Lurker > adjl

ItIsSoOver posted...

curious why the study didn't include people under 65 to give some broader results, but this sounds about right.

I'd guess that's mostly because they used Medicare data (at least, I'm assuming "all patients were covered by Medicare" isn't a coincidence) and therefore didn't have any information on patients under 65. It also wouldn't surprise me if it's hard to find a statistically significant number of people under 65 dying within 30 days of being released from the hospital, but that's just conjecture.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I have a bar at the bottom of my screen saying "This website uses cookies to enhance user experience". I never saw that before. Also, so far it has not enhanced my experience.

Unless you're logging in every time you visit, cookies have enhanced your experience.

Of course, that particular cookie has been offering that particular enhancement for about 30 years now and has absolutely nothing to do with Fandom, but it is nonetheless an example of an enhancement cookie. I can genuinely think of no other examples, and that's why I've got NoScript locking the site down as hard as I can without actually breaking it, but there's at least that one.

Not appreciably higher than the likelihood that you get dust/dirt from any other source blowing in. If you don't notice that the screens are dirty by looking at them, there's no need to do any extra dusting.

It's always kind of entertaining the way people will out themselves as not understanding what politics is by insisting that they are somehow above political discussion.

Protip: Discouraging/disparaging political discussion is itself a political act.

Melody_JR posted...

The desire to mandate forced spiritual or religious involvement is pure fascism.

Well, yes, but I don't think this topic represents a desire to mandate forced spiritual or religious involvement. Not everyone saying "this would be a good idea" is saying "this should be codified into law," after all.

I was going to expand on why this doesn't surprise me, but the article pretty much says everything I would, so I guess I'm just saying this doesn't surprise me and leaving it at that.

__starsnostars posted...

It would be interesting to see if men treated by women doctors also have similar statistical boost.

McSame_as_Bush posted...

For male hospitalized patients, the gender of the doctor didnt appear to have an effect on risk of death or hospital readmission.

It's a one-off line, but they looked at that as well.

CassandraCroft posted...

I couldn't agree more. 50 Karma is far too low to try and stop trolls. Should have been 200 - 250 Karma needed to post in CE.

Supposedly, they feel that just kicks the problem down the road. It's not entirely wrong that it's still possible to build up multiple 200-250 karma alts to evade bans, but it takes significantly more effort to do it more than once, and the problem can be pretty easily solved by using usermap axes and doling out larger karma penalties for serious/repeat offenses. If, say, it took 250 karma to post on CE (or any other board they wanted to restrict), getting suspended/purg'd more than once a year carried a 500 karma penalty, that penalty was applied to every account on a usermap, and negative karma accounts lost access to all social boards permanently, the problem would almost completely go away without doing anything to affect veteran users.

Building up 250 karma on alts takes a while, but is doable. Building up 250 karma on alts that only get one shot at trolling and are at risk of being taken down with your other accounts if you use the same IP address to access them? That's close enough to impossible that it would take negligible mod resources to deal with the occasional hyper-dedicated troll that pushed through the cracks.

Melody_JR posted...

This is literal fascist thinking... Please don't think this way.

Eh, I'm reading it the same way I'd read "everyone should have at least a couple good friends": It's not "Everyone who doesn't have friends should be forced to do so" (which would be fascist), it's "It's a good idea for everyone to have friends" (which is decidedly less so). It's just always a bit dicey saying things like that about religion because of how many societies do force people to be religious and how many problems that's caused (particularly where forcing people into spirituality means you don't get any of the benefits of conducting personal introspection on your own terms).

The cries of "indoctrination!" from parents who are petrified of letting their kids learn anything other than what they want them to learn would be hilariously ironic if they weren't so genuinely dangerous.

josh posted...

haha yea imagine still using a name you came up with when you were 14 haha

I can do you better than that: My dad suggested this username when I was like 9 or 10 and signing up for Lego.com (it's literally just my initials). I don't use it so much anymore simply because most sites want a name that's longer than 4 characters, but it was my default for a while and I still use it in several places.

faramir77 posted...

Animal Crossing became a daily routine for at least 2 months. There has never been a better timed release for any other form of entertainment media ever.

I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that the only reason I knew what day it was for those 2-3 months was because Daisy-Mae came on Sundays. It really cannot be overstated just how much that game did to maintain structure in my life during a time that otherwise would have had very little. It really was a perfectly timed release in every possible regard, aside from the fact that Nintendo wasn't able to keep up with the demand for new Switches because of it (combined with major manufacturing delays, of course).

https://imgur.com/JQNG7nP

LinkPizza posted...

Maybe Im missing something. Because even though you solve the puzzle of the temple, each room still has their own puzzle, right? So, wouldnt that be enough to keep you going?

And thats assuming that the water level mechanic is a puzzle. It feels more like a mechanic to move around rather than a puzzle Sortnof similar to how shooting the eye in the forest temple gets you to a different part of the temple That said, I never really hated the water temple, anyway

There are puzzles in each room, but getting around the temple relies on the core water level puzzle. It's just not much of a puzzle. I'd venture a guess that whether or not somebody hated the Water Temple will have depended mostly on how often they got the water level wrong and had to backtrack to fix it. If you get into the groove of things, there isn't much backtracking and it's fine, but if you don't end up in that groove and have to fix your mistakes frequently, I can see it becoming a pain.

Probably sometime around Decemberween.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I know the reason for my moderations. I've been trying to explain it to you.

If you're not willing to learn, I'm afraid I can't help you.

Sure, they came out of an ocean into which billions of animals are pooping, peeing, bleeding, spooging, and salivating all hours of the day, but I draw the line at a fisherman spitting on the fish and also it's totally plausible that Costco is the only brand that has figured out how to prevent this.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

I could see someone getting upset at it. Reply to someone then they edit their message.

That was the rationale used for years to justify not offering an edit feature, despite the fact that literally every other forum on the Internet was able to include one without running into serious issues in that regard. CJayC insisted that the risk of edit trolling was too great and that double posting was an adequate solution, even as the site was hemorrhaging users to other forums that weren't stuck in 1996.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

No. That you're right in your opinion.

Well in that case, I'm afraid you're quite categorically incorrect. Not sure why you're talking about that, though, when the discussion is about why you've been modded.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I thought you hadn't stated anything that isn't an observable fact. Now you admit your position is subjective.

I've stated the facts which form the basis of my overall opinion, an opinion which I have not stated here because that would constitute political discussion and is outside of the scope of explaining why you've been modded. My purpose here is to explain the reasoning behind your moderations, not to engage in a political debate.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Would you still defend your beliefs so staunchly if they didn't agree with you?

I'd take a moment to consider why they disagreed so strongly (as I do with anyone that disagrees), but generally yeah. Whether or not I defend a belief is based largely on how well-substantiated it is, and that's entirely independent from what GameFAQs mods think.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

If you believe in what you have to say, but know that you'll be punished for saying it, would you still be so quick to say it?

Probably not, just because getting punished for that would mean the community's values are so radically different from my own that participating in said community would just be an exercise in frustration. I'd at least listen to why they sought to punish me for it, though. Depending on the answer, that might change my mind.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

You seem to think that because the mods support you, you're right.

In claiming that not expressing certain opinions is necessary to avoid getting modded? Yes. Yes, I absolutely think that the mods supporting my understanding of which opinions would get me modded means that my understanding of which opinions would get me modded is right. That's not an appeal to authority fallacy, it's a tautology.

Again, this is not a matter of debating these particular political opinions. This is me giving you the advice that the particular political opinions you've expressed are moddable and explaining why. If pressed to defend the opinions themselves, I could very easily do so without invoking the ToS or opinions of the moderation team in any way (which is why I hold them: If I could not defend my opinions, it would make very little sense to believe in them), but that would be a political argument and therefore outside of the scope of this discussion and against the new ToS. I'm simply telling you how to avoid getting modded. Telling me that advice is wrong when you've spent infinitely more time in purgatory than I have really doesn't make much sense.

Watching this video made me realize why the Water Temple is so hated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42SDc2Fhkm8

It's an interesting video that's worth watching in full, but the takeaway from it for this post is that game puzzles are divided into two phases: The part where you figure out the solution to the puzzle, and the part where you execute the solution to the puzzle, after which the game rewards you. The main sense of satisfaction and accomplishment comes from figuring out the solution, though, so if the execution phase takes too long, you create too much separation between the satisfaction of figuring it out and the satisfaction of having the game validate your achievement. That kind of disjointedness can really take the wind out of the sails of a puzzle game, so it's important to avoid it. Some puzzle games like Portal achieve this by having the execution be entertaining in its own right (it doesn't matter that you figured out how you have to jump 10-15 minutes before you complete the jump, because flying around through the portals is just plain fun and keeps the energy up through that delay), others do it by having smaller puzzles to solve as part of executing the solution (like Factorio has larger-scale logistics puzzles to solve to figure out what items you need to produce at a given moment, but executing that solution consists of a series of small-scale spatial puzzles that are more immediately satisfying to solve), and others do it by just having the execution be quick enough to not lose steam, but however it happens, it's important that the game rewards you in a timely fashion for figuring out the puzzle.

In the case of OoT's Water Temple, the central puzzle for the temple is the changing water level. You have to figure out where to go to get different water levels, then bounce between them as needed to get where you need to go. The problem, however, is that once you've found the adjustment spots, there isn't much of a challenge left. In every instance that follows, whenever you reach an obstacle and ask "what level do I need the water to be?" you solve that puzzle almost immediately. The execution, however, is then to backtrack through areas you've already completed to reach the adjustment spot and change the water level to what you need, which means it's often several minutes of unexciting walking between figuring out the solution and being rewarded with being able to move forward. Get it wrong (the door you thought you had to reach wasn't actually the way to go), and it's a few more minutes of walking to try a different option.

In practice, once you have some idea what you're doing and know what to look for, the Water Temple is actually pretty linear and it naturally guides you to the adjustment points when you need them, but if you don't catch that guidance it can result in quite a bit of backtracking, which is both tedious and can be disorienting in a way that makes it harder to find your way through (made even worse by the fact that it is actually possible to run out of keys and brick the temple if you do things wrong enough).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Means that it's become against the ToS to do so. Which you just did.

I haven't stated anything that isn't an observable fact, and the position so far has generally been "reality isn't political" (which is a ridiculous position to take, but that's a broader discussion). I figure I should be fine, given that I'm explicitly not welcoming or engaging in discussion of those points, just explaining them to help you avoid future ToS violations.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

And in the 4 years prior I was modded for refuting the election fraud narrative put out by the other side. Without going into the merits of either narrative this shows that enforcement of the ToS was politically biased.

And therein, we arrive at several key differences:

• The concerns about interference in the 2016 election did not result in an attempt to overthrow the government and install an unelected dictator
• The concerns about interference in the 2016 election did not result in five deaths
• The investigation that followed the 2016 election found that Russia *did* conduct a campaign to interfere with the outcome of the election (though it was unable to conclude that Trump was complicit in that campaign, hence he was never charged for it)

The "narrative" that election interference happened in 2016 is quite demonstrably true and has not resulted in violence, so there's no reason to moderate it. The narrative that it didn't happen is false and sharing it serves only to troll, so it stands to reason that it would be modded if context indicates it's trolling and not just legitimate ignorance. By contrast, the narrative that fraud happened in 2020 is false and has resulted in violence, so modding it makes sense.

"Without going into the merits of either narrative" means you're deliberately not considering why the apparent bias exists, which is just not how critical thinking works.

https://imgur.com/ds78UOq

ConfusedTorchic posted...

unless it's a live service game of some sort, i feel like they wouldn't change much to fundamentally change whatever is being changed to where a guide wouldn't still work

Balance tweaks are pretty common, DLC or other content patches can add a bunch of stuff that changes things, sometimes there are major bugs that get fixed (like Xenoblade 3 has an option to cook meals at campsites to provide timed buffs, except at launch those meals did absolutely nothing and that wasn't fixed until a patch a couple months later - a guide at launch should caution people against wasting materials on meals, but post-patch that warning can be removed)... a guide will probably still be useful as a *guide* (as opposed to explicit step-by-step instructions), but having incorrect information in a guide is still annoying. As a format, wikis are more amenable to being updated as needed because anyone can do it instead of the guide author needing to come back to a game they might not even play anymore.

Foppe posted...

That happened pre-patches as well in different grades.

The big one I remember is the Swordless Link glitch in OoT. In version 1.0 of the game, you could activate the glitch (and all the shenanigans it entailed) simply by saving and quitting after the Master Sword is knocked out of your hand in the final boss fight. In versions 1.1 and 1.2, though, that no longer worked because you'd load up with the Master Sword equipped again. Other ways to activate it were later figured out, but they were much more complicated and involved some bottle shenanigans (if memory serves).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I feel like if people are gushing to you about how much they love genocide, there's probably very little you're going to be able to say to try and convince them to change their mind.

So one could argue that conversation would be even more pointless than complaining about Star Wars or applesauce.

Maybe, but that's still a buzz I'm more than happy to kill. I might not change their mind, but they don't deserve to have fun with that opinion, so I'm happy to do whatever I can to make sure they don't while I'm around. "Let people enjoy things" is a great philosophy, right up until those things start hurting other people. Then the gloves are off and no fun is allowed.

deoxxys posted...

Since I have thousands of games, as soon as I get a new game that I actually am interested in playing, I'll put it in a category on Steam called "Play Next" which acts as my "True" library since it's a lot more digestible. If a game doesn't interest me right away I'll usually remove it.

I'll still remove games that I'm fairly certain I won't enjoy, but I tend to at least want to give everything a chance if it looks even remotely interesting, which means my library still grows pretty quickly. I was also a little late to do anything to prioritize, plus my library is spread over multiple storefronts and that means I needed some other solution for cataloguing them. I went with HowLongtoBeat, which let me sort everything pretty effectively and also includes a convenient random button to help pick out what to play next and encourage me to try and write off things I might not have tried playing if not for an external influence telling me to. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Sahuagin posted...

I just order my games by last used, so the more interested in a game I am the higher it is, and a game I never play gets further and further away. I can browse down the list for games I forgot about and if I play it for a moment it goes back to the top.

The problem with that is that so many of my games have just never been played at all, so "last used" isn't a record of how long it's been since I played a game so much as it's a record of how long I've had a game without touching it. Toss in things being split across multiple libraries so I can't order it between them, and I just couldn't keep track.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Due to the new policy I feel unsafe with how you continue to advocate for a position that is of an innately political nature in an attempt to distract me from that

I'm not so much advocating for the position (I am, but I usually advocate for empirical reality over insane conspiracy theories) as I am explaining which position is against the ToS. You don't have to argue (in fact, arguing will accomplish absolutely nothing in regards to the topic at hand), you just have to learn. Like it or not, you were modded for supporting the election fraud narrative. If you wish to avoid being similarly modded in the future, avoid supporting the election fraud narrative. That's the lesson in its entirety.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

The ToS was enforced one way for the narrative surrounding one event, and it was enforced differently for a similar narrative surrounding a similar event

Knowing how you think, this belief is probably a result of you thinking about the matters in question at too conceptual a level. If you instead think in terms of the actual content of each narrative and the way it/the corresponding events affect people, they probably aren't actually that similar. Specifically, there's likely a key difference between them that is the basis for modding one and not modding the other.

As an example, if you're comparing Jan 6th to BLM protests, while they are both protests, Jan 6th was an attempt to undermine a democratic election to install an unelected dictator based on the lie that the election had been "stolen," while BLM was attempting to correct racist attitudes and policies that result in a disproportionate number of PoC being victimized by unnecessary police violence. Undermining a democratic election is bad, so speaking in support of that protest is frowned upon by the ToS. Reducing unnecessary police violence is good, so speaking in support of those protests is not frowned upon. They are both protests, which might be why you consider them "similar," but they critically differ in that one supports a good thing and the other supports a bad thing. That means the good one isn't moddable and the bad one is.

I can't be any more informative than that without knowing what you're actually talking about, but again, if you want to PM me the details so you don't risk being marked/modded for posting them publicly, I can comment on them less vaguely and possibly help you understand.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

Hmm. First time I've had a topic of mine derailed that I can recall. But also I usually don't get this many posts in my topics.

I'd say it's still kind of on the rails. It's become much more specifically about Skard's inability to follow the rules than about the rules in general, but it's still at least somewhat about how the rules have changed and what can/can't be posted now.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It was Reddit. 4chan helped with the earlier push on L-Block.

That's what I was thinking, but I couldn't remember for certain.

They missed that 6' mark like they miss everything else.

I actually catalogued mine a couple months ago, and set myself the arbitrary goal of finishing 30 of them this year. 860 games with an estimated total playtime of 770 days. A ton of those were giveaways or bundled games that I don't actually care that much about, so I'm unlikely to play those much beyond giving them a quick try to confirm that I want to retire them, but it's still a lot, and I do want to give them an actual try to definitively write them off, rather than letting them languish in backlog limbo indefinitely.

deoxxys posted...

You should watch some trailers if you're looking for some good games!

Oh, for each one I didn't immediately recognize, I looked them up on Steam. Some of them, that was enough to remind me which game it was so I could say I just hadn't played it, others, that confirmed that it wasn't one I recognized. A couple of them did seem interesting, though I've got more than enough of a backlog at this point to buy anything short of "I definitely want this to play right now."

Not really. If it's a discussion about the thing, I'll share my opinions as appropriate, but if it's just somebody gushing about something they like, I don't really have any reason to convince them not to like it. I probably won't be much fun to gush to if I don't share their enthusiasm, so odds are they'll get bored sooner or later, but I'm not going to actively rain on their parade.

This is, of course, assuming we're talking about like Star Wars or applesauce or something similarly inconsequential and subjective. If people gush about how much they love genocide, I do have reason to convince them not to like it (though I likely won't start by saying "I think genocide is overrated").

He's gonna nut.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

or, as it's known better

a white gravy

Not my fault people don't know what things are called. Take that route, and there's no reason to consider sauces and gravies separate concepts. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I put strawberry gravy on my ice cream.

Sahuagin posted...

I would say that in your examples you are merging the concepts, which is valid, but not the same as unifying the categories. if I say "gravy", generally that will not include spaghetti sauce, and vice-versa. if I make something that has properties of both, you can say it's technically both, but the categories themselves don't merge. you can't really define one of these in terms of the other ("a spaghetti sauce is a gravy that... or a gravy is a spaghetti sauce that..."). they are both sauces. and you could have a sauce that has both qualities. but one category does not come from the other, they are sibling categories descended from a more general concept.

I would say that all gravies are sauces ("sauce" being any liquid added to a dish, distinct from broth being liquid that a dish is primarily cooked in) but not all sauces are gravies. Gravies are then specifically sauces made using byproducts from cooking something else that isn't part of the sauce.

Sahuagin posted...

(not finding many sources for meatless gravy. a gravy without meat is really just something emulating gravy. generally "real" gravy involves meat juices; no-meat gravies are exceptions.)

In general, yeah, vegetarian gravies tend to be a matter of cooking veggies down into a sauce more so than thickening veggie juices. Conceptually, though, I don't see any reason it couldn't extend to meatless options.

One notable exception to my definition, though, is onion gravy: That's made by caramelizing onions and cooking them down in broth that then gets thickened, so that's a case where you do have the primary flavour component mixed into the sauce, but it's still considered a gravy. I'm okay with calling that an exception to the rule, though.

That's a bechamel sauce. I wouldn't call that a gravy unless you used rendered meat fat (or oil from cooking veggies, particularly onions/garlic) to make it instead of butter.

Zareth posted...

Gravy is made out of meat

Specifically, it's made from byproducts of cooking something else. Usually, that means the juices and rendered fat from meat, but you can also make veggie gravy with juices that have come off of veggies. I'd also generally still count it as gravy if you make it by deglazing a pan to dissolve solid bits left behind. The key distinction I would make is that the gravy reuses byproducts from cooking things that are not ingredients in the gravy. If it doesn't reuse byproducts, or those byproducts are from cooking something that's part of the sauce, it's just a sauce.

In that regard, I would say that if you're making your pasta sauce by cooking meatballs in the same pot, then adding your tomatoes and any other veggies to that pot to incorporate the juices/fond from cooking the meatballs, you could call it a gravy. If you're making bolognese sauce and the meat is just getting mixed straight into the sauce, I would not call that gravy. I also wouldn't call a vegetarian sauce gravy because even if the veggies were sauteed first and the resultant flavoured oil/fond were incorporated into the sauce, the veggies are an ingredient in the sauce. If you made, say, eggplant parmagiana and you made your sauce using whatever was left in the pan after frying your eggplant, that could be called gravy, though that's stretching them point a bit because in my experience eggplant doesn't really leave much flavour behind in the pan.

Saying this, apparently some parts of Italy will just call basic tomato sauce a gravy regardless of the nuance of its preparation, so there's precedent for ignoring this distinction. It's also common in Italy to use pasta water in making any pasta sauce, though, and I'd say that qualifies it as gravy under my definition, so maybe it doesn't ignore it after all. I dunno. This just makes enough sense to me to be what I accept as the distinction.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm going to be honest, some of those wikis are part of the reason why I haven't used a FAQ on this site in about 15 years.

Oh, absolutely. Wikis are just a better format for answering gaming questions than full guides/walkthroughs: It's easier to find the exact section you're looking for, it's more amenable to having multimedia resources (text explanations, screenshots, maps, data tables, videos), you're less likely to stumble across spoilers than if you have to scroll through a full guide to look for what you need, updates happen faster when anyone in a community can make small edits instead of waiting for a single author to finish and publish a whole guide (especially important in today's world of games getting regular updates, since that means wikis/guides need to update as well)... It's no mystery at all why wikis have mostly supplanted FAQs/guides and GameFAQs has stopped being the major gaming hub it once was. Wikis just work better in the majority of situations. Fandom's wikis in particular are often a little iffy in terms of overall quality, and are miserable formatting-wise because their ad practices are awful, but they're still a better option than GameFAQs guides.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And all of this probably isn't helped by the fact that the younger generation generally just looks on Google (or uses Alexa/Siri/etc) to ask a specific question, then follows whatever the first link they find to the answer (I know my 20-something nephew does this), which generally just points them to wiki pages or YouTube videos. So even if the answers are here on GameFAQs, the target audience they're looking for is never going to find them, and never going to care.

I do a similar thing (usually not defaulting to the first result because that can be hit or miss, but usually not going past the first few), but I'd argue that that's mostly because I know there isn't a single, reliable hub that I can consult for all games. Because wiki creation is so inconsistent (some games have official ones, some have fandom ones, some have ones that fall under another umbrella like fextralife, some have totally independent unofficial ones, some have none), it's a bit of a crapshoot what information I'm going to be able to find for any new game I search for, so I can't just go to any one gaming site and expect to find answers (and not just because these different wikis all have their own domains). That means Google is effectively the site I go to knowing that it will have the information I need.

The thing is, that's not new. Even back in the late 90's, there were alternatives to GameFAQs that we'd find through Google, and I know I'd often check 4-5 different sites for the information I wanted. GameFAQs just managed to be the best one consistently enough that it beat them out, to the point that I stopped checking others even before they died off. It's still very possible for one site to offer the answers people need consistently enough that they stop Googling the game they're looking for and instead default to checking that site first. To become that site, though, GameFAQs needs to switch tacks to be more wiki-like (plus bolstering its community significantly to be able to sustain those wikis, plus going a whole lot more SEO to actually show up on people's radars).

Again, though, Fandom's already positioning itself as being *the* wiki community (entirely by buying out as many previously-independent wikis as possible, rather than building a community themselves, but that's beside the point). They're very unlikely to cannibalize all of those efforts by trying to promote GameFAQs as filling that role, especially given how hard it'll be to pump up the community numbers enough to sustain healthy wikis. For that matter, though, even wikis are kind of dying out as more and more gaming communities shift to having Discord servers and focusing activity and information there instead of any static website (a trend which I despise, but the clouds never seem to listen when I yell at them), so even a wiki-focused rebrand probably wouldn't take off.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Without going into specifics, it wasn't a ToS violation when something of the same nature was posted in support of the other side.

This is true of many matters. To invoke Godwin's Law, it's not a ToS violation to say that Hitler was a bad guy who did bad things. It is a ToS violation to say that Hitler was a great guy who did nothing bad. It's not a ToS violation to say that murdering all gay people would be bad. It is a ToS violation to say that murdering all gay people would be good. It's not a ToS violation to say that the American slave trade was bad. It is a ToS violation to say that black Americans should be enslaved again.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That does not, however, extend to being welcomed to express any opinion in any given context. Certain opinions are not welcome on GameFAQs, for the sake of creating an environment that's comfortable and enjoyable for a broader range of people. This has always been the case and will always be the case, even as the specifics of that policy's application evolve according to the current cultural zeitgeist. It's not GameFAQs' job to be "fair" and let "both sides" of every issue have a voice. Some sides just suck and can be treated accordingly without losing anything of value (often, in fact, gaining quite a bit of value for their absence).

Again, you said something in support of the false narrative that widespread election fraud cost Trump the 2020 election. That's not something you're allowed to say, given that it is false, has cost several people their lives, and has resulted in legal trouble for a platform that promoted it. It's not "unfair" to not also ban people from saying that there's no evidence that fraud took place on a sufficient scale to give Biden the win, because that's just the truth and nobody's going to be hurt by allowing that truth to be expressed. That was your violation, plain and simply. You can insist that it wasn't a ToS violation if you want, but you can also insist that 2+2=5 if you want. Either way, you're going to be wrong.

You know, it wouldn't actually be that hard to turn GameFAQs into a multi-purpose wiki site instead of being oriented more around published FAQs and guides. A single site with community-generated wikis for (nearly) every game is actually something that the modern Internet would value (and in some ways what Fandom as a whole is trying to be, to pretty much everyone's chagrin because their sites are awful), saving the need to search for different wiki pages for different games and possibly even posing a real challenge to official wikis run by studios themselves (the convenience of having everything in one spot is hard to compete with, provided the GameFAQs versions of wikis aren't completely incompetent compared to official versions, as is often what happens now with Fandom wikis). Toss in better integration with modern social media and maybe some sort of Likes/Upvotes system (as much as I don't care for it, people expect that sense of validation from their social media these days and not having it huts the platform), and you've got something that might gain traction among younger users.

Except, of course, it's a given that Fandom's efforts to make that shift would inevitably just make the site more like the wikis they already have (which is... bad. Very bad.), plus developing GameFAQs to be the definitive wiki destination would undermine all of the other wikis they've bought out, so I don't think it's particularly likely that they'll actually make any such improvements. The biggest value owning GameFAQs has to Fandom is that they can take any guide content users create/have created for this site and copy it to more successful wiki pages to divert GameFAQs-bound traffic there.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I don't believe I violated the ToS.

Then you believe incorrectly, most likely because you're interpreting the ToS as written far more restrictively and literally than they're meant to be/are interpreted.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Now that the position on discussing politics has been clarified I can't continue and still make that claim.

Yes, now there's no question that any further political statements you make will be moddable. It's still worthwhile to make an effort to understand what you did wrong instead of spending six months stewing over "I guess the mods are defending Fox News," just for personal intellectual growth, but you don't need to understand the nuance of the situation now to avoid getting modded for political content.

• Binding of Isaac Rebirth - Played the original
• Atomic Crops - Played it
• One step from Eden - Played it
• Slay the Spire - Haven't played it, plan to buy it some time
• Monster Train - Haven't played it
• Dont Starve - Haven't played it
• Synthetic Ultimate - Haven't heard of it
• Faster than Light - Played it
• Into the Breach - Haven't played it
• Ring of Pain - Haven't played it
• Inscryption - Haven't played it
• Brotato - Haven't played it, plan to buy it some time
• Crypt of the Necrodancer - Played it
• Dead Estate - Haven't heard of it
• Hades - Played it
• Luck to be a Landlord - Haven't played it
• Endgame of Devil - Haven't heard of it
• Loop Hero - Own it, haven't played it
• Rogue Legacy - Played it
• Spirit Hunters - Haven't played it
• Time Wasters - Haven't heard of it
• Undermine - Haven't played it
• Vampire Hunters - Haven't heard of it
• Ratropolis - Haven't heard of it
• Nuclear Throne - Played it

Played - 8 (Counting Binding of Isaac)
Own, but haven't played - 1
Haven't played, plan to buy - 2
Haven't played - 8
Haven't heard of - 6

I'd amend that and suggest some form of spirituality, not necessarily a formal religion. Making a point of examining yourself and your place in the world around you is generally just a good idea that offers a range of mental and social health benefits. A formal religion can help to codify that with suggestions about who you should be and how you should live, and practicing as part of a religious community gives you the opportunity to discuss such things with like-minded people to develop your beliefs further, but secular spirituality still yields many of those benefits and can be a lot more comfortable for people that are hesitant to align themselves with some of the less savoury aspects of organized religion.

I like spinach, but I never have it anymore because my girlfriend is quite violently allergic (not technically an allergy, but functionally identical to one except with exclusively GI effects instead of symptoms more traditionally associated with allergies) and we therefore never put it in meals. There's really no reason I couldn't have it myself, since she's not sensitive to cross-contamination, but given that she actually liked spinach before it started causing her problems, I figure it's nicer to just avoid it.

What about Sundowner longing for the "good ol' days after 9/11" because he misses how aggressively militaristic the US was during that period? That is a character from Metal Gear Rising and thus, not real life, but he is providing commentary on real-life events and the political climate that followed them.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I don't feel safe addressing something of a political nature given the new policy.

You don't have to. You just have to recognize that that's what you said, and what you said is why you got modded. Again, maybe that's not what you meant, but if so, what you need to learn is that saying that communicates a belief that the 2020 election was stolen, which is off-limits.

I pretty rarely contest. I've only had a handful of moderations where I didn't mostly agree with the decision already, usually because the mod misunderstood something. Sometimes clarifying works to get it overturned, other times they double down, but ultimately the stakes aren't exactly high enough to worry about it.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

That just demonstrates how poorly you understood what I was getting at. Remember, I was posting in that topic to criticize Fox News as insincere.

"Was it proven that what was said [(that election fraud occurred on a significant scale despite Dominion's security measures)] was false?"

That translates to "I believe it is possible that election fraud occurred on a significant scale as described by Fox News and am challenging the beliefs of those around me that do not believe this," which is likely what got you modded. If that's not what you intended to say, then you chose your words exceptionally poorly.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

1) There was another user I was regularly butting heads with.
They always made derogatory posts about a group of people.
I challenge them, they are protected.
I get suspended.

This is too vague to comment on.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

2) Topic on fox news. Everyone says they hate it.
I do what I think everyone else is doing, join in, give my reason for having disdain for it.
People argue with me about something we agree on.
I get suspended.

I actually know exactly which topic/post you're talking about, and in that case, you were suspended for promoting the narrative that the 2020 election was "stolen" and the idea that Fox News' defamation suit was a punishment for "deviating from the centre" and not a cut-and-dry defamation suit. Asking "What proof is there that they lied?" when there's zero evidence whatsoever for the claim of election fraud to be made in the first place legitimizes the lie of election fraud in a way that is not tolerated here (largely due to the fact that that lie produced a fatal riot, but also because there's now precedent for legal consequences for giving somebody a platform to say these things and GameFAQs therefore has a vested interest in at least keeping up the appearance of not permitting them).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Only if, in your opinion, I'm a credible judge of reality.

Nope, that's true regardless of how credible I believe you are. Stating a belief is an attempt to share it and convince others of it. Whether or not that attempt succeeds depends on how well you support it and how receptive your audience is to it, but it is an attempt nonetheless.

Expressing any belief has consequences, regardless of what it is. If you don't want to risk those consequences, keep your beliefs to yourself.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So I believe something has merit... Find for me the passage within the terms of service where that is against the site rules.

Believing it? Nowhere. Expressing that belief? The expression of quite a few beliefs is expressly against the ToS. If you believed that Hitler had the right idea with the Holocaust, for example, expressing that would be no bueno. Generally speaking, these aren't explicitly spelled out so much as they lump things under vague umbrellas of "offensive," "inflammatory," "illegal," or other such things, and there's often a bit of subjectivity involved in interpreting those umbrellas, but by and large if you pay some modicum of attention to other people and what views they find particularly problematic, you shouldn't be blindsided by anything.

If you are still blindsided, that's what I mean by learning from your moderations. Insisting they were unfair and that you're somehow the victim of arbitrary persecution is precisely the opposite of how you should be responding.

Ah, I misread. I thought you were wondering that now, not when it happened. My mistake.