well obviously i am biased but I think the mods do a good job of welcoming members. however, in gil's case, he has taken it upon himself to NOT welcome members kindly, and in such a manner that he appears to be speaking FOR the moderators. he has received many, many warnings about this. rudeness (especially unjustified) is not particularly tolerated on this board in general, but doing it in a way that appears to be official is gonna piss the mods off more than it would otherwise, because new members will likely not be able to tell that the message is not coming from the actual leadership. For example:
"This picture is terrible; you need to go back to the basics and do a lot of thinking and studying and practicing before you'll be able to advance."
Not terribly polite, and a bit presumptuous, but hey in a lot of cases its probably right, and a member will probably not get a warning for saying this in the right circumstances. However, this:
"This picture is awful. Thanks for wasting our time; don't bother posting here until you've gone back to the basics."
EDIT - this is not a real post by gil, just an example of the tone of many of his posts that have resulted in deletions and warnings via PM
Thanks for wasting "our" time? It seems like a small thing, but stuff like this, to a new poster, can be a real turnoff, and make them think this is an elitist community of already-awesome pixelers, rather than a place that can help provide inspiration and information for aspiring artists at any skill level (like myself - when I came here a year or two ago I was baaaaaad). You will never see a moderator post something like this, and when members post things like this, that appear to the average newbie to possibly be of some official capacity...well that can earn you a warning pretty easily. And in gil's case things like this have been going on for a year, with little improvement in attitude, despite some improvement in actual post content.
Long story short, making counterproductive posts that step on the mods' toes is not going to endear you to anyone here, especially when its on a regular basis for months on end. Giving those mods attitude every time they call you out for being an ass is probably not going to help anything either. Being an ass and having an attitude is likely going to color mods' perceptions of your posts as well; I don't see how it can't. So I don't know what the problem and the surprise are here.
If you feel the need to leave, AND to make a scene about leaving in the hopes that it will inspire some kind of reactionary revolution...cuz that happens all the time on the internets...well, you do what you have to in order to feel better. But don't you think if this was a problem with the mods, there would be more users being subjected to the same treatment? Or is this all a big conspiracy?
