Special Sims only. [CLOSED]

Just saying that as I see it that special forums or areas of the board that only VIPs can access is similar to the USA in the 1950's when whites were allowed in one bathroom and blacks were not.
I know U R not racist, and I know U R not discriminatory, but the segregated forums seem so. Just saying

I don't see your point.
Every forum has sections to enable different categories of people to talk about different subjects.
Moderators for example might want to talk about things regarding the forum administration, Developers would want to talk about code which nobody else would probably understand and Helpers might want to share about things to help people better without everyone knowing about it!
This is the same in our society, even though it's hidden, we don't have anything "open to everyone" per se...

Hello Hathon,

Thank you for your complaint. To be honest, I don't really understand what you mean, since we do not have any VIP-only sections on the Forum. (Except for the VIP "Special ranks" area, but that one is out of use anyway)

If you mean the separated The Sims 3 forums, that's mainly to make it easier for you, our members/visitors, and for ourself. It keeps things organized. When a topic is posted in the right section, we know what to expect. For example, I do not know a lot about The Sims 3 in-game problems, but Lady ElDi does. That's why I prefer sticking to the "The Sims 3 download" section.
It's not organized if everyone posts all kinds of problems in one Forum. And since our fanbase consists of mostly The Sims 3 gamers, the separate category wasn't a bad idea after all. It makes it easier for us to provide help to you guys in an organized way.

Besides that, you shouldn't compare this to the situation then, this is a Forum. We do not judge anyone, everyone is welcome here.

I hope you understand, and please do let us know if you have more concerns.

//EDIT

Oh wait, I thought you meant the "The Sims" sections, because of your topic title.
As for the "Special ranks areas", it's pretty much as Shamrock explained; not everything has to be shared. I'm pretty sure you do not want to be bothered with Admin stuff, do you?
It's like going into a store and asking: "Why can't I go through the 'Employees only' door? That's racist!", right?

Agreed. Hathon, do you really want to know everything? What if they have bestiality videos in there? Or Twilight worshiping topics? Or Justin Bieber nude footage? Or, worse, My Little Pony discussions?!

Hathon wrote:Just saying that as I see it that special forums or areas of the board that only VIPs can access is similar to the USA in the 1950's when whites were allowed in one bathroom and blacks were not.
I know U R not racist, and I know U R not discriminatory, but the segregated forums seem so. Just saying

Hello,

I'd like to elaborate a bit on what Admin and Shamrock said. To use an analogy to begin with: we probably all agree that if people are denied access from e.g. public services due to their "ethnicity" then that's racist. But is it racist if "normal" users cannot view the special ranks fora ? Can we say that knowing about the contents of these fora is comparable to e.g. the right of getting medical treatment in emergencies ? Or being able to buy food ? Or being allowed to use public toilets ? I would say no.
I mean, as far as the "Helpers" area is concerned, you can imagine it like some sort of internal discussion forum in which solutions to specific problems are discussed.

But OK, as an experiment let's assume for a moment that it is really racist that you cannot access the special ranks areas. Alright, now a newly registered user could also say something like "Hey, why don't I get promoted to a Helper/Moderator/Administrator ?! This is racist!". Sounds crazy ? Maybe, but from a theoretical standpoint this is a legitimate example. So the question now is, if you insist that restricted access to the special ranks fora is racist, where do you draw a line ?

And (believe it or not), I'm certainly the last person on earth defending these racist . And I do not like playing the "devil's advocate" either (although my above thoughts may look like that). But this forum here is virtually not racist. If I see someone posting racist in "my" Sims 3 section (in which I can moderate posts), it will be a pleasure for me to counter that - swiftly, but still with calm composure. And I'm sure that the other Helpers, Moderators and both Admins will also "clean" the forum if something like that occurs.

Growing up and having lived most of my life in Austria (sorry Admin if this now is against the forum's policy) I've seen a hell of a lot of racist bull**it, due to me not being "caucasian", in the eyes of many Austrians. If you could understand German and read through most of the internet fora there, you would turn sick, and yes I mean it. Make no mistake, that's not the only country with racist fora, but this is not relevant here.
What is relevant though is that here, in G4TW's forum, there is practically no such thing as racism - and again, believe it or not, I do not make such assessments very often in my life; no matter if real or "virtual" life.

TUN3R wrote:Agreed. Hathon, do you really want to know everything? What if they have bestiality videos in there? Or Twilight worshiping topics? Or Justin Bieber nude footage? Or, worse, My Little Pony discussions?!

Damn, I thought the "my little pony" decusions were our secret, who let the pony out the bag?

Fields wrote:

TUN3R wrote:Agreed. Hathon, do you really want to know everything? What if they have bestiality videos in there? Or Twilight worshiping topics? Or Justin Bieber nude footage? Or, worse, My Little Pony discussions?!

Damn, I thought the "my little pony" decusions were our secret, who let the pony out the bag?

I know! This sucks, now the whole forum is going to know about how much we love those darn ponies. And I thought we all agreed to keep quiet.

But seriously. We are here to help. Those "special sections" don't actually get used for much more than little discussions on how to better the forum or let others know about circumstances in our life that will take us away from the forum for a little while. And if you look at the most recent posts next to the title of the forum on the main page, you can see that none of them actually are used very often. They're just there for if we need them, for the dirty behind-the-scenes work that makes this forum a great place to get help and have fun discussions.

Excellent I got some decent and thought out responses here. More then I expected. And now I think I am gonna leave it alone cus there is enough going on at the moment. But I will return on this.

(AND yes I do want to know everything, including what they use when they do the things they do...)

Hathon wrote:Excellent I got some decent and thought out responses here. More then I expected. And now I think I am gonna leave it alone cus there is enough going on at the moment. But I will return on this.

(AND yes I do want to know everything, including what they use when they do the things they do...)

Why do you want to know everything? As Shamrock and Carlos G. said before, is it legit to see what is behind the "Employees Only" door? That doesn't make any sense at all. Like if they want to discuss something about management of the forum or anything that doesn't bother you, why should you know all these? You, as a supermarket customer for instance, wouldn't want to know anything about how the groceries are arranged and how to label the groceries, or freaking "mysterious" long ISBN thingy (although it's not ISBN, I dunno what that is). You wouldn't know The Board of Directors' management system of a company if you purchase their product. Why would you bother all these?

invalidusername wrote:(...) and a bunch of people pretending to be busy. XD

Is your supermarket called Electronic Arts?

I loled when i saw that


Moderator edit: I'm closing this now. To the topic creator: believe it or not, there are also practical reasons for us to have these forum areas, for example where we can discuss about promoting or demoting/banning users. It wouldn't be a good idea if others saw that. And if "you know we are not racist", why do you hint at that possibility by pointing out the special ranks fora ? Sorry, if you can't comply with that, you may want to look for another forum.

- Carlos