Okay, this is going to be a
really long post, so I suggest everyone just file it into "
I'm back, blah blah blah"
category and skip reading it entirely. Employing the
Rule Of Threes, my ranting will be divided into three parts for easier digestion.
The truth and only the truth
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×Now, most of you were involved in the whole issue to one degree or another, but nobody knows the whole truth, including me. However, being the central figure in the conflict, the least I can do is share my side of the story. It will help everyone fill the gaps, and you are free to add any missing pieces yourself. Here's how events unraveled, from my point of view:
1. I did Schik a minor personal favor. Nothing very special, and it didn't cost me anything. Can be compared with finding some old hats while cleaning the attic and giving them to someone who collects hats. You were about to throw them away anyway.
2. Schik decided to repay me in the only way he could - by giving me a hatload of mod points, 5000 if I recall correctly. At the time, it didn't seem as a *very* wrong thing to do. I mean, he has the right, he has the power, he's the man, right?
3. Now, it's not like nobody knew that I don't like the explody smiley at that point. Schik even commented on it himself as he gave me the points. And it's true... to a degree. The smilie itself is nothing, a pretty animated image. But the concept of using an image that takes as much space as five or more full lines of text looks disrespectful to me.
4. But I digress. Back to the truth as it were. The first thing I did was modding every explody smiley down. The second thing I intended to do was starting a thread to explain what just happened and why. Imagine my surprise when someone started a thread on the subject before me!
5. At first it was just a standard "dude, where are my points?" thread, but it started to degenerate quickly. So instead of coming to the light, I decided to lurk a bit, see where it goes. Some lessons are sure to be learned here by everyone, that was the reasoning. Everything is a test, right?
6. Sure enough, things got ugly fast. Okay, I can understand being confused at first despite all clues pointing to me. But finding scapegoats and modding them down? Isn't that the exact behavior you are rioting against? A demi-mod reducing me by 100 points and claiming they need my cooperation for some reason? Ridiculous!
7. I was still watching the emerging patterns and not participating in the arguments. What I did, however, was restoring downmods on the smilies whenever someone reverted them back up. Until I ran of points that is. Apparently people with access to thousands of mod points liked the smilies, which is all well, but it made me think. And after thinking for a while, I left. Why? Read the next chapter.
Reasoning behind my leaving
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×In the previous chapter - I somehow started a conflict in which positive and negative mod points flew like a river. This made me think about the nature and meaning of these mod points. The initial conclusions were the following:
1. Mod points reflect, to some degree, the approval of the community - after all, you get one along with a rank point when you post something people approve of.
2. This means people with lots of mod points to spend reflect the will of the community - they can rate posts because their own posts were approved. This is all some sort of primitive democracy, or so it seems - people "vote" you up, and you get the power to "rule" by voting other people up or down.
3. By that logic, by reverting the negative mods to smilies by me, it seems that the community approves of the smilies wholeheartedly. Okay, we can live with that.
4. However, looking at my own rank, it seemed that I've been hit for more than 200 points down, not counting the -100 "ransom" incident. If it was in batches of -1's it would still be ok - 400 mod points is achieveable even by individual people. But it seem my very innocent posts were marked with -5's -10's and -15's, a very wasteful way to mod someone down, especially if you're not doing it based on the content of the posts anyway.
5. So thousands of points were spent on protecting the smilies = community likes the smilies. But thousands of points were spent on attacking me personally = community hates me.
6. So I took offense. I left the forum, because it seemed that people don't want me around. I didn't explain the facts gathered in chapter 1, and surprisingly, there were almost no people that thought the whole thing was wrong. I left, but then I came back. Why? Read the next chapter.
Reasoning behind my return
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×In the previous chapter - I happened to be in the crux of a great conflict, and decided to leave because it seemed like people don't want me around. A month or so was spent outside, and then I came to some interesting conclusions about mod points.
1. Mod points don't reflect the approval of the community at all - even if they are only gathered in traditional ways, people can end up with extra mod points if they only appeal to a minor part of the community. A great example would be the "Guess the next poster" thread.
2. And despite that thread being closed, the spirit of the thread is all over the forums. People treat rank points as something to achieve, a prize, arbitrary tokens of "winning" to be gained by any means necessary. But mature means or childish, mod points go where rank points go.
3. As if that wasn't bad enough, the moderators are too eager to "seed" the system. So I was given 5000 mod points, did that make me represantative of the community? Hardly. How many other people are there with hatloads of points, and even less maturity?
4. And it's anonymous, so there is no way to know what hidden horrors in form of jerks with mod points lurk in the shadowy corners of the forum. You'd think we can trust the moderators to only give points to worthy people, but they gave some to me, haven't they...
5. What we derive from this? There is no democracy, people with more mod points are not pillars of the community. The fact that I was modded down by jerks abundant in points doesn't mean anything about community in general. Some people like me, some people don't, it just so happened that those who don't had too many undeserved points.
6. And so I came back. Somewhat wiser, and less caring about your approval. Rank and mod points worked when we were a tiny community where everyone knew and respected each other. But now, points are dust in the wind. They have no meaning, and any meaning you assign to then is flawed at the core.
7. In conclusion - I refuse to care about numbers that don't reflect anything meaningful. The intended meaning was lost, and there is nothing to replace it. I will no longer mod anyone up or down, nor do I care about my own or anyone else's rank.
8. Sure, it's nice to mod someone who cares about points up to cheer them up. People like to do that, but in the long run it does more harm than good, since it gives importance to the points themselves. But there is nothing there. That is all.
____________________________
Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!
)
Disclaimer: I'm Welsh, left-handed, and stupid. 
