This was posted in the gift giving section of Sims3.com

10/20/10 02:06 AM
Subject: Banned Accounts *Update Please Read*

SimGuru_Sims


Joined: 10/10/10 10:10 AM
Messages: 1
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We express our apologies for the confusion during the past weeks. Not all players that were banned, were banned for abusing the The Sims™ 3 Store. Alexurt1 was NOT banned for abusing the Sims™ 3 Store and/or hacking the site. We apologize for any information that would lead to believe that this was the reasoning behind the banning of the account. In the meantime please understand that gifting and purchasing Simpoints from the The Sims™ 3 Store is not cause for being banned. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

I do not know this person but from what I am reading EA is stating she was not banned for abusing the Sims 3 Store? I guess they felt the need to say something about this?

I can't stop looking at the join date and time. It's like the Da Vinci Code.

Also, I much prefer MTS's non-commercial approach to bannination: memorializing the banned in the graveyard. Don't dangle, EA. Say sumptin' or keep your silence. If Alexurt wasn't guilty of button-pushing, your previous post on the subject was very badly handled. Did they fire the legal division?

curiouser and curiouser

Where's the link? I looked on the Gift Giving section and didn't see this post.

they took it down..

They seem to have a new section called simgurus that only some can see. Maybe the moved all stickies there. Most of the stickies seem to be gone from the forum.

Now I'm getting very curious that if she is not guilty, why she was banned and why her account is not reestablish by now.

the reason for my picture posts above was to point the fact that
she was banned...then got featured....

It is gone! And the forums are all messed up now????

It was the top post in the gifting threads locked, when I went on this morning it was gone and the threads have been moved all around???

I don't know what is going on to be honest with you but it is weird that was posted last night by someone who joined Oct 10 the same day this person was banned and now Walden's threads have been deleted and they have changed the Forums placing gift giving at the bottom???

I have NO idea why it is gone or what has happened

When you ask a question now you get this:
This is a moderated forum.
Your message is in the queue waiting the analysis of some moderator. Please be patient.

It is like the site is on lock down or something

Hehe I think they're cleverly creating a bit of drama to keep us hyped while we wait for the EP They know this time they are competing with CitiesXL2011 and FarmingSimulator2011

Somehow all the stickies are gone. Only seen 1 so far.

I just tried posting and whereas I did not get such a message as Mystikal, I don't see my post. Do they REALLY want to moderate every single post on those forums ?

EDIT:

I'm sure they just try out new stuff now so that it doesn't work at all when the EP comes out that the people with problems can't post like it was with the german forum when AMB came out.

She was probably banned for something else and has received emails/PMs from people who think she was banned for the exploiting. I wonder if she contacted EA and complained. It could be that the legal team suggested the apology and clarification to avoid any sort of slander situation and that could also be why they are moderated the forums. No doubt EA did not handle this situation very well. A simple statement about the reason for banning when banning the people for the exploits would have sufficed. But the mystery made it all a bigger deal than it really was. Maybe others were banned for posts related to the situation that EA thought were over the top, who knows. People sometimes don't realize that 'freedom of speech' does not apply to the forums of private companies and they start screaming about their 'rights' and all that. EA may have responded the way most companies do on forums and just banned the folks that were too vocal and trying to inject their opinions on something they really didn't understand. I think EA is just trying to control the situation now...after it got out of hand.

I agree that MTS has a great system for banning folks.

I wonder if someone hacked the forum, stuck a message on to further an agenda and messed the boards up in the process.

EA is perfectly capable of messing up the forum on their own but the message does look rather odd and suspicious

I got that message when I posted the Technical thread about the Master Help thread, because that is also gone, or rather when I found it the link was not working, I don't think it is happening in all the forums just wanted to clear that up.

I posted in the technical section, just not new thread.

EDIT: Never mind about my post. It seems that thread is one of the 'post eating' ones. Evertime there is a new page the first one is not showing till someone else posts. It's there now.

I was wondering something like that too - but it's too weird.
First, you click on a simpoint dispenser and go on a gift giving spree as if you don't care about getting caught. Then you call yourself SimGuru_Sims and post in the gifting thread?
Maybe it's supposed to be funny.

Why do people feel EA owes anyone an explaination for banning a member? They don't really have to...they own the forum...the only person who would probably NEED to know why they were banned is the person who was actually banned...

My post didn't have anything to do with your pictures jenieusa, sorry if you thought it did, was just placing something that was posted on the Forums which is now well gone

I am just someone who plays the Sims, I found it strange that was posted last night by someone who made there account the same day she was banned and now has it hidden? Then I am discovering most of the Guru's are hidden. :cylon:

Whatever they are planning to do with the Forums it has pretty much caused everyone to take pause in what they say about well anything? Even I have no idea what is going on there now, really had hoped all this was over

by the way here is the link to what was posted first...

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/274729.page

which was done by a GURU...lol

and here is the link to what you saw this morning

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/278423.page

which was done by an unknown....

The first I remember when this all happened. The second I did not see as the one I left here was from SimGuru_Sims, he had on a cowboy hat and was African American, it's not up on the thread now though may not be able to see it.

Here is ONE explanation I found?

Nichaedemus


Joined: 06/14/09 02:52 AM
Messages: 6443
Location:North America
Offline

Hi folks,

As you may have noticed, a number of forum threads were inadvertently deleted as a result of the last site maintenance cycle. The web team is investigating. The threads in question will be recovered if possible or otherwise recreated, as the case may be. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I should have stayed out of it. Not my intentions to accuse or blame or be rude to any member of this forum. If it seems I have been please delete the things I left. Thank you.

oh...so there must have been 2 this morning.....

I almost fell of my chair laughing when I saw Nichaedemus post that just now. WAY TO GO.

@Mystikal: Was the thread you saw a sticky ? Just curious

They don't. In fact, they would probably expose themselves to liability issues if they publicized the names of banned accounts and the reason for the ban. But then they leave themselves open to forum drama, which they attempt to stamp out with mass post deletions (I'm not talking about whatever is happening this morning, but about the deletion of all the "hey, where's Alexurt?" posts in the gifting forum), so the drama spreads across the community because if disgruntled Forumites can't talk about their issues there, they will talk about it here, or blog about it.

More transparency = less drama

(Honestly, I don't understand why anyone would choose to participate in the official forums. Their moderation seems arbitrary and without appeal, and the forums themselves aren't optimized for building a sense of community. If you want to send a private message to someone, you apparently have to send a gift from the store and include your message in the note field.)

Edit: The "unknown" mentioned in jenieusa's post (the one who is currently credited with posting the amended banned users notice quoted by Mystikal) is parthiv, whose profile declares he was part of the engineering team that set up the official website. As Sri said, curiouser and curiouser.

So...is parthiv SimGuru_Sims ?

We shall probably never know.

The most benign explanation is that SimGuru_Sims (join date 10/10/10 10:10...oooooh) was an authorized account created by the board admins to mop up a potential legal mess and that account somehow got merged with parthiv during today's "board maintenance."

The more entertaining conspiracy theory would be that parthiv was the gifters' source for the hidden URL and he created the SimGuru_Sims account to try to clear a friend's name. What would make the conspiracy more entertaining is if parthiv no longer worked for EA and he was actually hacking the site to do these things. (But that begs the question of why the parthiv account would still exist.)

** This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to SimGurus living or dead is merely coincidental. No official forum members were harmed during production.