Questionable Questing

Thank you. -_-

What benefit would I get from writing up such an essay? I can argue coherently why the move was arbitrary but, if you're asking for an apology, then that's not gonna happen. I see no benefit to me in doing it and I don't think I did anything wrong anyway.

I simply continued a discussion which gradually drifted off-topic, and you happened to arbitrarily pick my post as the point where it went too "off-topic" to be allowed.

There is, in my view, absolutely *nothing* wrong with continuing the natural flow of the conversation, even if that leads well off the original topic. If you disagree with that, then that's your *opinion*, and I'm not gonna apologise for not sharing that opinion.

I see no point in wasting my time trying to find a way of saying in a thousand words what I could probably say in a hundred, only for you to ignore it arbitrarily anyway. Your appeal process is dumb and intentionally designed to prevent people actually appealing, and I see no point in working within a process that is obviously designed to make our lives as difficult as possible.

To me, the sensible response to people going off-topic is to say "OK, guys, please get back on topic or take it elsewhere". It is *not* to arbitrarily move half the argument into some spam thread where no-one will ever read it for absolutely no good reason other than "well, *I* decided it was off-topic".

I will happily chew you out for doing that, because I think it is *wrong*, but I'm not gonna waste my time with some bullshit appeals system that's obviously designed to put all the difficulty on the user and make life as easy as possible for the moderators. You'll only ignore me anyway, I've never, ever seen a moderator actually *listen* to complaints about their behaviour.

Cherry Lover: You've already written about 500 words in this profile post chain. I would suggest consolidating your argument into a post and posting that in the specified forum.

Biigoh: An "appeal" is asking someone else to review a decision you think is wrong. An essay explaining "what you did wrong and what you'll do to avoid it happening again" is a confession and plea for clemency, not an appeal.

500 words is not 1000 words, though. And, yes, I *could* do that, but there is very little point. He's not gonna restore the posts, and doing so would just be jumping through their pointless and intentionally-difficult hoops. If I was going to post a 1000 word essay, it would be something intentionally designed to mock their idiotic rules, like repeating "this is bullshit" 334 times.

If it actually mattered enough, I'd make some pretence of jumping through their dumb hoops, but unmoving a bunch of posts really isn't worth the effort, and he's not gonna do it anyway. He's not at any point given even the slightest hint that he intends to listen to reason, regardless of what I do.

As I said, an appeal is a request for someone else to review a decision. Biigoh did mention that you could address it to all the staff.

I feel like the requirement in itself is ludicrous. Why should I have to write a thousand word essay when I can say what I need to say in a few hundred words? And, I'm a pretty verbose person, too, so I use more words than most. It's literally just designed to make me waste my time and to discourage me.

I also don't see how I could write a thousand words without intentionally repeating myself. There is simply not a thousand words worth of relevant argument to be made. A combination of everything I've said here would certainly contain plenty of repetition, and still wouldn't reach a thousand words, probably.

Besides, most of this argument is me pointing out how idiotic the thousand word requirement is, and that it's clearly designed to deter appeals whilst allowing them to pretend they accept appeals. Very, very little of it is arguing the stupidity of the decision itself.

Plus, I would far sooner write a thousand words telling them where they can stick their sham of an appeals process than a thousand words in a pointless appeal message that will only get ignored anyway. It has about the same effect, but the former is far, far more satisfying.

Look at the spirit of the essay and not the wording. If you try but don't make it to 1000+ words.... So what? What matters is the willingness to eat crow and admit being wrong, which is hard for people.

OK, firstly, I'm not wrong. Secondly, in what way would me "admitting I'm wrong" constitute an appeal? You literally just moved my posts to another thread, if I was to admit that I was "wrong" to derail the thread, those posts would, logically, still remain in that thread.

An appeal against a *ban* might well involve some admission of wrongdoing, depending on whether you believed there was real wrongdoing on your part. I'm aware of that, I've dealt with that sort of thing before (with varying levels of success).

But, appealing against a decision to move a bunch of posts to another thread isn't going to involve any admission of wrongdoing, because, in challenging the decision, I am explicitly stating that I think *you* are wrong. There is no logical reason for you to change your decision if I "admit" I was wrong, however contrite I sound.

In which case, do up a write up explaining how and why what i did was wrong. If I'm wrong in what I did as determined by the other staff.... I have no issues with admiting such and correcting things. But if you are going to do this.... I recommend doing it while calm and not angry.