Hey there all!
Have you ever said "quorum" in real life and if so, were you harmed in the process?
No, but I did get some stares.
Joe read books and paid attention at school or something, shame on him, apparently.
I'm afraid I blame most of my education on early MMOs and Europa Universalis.
You write that way because you have been brainwashed into thinking the ultimate goal in life is to be PR assistant to Mark Zuckerberg.
I understand he pays in Farmville coins.
Everybody knows that those robots are slowly taking over our lifes, bit like Terminator, but less Skynet and more Google and Alexia
"Okay Google. Manage the Retro Gamer Community."
For me being a retro only gamer is just as close minded as being a new games only gamer.
Thanks for the broad definition of "retro" of retro games. I'm glad to know there's not some hard and fast cut-off. In my head, I think classic NES, Sega CD, and so on. But I know that the scope is a broad one.
People want to talk about current events with the same people they talk about games with, but we now have a situation were World War 3 could break out and we'd be be banned for mentioning it. Ironically, I'm sure the bans occured in the name of 'diversity' and 'inclusivity' and other such trendy SJW buzzwords, but the board has never been more quiet and few new posters stick around as a result.
and
Tbh, it isn't possible to even properly review those cases now, as much of the 'offending' material was deleted, so there's nothing to compare to. The best you can do is ask Darran (or the superiors who forced his hand) for the info on this.
I've been getting the run-down on the events as they unfolded, and I can understand what happened. There were certainly some conversations that took place that had no due place here and contained what for any other forum would normally count as hate speech. I think there's room for discussion of current events in any forum without making it hostile to any group of people. None of the bans took place (from the context) in the interest of diversity/inclusivity, but there were definitely some comments that veered hard into hate speech territory. I see that five individuals were banned for violation of rules already in place, and those rules were clarified to (not amended) to prevent future potential violations. I'd be open to possibly revisiting some of those bans in the future (either as time-served, or with assurances that hate speech won't recur), and doing a deep-dive into those rules/guidelines to make sure things are laid out with no confusion as to what is and isn't cool here.
A strange silence from out new community team since Friday morning, and no indication of when we'll be moving from the current policy of 'ban first, change the rules to fit later'.
We're a slow burn, but a good one. We're also Monday through Friday - though I'll certainly keep an eyeball on things over the weekend and am on-call for any emergencies or escalation events.
Are they in a time zone remotely relevant to ours, or can we expect delays of a day or more in responses due to the difference?
I have staff in several time zones, admins and content specialists around the world. For me, I'm up relatively early to coordinate with UK and French colleagues - but yesterday was a tad on the busy side with a pending forum platform upgrade.
And they farm it all out to a new community team based out of the UK. This is a UK centric site, really, what sense does it have to have a team based in the US that communicates through corporate jargon nonsense. Sadly they are simply not fit for purpose.
I can wax monosyllabic if that will aid.

Though given a bit of time, I think you'll discover that I do rather know what I'm doing.
I'm prepared to let them prove themselves. They started out willing and at least some of the team have a decent background for the task from the bio they provided.
Thank you! I do hope to make you guys proud of what we can accomplish here.
One question. Is Retro gamer making moves to break into the US market and planning full distribution over there?
That would be very cool, actually. I'm not sure what the plans are on the magazine/site side for that type of expansion, but from the Community angle, I see retro gaming as an international phenomenon, one worthy of attention and interest of a diverse crowd of people.
How much time does this team have to dedicate to supporting us? Are we just one of a hundred forums that they're contracted to oversee?
Enough time to dive in here and start posting ahead of expected schedule! Retro Gamer is one of about twenty or so forums in the Future family of sites. I and my staff are full-time employees, just like Darran, Nick, and the Editorial team here.
I may not always be able to post frequently, but absence does not necessarily indicate a lack of attention or energy being expended in your interest. Trust on that matter will come with time (as expected), but often the team or myself may go quiet for a bit as we get things situated or lay the groundwork for efforts. In other words, you may not see me post every day, but I'm always watching and steering the ship. In fact, I'm likely to go quiet again in a bit, though I'll be reaching out to some of you behind the scenes in the coming week or so.
Any other questions?