I realize that in the time I've taken to write this post, more replies have popped up. This is mostly directed at GIR, but I guess anyone else who belittles the problem of elitism here and/or participates in it should read this too. Let me outline some cases that show that elitism here really is as big of a problem as we claim.
The first rule that comes to mind when it comes to being enforced hard on new users but not so much on established users is the rule against spamming.
I think the best example of a user who borders on invincibility from criticism would be Noxid. Please note that I have a great respect for Noxid. He's very smart, has the ability to be very mature, has the ability to make very constructive posts, has contributed immensely to the modding community, has some very good artistic talent, and amuses me to no end with his ability to quickly think of a witty metaphor to prove his point. Nonetheless, he regularly makes posts that are of very little value. He himself even admitted the other day that he blanket posts a lot. I'm pretty sure that at least 9/10 of the posts he made over the last 2 years in the modding showcase forum didn't contribute anything valuable to the discussion. And yet nobody seems to have called him out on it because he manages to stay afloat by sometimes making them witty or calling out a new user for saying something stupid in so doing. Furthermore, when he used his exclusive power to
start a new thread in the S.P.O.T. (something that was disabled among regular users for a reason), the thread became one of the most popular threads during its period. Not only was the thread itself pretty much spam, but it also encouraged other users to spam. The closest anyone even came to criticizing him for that move was Fab who jokingly
suggested he should ban himself for spamming. And yet, six months earlier, a new user at the time with a poor reputation made
a thread of a similar nature that was of hardly any less value than Noxid's, and was basically treated like spam. Noxid himself
even said that if there was going to be another thread like that, then there would be consequences.
The other most immediate rule that comes to mind that new users immediately get called out on breaking but established users almost always get by with is the rule against personal attacks.
I am aware that I might regret saying this out in the open. During my early days as a member here, I had a less-than-favorable reputation among several established users here. This was largely due to my overly verbose writing style and serious tone that many interpreted as trying to act above everyone else. I still do tend to write long posts (just look at this one here), and I still do possess a very narrow range of emotion when posting, although this was to a greater extreme during my first few months here, for those of you folks who weren't around then. And while the community's negative assumption about my mindset was partially true, it was nowhere near to the extent they believed. This was mostly brought on by the forums I had been previously present on where either no one noticed, or no one cared, and I was lead to believe that this was a "socially acceptable" way of typing.
And the user who seemed to be most aggravated by this was ShinyElectricBlueTiger. And because of this verbose typing style, apparently the community saw no wrong with him continuously making completely unprovoked degrading posts filled with straw-man arguments that tried to paint me as a hypocrite[
1][
2][
3]. He continually flame-baited me over the course of four-and-a-half months before
finally someone called him out. It took four-and-a-half months for just one established user to put two-and-two together and realize that another established user was gratuitously attacking a newer user, something that
anyone with a fresh perspective would have noticed at the first encounter.
And yet, by the time that I was an established user, and a new user
made a false accusation about my development habits, numerous users jumped to my defense and chewed him out for attacking me. Take a look at that post by that (at the time) new user that I just linked to. Now take a look at
this post that SEBTi made. Both of them are personal attacks. Neither of them
have any basis whatsoever. Neither of them were provoked. And I would argue that SEBTi's attack in question was far more hostile than A Gamer's. And yet, A Gamer was called out, and SEBTi wasn't, because A Gamer was a new user at the time and was attacking an established user, and SEBTi was a fairly established user at the time attacking a newer user.
There is definite discrimination between users based on how new they are, and you'd be ignorant to belittle it. You might be thinking that I'm taking some things here more seriously than I should... Trust me, I'm not. I may have written this large wall of text ranting about stuff that takes place over the internet, but at the end of the day, my face sitting in front of the computer screen remains expressionless. I really don't get emotionally worked up over something that happens in front of a computer screen, unless it's a seemingly legitimate E-mail informing me that a loved one has passed away or something like that.
I am also aware that this is not likely to accomplish much or bring about any change because the party that has a big problem with elitism here doesn't have enough power to do so. I just thought I'd give a detailed outline of why I agree with Dunc and Doors because you seemed to be mostly dismissing their less major incidents as nit-pickery.
