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 aphyon wrote:
@Charistoph
The only 3d printed mechs i have are for ones that were never created or no longer exist, like the doom courser, or original stompy grand crusader etc... otherwise i get them from ironwind or catalyst. the vast majority of my collection is ironwind, but then i have been collecting them for something like 30 years.

I have 5 printed 'Mechs, all designs which were based off of the MWO models. 2 of which CGL currently have variants in plastic, 2 of which CGL has plastic variants coming in the KS, and one that is still waiting on any announcement. That doesn't include the 13 others I've ordered for gifts. 12 of them were variants of the Bull Shark, which is HBS design, and another was a Cicada which I modified in to a 3C, which has since been lost since the day I gave it away. I also have 6 Vehicles which are the same, and 2 original designs from Metal Core Collections. I also use some DropZone Commander Shaltari Hovercraft as proxies at times.

The thing is, anything designed for Mechwarrior Online or the HBS Battletech game falls under the video game license. That puts it under Microsoft's IP, not Topps'/CGL's.

Of course that doesn't include the 14 models I have in the original FASA-style plastic, the 95 Ironwind models (50 Mech, 45 Auxiliary), or 117 CGL plastic Mechs I have (1 of which I traded my Clan Invasion Elementals for a replacement after my dog shredded the first I got), much less the 46 CGL plastics I have coming in the Kickstarter.

I also fully plan on getting most of the Forcepacks from the Kickstarter (never was a fan of Legends boxes or the big hexes of the plastic infantry) and the Mercenary Packs (only GDL so far), as well as assorted Ironwind models I need for campaign reasons along the way.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Then probably I misunderstood block for ban. As I said I don't use Twitter, nor have an account, so I thought that like in FB the owner of the account can delete delete messages posted on their timeline or block somebody for posting anymore.

M.

To be fair, it doesn't sound as dramatic to say "I said something trolly and got blocked!" when you can say "I posted my concerns and was banned from twitter!"

The whole 3D printed thing, by the by, is them just asking people not to post it on their official channels.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Well something is going on, as there are a couple of people posting things like

“I would like to cancel my pledge, recent actions by your company are disturbing and I do not feel your values are compatible with mine.”

On the Kickstarter comments section. Seems like that particular statement is not likely to end in refund.

Are there many comments from people asking what actions they're referring to?

There are a few. Seems like individuals are unhappy with how CGL are implementing their community standards.

There are also follow up comments of other backers wanting to pick up whatever the complainants want to get refunded

Seems like a normal day on the internet.

@Charistoph

I should do an updated pic, the ones i have for battletech in my profile are years old. i have added quite a few new minis to the collection...

 Miguelsan wrote:
I find points 2, and 3 reasonable. Nothing out of the ordinary for a corp to want for their corporate media.

Point 1 is problematic due to point 4. A reasonable person would think that being an donkey-cave is not the right thing to do, alas we have many unreasonable persons after all. Even more, the mods can be just as unreasonable as the regular forum members, and the way I read point 4 is "If we feel like banning you, we will, and you can go take a walk" thus I'm pretty sure that when insult X is hurled to person A mods will be fast as an upgraded Locust to the ban, but when it's insult Y against person B they won't lift a finger. Arbitrariness will be the name of the game.

Point 5 puts in place an appeal system, but my experience with appeals to the same organ that banned you almot never work if only due to the natural inclination to defend your own side.

In short, I see stormy weather ahead for the company, but honestly the only thing I want from Catalyst right now is that they keep producing miniatures. I stopped consuming fiction long ago.

M.

Edit: One of the Btech Discords I'm member of mentioned that there were mass bans in X, formerly known as Twitter, suggested by the reddit gang. Cannot say if it's true as I don't use X.

What do you mean? Not being allowed to disparage people for their sexuality or ethnicity or what have you is a long-running common clause in codes of conduct for forums, certainly it's something I've been running into since I started posting on them over 20 years ago. So's pointing out that no one has a specific right to post in one. None of this is cause for concern. Your points seem oddly vague.

Did you bother to read, or did you reply to my post with your mind already decided? I have the feeling that it was not the former.

I'll repeat it for you. If people were reasonable not disparaging somebody should be a given, but people on the internet, including mods, are often not, and when you put together oddly vague codes that literally say "including, but not limited to" on bold letters with a "Participation is a privilege, not a right" you have the perfect brew for what I am complaining about. That there is a risk, and not a small one in my eyes, that Battletech online spaces will turn into a place were the moment you step on the toes of a mod they will ban you for whatever excuse they come up with, and call it a day.

And it won't just stop with people that call something nasty to other participants. It will be arbitrary.

And that's what concerns me.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Did you bother to read, or did you reply to my post with your mind already decided? I have the feeling that it was not the former.

I'll repeat it for you. If people were reasonable not disparaging somebody should be a given, but people on the internet, including mods, are often not, and when you put together oddly vague codes that literally say "including, but not limited to" on bold letters with a "Participation is a privilege, not a right" you have the perfect brew for what I am complaining about. That there is a risk, and not a small one in my eyes, that Battletech online spaces will turn into a place were the moment you step on the toes of a mod they will ban you for whatever excuse they come up with, and call it a day.

And it won't just stop with people that call something nasty to other participants. It will be arbitrary.

And that's what concerns me.

M.

That's how every website with moderation works - including Dakka.

Participation is not a right. They are private communities and you don't have a right to be part of that community. You can be ejected.

On good sites the moderators follow rules and regulations; they make sensible choices; they review situations; they follow codes of practice; the firm/group they aid/volunteer/work for oversees them etc...
Yes there will be mistakes from time to time - or cultural differences - or differences of interpretation and so forth, but with a good staff and good setup they will be rare events and each one will be a learning experience.


YES there are bad sites with poor moderation; there are bad mods and poor setups. These are not exclusive to paid companies, free reddits to paid firms can all fail or succeed on moderation.

Yes. Nothing new under the Sun, but I don't care if the mods of ResetEra come straight from the looney bin, have the same ethics than a ferret, and use a code of practice written by Tzeentch itself I don't participate there. I'm concerned that there are new mods in Btech spaces where I do participate, and that those mods have been given new marching orders that don't seem to be the get along with the community, and that reportedly (this is hearsay I will delete it if proven otherwise) they are using block lists to decide who is worth of participating in the Twitter account.

Again, arbitrary much?

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Yes. Nothing new under the Sun, but I don't care if the mods of ResetEra come straight from the looney bin, have the same ethics than a ferret, and use a code of practice written by Tzeentch itself I don't participate there. I'm concerned that there are new mods in Btech spaces where I do participate, and that those mods have been given new marching orders that don't seem to be the get along with the community, and that reportedly (this is hearsay I will delete it if proven otherwise) they are using block lists to decide who is worth of participating in the Twitter account.

Again, arbitrary much?

M.

First off, I'm gonna apologize if this seems like trying to start a fight or drag things off-topic.

But Miguelsan, serious question:

Why are you taking people saying they're being blocked "arbitrarily" at face value?

As of right now, there's no way (outside of someone saying so) to see if someone else is blocked by another on Twitter. It requires the individual who was blocked to post screencaps of it. The one person who I'm seeing throw up screencaps of being blocked "just for asking a question" was asking that Catalyst and others "not showcase their kinks or fetishes, we don't need to know you're LGBTQ"...and when told that isn't a kink/fetish? They started calling Catalyst and others groomers.

I can't speak for you, but that doesn't really sound like someone making a mistake and getting blocked. That's fething around and finding out.

Call me naïve if you want but I take them at face value because they don't have any reason to lie to me.

And the 2 persons that posted screencaps of being blocked by catalyst on a Discord I'm member of claim they didn't interacted with Catalyst but one was a Razorfist follower, and another claimed that was because he followed Mage Leader, 2 very anti-Catalyst figures. You can say, again, that I'm silly for believing that was the real reason, and not another. But if they are not lying it doesn't get more arbitrary than cancelling somebody using lock lists using guilt of association.

M.

Um, have you seen the kind of stuff posted by that "Mage Leader" person?

I hate that you made me have to look up that account. You owe me for my time.

There's being "anti-<insert corporation name here>" and then there's what was being posted from that account on the day CGL made their announcement.

The latter is a "masks off" moment for a bigot.

 Miguelsan wrote:
And the 2 persons that posted screencaps of being blocked by catalyst on a Discord I'm member of claim they didn't interacted with Catalyst but one was a Razorfist follower, and another claimed that was because he followed Mage Leader, 2 very anti-Catalyst figures. You can say, again, that I'm silly for believing that was the real reason, and not another. But if they are not lying it doesn't get more arbitrary than cancelling somebody using lock lists using guilt of association.

M.

I would say that it is unlikely that people are going to be blocked by CGL just for following someone controversial - that would be unreasonable behaviour from CGL.

Without knowing the accounts of the people who were blocked, I'd be inclined to suspect they have either posted to CGL or retweeted something from the controversial accounts that crossed a line CGL want to hold true to - but I'm not inclined to do the digging to prove things either way.

And from Kan's reaction, I'm not going to go looking at those two people you've referenced, especially while I'm eating my lunch.

No, I'v only seen his latest video about the situation. But even if Mage Leader was posting all kinds of bigoted stuff, that's no cause to block his followers unless those followers join the fray, and say bigoted things in turn.
Well, you can block them all for whatever reason you want after all it was the core of bullet point 4, but then you cannot claim that Btech is for everybody because you just violated your own principles.

M.

I must have read it wrong. All I could really see, was;

1. Be kind to each other
2. Don't post pirated material on CGL forums and CGL social media sites or you'll get a CGL forum ban.

Is everyone reading something else into it?

Edit to answer Dysartes

 Dysartes wrote:

I would say that it is unlikely that people are going to be blocked by CGL just for following someone controversial - that would be unreasonable behaviour from CGL.

It should be unlikely, but if CGL's mods feel pressured, or under attack the easy way out is to use block lists, put everybody in the same bucket, and call it a day.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
No, I'v only seen his latest video about the situation. But even if Mage Leader was posting all kinds of bigoted stuff, that's no cause to block his followers unless those followers join the fray, and say bigoted things in turn.

They don't have to "say" anything. Liking, reposting, whatever is effectively them "saying" it.

Well, you can block them all for whatever reason you want after all it was the core of bullet point 4, but then you cannot claim that Btech is for everybody because you just violated your own principles.

M.

Is it really violating your principles if the people being excluded were not interested in being beholden to the principles you asked them to follow in the first place?

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I must have read it wrong. All I could really see, was;

1. Be kind to each other
2. Don't post pirated material on CGL forums and CGL social media sites or you'll get a CGL forum ban.

Is everyone reading something else into it?

Not really. Miguelsan's posting about stuff from a discord they are in.

Battletech, since Blaine Lee Pardoe's departure, has had a lot of culture warrior drama centered around it in social media spaces.

To be on topic though, point #2 also includes 3D printed material not just pirated material.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Miguelsan wrote:
No, I'v only seen his latest video about the situation. But even if Mage Leader was posting all kinds of bigoted stuff, that's no cause to block his followers unless those followers join the fray, and say bigoted things in turn.

They don't have to "say" anything. Liking, reposting, whatever is effectively them "saying" it.

Well, you can block them all for whatever reason you want after all it was the core of bullet point 4, but then you cannot claim that Btech is for everybody because you just violated your own principles.

M.

Is it really violating your principles if the people being excluded were not interested in being beholden to the principles you asked them to follow in the first place?

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I must have read it wrong. All I could really see, was;

1. Be kind to each other
2. Don't post pirated material on CGL forums and CGL social media sites or you'll get a CGL forum ban.

Is everyone reading something else into it?

Not really. Miguelsan's posting about stuff from a discord they are in.

Battletech, since Blaine Lee Pardoe's departure, has had a lot of culture warrior drama centered around it in social media spaces.

To be on topic though, point #2 also includes 3D printed material not just pirated material.

So at the end of the day it's guilt by association, right?

Let's make it easy for you, Kanluwen. I follow Arch on Yotube. He can be an ashhole of an edgelord with an inflated ego, and a dramaqueen on how he presents his videos about lore, and the other more political 40K videos about barbarian at the gates, and gatekeeping. But I enjoy it, even on occassion I have clicked the up vote button, sometimes the dislike too, does that mean that I agree with everything he says, his political positions, etc? Well, as per your stated quote above I seemlingly do, and apparently my opinions must overlap 100% with Arch's opinions. Thus I'm a horrible person.

Accordingly, if you truly think that of me I invite you to click the ignore button, because due to the taint of association my arguments are invalid no matter what I write.

Answering your other question: Yes, excluding people because they follow somebody on social media, and you built a strawman of them not being beholden to certain principles just because of that sole reason is a violation of Btech is for everybody.

M.

I asked for clarification because it seemed that your concerns boiled down to "what if the mods do a bad job?" which 1) applies to absolutely everything ever and 2) is not implied by the guidelines. Language such as "not limited to" is usually to forestall rules lawyering.

 Miguelsan wrote:

Answering your other question: Yes, excluding people because they follow somebody on social media, and you built a strawman of them not being beholden to certain principles just because of that sole reason is a violation of Btech is for everybody.

When the person they're following makes a specific point of opposing queer people it isn't really a strawman as much as it is a reasonable suspicion.

Your continuing vagueness is increasingly odd because at some point characterising following a bigot who thinks queer people are infiltrating and destroying Battletech as "following somebody on social media" "not beholden to certain principles" becomes lying through omission. What principles? Why do they follow this person?


Intolerance of the intolerant is not actually a paradox.

Rosebuddy wrote:
I asked for clarification because it seemed that your concerns boiled down to "what if the mods do a bad job?" which 1) applies to absolutely everything ever and 2) is not implied by the guidelines. Language such as "not limited to" is usually to forestall rules lawyering.

Not only that, but its actually insanely complicated and drawn out to define human behaviour in very specific terms and to have a policy for each one. That's why lawyers don't even cover all law, they have specialist areas of it and there are VAST volumes of law out there in just one nation alone. And even within that we have to have judges and juries to interpret the law and apply it to cases and so forth.

No forum or online community is going to invest that much in creating a set of rules for itself. So they will establish very broad and general guidelines, with a few specifics. The moderators/admin then use those to enforce their view of order on the site in question.

Rosebuddy wrote:
I asked for clarification because it seemed that your concerns boiled down to "what if the mods do a bad job?" which 1) applies to absolutely everything ever and 2) is not implied by the guidelines. Language such as "not limited to" is usually to forestall rules lawyering.

 Miguelsan wrote:

Answering your other question: Yes, excluding people because they follow somebody on social media, and you built a strawman of them not being beholden to certain principles just because of that sole reason is a violation of Btech is for everybody.

When the person they're following makes a specific point of opposing queer people it isn't really a strawman as much as it is a reasonable suspicion.

Your continuing vagueness is increasingly odd because at some point characterising following a bigot who thinks queer people are infiltrating and destroying Battletech as "following somebody on social media" "not beholden to certain principles" becomes lying through omission. What principles? Why do they follow this person?

You keep saying that I'm vague, I wonder if it's your way to insinuate that I'm a bigot, but I don't think I'm being vague. I've been beating one drum: terms will be applied in an arbitray manner by CGL's mods, actually if I'm not being deceived terms are being applied in an arbitray manner because they are blocking people not due to what they said, but rather for following the wrong people. It can be argued as you said (also Overread said mostly the same in the next post) that having objective terms, and applying them in an even, fair way it's insanely difficult. And I will agree that I might be overreacting to a few isolated instances, and that in the long run everything will sort itself out.

You seem to have a very all, or nothing position with your guilt by association stance. Let's agree that Mage Leader is a bigoted person, Kanluwen read his X posts, you seem to say the same, so he is a bigot that opposes queer people. Guess what? His political position is his right, and agree, or disagree with said position I wouldn't want Mage Leader to lose his freedom of speech. But before you jump on my throat, I also agree that if CGL wants to block this person from their social media they have the right to do so. But that was not the issue. My problem with this situation is that Catalyst reportedly, wants to expell people from Btech for the mere sin of following Mage Leader, and you seem to agree because guilty by association. You don't know if they share Mage Leader's anti-queer stance, you don't know what principles they espouse, you don't know why they follow him, you just know that they follow him. Thus if you claim as a principle that Btech is for everybody, you cannot block somebody from Btech media until they break the terms of the agreement, otherwise it makes you a hypocrite.

I found out about Mage Leader because YT suggested one of his videos about the IS about a year ago, I found out about Arch because of his Siege of Vracks video years ago. I wasn't aware of Mage Leader's political positions until this week, I knew about the accusations against Arch, but I separate the author from their works so I didn't have issues enjoying the occasional 40k/Btech video from them . And when any of them uploads another video I will watch it on its merits, not on Mage Leader's current political position. If that casts me in yours eye as a dangerous current thing hating bigot... it's your right after all, but I'm not going to shut up.

Intolerance of the intolerant is not actually a paradox.

Then go read what Karl Popper, and others said about tolerance instead of following a half-arsed pictoline. Or watch a video about it. Popper, and Rawls after him, posit that altough societies can set limits to freedom to defend themselves, those limits should be the last resort, and intolerance needs to be fought with reason first and foremost for otherwise society will become intolerant itself, and only when those limits are crossed by violent means should the liberties of the intolerant be curtalied.

M.

Have you taken the time to look at the accounts of those who claim that the only reason they have been blocked by CGL - if they actually have - is because of who they follow, rather than what they've posted?

Gotta say it seems like a lot of work to go blocking people who follow someone else on twitter

 Overread wrote:
Gotta say it seems like a lot of work to go blocking people who follow someone else on twitter

Yes, if I were the social media guy for a company then someone would have to be causing a lot of trouble before I bothered trawling through the list of people who follow them. It isn't even a matter of banning people from the company-run forums (which is at least a practical matter of shaping the enviroment for your other users), it's literally twitter.

 Dysartes wrote:
Have you taken the time to look at the accounts of those who claim that the only reason they have been blocked by CGL - if they actually have - is because of who they follow, rather than what they've posted?

No, as I said I don't use X so I cannot check their accounts, or rather I can check a given tweet, but I cannot see the whole thread. All I know is through Discord, a couple you are block screen shots, and complains that they got blocked before even interacting with CGL.

And mass blocking on Twitter is really easy, you import a block list, or have an app to create a block list for you, and done. No need to check one by one if that person was causing trouble, or not. It's very popular in Spanish X

And due to that is why I'm complaining about the very high possibility that the CGL mods are being arbitrary, and unfair.

M.

One thing I've noticed with moderating is that many times the kind of person that works themselves up to a ban by mods, will often not recognise their behaviour as a problem and will often cry-wolf on the mods for "abuse of power" and so forth.

Because in general if they recognised that their behaviour was an issue, most would change their behaviour.

So by the time the ban button is hit for some, they already have an axe to grind with a "mods on site XYZ are abusive and power mad and whatever"


It's not every case of course and mods DO make mistakes or get heavy handed or firms can take the wrong direction.

 Overread wrote:
Gotta say it seems like a lot of work to go blocking people who follow someone else on twitter

At least on the comics side years ago, someone makes a list and people just blindly use it so that they don't end up on it. I'd imagine that Catalyst will automate the process as well to be as inclusive as possible.

It's too bad to see Catalyst starting to crack down on 3D printed material, or at least rumors of a crackdown.

One of the main comments I always get from people about Battletech is how Catalyst is freaking awesomely chill about 3d printed models as long as you aren't pushing them as a way to "stick it to Catalyst". About half my models are 3D printed, but nearly all of them are ones that are not available in the modern plastics, like a Maulers, a Highlander IIC, a Catapult K2 before the Grey Death Legion box came out, aerospace models, helicopters, etc. If a plastic version is available, I usually buy that instead.

I know Battletech is extremely casual on WYSIWYG, but 3D printing allows for some *really* cool models for oddball variants, like my Shadowhawk 2K with a recognizable PPC on the shoulder instead of an autocannon, or a Shadowhawk 2D2 for those crazy enough to take to the field in one. Or my Hunchback 4SP with SRM-6's in each shoulder.

Miguelsan wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Have you taken the time to look at the accounts of those who claim that the only reason they have been blocked by CGL - if they actually have - is because of who they follow, rather than what they've posted?

No, as I said I don't use X so I cannot check their accounts, or rather I can check a given tweet, but I cannot see the whole thread. All I know is through Discord, a couple you are block screen shots, and complains that they got blocked before even interacting with CGL.

And mass blocking on Twitter is really easy, you import a block list, or have an app to create a block list for you, and done. No need to check one by one if that person was causing trouble, or not. It's very popular in Spanish X

And due to that is why I'm complaining about the very high possibility that the CGL mods are being arbitrary, and unfair.

No, you're giving the benefit of the doubt to those you share a Discord with - without doing any due diligence - and then complaining about CGLs stance without doing them the same courtesy.

AegisGrimm wrote:It's too bad to see Catalyst starting to crack down on 3D printed material, or at least rumors of a crackdown.

One of the main comments I always get from people about Battletech is how Catalyst is freaking awesomely chill about 3d printed models as long as you aren't pushing them as a way to "stick it to Catalyst". About half my models are 3D printed, but nearly all of them are ones that are not available in the modern plastics, like a Maulers, a Highlander IIC, a Catapult K2 before the Grey Death Legion box came out, aerospace models, helicopters, etc. If a plastic version is available, I usually buy that instead.

I know Battletech is extremely casual on WYSIWYG, but 3D printing allows for some *really* cool models for oddball variants, like my Shadowhawk 2K with a recognizable PPC on the shoulder instead of an autocannon, or a Shadowhawk 2D2 for those crazy enough to take to the field in one. Or my Hunchback 4SP with SRM-6's in each shoulder.

As for point 3 of their announcement, I think it is worth asking CGL to clarify/expand on what they are referring to. Are they talking about, for a hypothetical example, someone posting STL files which are just 3D scans of CGL models? Are they talking about pirate releases of rulebook scans, etc? Do they not want 3D prints posted/talked about on their forum?

A bullet point alone lacks nuance, basically, and should be taken as the starting point for understanding, not the whole of thing.

I'm not on the CGL forums, so I don't know if such discussions have started over there.

 Dysartes wrote:

Miguelsan wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Have you taken the time to look at the accounts of those who claim that the only reason they have been blocked by CGL - if they actually have - is because of who they follow, rather than what they've posted?

No, as I said I don't use X so I cannot check their accounts, or rather I can check a given tweet, but I cannot see the whole thread. All I know is through Discord, a couple you are block screen shots, and complains that they got blocked before even interacting with CGL.

And mass blocking on Twitter is really easy, you import a block list, or have an app to create a block list for you, and done. No need to check one by one if that person was causing trouble, or not. It's very popular in Spanish X

And due to that is why I'm complaining about the very high possibility that the CGL mods are being arbitrary, and unfair.

No, you're giving the benefit of the doubt to those you share a Discord with - without doing any due diligence - and then complaining about CGLs stance without doing them the same courtesy.

I'll grant you this point, something in the way CGL wrote the announcement made me not extend the same politeness I did to the persons on Discord.

Probably a combination of points 4 (we will get to decide who belongs to Btech, and who doesn't) and point 3 (now that we are selling a bunch of miniatures the laissez-faire about 3d prints is off) as seen in my eyes.

M.

That bullet point does just say "protect the IP" and 3D printing itself doesn't inherently violate intellectual property law any more than sculpting the old-fashioned way does. People like to use video game models for prints and CGL is likely legally compelled to disallow that on their forums. One of the many reasons to why IP law sucks.

I guess you could test the grayzone by hand-sculpting a legally distinct Warhammer and post pictures but I'm not sure they'd appreciate someone probing the limitations.