PMBD

The invitation to discuss the survey in the forums "where it can be moderated" got me interested in tsr's definition of moderating; reading their rules made me chuckle... here is an excerpt.

"At all times members of this Forum will follow the instructions of these moderators and administrators. Questioning their actions or motivations in public messages is not welcome. Instead, should you have an issue with the way a staff member is behaving or disagree with their judgment, you are asked to please contact the Forum Administrator via email or private message to express your concerns. Please do not take matters into your own hands. Our staff is entirely volunteer, and deserves the freedom to be able to do their volunteer jobs.

Also, while we grant our users the utmost discretion and freedom, there is no guaranteed right of free speech (or right toward anything else, for that matter) in this community, and we make no guarantees at all about its operation, its moderation or its policies; the Forum is operated solely at the leisure of the Forum administrators, in their free time, and no user is guaranteed the right to be here as a participant. We reserve the right to terminate any user's membership for any reason at any time."

So no disagreements, no on may question the judgment or have a difference of opinion stated on the forum. Is this is to keep the sheep in line? I love the smell of totalitarianism in the morning. BTW, I love how tsr handles "we want to censor your opinions" by saying that they need to be moderated. Is Thoma$$ a politician? They are starting to sound like them....  TSR reminds me more an more each day of "Animal Farm" that is not really shocking though.

We have an active TSR thread here (http://phorum.mustnotbenamed.com/index.php/topic,1657.330.html).  This post could have went there.  Too many TSR threads makes Keirra  a sad pirate.  >:(

It could've done, but seeing as that particular thread seems to have veered off topic, I stopped reading it a while ago and wouldn't have seen Charity_Bonney's post.

Is TSR is like Animal Farm, who is Boxer?
And what is the equivalent to the glue factory?  :'( That part always made me cry.

See, my view of the matter is that if the staff are unable to make a convincing case for their actions in public, then they clearly don't have any sensible motivations to begin with. After all, if you cannot defend your reasons, then they are not very good reasons. When you consider that reasons don't exactly have a particularly high standard ("I did it for the lulz" is a classic one), I fail to see why this is so difficult. I mean, I have a whole host of generic reasons for being mean to a user: "I find his continued and repetitive breathing offensive", "I hate his face", etc. These never fail.

I think many sim forums are like this, though most atleast pretend they are places where you can speak freely and express an opinion about anything.  I'm not too shocked that TSR is so open about its censorship. TSR has no shame and the shame they do have they are not afraid to hide.

Pescado, are you sure you're not my dad in disguise? I mean, sure, he claims to hate the Sims, but you sound really familiar.....
 :-*

Thoma$$ is just an ass. Of course they have to "moderate/control" the forum posts, otherwise some sheeple who don't know about PMBD yet, will find out and come here. Since they will never admit that they are in the wrong being a paysite to begin with, they have to control their sheeples and keep those blinders firmly in place. With so much of their stuff being utter crap, and with so many of their FA's creating nothing but garbage, their ship can't sink fast enough for me.

I should make that the policy over at Snooty's so that I can start my reign of terror! Muawhaha...

Whereas I don't really pretend this is the case, but for the most part, everyone considers it to be the case because I can't be bothered to care. After all, *I* won't do anything about it unless I have a defensible reason, like my burning hatred of your face and offense at your continued breathing.

 ;) we all love basking in the glow of your neglect, PK..

Yeah, i believe many people love it for sure.  There are always some few on similar forums who like to point their fingers at other members,
for random reasons, just for the sake of rebuking. Should we have moderators here, the ongoing exciting and meaningful conversations would suffer, and who would approve that?.
 

UGH, just stop, amazone.

Amazone, you have a neverending, unceasing ability to try to get in a random kick long after the argument has finished. I find myself constantly going "huh, where the hell did that come from, wasn't that discussion two or three days ago?" The shame of it is, I find you an absolute pleasure to deal with 98 percent of the time.

Looking at the TSR thead, I could have posted it there, but that has turned into a ramble. I was really hoping to point out that, on the forum opinions are not welcome. There is no debating, anything really. I was a member there for a long time, the forums are not a place to discuss. They exist so that sheep may kiss their favorite FA's & Moderators ass. Memebers are not allowed to disagree with a Mod about anything.

I have found that posting something in a thread where several topics going at once, points sometimes get lost. I read the thread, seemed to have gone off-topic. I started a new one, old thread went back on topic. That does not happen often, or I have been reading too much retardo land again.

I am glad members of EA Land are pissed, sad that they lost money. I am overjoyed that an EA/TSR venture is pissing off the sheep. That makes me grin, really big! ;D

That's the beauty of threads here.  They can go off topic but they can be brought back to topic just as easily.   So for future reference, even if you see that a thread has gone off topic, post what you have there that's of relevance to the original topic.

Agreed. We never mind gentle nudges back to topic.

It's really sad when organizations of any form refuse to entertain debate - I've seen it in companies I've worked for, a theatre company I worked in, and a handful of forums. When you squelch dissent and debate, you wind up getting MORE problems, defectors, splinter groups, and sometimes you wind up crumbling completely.

Here! Here! I've been blacklisted on T$R just for *breathing* "PMBD"!  And in the TS1 section!

Fortunately, all of T$R's TS1 stuff is free now, so I don't have to give those greedy b*stards $$$ to get stuff from them (Which is good, since a lot of their TS1 stuff is utter shite, stuff that isn't worth their insanely astronomical subscription price!).  However, I truly feel bad for you TS2 Simmers, who have to pay for practically EVERYTHING on T$R!

But, still, T$R sucks! Most of their downloads (TS1 and TS2) aren't worth the price and their moderators (TS1 and TS2) are the biggest jerks on the planet.  I've read posts in the TS1 forum where moderators have insanely blasted posters for doing something as simple as correcting another poster's posting errors (Usually giving a replly along the lines of "I'M THE MODERATOR AND YOU'RE NOT, SO SHUT UP AND LET ME DO MY JOB!!!!!!").

They can't continue to stifle protest like this much longer.  It will eventually come back to bite them on the a$$...

Bella, love your user name.

I will keep the on-topic issue in mind when posting here.

the sad thing is that actually, they can. Because sites like TSR just ban everyone who disagrees with them until there is no one left willing to speak. And then they take all the sheep left and have a nice little tea party. Sites like TSR just charge for each teaspoon of sugar on top of the cost of your teabag.

Lol, are you talking about this site ???

Wanna' hear something rather shocking?  T$R, many moons ago, used to be a free site! :o  Also was $im Freak$ and many others, for that matter.  Just type both into the Wayback Machine, and look at the archives from around 2000-2001 to see for yourselves.  Isn't it kinda' sad, in a way, that the Simming World's 2 nastiest totalitarian paysite regimes started out as rather innocuous free sites?


Why be so negative, TimeStop.  By unleashing their KGB, uh, moderators, on every little dissident they can root out, enough dissidents will rise up and potentially overthrow T$R's Premiere, eh, owner, henceforth toppling the United $im$ Re$ource $ociali$t Republics (The U$$R.  Not to be confused with the USSR, the totalitarian commie empire. ;)).

Want to see the KGB in action?  Go to TSR's TS1 forums and go to the general discussion section.  Read the thread entitled, "Paysites?".  There, you will find the KGB and brainwashed U$$R citizens blasting my (I'm #1_TS1_Fan) perfectly sane arguments for downloading equality.  Heck, I'm surprised I haven't gotten banned for igniting that battle!

I remember well when tsr was free, I first signed up once they started requiring logins to download.... That was a few years before TS2.

Those were the days, the were much like MtS2 in their wanting to foster friendship and community, all for free. Then someone got greedy.  ::)  Greed destroyed that community, turned it into a totalitarian state.

I remember the days when TSR were free as well. They would often spend more time offline than on, but it was a huge site and usually the first place any new Sims player went to for downloads - until they saw how much crap there was and went to Livin-It-Up instead!

Then they went pay, locked down all the downloads and profited off free submissions to the site. I don't recall when the FA element came into it because I had long stopped going there until around a year ago.

Way back during Sims 1 days I remember going to TSR.  I managed to navigate through the crap for all of 10 minutes and then decided there wasn't anything that I wanted to subscribe for it all looked horrible.  At the time I thought that paysites were normal and I had subscribed to Simshost (the horror!) I actually liked Candace's Sim Bazaar.  I had heard about file sharing back then but it was only mumbled about and I wasn't very active on forums. I am still very grateful for finding this place. Death to TSR.

They all started out free w/TS1, it was right out of the chute w/paysites and TS2.  Slippery slopes aren't a cliche for nothing.

I had gigantic quantities of CC for TS1, all from the many, many free sites.  Never had to pay a thing - and that was without filesharing.

Salad days.

In a way, it's kinda' sad how far T$R has gone downhill; it's quite indicative of how badly the TS1 community has deteriorated over the years.  T$R was, indeed, "Mod the Sims 1" back in its earliest years, back in the days when the TS1 community was a community.  Of course, T$R got greedy and began sucking up $$$ for (mostly) crummy downloads.  This was in around 2001 or 2002, I believe.  Then, TS2 came out and T$R pretty much threw TS1 out like yesterday's garbage; Thoma$$ had found a new cash cow to milk the p*ss out of.  During this time, the TS1 files became free (again), most likely because Thoma$$ felt that TS1 wasn't economically viable for him anymore (*Sarcasm*"C'mon! Who plays boring, fugly TS1 anymore?"*Sarcasm*).  Today, the TS1 section of T$R has that eerie "dead mall" (ie: the "T$R Ghetto") feel to it at times, the last remaining remnants of an once innocuous free site.   

And history's liable to repeat itself again.  I'm sure T$R's going to do another massive website overhaul again the very second TS3 comes out, creating an entire new section of rip off downloads and heavily-censored forums, henceforth, shoving TS2 into the "T$R Ghetto" with the sickly TS1.  TS2 will suddenly become "boring, lame, and obsolete" and will be the butt of every T$R creator's jokes (they'd all be creating TS3 rip off stuff by then).

T$R represents something far more insidious than paysite evil.  It represents the kind of Simmer that doesn't care about the Sims at all.  The type of Simmer that creates only for profit and not for the love for the game.  The type of Simmer that ditches their old Sims game immediately when something shinier and newer comes out instead of just playing the Sims game they love best, whether it be TS1, TS2, or both.  This type of mentality is something that'll hopefully be destroyed along with paysites.

The people who run TSR do not play the game, so calling them Simmers is a gross overstatement. They are people with the full intention of milking cash, they went into it with their wallets fully open.

I didn't call them Simmers.  I was referring to the retarded sheep that pay them $$$$ and the scam artists that create there as "Simmers" and how T$R expouses their money-grubbing, apathetc, fickle mentality towards the Sims in an allegorical sense.  Besides, these type of "Simmers" are Simmers in a very loosely-defined way, because they don't care about the Sims at all.  Their main concerns are $$$$ and having the newest, latest version of the Sims (So they can reap the most $$$$ and/or be the "kewlest" Simmer.). 

Couldn't have said it better. ;) It's not the violation of the EULA that makes sites like TSR so repugnant to me (although that is undeniably shitty), but the fact that they don't care about anything but money. The game was raped and left on the roadside a long time ago, and subscribers are being fed on like the victims of vampires. I also hope that, like you said, this sort of attitude will eventually be weeded out as more and more players become aware of how they are being taken advantage of.