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Why I dislike the TWOP forums.
May. 19th, 2010 11:58 pmOkay, at the risk of sounding like a whiny emo baby, I want to take a moment to explain why I have never gotten into the Television Without Pity forums due to feeling incredibly unwelcomed even though I generally enjoy forum atmospheres and would otherwise have enjoyed participating in them, I think. (Issues I heard about regarding Jacob's latter-season moderation of the BSG forums aside, that is. But hey, given my experience of the TWOP forum culture, perhaps jerky moderation shouldn't shock me.)
So, four years ago, I register to TWOP and make my very first post. As far as I recall it was polite and uncontroversial, but I made the cardinal, shocking sin of signing my name at the bottom of the post. Now, in fairness, the weird not-signing-your-posts-because-people-can-already-see-your-handle rule is in their Dos & Don'ts thingy, here: http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3150213
In fairness to me, it's stuck in the middle of a whole mess of stuff, and while I did glance over all that? It's such a weird, random rule that yes, I MAYBE FORGOT ABOUT IT cus I was a newb.
This gets me a warning. Which means every time I post, I (though not other people) can see a lovely little BRIGHT RED line under my name saying, "1 note/warn" or something. It's also in BRIGHT RED on my user profile (though I presume that's not visible to others, I don't actually know for sure ). When I click on this permalink beneath my name, I discover they have a system of sending out "notes" as low-level reminders to follow the forum rules, which disappear when acknowledged, and warnings for MORE SERIOUS OFFENCES, like apparently SIGNING YOUR NAME, which stay there forever unless a moderator chooses to remove them. And I think when you hit a magic number of them you get banned.
So yeah, aside from the fact that it's hardly welcoming - someone makes a minor slip-up on their first ever post and the moderator response is to issue a full-fledged warning - four years later, it's still there. Every time I post something, I get to see this lovely, accusatory warning that I did something wrong. It's just...unwelcoming.
(And yes, for those wondering, this is cus I went there and randomly tried to post something, and realised that yes, it's still there. MORE THAN FOUR YEARS, PEOPLE. No wonder my total post count is like...5).
So like, it's their forum. And if people not making minor etiquette mistakes when they first show up is so important to them they can give no leeway for good faith mistakes, that is entirely their call, but for real, it will make me feel so unwelcome and picked on that I will not ever want to post there again, and every time I try to go back, it'll piss me off so much it'll be another year before I try it again.
A quick note of warning, I could have understood. I would have said, "Dude, I'm sorry, I messed up on that, won't happen again." But srsly, when you have a two-tiered warning system available and you choose to make a big deal of that kind of thing by sending out the more serious type of warning? Makes you look like a jerk. And no, I have no intention of asking a mod to remove the warning, since one of the Dos & Don'ts is "Don't bug mods to remove warnings" so it'd probably just get me another one.
/GIANT RIGHTEOUS RANT.
So, four years ago, I register to TWOP and make my very first post. As far as I recall it was polite and uncontroversial, but I made the cardinal, shocking sin of signing my name at the bottom of the post. Now, in fairness, the weird not-signing-your-posts-because-people-can-already-see-your-handle rule is in their Dos & Don'ts thingy, here: http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3150213
In fairness to me, it's stuck in the middle of a whole mess of stuff, and while I did glance over all that? It's such a weird, random rule that yes, I MAYBE FORGOT ABOUT IT cus I was a newb.
This gets me a warning. Which means every time I post, I (though not other people) can see a lovely little BRIGHT RED line under my name saying, "1 note/warn" or something. It's also in BRIGHT RED on my user profile (though I presume that's not visible to others, I don't actually know for sure ). When I click on this permalink beneath my name, I discover they have a system of sending out "notes" as low-level reminders to follow the forum rules, which disappear when acknowledged, and warnings for MORE SERIOUS OFFENCES, like apparently SIGNING YOUR NAME, which stay there forever unless a moderator chooses to remove them. And I think when you hit a magic number of them you get banned.
So yeah, aside from the fact that it's hardly welcoming - someone makes a minor slip-up on their first ever post and the moderator response is to issue a full-fledged warning - four years later, it's still there. Every time I post something, I get to see this lovely, accusatory warning that I did something wrong. It's just...unwelcoming.
(And yes, for those wondering, this is cus I went there and randomly tried to post something, and realised that yes, it's still there. MORE THAN FOUR YEARS, PEOPLE. No wonder my total post count is like...5).
So like, it's their forum. And if people not making minor etiquette mistakes when they first show up is so important to them they can give no leeway for good faith mistakes, that is entirely their call, but for real, it will make me feel so unwelcome and picked on that I will not ever want to post there again, and every time I try to go back, it'll piss me off so much it'll be another year before I try it again.
A quick note of warning, I could have understood. I would have said, "Dude, I'm sorry, I messed up on that, won't happen again." But srsly, when you have a two-tiered warning system available and you choose to make a big deal of that kind of thing by sending out the more serious type of warning? Makes you look like a jerk. And no, I have no intention of asking a mod to remove the warning, since one of the Dos & Don'ts is "Don't bug mods to remove warnings" so it'd probably just get me another one.
/GIANT RIGHTEOUS RANT.
