One thing I've found turns me off of an RPG faster than anything is the presence of blacklists.

You know, you go to a game to advertise and you see, listed right there, a big ol' long list of people who broke the rules and are now banned and blacklisted. I dunno about you, but that seriously turns me off. It makes the admin come across as a complete arse to me. I mean, if someone breaks a rule, ban or delete them, but this just reeks of airing dirty laundry...er, pun intended. XD

It's even worse when it's something like this, which I just saw today while advertising:

"Black list: Game Name Removed [f***ing proboard using a** holes]"

Ahem. Game name removed, and asterisks edited in. Those asterisks were definitely not there. >_>

Just...what? I mean, not only does that go into the whole discriminating against certain types of games thing (this was a boards2go game, but it honestly doesn't take long to convert an HTML advertisement to BBcode; I made 3 advertisements for both of my games [HTML, BBcode, EZcode] and that took like five minutes) but is that really necessary? Even if they hadn't used any swears, is blacklisting necessary to begin with? Just delete the ad and go on with your day if it's that bothersome. Jeez.

All blasklisting tells me, as a new person browsing the site, is that the admins are not people I want to be around.

Especially when one of their advertising rules is this: "we better not have to join your site to advterise or we will spam the s*** out of you. we hold long grudges."

Asterisks added yet again. >_>

Stay classy, Game-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

I agree, it's really stupid... How petty and bored do you have to be to make a black list like that? Just delete it and get on with your life.

The only blacklist I could ever approve of would be a list of sites that ripped from yours, lol. I don't have those either, though.

Even though I am less against things like showing declined applications and stuff than you are, Rhi, I would NEVER have a blacklist, even for a site which did the worst things i could imagine that were still within the law (if it was outside the law I would tell the police!)

Psh. Don't be rude, silent cacophony. That is insulting and thoughtless towards the younger members of our community, not to mention totally wrong. A person does not need to be young to be a jerk.

silent cacophony was just making a generalization of immaturity; I'm sure s/he's aware that there are some mature twelve-year-olds... lol

That's just silly.

I wouldn't waste time to make a blacklist. They act like immature twelve year olds. =[

I'm not against blacklists; I just wouldn't waste my time on them, especially over something like advertising.

:o That's horribly grammatically incorrect!

Wow, I haven't come across this yet, but is sounds anal. What a waste of admin time.

I have seen someplace that had a "Wall of Shame". I can't remember it exactly, but it was really just mean. It had complaints written by members or potential members before they were banned. So it was essentially some sort of blacklist, I suppose.

There is a message there that so many who admin boards ignore. There is an attitude that comes across on boards and you have to be very careful to temper it. You are suppose to be building communities, not launching into your own little narcissistic world- ruler fantasy.

Blacklists, shame lists, really obnoxiously written rules, arguing or insulting members in the c-box---all this crap looks just awful. Who the hell wants to write on boards where you see that happening?

I still think that comparing behaviour like that to being twelve is mean. There are few twelve year olds that would actually behave in that manner. A person would have to be malicious, stupid and petty to do that sort of thing and although young people can be pretty silly, they aren't bad people.

People who enjoy being picked on, RyanA :p

Well, then the masochists deserve what they get... :smirk:

And I think the person who wrote about twelve year olds was only pointing out the "immature" ones. Oh, there is probably truckloads of very mature ones with good teeth and impeccable manners (my attempt to stave off the gang of twelve year olds that might be taking offense).

It's only mean if you take it too literally. It was just a generalization, as I said before... :p

It was just a generalization. Nothing to be taken literally. There's exceptions to every generalization in the world, but I just used it as an example. No big deal. -shrug-

Ummm... what?

You can delete proboards ads that post, you can ban people posting them or you could ban people that post them if you're really desperate... but uh what is that? It seems people these days use the 'taboo' words a bit too often. They're necessary a lot less then people seem to think.

Well, I know if I saw that I'd just close it. No point worrying over other people's spilt beans.

It's amazing the amount of stuff I discover idiot admin doing via rant threads. Blacklists? Now that's just stupid. Not only is it rude and unnecessary to the people it is directed at, but it kind of screams "Hey, we are a bunch of arses so start running in the opposite direction!" The reason stated in your example was a terrible reason to 'blacklist' someone in the first place. Because they use proboards? Realllly mature.