salarta

kurt-banged-her:

salarta:

As expected, CBR deleted my final post on CBR. Before any of what follows, I have to state right away: I asked for the ban. I don’t want anyone to think the ban was a heavy-handed reaction on CBR’s part, they may not have done it at all if I hadn’t asked.

Anyway, here’s the reason for why they deleted the post:

You have been banned for the following reason:
Discussion of warnings and bans are not permitted on the forums. If you don’t want to be here, just leave.
Date the ban will be lifted: 02-05-2015, 10:00 AM

Which just further proves why CBR’s boards do not deserve traffic. Boards that are actually good and worth visiting do not make discussion of warnings entirely off-limits. Admins and mods are not infallible. They make mistakes, they create guidelines that are imperfect, there are cases where their word and power is not sacrosanct and they actually need to be questioned.

But CBR isn’t interested in that. Their current structure does not encourage discussion, it stifles discussion. It gags opinions that are not generally favorable to companies like DC or Marvel and the people that work for them. It results in an atmosphere where unless you have nothing but nice things to say, you’ll be looking over your shoulder, walking on eggshells and worrying that something you said might get you banned because it’s not nice enough.

There’s also one obvious problem with the ban itself: it’s not long enough. As in, it’s only a week when it should be permanent.

Anyway, the text of my final post on CBR (before it was deleted) is below.

We’re a week out from the final issue of All-New X-Factor? Excellent.

It’s time for me to leave CBR, likely forever.

Anyone that knows me and has read my posts knows I can be harsh but
honest with my opinions. I don’t mince words or beat around the bush, I
say what I think needs to be said. I don’t refrain from saying those
things just because someone is a huge fan or because it might be
something someone at Marvel doesn’t want anyone to say. Sometimes, that
leads me to say things that shouldn’t be said, things that might have
even been cruel for me to say. Some spring to mind right now that I wish
I hadn’t said, and they were the reason I didn’t leave sooner: I wanted
to apologize for those cases before I left.

With that in mind, here is why I’m leaving.

At the beginning of this month, I said something negative about Marvel editors and writers in general.
I didn’t name names. I didn’t call out any specific people, or even
offices within Marvel. I could only have been broader if I had just said
Marvel in general (which frankly, I should have; obviously not every
editor and writer at Marvel is bad, otherwise I wouldn’t have read ANXF
and wouldn’t be reading Magneto). I called out the way Marvel as a whole
behaves for exactly how it looks to me. This got me a warning for
“insulting behavior.”

I draw the line when I can’t call out a company’s behavior for what it
is. I could have completely understood the warning if I had aimed what I
said at a specific person, but I didn’t. I see this as no different
than giving someone a warning for calling out Enron for being greedy. If
I can’t call out Marvel’s bad behavior in general as a company, or if I
have to wrap it in words so watered down and ineffectual that they may
as well not be said at all, then there really is no point in saying
them. Which, in turn, means there’s no point in posting.

I’m not going to post on a board that expects me to only post positive
things and never anything critical of Marvel’s behavior and the
corporate culture and attitude that fuels such behavior. I’m not going
to just give Marvel a pass any time they do things that deserve to be
called out, especially things that are insulting to me as a fan and
consumer. I’m going to say something about it, even if what I say isn’t
flattering in the slightest.

I don’t know how many people are going to see this post before it’s
deleted, which I expect to happen. I’m also going to ask an admin to go
ahead and ban me. So if you see “BANNED” under my name, know it was
voluntary and I asked for it.

I just want to say, those that see this message, thanks for the good
times we’ve had. Thanks for being awesome, for sharing thoughts and
ideas on the potential of Marvel or certain characters at Marvel, for
speaking up when you saw something wrong with the way things were being
treated, and for sharing fanart and cosplay. From here on out, you can
reach me on Twitter and Tumblr. Don’t try to reach me by PMs here, I’m
pretty sure I won’t be able to read or respond to you.

I’m glad I’m not on CBR anymore

I don’t really want to be part of a forum that just smiles at everything a company like Marvel does and silences all criticism.

There are SOME things I can understand when it comes to their perspective. There was a big issue last year where a female critic got a lot of undue harassment and personal attacks just for saying what she wanted to say, and I can understand CBR going a bit excessive to curb personal attacks. But when you can’t even give proper, no bullshit criticism of a company like Marvel without an overzealous admin referring to it as “insulting behavior,” that’s when things have gone to shit.

I noticed a lot of bans on threads of CBR over several months, and I found them incredibly odd because those people said and did nothing wrong. Now I know why, it’s all CBR slamming the banhammer down where entirely uncalled for.

CBR may still be decent as a news site, but we know from ANXF early reviews that it’s shit for reviews, and we know from how they respond to criticizing even just whole company that’s CBR’s now shit for community interaction.

The ban they set expires tomorrow. I’m trying to decide whether to repost the text of my goodbye post, or if I can’t be assed to do even that much anymore.