Is it so important to you to have the first comment that you need to post a one word comment and then later edit it to add something worthwhile? It's ok to be 3rd or 4th you know ;)

Is it so important for you to be the first blue text in the thread that you have to pick on our Roman5? ;-)

I find that the fact that you feel compelled to be second blue post cause for deep psychological study...

>.>

I'm not insane. My mom had me tested!

Let's not fight, kids. "If you can't say something nice..."

That wasn't a death threat. As someone who's actually received a few personalized ones, trust me on that.

By your own admission, you're apparently paranoid and you've mentioned in other threads that you suffer from a number of conditions that make you non-psychonormative. As such, it's entirely possible that you don't realize this.

To that end, let me be clear: this is, indeed, a forum where free and open discussion is encouraged and we're as inclusive as a grouping of several thousand virtual strangers can be. Part of what happens when you bump up against other cultures is that they view things differently and say things that might not feel friendly to you. That's part of how other people view the world and if you expect to be part of any community, you will need to understand that you are not going to be greeted with open arms from every single person you meet.

Licurg does not know where you live; he lives approximately 2,580 km away (that being the distance from Bucharest to London) and is no position to actually threaten you. He doesn't know your postal address, so he can't mail anything lethal to you. Finally, he doesn't even know your real name, so finding out who you are to *do* anything dangerous to you is problematic. Even under British harassment laws, you do not have a reasonable suspicion of actual threat, here, and there's no call for legal or police proceedings. If you feel this is a legitimate death threat, then I simply cannot help you because you don't operate on the same psychological plane that I do. If you, instead, are trying to censor someone else who you don't like by appealing to the moderators of the forums here and whining about it, you're not going to have much luck with that.

That said, Licurg, I suspect we'll all be happier if you simply ignore gameon in the future, instead of antagonizing him.

Harassment is doing that every day; or to every single post Licurg makes. Wishing ill-will twice in three and a half months? That's not a pattern of harassment, nor is it a serious death threat. If you'd like to test it out, we can see how alarmed Licurg is.

:: reads down ::

Oh, wait. He's not. Is "I wish you were dead" something that adults say in sensible conversation? Not remotely.

But if you expect a mod to swoop in every time someone said something puerile, delete it, and then ban the user who posted the stupid thing, then the Internet as a whole would only have about 10% of the content that it actually does. Whether that would be for the betterment of society as a whole is up for debate, but that's not how we run the shop around here.

You know I'm American and, as such, am always carrying 26 assault rifles at any given moment, right? ;)

I wasn't trying for patronizing, actually. I read a lot more threads than I comment on, and I have seen gameon mention in more than a few places that he has mental and social issues. It is possible to me that if he legitimately means it when he has posted about these disabilities that he literally doesn't know that Licurg's threats are empty. As such, speaking in a clear and unambiguous tone is not patronizing, it is informative. It is possible I'm wrong in my approach here. I'm as human as anyone, and just as prone to error as the rest of us.

Should Licurg make empty threats? No. Have I told Licurg this? Yes. If gameon had conducted his, "I am disgusted with you and GOG" discussion via PM with me, I"d be happy to keep the conversation there, but it seemed that he wanted it public.

Harassment requires a pattern of repeated intimidating or unwanted behavior. Twice over three months is not a pattern, although Licurg telling people that he wants to kill them isn't funny and isn't appropriate. Being told so by a mod should, generally, settle the issue. If Licurg makes a habit of repeatedly being hostile to users and is reported frequently, then further action may, indeed, be appropriate.

I'm not dismissive of handicaps or of mental illness; as someone born with profound hearing loss, I understand that life is harder when you're disabled than when you're not. That said, I also believe that if you want to engage in the majority community, you pretty much have to play by the same rules the rest of us do because you don't get much of a life otherwise. I could stick to sign language as my main language, but then life's options would be pretty crappy for me, since the majority community doesn't speak that one. Likewise, realizing that someone's puerile and unfunny insult isn't an actual death threat is pretty important if someone is going to make his or her way through any large online community.

There are millions of people who use GOG each month; it is impossible to moderate for each of their wants or needs. I--as any moderator in a large community like this must--look for truly egregious examples of abuse, harassment, hate speech, or otherwise objectionable speech and swat at those; the remainder--the stupid, the tactless, the misinterpreted, and the borderline cases--are generally either ignored or set in a bin of "monitor but don't act yet." In this case, the appropriate action seemed to fall more in the latter than the former, and I took the action that seemed appropriate. Namely, I warned Licurg.

Hopefully, you guys understand my point of view, here. If not, well, sorry to have let you down, but I'm not sure what else I could have done here except ignore the issue entirely.

I'd say that I addressed both ends of that spectrum in the initial post; if he legitimately didn't know that it wasn't a threat, then I explained it was not. If it was an attempt to claim harassment and have Licurg moderated because of protected legal status, I explained it wasn't harassment by the definition that applied in his part of the world.


But you raise a fair enough point; while I did explain--one way or another--that Licurg's behavior was bad but not an actual death threat, I did dumb things. First, of course, I should have kept this discussion over PM regardless of what was happening out here. I started on that road, though, and rather than seem to ignore all of you, I'm stuck having this conversation here. The second is that the line between "blunt" and "asshole" is very narrow, and while I aimed for the former, I clearly came off as the latter.

So, Gameon, on the off chance you swing by the forums again: I'm sorry that I addressed your problem like an asshole. While the resolution of it would not change, I could have done a better job in several respects of informing you what was happening and why.

With that said, it's 2:30 in the morning here, and I've derailed this thread more than enough for one weekend. See you all on Monday.

Damn, now that's a blast from the past :D