I forget why GameFAQs becomes so appealing, and only know how it likes to appear so often on search engines due to a lack of a good competing alternative, one that would be needed amidst the glorified elitism of the moderators. The moderators have recently deleted evidence against a group of rape apologists in a discriminatory attempt to silence the person who provided said evidence. Evidence can be found on the petition "GameFAQs needs to stop supporting rape and discrimination" for anybody interested, but long story short, they are willing to keep enabling not only the YouTube user named "Mangs", an unrepentant rapist who has over 100K subscribers on YouTube despite the fact, but already shady characters in their own right who also claim to be against the rapist but at best refuse to directly submit more active proof of their actions which sabotages the credibility of anybody else attempting to go up against Mangs for additionally OTHER nasty behaviors, ones that don't even have anything to do with women.

The fact that the deleted posts were preemptively Archived also make it clear that the moderators' conduct is not new. In fact, there is an entire blog that posts VARIOUS actions by the GameFAQs moderators, the latest one of which (as of writing) implicates a proven doxxer known as "Flintlock Staff" who was made moderator. Worth noting is that "Flintlock Staff" would come from Kid Icarus Uprising, where the board involves the submitter of evidence having had his topic providing a Christmas gift basically celebrating a sort of character family choice met with unblockable bullying by "Flintlock Staff."

It is quite possible that "Flintlock Staff" was behind the false moderations, but there is no way to prove as much OR call as much to attention on the forums themselves even if you don't get arbitrarily suspended. Why? Because the punishment system is completely biased in favor of the moderators' whims; it is impossible to tell which moderator is responsible for an individual post's deletion without them giving a signature point in the first place, and even if you can dispute the moderation, they can Uphold without giving ANY reason and prevent any further attempt to dispute it. There is no calling this out in public either, because the "Ask the Mods" forum disallows talk of individual moderations, and the "Site Suggestions" forum bans calling out site policy. The admins don't even care either, only siding with the mods whenever something, ANYTHING, comes up.

This isn't even going into the brand of material that is allowed to run around. That second image was admittedly dug up via searching a line I remembered, no matter how stupid I am for remembering it, but believe me, that sort of content is TAME as far as what you can expect to find on GameFAQs without the mods caring to put a lid on as much. Reporting these messages is useless as well because the moderators are too busy picking on whoever they want to, assuming they aren't in direct support of the inappropriate material in the first place. Again, there is a blog that indicates how the moderators will themselves post less than welcome material, not all of which even involving objectifying women in the first place.

The clincher is when, like with TVTropes.org, GameFAQs will claim to be about democracy. They're a different form of the corruption of democracy: where TVTropes.org shut out necessary voices for healthier organization in a hypocritical zeal, GameFAQs runs on mob rule, which definitely makes it even worse particularly when it's still a bigger site. Red Ventures and C-Net, both allegedly in support of diversity, also warrant some of the blame for letting all of these problems run around unchecked.

It's also worth noting that the intended key appeal for the site, the guides themselves, have become increasingly more mediocre. This does NOTHING to offset the abuse of power in the social aspect that has become predominant in the usage of GameFAQs, and thus they deserve this BARE mention.

At the end of the day, if you can avoid GameFAQs, do it. Dealing with it unnecessarily at all is not worth the hassle of this mess. It's a testament to how much the internet needs to morally improve that dealing with it becomes too constant a necessary evil.

I have been going to the site since 2003, an account since 2008, and it's just been a train wreck. The boards are practically unusable, you will get slammed by their mod staff for anything. They have their own little clique and some of the worst people are in there, including folks who stole accounts and hacked with the site, but they're a mod's friend so that's okay. Some of them even followed me offsite to issue death threats or say they were going to doxx/SWAT me. If they decide they don't like you, you're in for a constant barrage of "warnings" or "suspensions" while people who suck up to the mod staff post topics where they go around in circles shaming the user like it was a communist show trial.

They used to allow you to dispute but they dropped the appeal levels and ended responses entirely. They don't even tell you the reason for the moderation. I had a 12-year account banned a few months ago because I said "I am an antiracist" on their current events board. How is that problematic? It took 4 months and several messages just to get an answer from their admin SBAllen - and he said it was for a rule that THEIR OWN LEAD MODS said that same month wasn't a rule (they frequently do these unannounced rule changes to the point of absurdity - it was once considered "plagiarism" to link to a news article - WTF?). Then Allen said that it was somehow "causing trouble" to say this. What? Many of their mods like Admiral and Baseman have been caught for open racism in the past, and the admin is MIA or worse, silently enables it. He gave up on the message boards years ago, it was also clearly not a priority for CBS, but I heard Red Ventures just bought them out so I hope some of these issues will be fixed moving forward...

The boards are therefore a trash fire, there are no real rules there except "if you slightly annoy a mod we will come after you and delete anything you say." Many users have actually joked that they would get moderated for saying they like Pepsi if a mod likes Coke because the post would be "offensive" to people who like Coke. That's their mindset, they have nothing else to do all day apparently. It's killed their boards and traffic is way down because they over-moderate everything. I gave it 2 stars solely for the content of the guides, reviews and so on. Anything like the message boards that the mods can touch, stay far away from.

-Tails82

Game guides, nuff said.