I had a pinsider threaten to come to my home in real life and hurt me. I posted to the mods twice. They didn't contact him, suspend him or even respond to me in any way. Guy still posts on here. That was 21 months ago.

haah the purge...man that was hilarious.

Just a reminder, While Robin's thoughts about moderation philosophy are relevant in this thread, it is NOT an open invitation to criticize Pinside Staff, past moderations or past decisions made by the Pinside Staff. There is a fine line between discussing moderation approaches and philosophies and criticizing the Pinside Staff for a past decision. Discussing philosophy is fair game. Criticizing the decisions made by the Pinside Staff is not fair game, and against Pinside Rules.

If you have an issue with moderation or an action by the staff, please open a moderator feedback to discuss it with the entire Staff.

If you publicly air your grievances, then you will be moderated and most likely ejected from this thread.

Thanks. And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Marcus

"Publicly critizing Pinside staff A temporary (14 days) all forums eject was issued."

I just want to publicly say, I love Pinside. Everyone is great.

publicly commending the pinside community A temporary (1 year) forum invitation has been issued

What I always find amusing, is when other podcasters always bag Pinside (pretty much all of them do it) and then in the next sentance, they reference information they’ve read on Pinside.

Pinside is an invaluable resource for the community. Like any forum with 48,000 (!!) members, there’s going to be some too and frowing from time to time.

But the good far outweighs the bad IMO.

rd

I don't think I've ever bagged pinside. All I've said is that people seem to go crazy when something happens and blow it out of proportion.

It's an interesting dichotomy. Pinside (because of its size and activity) is a very useful tool in podcasting. The latest rumors and speculation, to-the-minute happenings, it is positioned as a go-to source of unfiltered information. And that's setting aside that Robin is directly very helpful (I don't know if other shows have done so, but I've contacted him several times for data pulls so I can exploit the mass use of other features, like the game ratings, to see what is happening in the hobby). Pinside is easily the most useful discussion venue on pinball, period.

That said, the forum reputation is not unearned. I basically avoid debating topics here outright, and that's what works for me. My co-host, while having an account, never posts here. Too toxic. When he follows the discussion threads that are hot topics, and sees how negative and personally attacking some participants (not the majority) are, it reaffirms his decision. I imagine he just reads This Week in Pinball now instead, as that's more what he's looking for, but I haven't asked recently.

I think the mods do an outstanding job. They were, in the past, (and this is not criticism guys) a little heavy handed, and I really didn't care for them deleting my posts. But that was a couple years ago. These days I think they do a fantastic job. I've said it before...people that bitch about Pinside aren't doing it right. Keep up the great work mods and thank you for your hard work!

Personally, I’d like to see the nuclear option exercised around here. Especially when it has become painfully obvious of a chronic offender and demonstrating their inability or lack of desire for learning or changing behavior.

I’m a big believer in second chances and warnings but come on.... And if the moderators are reluctant to pull the trigger, put it to a community vote. (Note, I haven’t completely thought that through. See picture.)

But let’s not overlook our personal responsibilities here. Bad behavior can be contagious for some. I went dark on Pinside for a long while after being unjustly attacked and ganged up on. Was it human nature that I retaliated? ...sure, I guess. But was it right of me to do so, ...no. And I’m a bit embarrassed at how I lashed out at some innocent bystanders.

That said, if you’re going to be an insensitive jerk, a liar and/or a hypocrite, plan on hearing from me.

I’ve been a member here snice November of 2011 and I’ve been moderated 3 times, the third just recently. I probably should have been moderated more in the past but I appreciate the light touch that Pinside has allowed me. To me, being moderated is a wakeup call to step back, learn from and evaluate myself. If you don’t get that, or can’t do it on your own, you’re a lost cause.

zzzzzzz punish030504 (resized).JPG

I don't think there's any official policy against threats/harassment via PM?

There probably should be as I think some people just think this is a great way to blow off some steam without being moderated. I've gotten some pretty outrageous PMs before and I'm sure many have. Veiled threats of violence (even if they ALWAYS come from drunk blowhards who are completely impotent and harmless) really shouldn't be allowed around here, especially keeping in line with the "Pinside ethos" being promoted and espoused in the TWIP interview. If stuff like that is tolerated I don't see how you can't expect it spill over onto the public forum.

You can't tell someone that you just might come and shoot them publicly, as this would surely result in moderation. Why are you allowed to send someone an uninvited PM saying the same thing?

Well go ahead and post the PMs in a thread.... Unless they are private

https://pinside.com/pinball/help/pinsidecom-community-rules

Make speculative claims without fact: Speculation and opinions are fun to share and discuss, but avoid stating speculation as fact.

Riiiight

The best course of action is to disengage and place the person on ignore. That will also block them from sending PMs to you.

In the situation referred to above, you're only hearing one side.

We can't issue moderations for PMs because they are private correspondence that we don't have access to. We typically only moderate what is posted on the public forums.

However, if you are encountering a problem, you are welcome to open a feedback thread about the situation, but like I said, usually the best thing to do is to just disengage and set them to ignore.

As much as I think the rules and some mods are over the top this site does belong to Robin. He pays for it and it belongs to him 100%
so he is allowed to allow and disallow whatever he sees fit.

What I thought reading that interview:
"Just say his f****** name!!!"

Oh shut up! Don't make me come over there!

Was it justified?

“Other”.

I can’t say I’ve heard you bag Pinside too much.

rd

I always wonder what threads people are reading when they say "Pinside is toxic"? I don't find that to be the case overall...and I've been involved in some controversies here. But those are the minority (IMHO). This place has been WAY more helpful to me than toxic. I've also meet a lot of great people and made some great friendships all becasue of Pinside.

Everytime time I hear people bitching about Pinside my first thought is "grow thicker skin". Many say just leave if it bothers you...and that's a viable option...but geez if Pinside is bothering you that much what is real life doing to you?

Maybe they only scanned Pinside briefly and happened on one of the long winded off track threads where nothing good was happening ?

LTG : )

Bravo!

Pinside truth. We hate the controversies, but we love the drama.

zzzzzzz 50% (resized).png

As with every internet forum there are things being discussed in wich shortly everything is said,... but not by everyone (wich follows), and in every thread (following also). On top of that boringness a "discussion" is often misconfused with "pointing out why oneself is 120% right" wich leads to People beeing angry aaand 'toxic' for the hobby. (Like in destroying all excitement for a new game because two out of one games NIB are usually broken.)

Most toxic People get banned but still want to state their mind best without anyone arguing with them, therefore doing a drunken one man show Podcast.

So the main Problem is that the internet in itself should be illegal and bored old over-fed people being overfed and bored, not able to appreciate something they loved like when it was new, like a child. Grinching everyones christmas.

simleyface

$2,572,648.73

1 step forward 3 steps back.

Hmm, I'm taking that Deep Root price range with a pinch of salt. It's rather like saying 'my favourite place to live would be between Mercury and Pluto'.

Fair play though if a simpler and smaller $3500 game is both achievable and marketable, because there's a few things I'd certainly like to do along those lines.

Fantastic article and further evidence of This Week In Pinball being such a valuable asset to all of us.
Wow, Dennis Kriesel, extraordinary effort and many thanks to you. - I love stats.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz7e216f99928f937bb8aede3298516ef (resized).jpg

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm always worried I'll make it too dense for consumption. Thanks to Jeff for hosting it and suggesting the topic to me!

should share it on r/dataisbeautiful

People would like it and may be good exposure.

I'm a number guys myself, so appreciate the article.

I suspect pinball had a real spike in the 2012-2013 time frame, and is still growing, just not as much as that 1 single year did. And that doesn't mean it is dying or anything else, it just means there was a huge influx of people that 1 year and steady growth since.

do you think there is a specific reason that year saw the growth?

What caused it?

Not sure. That was when I came in, and it felt like I was a newbie along with a whole lot of other people at the same time.

Pinball Arcade was a key component in my own personal journey, and it seems like it was for a lot of other people. I remembered I liked pinball, found the app in the app store, then was playing Medieval Madness. Before long I was looking for somewhere to play it in real life, and then I was on Pinside and bought my first pinball.

Maybe my story isn't that different from a lot of people.

The unique players per event is down by about half from the 2009 level 8.1 to 4.0, total attendance per event is slightly down also, 25.7 to 23.9.

Tron, Star Trek, Metallica, AC/DC, Wizard of Oz were all in production in 2013.

good thought.

when did pinball arcade first come out?

Tron is what got me back into pinball. I know there were a lot of other people that Tron was their first NIB. By the time all of us morons bought machines and started blathering about them to other people, word of mouth might've accounted for a measurable chunk of bringing in more people.

Was mine.

This is part of it.

Pinball Arcade is part of it.

And for me personally again, I had just reached an age, and a level of success, home ownership, etc, that allowed me to indulge in this hobby. I think we're a big cohort.

WOZ was my first NIB experience and really got me into the hobby. The waiting was rather nerve racking, but that machine really opened my eyes to the potentials of a pin.
I had only owned a couple of routed beaters(BK and HS)through the years and really hadn’t been involved as a hobbyist.
So for me...it was 2014 with WOZ.

You used to (maybe still do?) post on KLOV right? Pretty sure I remember seeing your name there back in the day. I haven't been on there actively in a very very long time...

how about looking at the macro picture.

during 2012, the stock market finally broke out above the highs that existed before the 2007-08 banking/housing crash when fortunes were cut in half and confidence was shattered. took five years, but by 2012-13 what was lost had been recovered. baby boomers could now feel more comfortable buying 5K+ toys.

The only thing I would add as evidence is the growth of pinball companies has been extraordinary. Yes there have been a few flakes but the overall growth of the number of investors willing to take a risk on pinball manufacturing is something I'd never thought I'd see in my lifetime. Also, the recent expansion by Stern is pretty good evidence that they are in for the long haul.

The writer could have also asked Pinside for information about new subscribers which Robin told me (at TPF) has been exploding.

Lastly, the number of Shows and attendance seems to be way up over the past decade.

Not me. Never had an account there.

The subscriber count is a great idea I did not consider.

I did try to find a comprehensive collection of show counts with attendance data, but could not find a source. I believe one could build this out by directly contacting most of them, but you would need to prep a lot of defined categories to try and make sure everything is apples to apples.

I also attempted to get locations and # of pins per location, but none of the mapping data sources I contacted logged information in a multi-year way that could really be used as evidence (a long-shot since none of them really need their data in such a format, but it would have been interesting and with my assumption that hobby operators in particular have grown recently I'd really have liked to seen some evidence proving it).

I like the Pinside subscriber count as a good surrogate for interest. I think game ownership by year produced is a bit misleading. For example, my first NIB was TWD, but I bought it in 2017.