The Land of Power-Drunk Moderators

In all the years of being a member of various forums, whether they pertain to gun ownership, kaiju, home video systems and RVs, I have never seen such a collection of power-drunk moderators as in the iRV2 Forum.

Sure, moderators are necessary to "keep the peace" and stop flame wars and other things that may disrupt a forum. But at iRV2, there's a collection of moderators who seem to be power-drunk and who twist the forum's rules into all kinds of shapes to back up their decisions.

As one fellow member pointed out:

I think its just a case of a power-drunk moderator.  An old fart sitting in his RV with nothing better to do than lord over people on an internet forum.  

Case in point, a thread was started with the topic of who (among the members) had books or articles published. Several members responded with titles, etc. of their published works, all of which had nothing to do with RVs.

I responded (after checking the rules, which states "no selling" except in their classifieds section) with a photo of Yuu Asakura holding a copy of The Monster Movie Fan's Guide To Japan. I mentioned that I am currently working on an updated version and that an ebook version is at Amazon. I posted no links or anything else. Others did post Amazon and other links to their works, only after they were requested by others.

This thread had been up for months without a peep of complaint by any moderator. This, to me, would constitute tacit approval.

Then, suddenly, in March 2017, a moderator decided to give several members, including myself, "infraction" points for allegedly "selling" on the forum. I protested this in a private message response to the moderator, to which I received no response.

Then, a month later, a different moderator decided to take it upon himself to give me another infraction and a 2-week suspension for a photo of me in my user profile holding the book! 

This is what the message from the moderator said:

You are receiving an infraction and two week suspension of posting privileges for using an inappropriate photo in your user profile. Using a picture of you holding the book for which you received an infraction for selling is tantamount to discussing moderator action.  Another rules violation will result in a 6 month suspension and can lead to a permanent ban.  Please take time to reflect on our rules and act accordingly. 

Thanks for understanding.

The photo had been in my profile page since 2015, when I joined the forum. It was not in any way a "discussion of moderator action" or even selling, just biographical.  In fact, I forgot that I even posted it and thought he was referring to the photo featuring Yuu Asakura that I posted in the aforementioned thread. I sent them an email stating this and requested that the head administrator or owner contact me.

I also protested this action to the moderator and said this:

Kindly have the owner of this forum contact me so I can discuss this further with him/her. 

I never did hear from the owner of the forum or the head administrator. No surprise!

I have learned through other members that the moderators are very "thin-skinned" if people "discuss moderator actions" on the forum or even anywhere else. They search other forums to see if someone is criticizing iRV2. This is cyber-stalking, which is a crime. Sieg heil!

Another ex-member noted:

I headed over to IRV2.com today since I thought my two week ban had been lifted only to find that my ban status has been changed to "forever"! 

Since I've been banned for two weeks and couldn't have possibly been on their forum, apparenly they do read other forums and assign punishments based on your posts outside of IRV2.com.

And, some have even retaliated:

I have contacted four of their corporate sponsors that I have been doing business with for more years than IRV2.com has existed to inform them of the childish and vindictive nature in which they stalk user's travels to other forums and dole out punishments and personal attacks.

Now, I am being accused of violating their rules again, even though I was careful to not mention names, etc. by using "l****al" in a discussion on registration/license fees. This garnered me a 3-month ban with an obnoxious and antagonistic email.

I have also been a monetary contributor to the iRV2 forum. However, if this is the way they treat their donors, I decided to permanently "ban" myself. They are not worth the aggravation.

In the meantime, I have found what seems to be a much friendlier RV forum that is not inhabited by power-drunk moderators. There are number of other ex-iRV2 members at this forum. It is http://rv-dreams.activeboard.com/. According to what I've read there, iRV2 has had problems with moderators for quite some time. Several iRV2 former members told of other instances of heavy-handed tactics by iRV2 moderators. iRV2 is owned by a big social media company, Social Knowledge LLC.