2046 wrote:Mr. Oragahn wrote:2046 wrote:... such as Mith, Mr. O, l33t, et cetera, who are conspicuously kept on the recently-banned list)...
Hey? I don't know all the ins and outs of SBC. Is there such a list available?
I doubt there's an official one, but for example I have a thread saved for pertinent info which also contains Facehugger temp-banning CrossoverManiac, having drummed up some feigned excuse ("zomg, he quoted our rules!"), while at the same time patting a pro-Wars kid on the shoulder when he was acting a fool. (For reference, it's the recent "Turbolasers make my head hurt" thread).
That way, CrossoverManiac can be said to be a troublemaker, while real troublemakers like Leo1 are allowed to run free while his opponents get warnings/bannings if they disagree.
Considering abuse of moderator power is the only force they can apply, they use it as much as is feasible to short-circuit rational argumentation. Thus the pro-Trek (or anti-Wars-wanking) SB guys are dared to disagree while the proverbial gun is pressed to their heads.
Put simply, it's moderatorial pissing in the well of discourse.
I remember the issue with CM's quoting of the rules. He
didn't wish to argue against someone who insulted him right off the bat, it was his right to do so, and point it out.
I argued that it was a silly decision to sanction CM for that. hr was accused of style of substance for that. Whatever.
It was said he should use the report button. I scarcely use it, and generally no one gives a damn. Amusingly, every time a moderator comes to a SW thread after several reports have been filled, I notice that as far as I'm concerned, despite the heated arguments, I never pressed the button.
Schatten and Leo1 also got their usual free pass. Magic9mushroom got
pissed off by Leo1's usual way he reacts to attacks against Saxton's work... in a forum which supposedly is tighter regarding posting behaviour.
No surprise here. That's the kind of biased moderation that gives support to the revival of ASVS.
Oh, slight side topic, but I noticed that during the debate, CPLF didn't refrain from regurgitating the same washed horse crap
here, like:
Thester wrote:Actually no, 200 GT is not THE canon value, it is one canon value among many.
CPLF wrote:It's pretty much the only directly stated value anywhere. Everything else is calced based on various statements or events.
Certainly an old pro-wars debater would never forget about KJA's
terajoules exchanged by fresh warships and heavy battle stations.
Or the same old appeal to authority:
CPLF wrote:Also: Curtis Saxton is an accredited physicist. I'm pretty sure he knows what the numbers he's writing about mean. Better than you or I, in fact.
This, mixed to the moderation above, is SBC in a nutshell.
Mike DiCenso wrote:What I'm concerned about is instituting real reform at SB.com. Is there any chance of that, or is the pro-Wars moderator abuse too well ingrained for that to happen.
Not going to change.
Also interestingly enough, I'm somewhat curious as to how it is that Star Trek is so badly beat upon, while other franchises like WH40K are allowed to slide. Is it really because the Imperium of Man is powerful? Or is it because as a franchise WH40K is not on the top of the list, just a modest niche in the wargame and RPG communities?
-Mike
WH40K is more violent, it's absurdly grimdark, but overall not superior technology wise, at least regarding the Imperium. It's powerful in certain departments because it uses its technology in ways even the UFP could but doesn't (Space Marines, big mutants with plenty of buffs and animated tough armour), and warships are powerful because they use large cores, many of them, and use big ass cannons to channel the energies.
And they generally have good ranges, in the thousands of km and more, but any ship capable of closing in fast, either by FTL or sublight while tanking shots could deal with them. There's enough material that strongly disputes the idea that they're very fast and agile.
Why it's not beaten up is because of its inherent violence and the support of many fans, including a god awful number of them quoting numbers without checking them, or perhaps even understanding them at all.
For an example of this, read
this thread, "Warhammer 40k imperial guard vs star wars storm troopers", including a discussion about Caves of Ice (for which I did my own calcs in the "Other" forum of SFJN, where you can see that I get low megatons where Connor's low end estimation was about countless teratons) and the Nova Cannon, supposedly delivering tera/petatons of KE because of its relativistic velocity; a problem I explain in my other threads here as well, notably how it doesn't fit with the way the projectile explodes, and how the same source describes mighty warships threatened by most regular solar flares! In other words, cherry picking.
It also gets so much leeway because of the moderation. As you know, warsies rule the versus section of the board, more or less, and they also post at SDN.
They always excused SW's gigatons of firepower (now much more) by saying that there were universes with even far more power, like WH40K. Of course they wanked out WH40K so it worked well. One wank excused the other wank. Pretty much all retarded claims come from that.
From the few pieces of WH40K I've read, it's rather clear that the vision you get of the universe is very different of the vision you get without reading any fluff and only going on with SDN's calcs; pretty much all Connor MacLeod's calcs in fact.
It gets such a free pass that fans can throw quotes at your face and insult you and your comprehension capacities without ever providing their own interpretation, and that's it, they win the argument. I got this with quotes about titans and other supertanks, which I'm planning to address here.
I've also begun reading a couple of other short novels, which are full of rather interesting details, which as you can guess to mesh well with the vision we get from SDN.
Mind you, as a sidenote, I found an old thread about titans at SDN where the posters were faaar more moderate about the machines' abilities, and that by quoting several sources and pictures.
Other aspects of the Imperium which are often forgotten is how the typical warship formation counts very few ships, or how their FTL transit capacity and not so reliable and generally slow.
If you read my WH40K threads, this is quite clear.
This reminds me that I have to finish the Space Fleet thread. I was about to cover the part about the Goliath ship that collects fuel for other planets and warships by flying close to photospheres and sucking up energy. This is interesting because Connor references this passage of the original and old source with a short quotation about how the fuel the Imperium uses is a thousand times more powerful than nuclear fuel or something like that. Well again, with proper context, you'll see how the painting is different.
Now, a question for you Mike. Why don't we see you at SBC?