Adventures At Brian's Page: Arbitrary Moderator Rulings

Moderator At Brian's Page

 The story:

A couple of days ago Brian K posted about a "possible" scene in a movie he saw the trailer for online. I went over and looked at the trailer, and frankly didn't see anything that would leave me to think this film had a DiD scene. It struck me as funny, so I bopped back over and told him that I didn't see anything, and then asked what he saw that led him to pick that film out over so many others.

Knowing that there are some ridiculously thin-skinned people on that page who can turn the slightest remark into WWIII, and/or pick a fight over virtually anything, (Not Brian K that I know of, but why take chances?) I went out of my way to be as lighthearted and jovial as possible so as not to offend anyone. I was IN NO WAY picking at Brian K, or his post.  I guess I was having a little amusement with his selection process, but it seemed like a fair question, and I really honestly wanted to know why that film was listed. 

Now, it turned out the film apparently does have a scene, at least technically speaking, so all congrats to BK for his psychic DiD detection ability. (If you can reliably tune that to gag scenes, lemme know) Frankly, a gal in cuffs alone is pretty lame, IMO. "No gag, no care" y'know, but that's not the point here at all. And, that clip wasn't the one he posted the link to.

The point is, all was fine until the Moderator gets involved and shuts things down. Even THAT was fine, although I still would have asked why, out of curiosity if nothing else. I mean, sometimes I post things that I'm not sure broke his rules or not, but in this case, I wasn't even considering that possibility, so this one kind of threw me.

But where he got me going was this little add-on diddy:

"Refrain from the urge to moderate the page for me."

I went back and re-read my posts half a dozen times trying to see what he saw that could be construed as any possible attempt to do this and came up with nothing. Then, I had a several people come to my defense, which is kind of unusual. (The number of supporters, not the defense.) Which, as usual, led to a coupe of others taking the Mod's side, and which is why I brought this over here. Too many cooks... blah blah.      

I asked for a detailed explanation for his ruling and basically got told to suck it. As the Mod usually loves to tell someone exactly why they broke one or more of his seemingly endless list of rules, I saw this as curious to say the least. And telling as well. Perhaps the explanation is, there is no explanation, but to get the moderator to admit an error is like getting... well, he just ain't gonna do it, OK?  

Which is, of course, his purview, as it's his page. That however, does not make it right.

While it's true anyone can theoretically read anything into anything (SCOTUS has proven that far too many times. Many of us are still looking in the Constitution for the right to tax personal income and the right to kill preborn humans. No luck on that, BTW.) when you go off the reservation that far, there's usually some predisposition to find something, anything to justify an act or process you want carried out.

In this case, I feel he played the "trying to moderate my page" card, and then used the weak and silly "Because I said so" defense to avoid having to justify or even explain his arbitrary actions. 

This raises an interesting dichotomy. Is all this tight control really necessary? Brian claims it is, but recently I've begun to visit Anubis' forum over at DIDVIDS. They've been around for 2-3 years now, and despite far more casual rules even in their non-AG areas, the place has not fallen into chaos and anarchy at all. Perhaps over at BP, Brian could have the Moderator ease up a bit and let's just see what happens?


Now, Brian K, I STILL would love to know how/why you select these "possibles" for DiD scenes if there's really nothing in the trailer to indicate a scene.