Zoraptor

In significant numbers, yes. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there were more FSA chaps there than Rohirrim, just not significantly more. Reason is, the YPG and FSA don't like each other much. The FSA sees the YPG as barely better than collaborators with Assad as they have barely fought Assad at all since he (pragmatically) withdrew his troops from most of Syrian Kurdistan, they don't have particularly compatible aims as the FSA is explicitly anti Assad while the YPG is pro Kurd and anti anyone (including the FSA since they want territorial integrity) who opposes that, and perhaps most significantly the YPG remembers how a large number of 'FSA' people became ISIS people as soon as they became the most well armed and successful group.

I don't have any particular problem with the article in general, as the FSA stuff is minor and I haven't looked at the other stuff in any depth. But it is another example of the so very easily exploitable reference rules which allow incorrect, non independently confirmed or biased information into an article so long as it has a citeable source- rules which are open to everything from simple mistakes to gross and deliberate manipulation as a result. Whether there is any way of actually fixing that which isn't worse than the current situation, well, I cannot readily think of one except the rather specious one of having unbiased and critical editors- realistically I know perfectly well that my idea of unbiased will clash with other people's even with perfect good faith by all parties.

There is no back pedalling, there cannot be any back pedalling (for a year, at least), the decision is final, the votes are counted, the fat lady is sitting back down having a Gin & Tonic while letting her vocal cords rest, the janitor is picking up the empty popcorn containers: it is over*. In any case Ryulong self ejected before the ban was official- his attempt to get the Adland article deleted was probably a pre emptive kamikaze once he saw which way the wind was blowing and his user page now has the same message that NBSBaranof put on his. *Which may not stop people from trying to re-litigate it, but under wiki rules it's a final decision by their equivalent of a Supreme Court.

The wikipedia article is, well, rubbish when it comes to FSA involvement. It cites Facebook (!) and otherwise every single source for FSA involvement resolves to being an FSA one thus not independent and with a vested interest in over exaggerating any contribution made by them. Which is of course one of the primary problems with wikipedia, their main concern is getting citations from trusted secondary sources not getting unbiased or accurate information so for them 'CNN quotes FSA leader as saying they have a millionty billionty soldiers in Kobane' is an accurate source because it comes from CNN- not because there actually were a millionty billionty FSA guys there. At least the graphic used YPG pennants for the areas captured, but there really isn't any justification in using the FSA one beyond PR.

They've published the final decision and he's gone. The main anti-GG arb member even voted to ban in the end probably due to him trying to get a moderately GG related page deleted. Pretty sure it always had a right to appeal after a year clause and that has not changed, but they are otherwise permanent bans:

It doesn't set one. The pilot is a legit pow and was captured legitimately, he isn't a kidnapped civilian. Doing a swap for a kidnapped civilian encourages more kidnapping, doing a swap for a pow encourages them to take prisoners rather than line any captured combatants up in the desert and execute them, as was their prior modus operandi.

EA's quarterly report has DAI being the most successful launch of a Bioware game ever. So congrats Bioware, I guess.

The something else being Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, not Advanced. I suspect that Bruce is getting a kick out of everyone parroting his (no doubt deliberate) mislabelling as if it were accurate.

Ryulong has been saying pretty much exactly the same thing in multiple sympathetic places- someone fast tracked his membership onto neogaf and of course he's been sponsored by/ posting on 'ghazi for a while. His and NBSBaranof's reactions illustrate almost perfectly why they shouldn't be editing something that is supposedly a dispassionate encyclopaedia, the level of emotional involvement is too high by far. And of course if they weren't so emotionally involved they wouldn't have edit warred and ended up banned in the first place.

Shame we don't have the Sexy Men thread still active, else I could post those pictures of Sting as Feyd Ruatha in his ludicrous posing pouch. Instead I'll just link to a google image search with a mild nsfw warning: budgie smugglers detected. (I say posing pouch/ budgie smugglers, but groinal batarang is probably a better description).

FSA flag, don't make me laugh. May as well put the flag of Gondor or Rohan there too, they contributed only slightly less than the FSA did.

Quen is the 'shield' power. Aard is the 'wind' power.

Looks like the two biggest editors of the gamergate wikipedia page (Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof) have both been topic banned now. There's not much more left to happen from that arbitration, by the looks of things. Of the four biggest edit makers two have been topic banned, one exonerated and one giving a warning only.

Agreed, Gamersgate is about ethics in selling you games, not about disseminating personal information. At present they want me to buy 'Dead Island' which I hear had a totally non sexist bloody-yet-shapely-bust-of-a-bust as part of its physical collectors' edition which appalled the delicate flowers at RPS so much they got it pulled. Unfortunately it's a steam key like most of the stuff they try and sell me and I suspect I'd find the gameplay trivial and repetitive, so I will decline.

Helix S1 was... interesting. At times it felt like they'd shot 1 hour episodes that had been crudely cut down to 42 minutes so it was kind of nonsensical but it was entertaining enough (and had at least one completely random but wildly entertaining wtf moment) and I watched the whole thing. The elevator muzak theme and setting giving me a System Shock vibe was one of the main factors though. S2 isn't (so far) related much at all to the setting of S1, apart from obviously being in the same continuity and using most of the same characters it is in a completely different place with a different disease.

In some truly random gaming related news the Greek economist who designed Valve's economic model designed to fleece obsessive compulsives of their cash is set to fleece Germans of their cash become Greece's new finance minister. Expect the Euro crisis to be solved by selling a plethora of regional hats, achievements (1% annualised growth unlocked!), trading cards and gamifying everything under the sun.

Interesting dichotomy between the two versions of what the psychologists did, and from the psychologists themselves at times. Mitchell himself has simultaneously said he didn't have much to do with abuse and that he did and it was a success anyway: Not really sure how to reconcile the two statements unless he is explicitly using the 'enhanced interrogation techniques torture by trained professionals is fine, by amateurs is highly irresponsible' definition of abuse. Still, for a reported 81 million dollars I suspect there'd be a fair number of respected medical professionals whose ethics would suddenly become more elastic let alone if their patriotism were appealed to- and you basically have to believe that you're better than and got the good oil for a better cause than Saddam Hussein, Heinrich Himmler, Hideki Tojo or Laurentiy Beria's torturers who were just plain thugs.

To explain: it's sticking the question marks at the end of aggressive statements that to my mind pushes it from being a reasonable response to being passive aggression, I have no problem with your responses, as illustration, nor with the original question Enoch asked which was entirely reasonable. I don't even have a problem with Gromnir's responses here even if I may disagree with them, and he's someone I'm very likely to find subjective or objective fault with, if fault is there. Specifically, question marks imply a desire to continue engagement and actively invite a response when the (sensible) response- and the one he suggested himself- really ought to be to state your opinion, if wanted (already done), and then leave the thread and subject you don't like. To ask a (hopefully not aggressive, and mostly rhetorical) question myself: what's the point of asking a question if you don't want a response or the thread to continue, and specifically what is the point of asking an aggressively worded question if you don't want said response? It just increases the likelihood of your disliked thread continuing on and you aren't going to get an answer you like because, well, you already know it's a subject you don't like. It is at best classic make work, asking questions for the sake of putting out the person you're asking, at worst it's fishing for a- specifically aggressive- response. Those are both recognised traits of passive aggression. (I've got no problem with Enoch himself, I just think that particular technique is utterly unconstructive and wastes everyone's time)

I'm finding it hard to be upset, to be honest. Yeah, you can avoid it if you want to but at the same time it's trivially easy to get the same content from other sources, indeed I suspect most of the images came from Google Image Search as it was. On most gaming sites the thread would never have been allowed in the first place, nor would a lot of those on the front pages- and any public disagreement with the moderation team would be met with deletion and bans. And there were several moderational notes previous about it skirting the line in terms of acceptability and asking for no bikini shots etc that were adhered to for a week or so and then ignored. I was quite surprised it lasted as long as it did. Fundamentally though, there's no expectation of free speech on company property: their place, their rules.

For some reason I thought the MiG 15's designation was given to a soviet missile, not a fighter. How stereotypically Freudian of me.

You can follow the voting yourself if you want, it's a matter of public record. There's a summary of the voting at the bottom. The patently antiGG arbcom member who initially recused herself then unrecused herself is voting pretty much exactly as expected.

Wikipedia is wrong, plain and simple. Can't say I am surprised since most self identified anarchists are left wing and most anarcho capitalists self identify as libertarians nowadays, but anarchism is and always has been left/ right agnostic, its opposing pole is authoritarianism (also left/ right agnostic). Your thesis is also fatally flawed. For example, abolition of hierarchy is not a left or right tenet at all. In theory Capitalism supports the abolition of rigid hierarchy, in perfect, theoretical capitalism hierarchy is also perfectly fluid, those with ability rise to the top whatever their start in life due to their achievements and the support of the market and everyone is rewarded by the market according to their contribution- perfect social equality because everyone has an equal chance of achieving success. That would make capitalism left wing...

I don't think there's anything suspicious about all the COR articles coming out at least, she probably has sent out a press release and they're spread over two days. Sent out a press release to sympathetic eyes, no doubt, but it doesn't look like "Gamers are dead" pt 2 in that respect, more like Fallout 4 announced!!! articles would be collusion with Bethesda. OTOH I have little doubt COR is... hmm. Unlikely to be unbiased, at very very best.

Seriously bro, that's three passive aggressive questions (the first one, unquoted, was genuine enough). That's a cheap technique when Bruce does it and it's a cheap technique here. Take your own advice from the bottom one and just ignore the thread if it offends you or doesn't interest you. If mootykins and 4chan are so very insignificant the thread will be dead in a few days anyway. (meh, 4chan. Usenet OGs know where the original anarchic anything goes pseudo anonymous posting 'boards' were at, and they didn't have some all powerful 'admin' running everything. Until asterisking Google tried subsuming everything into asterisking 'Google Groups')

In most places in the rest of the world the Democrats would be a right wing party with the Repubs being even further right, that explains most of it. The rest is Bush jr hangover, almost everyone outside the US loathed him, so anyone associated with him gets automatically disliked. I didn't actually mind Romney particularly, he gave the impression of being a moderate guy saying immoderate stuff because he needed to fire up the core support. I suspect you'd get significantly different results if you asked "has Obama done a good job?" vs "has Obama done a good job compared to how McCain or Romney would have performed" from non US people.