To the Senior Members of TTV; The Underlying Issues with the Message Boards

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My statement about the TTV Message Boards. Anyone else who would like to contribute stories of their own, please post below.

Dear Senior Members of the TTV Community,
On the afternoon of March 1, 2016, I engaged in a new subtopic under the overarching topic which was Bionicle 2016. I am able to supply quotes for the discussion, and will provide several examples in this statement. This will be a rather long post, due to the quotes, but I believe that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. The side discussion began when community members started discussing their opinions on different voices in the new trailers released from Netflix which cover Bionicle: Journey to One.
I began by making a comment that I liked the metallic effect of the voices, considering the somewhat mechanical personality of the main characters. Community member Azani responded with the comment “For whatever reason, this is a little off-putting to me, especially because I’ve never really seen G2 characters as robots or even cyborgs; more along the lines of aliens…” (Post 20081), and a new side discussion started. I responded with:
“I know it may seem unnatural, but that’s just the nature of the characters. They are robots, in a manner of speaking. Its something you may have to get used to.” (Post 20082).
At this point, I intended to explain that these were bio-mechanical beings, but more mechanical than biological, which covers headcanon and would clearly fit under an extremely general topic of Bionicle 2016.
Azani continued the discussion by remarking “I’m not talking about anything but headcanon; I understand what the official story is. And I’m pretty sure that the villagers, at least, aren’t fully robots, because we’ve heard that they can have children.” (Post 20087). To me this was a very strong point, but just to keep the discussion alive and to not just complain about the voice acting in the trailers, I decided to play devil’s advocate. By this point you should be able to tell the flow of conversation through the posts themselves, but I will continue posting quotes and explaining myself. In playing devil’s advocate, I remarked:
“OK, well, if you consider our advancements of technology, one day, nanobots may have the ability to multiply, “creating” a new singular consciousness, much like human cells. Its a currently nonexistent concept, but who knows in the future. Just saying, its possible. Add that to the fact that this universe has slightly different rules than ours, and boom, completely possible.” (Post 20088).
Community member evolutionofconsciousness decided to join the discussion, saying “I’m slightly confused as to what you mean here… are you trying to say that the villagers and Toa are inorganic robots?” (Post 20089) to which I responded:
“Its a possibility. There could be an even larger motive out there. After all, I’m sure robots today aren’t aware of being inorganic, they just go along with their “lives”. This could be big.” (Post 20090).
I was connecting together pieces of a puzzle, and decided upon a new theory for the newer generation of Bionicle, which is that all of the beings that are main characters to the story were created by something or someone else. Considering the plot twist of Gen1 where everything happened inside of a giant robot, I did not consider this too far out. White_Rainbow joined the conversation (which is drawing to a close), and stated:
“Not really, first it would contradic the whole bio thing, and while you may use the counter argument of “not G1” it is clearly stated in a book that Tahu could smell something (and cmon don’t bring up “smelling sensors”). To further that they are not simply robots they do feel love in this new Gen and in yet another book you can see families.” (Post 20092).
“Smell is only objective, and refers to the recognition of scent patterns in the air. Thus, Tahu is able to “smell”.
I don’t want to be too contradictory, but I think this will give the topic something new to speak about, and may provide new insights to the world of Bionicle.” (Post 20098, a reposting of some ideas after Post 20093 and new additions).
At this point the conversation is dying own and most people are back to talking about the voice acting. White_Rainbow was apparently fed up with me talking about headcanon and how it could relate to how we view reality in the Bionicle universe, and said “This argument is quite invalid, and Kinda off topic so anyway.” I was confused at his statement that this was off-topic, and later admittedly did something fairly rash. I wanted to keep the conversation going, especially with White_Rainbow and evolutionofconsciousness, so I enticed White_Rainbow with a .gif which could best be described as Tahu(from Gen1) pulling out his swords and saying “Come at me, Bro”. Soon after this, I come back to see how the topic is faring, and find the post deleted. I also see this message,
Account suspended until March 2, 2016: Off-topic discussion in the 2016 topic. Read the rules, mang!(Copied directly from login screen at board.ttvpodcast.com)
While I’m not sure who suspended my account, I believe it unjust that I was banned from a general Bionicle 2016 topic for talking about Bionicle 2016. I don’t care about knowing who did this, and I don’t want anyone punished, but what I do want is for no one to be suspending accounts unjustly. The worse part is that they didn’t just ban me from the topic, they suspended the account completely. This stopped me from communicating to you until now. If my account was banned for a month, this would all be a distant memory.
While you’ve had to listen to the whole topic and read such a long post, I want for you to consider what this means to the community and what impacts it could have.
Respectfully,
Community member Voridak

Edited for Double Post.
~Chronicler

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I think posting that gif was considered off-topic…but I don’t know. Have you PMed a mod about this?

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c-can you quote from the topics? You can find the posts and highlight em with a mouse or use the quote button at the top right

I also feel there’s certain… mistakes you might’ve made

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@Rockho NO I don’t know how to PM a mod about this

@JMP Yes I can edit for exact quotes, No, I haven’t made any mistakes, these were directly copied.

@SwagMeister Talking about the essence of what makes up the characters of Bionicle itself, I would argue, is completely Bionicle 2016 related.

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Now I’m no mod, but in my book going from how you feel about robotic filters to a headcanon about how the Toa can smell isn’t BIONICLE 2016 related.

I would argue no. The 2016 topic is made for talking about the sets, and any new news or media concerning BIONICLE 2016. You could have easily made a topic concerning your thoughts about how the toa have senses, but as far as I can tell just talking about your headcanon in a topic that was currently talking about a new Netflix show is not on topic.

And I leave it at that.

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This topic is proof of why I don’t enter that wretched hive of scum and villainy called the 2016 topic

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uh

By mistakes

I mean

errors in judgement

such as the gif

EDIT

About the PM thing, just message them on their account

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Same.

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The thing is, once you posts gifs like that they don’t contribute to the topic and are seen as spam.

Recently a lot of off-topic discussion has hit that thread so we’ve been banning ANYONE who has contributed to off-topic discussion. That includes memes and gifs.

That is why you were banned.

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Well sure it was a judgement error on my part, but as I stated in my statement, it shouldn’t constitute a suspension of the account, perhaps simply a short-time ban. For example, a quote for you:

See post 21006 topic 15529 to see the .gif he put on, and he didn’t get suspended.

@JMP Also how exactly do I go through the process of messaging them?

@Takua I tried to get the .gif in too, but it didn’t go in

@SwagMeister Arguing about anything in Bionicle which could affect the whole outlook of the 2016 canon would well fit under “Bionicle 2016” If you would read the discussion, you may understand what I was implying.

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Maybe you could quote it?

You seem to know the numbers for the post.

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I think you might of been suspended by the “come at me Bro” gif

it was probably viewed as this, and that’s why you were temporarily banned. also to PM someone you click on their profile picture, and a brief bio will pop up, and there will be a blue button in the upper right hand corner that says message.

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Look, go to their profile, I’m sure after you press the message button and write what you want to message them about, I’m sure it’s fine

though you’ve brought @Chronicler’s attention so I guess no need to PM until the issue’s resolved

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The thing is, too, that sometimes us moderators don’t see posts like that all the time.

I might have accidentally denied the flag instead of accepting it. Sometimes things like that slip. Regardless, I wasn’t the one who happened to ban you so I don’t exactly know the circumstances of why the person banned you.

Hopefully this can be settled out.

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You can save the gif and put it in the quote simply by adding onto the text inside of said quote.

Or copy the URL and post it after indenting within the bounds of the [quote] [/ quote]

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So, this is a good example of what not to do in a situation where you wish to address issues you have with the boards.

Firstly, this does not need it’s own topic. You have a problem with staff actions? Please direct them to staff members in PM, for one thing it’s more likely to reach us (since you didn’t even bother to tag us in this topic). Two it doesn’t make a big public spectacle out of a trivial issue such as a 24 hour suspension.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re suspended and wish to talk to us about the issue, you can email us on our public email: the3virtues@gmail.com which is displayed on the front page of our website and on our youtube channel.

As it stands, this topic reads as a desperate cry for attention to show the community how “unjust” the system is rather than an actual discussion with staff about the ethics of our moderation. So that doesn’t really help your case here.

Anyway, I wish to address the issue at hand.

First and foremost,

We do not allow off-topic discussion on the BIONICLE 2016 topic, and we’re holding that topic on a very tight leash.

As such, any posts deemed off-topic after that warning are strictly outlawed. We have restated this warning multiple times throughout the topic.

You were banned for multiple posts that were deemed off-topic by the community, two of which were simply meme images/gifs that contributed nothing to the discussion at all.

Having an on-topic discussion does not excuse or cancel out the instances where you were not on-topic, so don’t make the mistake that you were being banned solely for your conversation regarding the mechanical voices or that those on-topic posts should have stopped you from being banned. You were banned for your single-image posts.

It would also be wise to listen to other community members when they tell you that your posts are off-topic, because more often than not they likely are.

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