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Sorry, your name is alcoholic!
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I have been an avid player on Neopets for almost 12 years. I was there when the site was in its infancy and there was little to do. The site focussed on humour and fun. There were rules but everyone felt assured that staff would would be sensitive and human when dealing with infractions. Chatting on the boards and showing off your pets was the social aspect of the game that kept users coming back (because back then, there was little else). Playing games, chatting and having fun, away from the grind of daily life was the site's focus.
The site attracted a number of kids and gradually grew increasingly difficult to socialise in, many users being afraid to post on the neoboards (a hybrid somewhere between a live chat and a forum). Many users made 'chat accounts' to shield their main playing account being warned and eventually frozen (disabled) for trivialities. While many warnings have been warranted, an equal if not larger number have been unwarranted (proven by asking for clarification from staff who provide, on occasion, a copy of what was said to cause the infraction.) There is usually no mention of whether or not the user has been pardoned and many of these requests are ignored meaning the user never really knows what their crime was. The support system is full of bugs, some of which infringe on privacy as tickets can appear in a user's account that came from an entirely different account. Nothing has been done about this problem and I have seen sensitive information such as email addresses and birth dates (which are used to re-grain access to accounts with lost passwords)from other users.
The site has been through several differing levels of censorship starting with obvious curse words to more recently banning words that just happen to be the names of something associated with a banned topic or words within words making communication difficult. A lot of these references are so vague that they encourage the user to investigate the word to find out why it was flagged (Urban Dictionary seems to be the first port of call). If you're lucky enough, or unlucky as is the case with neopets, to have a name you share with any popular alcoholic beverage, saying it on the boards will most likely result in a warning regardless of context. A pet or account with of the same name is also likely, in time, to be deleted without warning. While I can understand their wish not to discuss adult drugs such as alcohol on the site, I believe banning names associated with particular brands of (especially those of family names) is going a step too far. It's unknown how they decide on which ones are acceptable and which aren't or whether all of them in time will be deleted. Another point worth raising (a trifle I'll admit) is that you can talk all day about being 'high' on caffeine with no likelihood of being reprimanded, despite it being a damaging substance for children.
By the time this site comes to an end (which from their user activity stats doesn't look to far off) I wouldn't be too surprised to see their puritan list of banned words in the Guinness book of records. Just don't mention that on neopets, it's banned!
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