Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: BANNED MEMBERS

[Guest guest]

To those that don't know of whom Zoo speaks and what they've posted

elsewhere, it may seem draconian. However, evidence must be weighed.

Logical.

Reasonable.

Polarizing.

Likely unpopular.

Reduces insanity on this board, at least: if someone is in complete

disagreement with your impartiality/qualifications, I would logically

expect them to always give you grief in the future, stirring up

dissention with intense disrespect. They will likely always expect

you to bend over backwards in proving your motives for your actions

are fair and just, and complain if they don't think they are.

Actually.... oh, never mind

StrictNon-Conformist

>

> To date I have not needed to ban or terminate members for any other

> reason or infraction. However, two of us have questioned my

> moderating skills on another board and suggested that I step away

> from my post there.

>

> As they are members here, I see it as a conflict of interest that

> they should be demanding my resignation elsewhere but still claim

> the full benefit of such ammenities as we have here.

>

> I have terminated their memberships in this group, seeing as they

> implied my moderating skills are in general...well...bad...no

matter

> where I am moderating. I have terminated their memberships not as

a

> punishment, but simply because, since I am the sole administrator

of

> this forum, there is no way that I could satisfactorily reconcile

> their issues.

>

> One of these members has never posted and wished to remain

> anonymous, therefore I will preserve that anonymity and not name

> that member. But because the other member has posted, it would be

> wrong of me for you to post to her, expecting a response and simply

> never get one and not know why. And so it is with great dismay that

> I say that Drunkard's Walk has had her membership terminated.

>

> I felt it necessary to give you this statement. It is very

> difficult for all. I only wish that things could have worked out.

>

> Zoologist

[Guest guest]

StrictNon-Conformist:

> To those that don't know of whom Zoo speaks and what they've posted

elsewhere, it may seem draconian. However, evidence must be weighed.

> Logical.

> Reasonable.

> Polarizing.

> Likely unpopular.

> Reduces insanity on this board, at least: if someone is in complete

disagreement with your impartiality/qualifications, I would logically

expect them to always give you grief in the future, stirring up

dissention with intense disrespect. They will likely always expect

you to bend over backwards in proving your motives for your actions

are fair and just, and complain if they don't think they are.

> Actually.... oh, never mind

I totally trust Tom's judgement. It is very rare for me to come across

people whose judgement i trust so much, but i have seen nothing but

fairness, intelligence and maturity so far.

Inger

[Guest guest]

Wendi:

This is the crux of the matter: while the most recent banning

involved someone that has had a past history at Aspergia.com, that

person had created quite a history with all people involved, other

than perhaps Crucibelle, before he was banned.

The two banned by Zoo here were not only defending the " rights " of

the one that was most recently banned, they were also openly defiant

and attacking the credibility of Crucibelle and the other two

moderators in a very personal way for all members to see, making

accusations that they were not being at all fair to the one most

recently banned, and not taking evidence demonstrated online at AI

into account, even what they could clearly see. They made wild

accusations based on their personal assumptions without getting the

side information from all of the moderators and Crucibelle. All

this, while clearly denying that it was a personal attack on the

moderators.

As I expect the other two did (Crucibelle and Queenbee) Zoologist

found the accusations very disrespectful not only in the accusations,

but also in the manner they were made: out in the open for everyone

else to see, so that they may use emotional blackmail on the

moderators to " be impartial " by restricting Zoologist from having

anything to do with the banned member. I am making the inference

that Crucibelle (in the end) found the whole thing rather unpleasant,

as noted by the new sticky post indicating the procedure for

addressing such complaints.

I openly will state that I side completely with Zoologist in the

handling of this matter; I've had personal experience with dealing

with personal confidences and information not visible to the outside

observer in administering sensitive matters like this in real life.

I will also state quite clearly (I also stated this in my posts in

the " unjust " thread) that I believe that the two Zoologist banned

from here have been unwittingly beguiled by the most recently banned

individual into thinking they are more angelic than outside evidence

in clear sight has shown to everyone else that reads it.

So, as a result of personally taking offense to the personal attacks

on the moderators of AI, as well as the knowledge that they were far

more lenient in the case of the second individual with a past history

than observation warranted (perhaps the time lag of not being able to

discuss things together as a group of moderators contributed to this:

a real world consequence of people existing in different time zones

with different schedules and other things to do than admin/moderate a

forum) and private communication from an unstated number of other

individuals that relayed to me the dampening effect this individual

had on anyone that looked at the board (and that's only the ones that

had enough nerve to speak up to someone!) and contemplated joining,

it was painfully clear to me that not only were they more than not

being overly personal in the method and banning, if anything, they

were unable to stop the damage soon enough to be optimal. Now,

consider what I said above about them having real life cause them

delays, as well as the intentions of trying to make it as impartial

as possible.

Also, consider this: the person most recently banned on AI had

sufficient chance to remove the most offensive and off-putting posts

that had scared off those that I'm personally aware of via PM before

they were banned, and not a single effort was made to even tone it

down for those posts. So, while perhaps they contributed some non-

bannable (and maybe remotely valuable) posts before they were banned,

no remorse in the least was shown for their behavior.

Being someone that hates to see a system torn apart by screaming,

emotionally-charged, illogical people intent on emotional blackmail,

I got frustrated, and did what I'm very good at: parsing reality and

breaking it down for others to follow. What the two that were banned

today by Zoologist from this forum did comes under the legal

definition of libel: to ridicule/show contempt for someone in public,

as well as doing their best to ruin their reputations based on their

accusations, without sufficient information to back up their claims.

I proceeded to shoot down their complaints and claims, one by one.

In effect, the two people involved wish to be armchair moderators:

everything is fine, as long as they say it is fine, regardless of

whether or not they have the right to inflict such judgments on the

discussion forums, and they weren't afraid to shame the legitimate

moderators publicly into getting their way. They were doing their

best to goad the moderators into admitting that they were not

impartial. All this, while having agreed previously to the terms of

the discussion forum, which Crucibelle setup in advance. Well, as I

mentioned in the thread, AI and how it is governed is NOT a

democracy, and anyone other than the moderators and Crucibelle have

no right to expect anything to go exactly how they want it. It is a

democracy insofar as every member may stay and live in agreement to

the terms of service, or may leave, never to visit again.

Was I kind in how I responded to the two people attacking the

admin/moderators on AI? I was less concerned for their feelings,

actually, than in ensuring that they didn't bring down the system

into externally-induced anarchy based on pure biased opinions. I

also had in mind the objective of trying to ensure that anyone

interested in staying/joining wouldn't be scared off by the thought

that there are people that might have control in such a way as to

allow people like the one most recently banned to come back and cause

trouble without consequences. Not all people are nearly as outspoken

or as eloquently spoken as I am, and are more timid than I am, in not

wanting to become a target of attack to anyone. I'm not afraid to

speak up and defend what I feel is correct, regardless of how many

feathers it ruffles: part of my personal philosophy is that it's

better to live with hearing an ugly truth than a beautiful lie,

because at least with an ugly truth, you can build around reality

without it coming crashing down on you at an inopportune time.

The two people involved (as well as the most recently banned person

on AI) have as a central flaw the sin of ingratitude.

It is an interesting thing to compare how AI has thus far been

governed when it comes to such issues as inflammatory posts, when

stood up against another Aspergia jump off point: AFF. Whereas AI

has preserved the evidence of how and why members have been banned in

all its gory, AI has done things very quietly in the background,

without a lot of the members even knowing what has happened. They

have also (based on what others have said) deleted posts that didn't

seem to fit in with their desires otherwise. Despite the fact that

they've been up and going longer, it's interesting to note that when

they switched to their final site and a different forum system (looks

suspiciously like what we had on AI and Aspergia.com ) that they

lost a huge number of members. It would be interesting to know

exactly what has happened at AI as a result of all this flap lately.

Well, this post is quite long enough already, and I expect some

people have fallen asleep

StrictNon-Conformist

> IMO, the important facts are as follows:

>

> The only people who can know all the details of what went on behind

the

> scenes during the recent events at AI are the other 2 moderators.

>

> The other moderators have not asked you to step down.

>

> I can only deduce from the above that you are being as impartial as

you

> possibly can be in your moderator role on AI.

>

> Wendi

> PS - I must have missed something because I have no idea who the

other

> member is.

>

>

> <SNIP>

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the long explanation, Strict. (I almost made it to the end.) ;-)

I had no idea what's been going on, but felt enough trust in Tom anyway.

Seems i always miss the action since i am often too busy elsewhere to read

every thread. Is it the " caveman " incident you're all still talking about,

or has there been another one (perhaps reptilian?) incident after that? Are

the relevant threads still around?

Inger

> This is the crux of the matter: while the most recent banning

involved someone that has had a past history at Aspergia.com, that

person had created quite a history with all people involved, other

than perhaps Crucibelle, before he was banned.

> The two banned by Zoo here were not only defending the " rights " of

the one that was most recently banned, they were also openly defiant

and attacking the credibility of Crucibelle and the other two

moderators in a very personal way for all members to see, making

accusations that they were not being at all fair to the one most

recently banned, and not taking evidence demonstrated online at AI

into account, even what they could clearly see. They made wild

accusations based on their personal assumptions without getting the

side information from all of the moderators and Crucibelle. All

this, while clearly denying that it was a personal attack on the

moderators.

> As I expect the other two did (Crucibelle and Queenbee) Zoologist

found the accusations very disrespectful not only in the accusations,

but also in the manner they were made: out in the open for everyone

else to see, so that they may use emotional blackmail on the

moderators to " be impartial " by restricting Zoologist from having

anything to do with the banned member. I am making the inference

that Crucibelle (in the end) found the whole thing rather unpleasant,

as noted by the new sticky post indicating the procedure for

addressing such complaints.

> I openly will state that I side completely with Zoologist in the

handling of this matter; I've had personal experience with dealing

with personal confidences and information not visible to the outside

observer in administering sensitive matters like this in real life.

I will also state quite clearly (I also stated this in my posts in

the " unjust " thread) that I believe that the two Zoologist banned

from here have been unwittingly beguiled by the most recently banned

individual into thinking they are more angelic than outside evidence

in clear sight has shown to everyone else that reads it.

> So, as a result of personally taking offense to the personal attacks

on the moderators of AI, as well as the knowledge that they were far

more lenient in the case of the second individual with a past history

than observation warranted (perhaps the time lag of not being able to

discuss things together as a group of moderators contributed to this:

a real world consequence of people existing in different time zones

with different schedules and other things to do than admin/moderate a

forum) and private communication from an unstated number of other

individuals that relayed to me the dampening effect this individual

had on anyone that looked at the board (and that's only the ones that

had enough nerve to speak up to someone!) and contemplated joining,

it was painfully clear to me that not only were they more than not

being overly personal in the method and banning, if anything, they

were unable to stop the damage soon enough to be optimal. Now,

consider what I said above about them having real life cause them

delays, as well as the intentions of trying to make it as impartial

as possible.

> Also, consider this: the person most recently banned on AI had

sufficient chance to remove the most offensive and off-putting posts

that had scared off those that I'm personally aware of via PM before

they were banned, and not a single effort was made to even tone it

down for those posts. So, while perhaps they contributed some non-

bannable (and maybe remotely valuable) posts before they were banned,

no remorse in the least was shown for their behavior.

> Being someone that hates to see a system torn apart by screaming,

emotionally-charged, illogical people intent on emotional blackmail,

I got frustrated, and did what I'm very good at: parsing reality and

breaking it down for others to follow. What the two that were banned

today by Zoologist from this forum did comes under the legal

definition of libel: to ridicule/show contempt for someone in public,

as well as doing their best to ruin their reputations based on their

accusations, without sufficient information to back up their claims.

I proceeded to shoot down their complaints and claims, one by one.

> In effect, the two people involved wish to be armchair moderators:

everything is fine, as long as they say it is fine, regardless of

whether or not they have the right to inflict such judgments on the

discussion forums, and they weren't afraid to shame the legitimate

moderators publicly into getting their way. They were doing their

best to goad the moderators into admitting that they were not

impartial. All this, while having agreed previously to the terms of

the discussion forum, which Crucibelle setup in advance. Well, as I

mentioned in the thread, AI and how it is governed is NOT a

democracy, and anyone other than the moderators and Crucibelle have

no right to expect anything to go exactly how they want it. It is a

democracy insofar as every member may stay and live in agreement to

the terms of service, or may leave, never to visit again.

> Was I kind in how I responded to the two people attacking the

admin/moderators on AI? I was less concerned for their feelings,

actually, than in ensuring that they didn't bring down the system

into externally-induced anarchy based on pure biased opinions. I

also had in mind the objective of trying to ensure that anyone

interested in staying/joining wouldn't be scared off by the thought

that there are people that might have control in such a way as to

allow people like the one most recently banned to come back and cause

trouble without consequences. Not all people are nearly as outspoken

or as eloquently spoken as I am, and are more timid than I am, in not

wanting to become a target of attack to anyone. I'm not afraid to

speak up and defend what I feel is correct, regardless of how many

feathers it ruffles: part of my personal philosophy is that it's

better to live with hearing an ugly truth than a beautiful lie,

because at least with an ugly truth, you can build around reality

without it coming crashing down on you at an inopportune time.

> The two people involved (as well as the most recently banned person

on AI) have as a central flaw the sin of ingratitude.

> It is an interesting thing to compare how AI has thus far been

governed when it comes to such issues as inflammatory posts, when

stood up against another Aspergia jump off point: AFF. Whereas AI

has preserved the evidence of how and why members have been banned in

all its gory, AI has done things very quietly in the background,

without a lot of the members even knowing what has happened. They

have also (based on what others have said) deleted posts that didn't

seem to fit in with their desires otherwise. Despite the fact that

they've been up and going longer, it's interesting to note that when

they switched to their final site and a different forum system (looks

suspiciously like what we had on AI and Aspergia.com ) that they

lost a huge number of members. It would be interesting to know

exactly what has happened at AI as a result of all this flap lately.

> Well, this post is quite long enough already, and I expect some

people have fallen asleep

> StrictNon-Conformist