This is a rant and criticism of some unfair policies of the Animebytes. If you don't care to read it, I'll post a tl;dr at the bottom.
I was a member of Animebytes for 2 years, 10 months. The content was always high quality, I have no complaints there. What I do have complaints about... is the forums.
When I started, the forums were a great place to have high quality discussion and I made a good amount of friends. The old moderators/forum staff were respectful and pretty nice. The discussions were allowed to be relatively open-ended, and when people would say something stupid, you were allowed to call them on their bullshit.
However, about a year ago, things changed. Staff members left, there was a gradual shuffle and eventually all of the lower level moderators/forum staff was newer, and purely from a moderator standpoint, they're terrible at their jobs. They play favourites, and I suspect some level of cronyism was involved in their hiring. Now, I've been there, done that, ran forums with friends of mine who were good guys, but ultimately, shitty moderators. Unable to take criticism.
Now, I had a tendency to confront people and call them on their bull when it came out of their mouth, but as the 2016 elections started up, all of these guys came out of the woodwork like maggots. Three groups, really:
Alt-right white supremacists who promoted Trump whenever they could
Regressive Leftists, who promote hillary and radical feminist causes whenever they could.
Drug-addled trolls who would bitch and complain about their social status but did nothing but smoked pot, played video games and lived off welfare - according to what they said.
I got into a fight earlier this month with one of the latter because this person was stating inaccurate information about engineering. This person repeatedly claimed I was harassing and doing this that and the other, but ultimately, I just was calling bullshit as I saw it and told that person they needed help, listed several psychiatric resources and MIT OpenCourse classes they could take to get educated.
I received a warning from a moderator. He knows who he is. I'm not going to play the slander game and say his name here, because ultimately that's not the point. The reason was "Insulting $druguser, do it again and be banned" so I backed off and let that person be.
All this time, alt-righters and SJWs were going at it in the forums. The moderators often times were doing nothing despite me and other users pointing out posts, such as one guy accusing Bollywood of "poowashing" and another person insinuating all white men were scum and should be killed.
I stayed out of that, until one user made fun of my religion. Now, normally I just walk away, but I was having a conversation in the thread with another user, so I told him, unless you want to piss me off, leave my religion out the discussion. He goes on for two posts along with another guy making fun of my religion, and not even utilizing things you can make fun of, instead conflating it with another ( Think Hindus vs. Jains ). So, I go on and correct him, write a note to the moderators in that forum post saying "Throwing in the towel in this topic, I've said my piece here. If you're going to let people like him say shit about religion, at least I had my say."
I get banned the following morning. Go into IRC, wait hours before falling asleep, find out they used it as an excuse to close my modqueue request. Ultimately, I'm not gonna go back at this point. I have nyaa and BakaBT, even if they're not the best. I'm sick of their cronyism and forum staff acting that way.
Ultimately, I could care less about my ban, I'm more concerned about that tracker's future. I've got terabytes of anime to watch, so I'm not concerned about myself, but I wish they wouldn't have taken this route.
If only Aldy, Amethyste, and the other moderators who made the community great never left, I think things would be different. In the end, all good things have to end.
My advice is, use the tracker for its anime, don't use it for the forums. I have a buddy on the inside, so ultimately, if the staff turns over again and is better, then maybe I'll see if I can get my account back, but as of right now, I'm sick of it.