[quote=ASTA]GMs like these seem to be badly confused as to what their title truly entails, for their station is really only guaranteed true legitimacy so long as they have players that are willing to stick around for the ride. Typically, no one's going to persist in a thread when there's a shitlord on the loose in it, and I don't think a GM is really much of a GM when his or her thread has nothing to show for itself other than a cool breeze and some chirping crickets.[/quote]

Doesn't this problem solve itself? The GM's word is law to those players in their RP, but if the GM behaves like a tit, there won't be any players to behave like a tit to?

Obviously being a tit is being a tit and should be discouraged at all times, but a GM's role, to me, is to present their idea and persuade others to come along for the ride. Ultimately, the core content is (usually) the GM's, and, as such, they have creative ownership over it. This means, surely, that they have the right to control, if they so choose, those things that affect their creation: the players, the players' characters, rules, gaming systems, plot directions, etc.

As you say, if a GM does this over-zealously, there won't be any players, and, thus, very little RP, so you'd think they'd learn not to. Then again, they do surely have the right to reject an addition to their RP that they don't like without even having to have reason or logic, and citing personal preference? That can, of course, be done in the polite form of:
[indent]I don't feel like it's right for this RP[/indent]
rather than
[indent]It's a bad idea because X[/indent]

Isn't it just basically about manners, at the end of the day?