Spazz gets banned, and within minutes there's a mass mutiny in the GS community and seemingly the MOD community.

I won't pretend to know the details. I won't pretend I know what's going on, or that I know each mod personally.

I have been here for ten years. I've watched people join, become mods, resign / get banned, etc. and nearly all the site admins that came from the forums are people I recognize and can recall from days, weeks, months and years back. For the most part they're all very fair people, even if they may have changed over time.

Fact is, Gamespot lost a plethora of good mods around 'Gerstmanngate' out of protest and ever since then cracks have appeared and dissent is spilling onto public boards and blogs. I've never seen Solidruss this upset, for one. I really hope he doesn't get banned for this because outside of MAILER_DAEMON, he's the most fair and understanding mod in the community. Spazz was definitely up there and had such character as well, and to lose him really is a blow to the public opinion of the moderating team. If Russ went, I don't know what would happen.

We've seen countless bans from users being pushed to the brink because of questionable moderations(spanning from a lack of detailed explanation to using greay area rulings that hardly fit the crime) and inconsistency in rulings, and eventually get banned for complaining in the public forum. I've never seen so many high profile members go down so often as I have this year in OT, and I've been here for a while. I remember the GameDude and RyanTheGod game-board raids and OT spam-raids.

I hope cooler heads prevail on both sides of this. I hope the community can forgive the mods and admins, I hope the mods can forgive each other, and I hope the admins can actually stop being so systematic about everything and remember why people come to gamespot. I don't get my news from gamespot. I rarely read reviews or previews or features on the site. I come for the people, who are on the forums and blogs and whatnot, and if those were whittled away I'd stop coming. I stopped reading Gamespot reviews after Navarro(best game reviewer ever) jumped ship. Tor Thorsten is still around, and he's a cool guy, nd the odd time I'll check out his articles, but there's not much else keeping me here.

If there would be more transparency and leniency I think a change would come for the better. Just a little more lenient, not IGN lenient.

Anywho, that's it from me for now. This all could have been avoided, really.

EDIT: Solidruss is banned.

****, people are dense. Two of Gamespot's top 4 mods gone in one day? What next, Duxup gets canned?

DOUBLE EDIT WHOO YEAH EDIT:

Was a pre-April Fools day prank. No one's gone! Though I feel hosed.