The banning o' Blitz6speed and its repercussions on the HD Talk Forum
 

Sorry to bring this up again, but the last thread was closed before I could reply. Blitz was banned for a personal attack against me, and I had him on ignore, so there was no way I was egging him on. Anyone on this board knows I have strong feelings against the way Sony has been conducting business lately, because it shows how little they care about consumers and quality, and it also ruined what could have been a great gaming console. If I said something against Sony as a company, and Blitz took it as a personal attack, then I don't see how the onus on his banning isn't 100% on him.

Did we make some choo-choo comments? Sure. But we've said worse to art, who AFAIK, is still around.

Edit: I just went and re-read Blitz's full post. It was in response to a debate Jay has been having with several members on the board about the PS3. That whole debate has been nothing but civil, with good points brought up on both sides. No one had said anything insulting to Jay, nor had Jay said anything insulting about any other member. A purely intellectual debate. Then, out of the blue, without even being addressed, Blitz makes a personal attack on me. Could you argue that all of our anti-BD comments drove him to it? Maybe. But that's a pretty slippery slope, if you ask me. I don't go around attacking people who like movies I dislike, or music I dislike, or video games I dislike. Blitz is definitely responsible for his own banning. He knew the forum rules and willfully broke them, on a member who wouldn't even read the comment.

Suprmallet, we let a lot of things go for the past few months. We gave so much leeway that people actually began to think that bashing Sony was okay, or that chiming into every BD thread to comment on the failures of Sony/BD was acceptable, or that there's nothing wrong with flamebaiting.

Anyway, I'll discuss with the other moderators and give you a response. It may take a few days, so please bear with me.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

I can't say I agree with Blitz's banishment for the simple fact that people make mistakes, but I will say that his comments in general were no different then digifreak and while I don't know what was exactly said by Blitz I can't agree just because he could have been egged on and at the same times was egging on with some of his statements like "choo choo" and so on.

What he said was a personal attack against me, and I had him on ignore, so I was not egging him on. He deserved his banning.

Absolutely. Blitz went from debating the formats and started attacking people. I also think you've got it a bit reversed, Namja. Blitz was the first to interject into any HD discussion and derail the thread. His "choo choo" comments were flamebait, pure and simple.

As for the inevitable comparison to DFNYC, I can't recall him making any personal attacks. If I were an BD supporter, I would hold up a guy like Jay G as a good example of a fellow BD supporter, not Blitz. The same holds true on the other side. There are a few HD-DVD supporters who I would not to be associated with, were I backing that format. Level headed and openminded is good, fanboy is not.

The idea that people "egged" Blitz on is insane. His entire MO was trolling.

And not just on this forum, either. His incessant "Nobody wants the Wii because it's just a souped-up Gamecube!" and "Nintendo is slapping me in the face by releasing Zelda on the Wii!" were just obnoxious.

Wow, I completely missed that Blitz got banned. It is a shame if went personal because his Choo Choo line was becoming a DVDTalk classic.

:up: :up: This post very succinctly describes my feelings as well.

I know there's a line between Sony bashing and Sony criticism but this is one of those companies that deserves to be criticized, as their mistakes are many, across the board. Were this another board, I might suggest that Sony bashing is "against the rules" because some Sony ad campaign might be started, but I know Geoff doesn't run his site this way and the suggestion is preposterous. But Blu-Ray, up until this point has been exceedingly deserving of any criticism. It sucks, plain and simple. More expensive hardware, less movies, less storage, worse quality, etc.

The future of Blu-Ray definitely seems to be rosier and it would be unthinkably ignorant to write off the format as it is now. Nobody sane thinks that the format was is over right now and Blu-Ray has lost.

But to deny people to give opinions about a format, or a company, or a poorly written article, seems to be asinine. It's not my board, so I don't make the rules, and I'll follow whatever decision you want to make, but if no criticism is allowed, you might as well close down this thread. Unlike most video game discussion threads, this one actually had a very low signal-to-noise ratio. For every two fanboy posts we had one or two well written intelligent replies, and it would be a shame to throw out the DVD with the bathwater, so to speak.

I agree 1000000% Blitz started alot of this crap and he derailed plenty of discussion. Good riddance.

Exactly. There were plenty of good discussions that were wrecked by his constant thread crapping and off topic responses.

:lol: @ flashburn for slamming Blitz while having "Choo Choo" in his sig.

:mad: @ flashburn for using my 2012

And he was suspended at least once for such comments in the VG forum, and warned several times before and after it. So it's not like he wasn't warned regarding his posting style, and just banned off the cuff for this one incident in the HD talk forum (where he made repeated abrasive and attacking posts, that I assume drew warnings as well--I don't read that forum enough to know, but did skim it enough to see his posts).

Time to derail the thread! Choo Choo!

I've been using 2012 for like 5 years, however I don't know what I am going to change it to once 2012 comes around! Oh, and its my 2012!

I'd absolutely LOVE for someone to explain the Blitz/DFNYC comparison. I consistantly report actual NEWS to this forum whereas Blitz just posted things to incite a response. There is certainly nothing "blind" about my posts. I'm definitely a fan of HD DVD but were they to screw up as badly as Sony/BD, I'd be right there criticizing them as well. They just haven't...thus far.

This thread should be closed. Unless we're allowed to discuss banned members now.

The discussion really isn't about the banning of a particular user but how pervasive his sort of behavior is and whether or not that behavior should result in a sweeping change in the moderation of the forum in question.

Okay then, thanks for the clarification.

Blitz was absolutely wrong for the shot against Suprmallet, but he was constantly being egged on. The post he made about the Tears of the Sun review is a perfect example. He simply posts the link link to a review, posts an excerpt, and gives the mandatory Choo Choo. Nothing else. The Choo Choo thing, I think, has become a big joke to everyone on the forum. Bllitz included. He put it in to make everyone laugh. After his post, the whole thread goes to crap. Literally. Every post after that was a thread crap, and really should be deleted. Noone discussed the review. It was all, Sony sucks, 1 disc... wow, one review and Blitz goes crazy, and even one of our moderators decided to take a shot:

Adam Tyner
DVD Talk Reviewer/ Moderator

Originally Posted by Blitz6Speed
Rivals anything HD-DVD has to offer

Wow! It's just as good as HD DVD and for only $500 more!

What does this say about Sony's earlier work -- that they just didn't care enough to do better?

I couldn't make it to the second page, far too many bull shit replies. He only replied once in his own thread, and that was to defend himself from the thread craps. He was wrong, but he has been provoked by many on this board including freak.

Suprmallet, I don't know how the ignore post thing works, but how could you respond to a thread started by Blitz if he was on your ignore list? Just asking.

I say reinstate him after two weeks and keep him on a short leash. He was wrong, but does not deserve to be banned for life.

The format warring is out of control in the HD forum. One thing I've noticed: since console-bashing is forbidden in the VG forum, folks who want to bash a particular console go to the HD forum instead.

Agree 100%. HD forum is how the VG forum use to be.

I agree. It's just like the VG forum was in 2001 during the GC and X-box launch, along with the PS2 2nd gen stuff.

It needs a zero tolerance for bashing policy just like the VG forum.

People can post cons, express opinions. But no outright bashing, flamebaiting, trolling, threadcrapping etc.

The forum is unbearable. I like to try to keep up on HD stuff as I want to make the leap in the hopefully near future, but the forum is useless for that purpose now as the fanboy bickering ruins it.

The way ignore works is when someone makes a post, you see a small placeholder that says "You cannot read this post because User X is on your ignore list. Click here to take this user off your ignore list." So I can certainly post in his threads, I just can't read what he said. I didn't know he had attacked me until Adam quoted it. By that point, he was already banned.

Do we need sweeping reform in the forum? As someone said, it could be akin to the VG forum, where valid criticisms and concerns can be posted, but posts saying "Your format sucks and mine rules!" should obviously be left out.

That being said, as Josh Hinkle mentioned, Blitz was suspended for not adhering to the VG Forum rules, so I don't see why we would expect him to adhere to the HD Forum rules. His posts would get so bad that I got into fights with him here and on AVS simultaneously, and put him on ignore on both sites. Had I not put him on ignore, I'd be the banned one right now. So I think his banning was a good thing, should remain in effect, but should stand as a lesson to all posters in the HD Forum. No format is worth getting banned over.

...yes, responding to his obnoxiousness about how HD DVD was in its death throes now that a Blu-ray disc got a review that put its video quality on par with an HD DVD release, even though it still lacks all of the extras from the original DVD and can only be played on a deck that costs twice as much. If he'd just posted the link and the excerpt, I think the responses would have been very different. Likewise if the post had been made by someone else. (I honestly think that the pervasive anti-Blu-ray sentiment on the forums is owed more to the couple of vocal Blu-ray evangelists than anything Sony or its partners have done.)

You can't assume that blitz6speed would've been a saint if not for the other posters in HD Talk. He engaged in this same sort of obnoxiousness on the Video Games forum, and he spouts off the same sort of junk on other message boards having nothing to do with DVD Talk as well:

I received about as many complaints about this user in the space of two or three months than the sum total of "Report this post..." submissions across all users in all threads during my time as a moderator. His banning may seem unfair to some, and I agree that perhaps I should've done more as a moderator to try to keep things from ever getting to this point, but judging from his behavior elsewhere, this was an inevitability.

I'm perfectly fine with having a "no format bashing" rule. One of the things I enjoyed so much about DVD Talk's HD forum in its early days was the lack of this sort of vitriol, and no one would be happier than me to see it return to that.

(For what it's worth, I have every intention of buying a Blu-ray player as soon as more capable hardware and a variety of compelling software are available. I couldn't care less who wins the format war because I'll be able to play discs from either camp.)

You are allowed to (and we encourage you to) make posts that constitute constructive criticism. I think that your post above is a good example of that, except for the sucks comment. When you post that, that's not just stating your opinion. That's an attack on a competing format which invariably leads to an ugly mess. Even though the rest of your post makes you sound like your opinions are well thought out and that you're on an even keel, someone's going to take a personal offense to that one line in your post (more on this later).

Furthermore, if the main purpose of a post is to mock another format, then that is strongly discouraged. Whenever someone posts something good about Format A, then we can count on certain supporters of Format B to enter that thread and make a snide comment about Format A. Perhaps it's just a :lol: or a sarcastic one-liner. A single post in itself may not violate specific DVD Talk rules, but repeated mockery of a format or constant badgering of a format constitutes threadcraps and/or flamebaits, and they will not be tolerated.

The problem at HD Talk Forum has not been so bad, but it's going down the path of the VG Talk Forum. And VG Talk Forum was, at times, really ugly. We even asked certain members not to enter threads that didn't deal with the console of their choice (for example, asking PS2 fans to not enter XBox or GC threads). The main reasons why the problem was so much worse in the VG Talk Forum were: (1) the video game consoles sold by the hundreds of thousands at launch, and (2) because of that, we had a lot more people participating in the discussions. With more people participating, there is a higher probability of someone throwing the first stone, and when one stone is thrown, there is an exponentially higher probability of someone throwing a stone back.

Back to people taking offense at your post. Your post above may or may not incite anything at the present. But when we have hundreds more that are actively participating in the HD Talk Forum, someone's gonna bite and say something nasty about HD DVD, and there will be retaliations to that, and it will get ugly. In the VG Talk Forum, we've had fights started by comments that were a lot tamer. We've had dozens of suspensions and bans. I certainly don't want to see that happen at HD Talk Forum, i.e. I like you guys and don't want to see anyone get suspended or banned.

Anyway, I will discuss this with Adam and the other moderators privately, and we will return with a more concrete guideline. We value your opinions so please keep contributing to this thread in the meantime.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Namja,

I just wanted to make sure you got my email. I sent it before this thread was created, I didn't want to keep discussing it in the HD forum.