Getting back to the forums that I resigned from...
Esigarettaportal.it s about electronic cigarettes and it's the place where I found all the informations I was searching for about this topic.
Where's the problem? It's in its moderation. Not all of it, luckily. Sadly just 1 or 2 bad persons are enough to make every place a bad place.
Around a year ago it happened that I disagreed about the moderators, and I paid the consequences of this.
Summarizing (a lot!) the facts, some users had been found giving one-another votes to rise up their reputation. Bad thing, of course, which correctly deserved a punisment.
And I totally agreed on this point. But I didn't in the kind of punishment they got (by the way, without giving any kind of explanation to all the other surprised and worried users): every one involved got all his reputation points removed.
I felt this as a lack of respect for everyone of us, because even the reputation which has been correctly given to those users for their useful posts, had been totally removed.
I agreed of course in removing the undeserved reputation, but not on getting rid of the deserved one too.
Sadly this produced a month of official warning for violation of the rules for criticism ("polemical attitude", officially) to the moderators, who cannot (comfortably!) be criticized by rules.
Let's note that facts agreed with me, since legal reputation have been returned, and I've been provately confirmed about harshness of moderation. Sadly no one actually apologized and I kept my warning for all the month.
I no longer felt free to express myself and I stopped, moving to a "silent mode".
A year later, I stopped at it, opening a new topic and asking if in the meantime a resign function (which was missing) had been added.
As a reply the topic had been closed without any reason.
Writing to the admin, asking for an explanation and for the name of the author of this act, only produced the saddest result: the thread had been reopened just to add the missing answer, then suddenly closed again, to avoid further discussions. Fixing the error solved the need to provide explanations!
Way too confortable. And very sad.
Some other episodes are to add to hese ones
Like the total lack (partially fixed a year later) of control of posts signs full of pictures, forbidden by the forum rules. Funny how the rules do come up only when needed...
Or like the repeated and unneeded deleting of many posts in a useless attenpt of keeping a discussion-order in a forum which pretend to be a collection of informations to browse, for everyone who want to know more about the electronic cigarettes. Desperate and useless attempt since the forum is by definition a tool to discuss, not to collect and arrange informations. The creations of archives of informations to browse should be done with specific tools like wikies (an attempt has been done out of the community, but it's been suspended for totally lack of interest and collaboration). Deleting of too many posts does produce an unpleasant censorship effect which works against the meaning of the forum itself...
Sadly, due to the shape of my mind I really can'accept such behaviour, so authoritative and prevaricating. :/
I asked for my account to be closed. Being unable to contest and/or constructively discuss without getting more warnings or even the ban, to publically resign has been the only one way that I found to express my disagreement and at the same time to escape from an authority that I don't agree with and that I can't accept.
Another place I found the same problem has been maciste.it, where a funny operator amuses himself with "happy" replies, justifying his moves or his unpleasant replies in the most silly and banal ways, even whinig for the hard job and for all the time he spend doing it (must users thanks him for something he decided to do by himself, by the way in such objectionable way?).
Already abandoned in the past, I came back pulled by a friend, but I ended up finding the same situation and I decided for closing the account.
(But they still send me advertising email...?!)
Duh... Perhaps it's me totally failing in staying with people...
Meh, nevermind.
y.