Banned for life from English Amiga Board for NO specified reason - Appeal?

[Foebane]

I was on the English Amiga Board for years, because I needed to contact Toni Wilen of WinUAE fame and as far as I know, he only replies to questions there.

However, I got banned permanently months ago for defending the Amiga sound chip and inadvertantly insulting someone about it, but I'm not even sure if that's the reason why as none was ever given.

I'm just wondering if I can somehow contact a moderator at EAB to appeal their decision. I am deeply remorseful about the whole incident.

[Foebane]

I could join again under a different email and username, but I'm sure they look for IP addresses so that wouldn't work.

[Foebane]

Is no-one going to comment?

Is there at least a way of contacting Toni Wilen about WinUAE use outside of EAB?

[Foebane]

I was given no warning. It suddenly happened.

The context is, someone was saying synth sound chips were superior to Paula and I told them to eff off in a moment of rage defending Paula, left the post for several hours and came back to find the banned message.

Now I know there are rules on EAB, as in any site, but I wasn't specifically insulting the person, I'm sure. Either way, I would've been given my warning then, but no.

I just found it unfair that they banned me for no reason as specified, not even mentioned the above, and somehow expect me to figure the reason out for myself, let alone accept it. I would at least like an appeal.

[Foebane]

I don't think I had my settings so I could get emails from EAB at all, I opted out of them... I think. If I didn't, I never thought to check spam or email at all.

It wouldn't be an issue at all, but it seems Toni Wilen only posts and replies to comments on EAB, I saw no contact address in the WinUAE documentation.

Also, EAB is mostly, almost all about the games, yet I prefer Amiga demos.

However, the latest WinUAE is behaving strangely with my old configurations, it seems that JIT is slowing to a crawl on 4.9.0 and I don't know if Toni is deprecating JIT at all or not.

[Foebane]

I was sorry to see you'd been banned as well, Pat the Cat, my commiserations.

But if Toni has changed the config system entirely, it's time for me to create new configurations as well.

[Foebane]

The thing is, I'm using WinUAEs 4.0.1, 4.2.0 and 4.9.0 (the latter for just one demo that doesn't work on the other two, and for potential future ones).

I've got Windows 10, and I haven't yet come across a Windows update that has broken WinUAE functionality, so I figure if the old versions work fine, then why change the demos to work on the new one? Very old Win32 programs still work fine on Windows 10, and they wouldn't deliberately break them for a new Windows version, for compatibility's sake. And some people, especially the US military, still use WinXP, long after it was discontinued and lost support.

A potential problem could be Windows 11, but I've decided I'm not going to upgrade for many years yet, if at all. I actually wish I'd never upgraded from Win7.

Anyway, if particular old WinUAE versions work on my current Windows, why upgrade? 4.0.1, the oldest, is only a few years old anyway, and while on EAB I saw many queries to Toni from people using ancient versions of WinUAE from the Noughties!

I don't think upgrading WinUAE is strictly a necessity at the moment. Besides, it'll give Toni time to iron out the sheer number of bugs in his rewrite, because, as I said, JIT looks broken at the moment.

[Foebane]

I was on EAB for literally about ten years, I discovered to my surprise after I was banned, and I don't recall ever being temporarily banned for anything I posted.

HOWEVER, I remember that months before my permanent ban, I did start a thread about a Demoscene production that used a derogatory expression for the Amiga as its title, and I used it for the thread title, and I suppose that could be seen as inciting to troll and provoke people, and it certainly sparked debate as to, in my wording at the time, why an Amiga demo would bash the platform like this. The irony is, the Amiga demo in question had Japanese characters in its title and google did the translation for me, which was very open to interpretation, so the bashing wasn't obvious.

In the end, after the discussion was done, the mods closed the thread and gave me a polite warning and NO ban, not even temporary. So I suppose that, in combination with the main infraction, was enough to ban me for life.

I should've mentioned this at the start, but I really didn't think it would be relevant. And the rules for posting on EAB do say not to insult anyone outright.

[Foebane]

Sorry to hear you were banned from EAB, Pat. I'm certain I remember your avatar, if not your name, at least.

I wouldn't give a damn about EAB neither, but what do you do about WinUAE queries?

[Foebane]

If these arbitrary bans keep happening at EAB, then maybe Toni Wilen should be a Developer Admin someplace else. Otherwise, it's just an elitist club for Amiga fans who don't rock the boat. I just think it's aggravating that I can't even contact him, all I can do is to lurk around his section of EAB and hope someone posts with similar issues to me.