Sorry but, I don't have anything to add beyond what I have said before regarding the community management directive and industry norms,  I was more interested on everyone's take here.

Cordo and his pet Uurlock.

All joking aside, is this weirdness just you?  Or do they like teach you that in French schools.  Or do the French just completely overlook everyone else's concept of continents and use your own guide lines?  You want to label them as 'middle eastern,' I can see that - but that's a region, not a continent.  Can you even give a source that puts Turkey in Africa (cause I can give like a million that puts it in Asia/Europe/Eurasia or whatever the fuck you want to call it).  (and keep in mind I'm discussing pure geography here, not social sciences).

Turkey has it's own plate : the Anatolian plate, separated from Eurasia by the North Anatolian Fault, separated from what you call Middle East ( actually the Arabian Plate, I didn't call it Middle East when talking geology ) by the Levant Fault. and on the east Separated from Eurasia by the Egean Plate and the relevant faults for that plate. South it's separated from Africa. That still doesn't make them European since they are not in Eurasia.

Crane made a good point, then they were piled on and "bullied" off the main forums by blinkered suckups, which was then covered by stating this place was doing the bullying, and now they're apparently gone.

... asia minor?... minor asian

Knowing the history of the vault's nsfw posting this could have been so much worse.

Hammertop has a new sig:

Jerry's Kids

My suspicion grew when a group of folks continued to beat the "I am Crane_Mace" signature drum and discuss the issue on the forums. So, yesterday, I dug a little deeper into the Crane_Mace forum account and within seconds realized that the account was an account created for the purposes of avoiding moderation on a person's main account. Furthermore, the person who created the "sock" account was the same person who just two days prior had had their forum ban lifted after an appeal. The evidence linking the two accounts (and several other accounts, by the way) was that the same email address was used for all of the accounts.

It appears that this incident is part of an effort by an external forum primarily known for bullying DDO players in-game and on our forums to disrupt the community and cause work for the moderation team. I don't know how many people were deliberately involved in the deception, or how many people were mislead into "supporting the cause" (it's not particularly relevant), but in any case, the actual number of people whose signatures had to be removed was three (although it looks like I have two more to take care of after seeing the image pop up in this thread.) If I clearly knew that the person in question was one of the folks behind the scenes taking part in the deception, I took additional disciplinary action, but leaned toward not doing anything further pending more time to investigate.

On the subject of the signature image: Besides being generally distasteful and semi-political, the signature image clearly calls out another player for attention. We do not permit people to call out others in their signatures, either positively or negatively, without the person's permission. Since the signature violated several parts of the Community Guidelines, it was removed. Since I was attempting to stop the trolls from misleading other members of the community (once I became more aware of what was actually going on), I removed the ability of people who had the signature from being able to use signatures.

If you deliberately use your signature for trolling or bringing attention to someone else in violation of the Community Guidelines, we will remove your ability to use signatures. If you truly believe you were mislead, and want to have your signature abilities back, PM me. Keep in mind that I'm getting a bit sick of the way a particular external forum negatively manipulates our community here, so I will be taking a close look at your forum account to make sure you don't have multiple accounts being used for nefarious activities. Please be aware of that intention before PMing me with an appeal.

If there is a lesson here, it's to be aware that one of the main reasons we do not publicly discuss moderation is that it often involves actions or behaviors that are not clear to the "average" person reading a post. We are also not interested in conducting public trials. This particular case includes examples that will hopefully provide further insight into the world of moderation.

Since this thread is meant to discuss moderation, and is part of a larger effort involving deliberate trolling, it will be closed. However, I'll leave the thread open for a couple of hours for people to discuss a bit first. Thank you!