome discussion with the other moderators.
D.
OK. Here's my final word on this whole deal:
I hold and maintain that a Mod, any Mod, myself included...does not give up the right to have or to voice strong, even unpopular opinions.
You should know that these opinions do NOT come into play when I am in a Mod capacity.
There are several safeguards we have put in place to prevent this very thing.
For one, we have a very uniform set of "rules" among the majority of Mods...as to what sort of stuff warrants immediate action from any Mod who sees it. Anything else, which is questionable...is brought to a discussion among many Mods, where decisions are then made. In the meantime, the offending post may be Hidden, but not deleted - and if it is later decided such post should not have been Hidden - it will be Unhidden.
Generally, no warning points or other action short of Hiding posts is done unilaterally. and Hidden posts are still usually brought for general discussion - unless the Hidden post violates one of the basic rules we have in lace which are no-brainers - for example, ad spam, pornography, mention of any illegal item or activity.
Furthermore, some Mods, myself included...have a certain list of people whom they will not Mod...because of the possible appearance of any personal bias/grudge. Just as Supreme Court Justices in the United states recuse themselves from cases in which they may have a personal interest, or a conflict of interest...so we Mods, as professional people...recuse ourselves from such things.
What angered me was I felt you had implied that I had, would, or could...abuse or misuse my position as a Mod...or over-reach in my position as a Mod. I can assure you that my own sense of fairness, would prevent me from doing this. I felt you had attacked my integrity, and this angered me more than you can know...and I had all I could do to even remain fairly civil and eben-handed in my response to you...the whole "I have nothing further to say to you, sir" was an attempt to convey to you exactly how much you had angered me.
Your position regarding GTA being opposed to mine is not what angered me. As far as I am concerned, everyone has a right to their opinion, and everyone who does not match my view certainly has the right to be wrong...and to express that. What angered me was that I felt you implied that I had, could, or would...Moderate in a manner that was not fair and balanced.
You can be assured, because of the rules we have in place, that most Mods have agreed to...prevents such a thing. That and my own sense of integrity. However, I will state, and for the record...that one who is a Mod does not give up the right to have, hold or express, strong personal opinions...even when those opinions may be unpopular.
And to insinuate that one would Moderate in a manner that is not fair...because of those strong opinions is uncalled for - because now you know how Modding is done behind the scenes. There are safeguards in place to prevent the sort of thing that you seem to feel could occur.
If you oppose GTA because it glorifies thugs and thiefs, you should also be opposed to any war game, because that glorifies war. War is much worse than thugs and thiefs: the latter are mostly poor people committing mostly small crimes and violence to try to improve their own miserable personal situation, whereas the former are waged on a much larger scale and with many more casualties, by very rich people, for their own economic interests, and they're paid (both in money and lives) by the public. At least a thug does his own dirty work, the rich elite (e.g. the oil industry leaders) let others (e.g. soldiers) do the dirty work for them, and don't even pay them themselves, but manage to directly pay them with tax payers' money (which they contribute very little to). They even manage to legalize their crimes; for normal people it is illegal to steal a loaf of bread when you're hungry, but for the rich elite it is no problem and perfectly legal to get an entire village bombed to ashes if that's what it takes to get access to (i.e. steal) that country's oil reserves. That's hypocrisy on probably the largest scale humanly possible.
Anyway, I can see why you would oppose depictions, interactive or not, of socially or morally unacceptable behavior. However, in my opinion it is rather naive and philosophically idealistic to assume that you can significantly change reality by changing or outlawing these depictions. In my opinion, it is better to try to take away the real underlying causes of the unwanted behavior, and while violent video games or movies may or may not be a cause of them, there certainly are more important and significant causes: unemployment, poor education, lacking social security, bad health care (including mental health care), capitalism and its morals, etc. This is of course a much more daunting task than a relatively easy ban on violent video games, but it is what is needed to get rid of (or at least significantly reduce) thugs and thieves and wars. It requires a social-economical and political revolution, if it's up to me, a revolution that removes capitalism and replaces it with democratic socialism.
I think, sir, we agree on far much more than we disagree on!
Murde rate in the USA 1900 1.2 per 100,000. In 2010 4.6 per 100,000
Rape stats in USA . From 1960 to 2010 the population doubled. Rape went up 5x.
Yep things have got worse.
Putting our heads in the sand doesn't help.
Rapes reported went up x5. That is different from actual rapes. Where do you get your statistics?
I can post statistics that support my argument too
United States 2003 -->
93,883 reported cases of rape
United States 2009 --> 84,767 reported cases of rape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics
Rapes reported went up x5. That is different from actual rapes. Where do you get your statistics?
Devil's advocate:
between 2003 and 2009, the number of REPORTED rape cases went down. This does not mean fewer rapes happened...just that fewer of them were reported!
You can't have it both ways, dude.
At this point, since the discussion seems to have been fairly well hashed out, and it is obvious that I will not change anyone's opinions...nor will they change mine...it is time to move on and leave this topic behind.
