Kentucky, USAhttps://www.speedrun.com/sotc/runs/m7pwdo5m
I submitted this run 7 years ago. I haven't played the game since. About a month ago, it was apparently rejected because I am "banned from the community". I do not even know what community he is referring to, and I haven't interacted with a Shadow of the Colossus speedrunner in at least 7 years. Oddly enough, every single one of my other submissions for the same game seem to still be standing. I'm almost questioning if it was just a mistake, or if it's someone who I happened to piss off long ago who I don't even remember and who actually held a grudge for that long. As the video shows, I didn't use any cheats or otherwise violate submission rules; I'm just apparently, according to this particular moderator, "banned from" some community. Any way to get that reversed? Thanks.
I wouldn't be the only one using the board. It's still actively updated. The idea that it's inactive is literally a falsehood being spread simply because it is less active than the-elite.net. As for humans being flawed and thus being unable to be impartial, I guess I must be superhuman then.
If the Super Mario 64 moderators didn't like cheese05, do you think it'd be okay, since it's a "community leaderboard" (another term for leaderboard which allows moderator abuse), to remove his legendary world records from the leaderboards? Or because his world records are so popular, they shouldn't be allowed to, but because my world records are less popular, they should? Do you seriously believe this ridiculous line of reasoning?
An impartial leaderboard recognizes records regardless of how hated the person who sets them is, or regardless of how much the community doesn't want to accept it. No shit people being destroyed by an outsider who isn't like the rest is going to piss them off. Imagine if sports worked this way. Any big rival team or competitor who wins big even though everyone wants him to get fucked? Hey, I know! Just fuck him by refusing to acknowledge how much he's beating everyone. Even look to Smash: Imagine there was a vote among Super Smash Bros. Melee players about whether or not to ban Hungrybox from competing in the game, and all the whiny babies who get mad about his playstyle or personality vote to bar him from tournaments. That flies in the face of the very meaning of competition.
Complete bullshit.
I'm not asking anyone to do anything about an external board. I'm asking SRC to host my runs on their board. A leaderboard is not supposed to be community-based. It's supposed to be achievement-based. A leaderboard which is community-based is doing it wrong.
But the point about the gay, trans, and etc. is to show that the supposedly inactive status of the leaderboard literally does not matter in certain circumstances of moderator abuse. The ruling is, essentially, this instance of moderator abuse is allowed because we don't like you, but abuse against other people who we do like and agree with is not allowed. How is that remotely fair or logical?
Why, then, would it not be out of hands for Pac or speedrun.com to handle the situation were it being done on the basis of me being gay, or being trans, or "etc."? Why those arbitrary classifications rather than having a blanket rule not to censor legitimate runs from the site?
So a case in which a person is having legitimate runs censored because of inter-personal disagreements is not an exceptional case? So you do agree that if cheese were banned from his community for being gay, that would be acceptable, despite him holding multiple world records in his game? Or do you think that being gay is okay, and because you agree with his politics, you would side with him? Or because he's more popular? Or because the game he plays is more popular? Clearly, the site moderators (and you, in all likelihood) are hypocritical, so there has to be some reason for this hypocrisy.
The site moderators did specifically tell me that my runs would be approved, because, according to them, their leaderboards are intended to be run as leaderboards and not social justice platforms, unlike the-elite. However, because Pac, the site owner, is involved in the-elite clique (it's one of only three games he has ever tried to speedrun), and it already friends with the moderators of the game, he does not care that my completely legitimate runs are being censored by the game's moderators, even though he would in the case of other people who are either being censored by moderators he isn't already friends with or people who he actually likes or agrees with politically were censored. It was Pac who escalated the case this high, and if the site moderators' decision were to stand, my runs would indeed be approved, so your point there is moot.
It's quite clear to me that Pac and the GoldenEye moderators are involved in some deep corruption in an attempt to censor legitimate players who they do not like (specifically me), and after reading this entire thread and my discussion with Pac, that should be readily apparent to anyone.
If you read that as Pac "slapping it down", then you can't follow the conversation. The only "slapping down" he attempted was asking if I was comparing hebephilia to homosexuality, to which I responded no, as it's completely unrelated to the discussion and everything I said, and is in fact not what I was doing. The entire point of the question was me fishing for some example which would nullify his initial statement, that the GoldenEye community can moderate as they choose. His response to my question directly contradicted what he said, as after I posed the question, he said that he would in fact force them to approve runs of certain people under certain circumstances, due to his own political beliefs and, according to the logic of TalicZealot, his homosexuality.
According to Pac himself, the GoldenEye leaderboard is inactive and does not matter. It does matter to me, but according to Pac, I am alone on that. Therefore, me disagreeing with the community regarding how to moderate would not matter. Further, if an actual issue did come up, and not the community simply blocking and censoring someone for a bullshit reason, and I was being unreasonable (find it hard to be more unreasonable than the GoldenEye community in this situation), they could easily strip me of my moderator status for it, just as easily as it was given to me.
As moderator, I would properly integrate the-elite with speedrun.com, but make it more accurate than the-elite, so it in fact would matter. The-elite.net does not allow my legitimate runs to be ranked on their leaderboard, so with me properly updating speedrun.com, there would be an actual proper legitimate and accurate leaderboard for GoldenEye 007. Currently, there is not. The fact that this "doesn't matter" to some people seems wholly irrelevant.
Except it would be a matter handled between me and SRC, were Pac to disagree with their reasons to ban me. Because he doesn't fully disagree with their politically-charged reasoning, and actually agrees with their distaste toward my political views, he isn't stepping in. This is a pretty great atrocity. Whether it be an Olympic sprinter or an office chair racer, any legitimate competitor deserves to be included on the leaderboard for their sport. I am being discriminated against by bigots, quite literally.
I never condoned "underage relationships". The homosexuality example is not misleading at all. It's a personal characteristic or trait entirely unrelated to speedrunning. Using this example showed that Pac's original statement, that the GoldenEye moderators don't need to accept any runs regardless of who submits them, is false. He clearly admitted that if a person was having their records denied on the basis of homosexuality, he would force the moderators to approve them, even if the leaderboard was "not in use" (by which he apparently means a leaderboard which is actively updated and has all best times for the game listed on it). Essentially, because he also disagrees with my political opinions, he will not step in and force the GoldenEye moderators to approve my records, even though if the roles were reversed and he disagreed with their political opinions, he would.
His criteria for who is protected under these circumstances are entirely arbitrary and have literally nothing to do with leaderboard integrity or speedrunning skill. I am genuinely surprised that someone who is supposed to be an administrator for a website based around recording who are the fastest players in various video games would go to such lengths to rationalize moderator abuse resulting in censorship of legitimate world record runs.
@Liv After discussion with Pac, I determined that this part of your post at the end of page 302 is patently false:
"Runs shouldn't be being rejected for any other reason than if there's a compromise with the actual run itself, so I don't think it's entirely necessary to know the entirety of the drama between you guys and those on The Elite.net because it's not really relevant to the case I feel. They either have an issue with your runs, in the lines of cheating or foulplay, or they don't."
Pac specifically explained to me that this is not the case, in no uncertain terms (although his position apparently flip-flops several times throughout the discussion):
The full discussion can be found in a text format here: http://puu.sh/C4Nnf.txt
Given this newfound information, could you and Pac work together to devise a list of things that you can't think or say lest you forfeit your right to be ranked on a leaderboard that has abusive mods? It would be useful for future cases, so other people like me don't have to waste their time going through this lengthy process. Thank you.
Why not? And what has RWhiteGoose told you about my runs and their verification status?
Could I also be a moderator for GoldenEye 007? I could clean up the outdated SRC leaderboards quite a lot by adding a lot of world records that are currently unrecognized there, not to mention I would never be corrupt enough to allow legitimate records not to be ranked.
The idea that the reputation of the-elite or of speedrunning will benefit because of me being banned is quite clearly a false idea. Take a look at this thread to see how quickly this exact issue derailed discussion even before I ever saw it: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/9x25kt/the_comprehensive_guide_to_goldeneye_speedrunning/
The very top-voted post was made before I even entered the thread: "Does your resource include a list of ideals and stances that The Elite deem are ok to think, and the things that will get your times excised from the leaderboards?" Clearly, the Streisand effect is in full force regarding this, and where the-elite intended to disassociate their website with my name and with my political beliefs, and specifically went about this in a way to ensure that as few people as possible would know about it (by silencing all discussion about it in their forums/Discord), it actually had the opposite effect, and many outsiders who would otherwise never know of me or the situation are now fully aware of it and aware of the-elite's insane tyrannical censorship practices.
I would also like to note that I specifically said that only possession of child pornography should be legal, and that production, distribution, sale, and purchase should still be illegal; that is to say that everything should be illegal except the act of downloading it onto your computer. It is my opinion that merely downloading something doesn't cause harm to anybody, which is why I hold this belief. It has nothing to do with being a rapist, child abuser, or a pedophile, and those who act as if it does are being completely disingenuous.
Wow, unfortunate I lost my post. I'll try to briefly rewrite it.
The-elite banned me from their own website's leaderboard and rankings because of a political opinion I had, not related to cheating at all. However, they are refusing to even address my 5 world record runs I posted to speedrun.com, not just their own personal leaderboard. They even directly conspired not to approve my runs in their now-private Discord (so I can't see what they are saying about it now):
I can't contact RWhiteGoose because he has blocked our communication in all ways I'm aware of. I left a comment on Qweczol's public Steam profile asking him to approve my runs, and I added him on Discord. He responded by making his Steam profile private so that nobody can read or post comments on his profile, and by blocking me on Discord. I sent Spec3x a message, but he never responded. I can't find AustinPerroux's contact information.
The moderators of GoldenEye on speedrun.com are the same moderators that banned me from the-elite's leaderboard, again, not for cheating, but because I posted political opinions they disagreed with. As it stands, the-elite is blocking my completely legitimate runs from being posted on speedrun.com simply because they do not like me.
If you'd like to learn more details, I made a video documenting this drama between me and the-elite:
