Post by Dustbuddy on Mar 17, 2006 8:39:42 GMT -5
Just in case my post gets deleted, this is what I wrote in this discussion. It all started when I became the latest person to be accused of being somebody else's sock puppet. Joking about this, I wrote
and some drama followed, some it due to one of the mods sad to say, to which I responded. Profanity has been replaced out of respect for Probaboard's TOS. You can probably guess where.
Spec, in the words of a longterm critic of this forum, "step back from the discussion, count to a thousand, come back to the discussion and see that you've been played". Shedding so much heat that nobody notices that he is shedding no light has been Rockdad's strategy of choice throughout. I know that you've had differences with HughMungus. One only has to do a search to see how many, and I'm not necessarily saying that you were in the wrong during all of those disputes, but that old saying about the enemy of your enemy being your friend is a crock. The mere fact of somebody else being Hugh's enemy wouldn't necessarily imply that the person in question was being a productive or civilized presence on the board at the moment, even if Hugh had been trolling nonstop - and would you really want to argue that he has been?
I've moderated forums before, so I know what a board looks like from a mod's point of view, and I know that you know darned well that I'm not Hugh. Somewhere near the bottom of this post, as you see it on your screen, you should find my IP address. A simple IP lookup - and there are a lot of sites where you can do those - will show you that I'm posting from a small ISP in Northern Illinois that has no out of state dialup numbers, a fact that my primary ISP will confirm. Hugh lives in Reno, literally thousands of miles from me. How could we possibly be the same person?
The whole thing is absurd and it's a kind of absurdity that ePlaya is getting deservedly notorious for - random sock puppet accusations, used as a form of mudslinging against the newbies whenever an argument isn't going the way one of the regulars would like. This is part of what Rockdad did to me, in response to the fact that when he was less than forthcoming about what one of his cited sources had to say, I called him on what he had done. That's not a "difference of opinion", Spec, that's just wrong under any civilized standard of behavior.
If I had gotten really angry about that incident and started venting about it, I would have been 100% within my rights, but I didn't do that. Instead, I joked about the absurdity of a scenario that keeps playing itself out on this board over and over, and will continue to do so as long as defamation of character continues to be a respected tool of debate in this forum. Demonstrating that somebody has lied about what one of his cited sources had to say is not defamation of character. That's just responsible scholarship in the face of fraud, and demonstrate the point I did - just follow the links. On the other hand, slinging irrelevant personal accusations designed to provoke ridicule for the purpose of constructing an ad hominem argument IS defamation of character, and I should hope that a moderator would know the difference. May I assume that you do?
If so, then with all due respect, I would say "please lighten the Heck up". Joking about a genuinely, outrageously offensive situation is a lot less provocative than screaming about it, and in the long run, friend, it is one or the other. Anger does not stay bottled up forever; it is either released at the right moment, in the rough direction of the person who has earned it, or it gets choked back, held in deep until the person who has been angered forgets who he is angry at and why, and his anger spills out, barely disguised, onto some innocent bystander. I'm not going to poison my own spirit and the lives of those around me, even a little, taking the next small step in the direction of becoming that kind of person, just to go along with an exaggerated and misplaced sympathy for a misbehaving member of the board, who wants to make a scene about the fact that he's been called to task for his misbehavior, by somebody who's backed up his accusations with solid evidence.
Like Hugh said, this is just a board. If the mods want to treat people fairly, and their good spirit sets a good tone for the place, maybe it can become a good board to post to, but if the rule is going to be "tread lightly around the crazy people, because they make the rules", forget it. Been there, done that, don't need another ulcer that badly and certainly not over a darned board. At every point, I'm going to do what I know is right. If that's good enough for the mods, cool, and I look forward to being a constructive presence on this board - an assertively constructive presence. If not, it's your loss and I sure as Hell am not going to work that hard to get out to spend $250, if being expected to swallow somebody else's excrement is now going to be a nonnegotiable part of this vacation package. I doubt very seriously that I'll be alone in feeling this way, especially given the reality of the glaring loopiness of the discussion that lead up to this, in the first place.
Clear enough?
Recently, over on the Sept.11 camp thread, I became you! (1 2)
You can imagine my surprise. I've never been anybody other than me before, so being transformed into one of your avatars completely threw me. Now that we're one and the same person, I was wondering if you could offer me some advice on how to be you.
That, and if you could tell me why, if I'm you (implying that I'm living in Nevada), why it looked like I was still in the Midwest when I was walking around a few minutes ago? Big tall trees and not a mountain in sight. Was I seeing things? Have I/you/we been hitting the sauce, again, and if so, as your avatar, will I have to worry about getting your headaches? All of this alternative epistemology has me so confused. Please clear things up for me while I ponder the wonder of it all in an irony-free way, of course.
You can imagine my surprise. I've never been anybody other than me before, so being transformed into one of your avatars completely threw me. Now that we're one and the same person, I was wondering if you could offer me some advice on how to be you.
That, and if you could tell me why, if I'm you (implying that I'm living in Nevada), why it looked like I was still in the Midwest when I was walking around a few minutes ago? Big tall trees and not a mountain in sight. Was I seeing things? Have I/you/we been hitting the sauce, again, and if so, as your avatar, will I have to worry about getting your headaches? All of this alternative epistemology has me so confused. Please clear things up for me while I ponder the wonder of it all in an irony-free way, of course.
and some drama followed, some it due to one of the mods sad to say, to which I responded. Profanity has been replaced out of respect for Probaboard's TOS. You can probably guess where.
gee, thanks for people spreading personal differences around, especially appreciate creating a whole new topic for it.
Spec, in the words of a longterm critic of this forum, "step back from the discussion, count to a thousand, come back to the discussion and see that you've been played". Shedding so much heat that nobody notices that he is shedding no light has been Rockdad's strategy of choice throughout. I know that you've had differences with HughMungus. One only has to do a search to see how many, and I'm not necessarily saying that you were in the wrong during all of those disputes, but that old saying about the enemy of your enemy being your friend is a crock. The mere fact of somebody else being Hugh's enemy wouldn't necessarily imply that the person in question was being a productive or civilized presence on the board at the moment, even if Hugh had been trolling nonstop - and would you really want to argue that he has been?
I've moderated forums before, so I know what a board looks like from a mod's point of view, and I know that you know darned well that I'm not Hugh. Somewhere near the bottom of this post, as you see it on your screen, you should find my IP address. A simple IP lookup - and there are a lot of sites where you can do those - will show you that I'm posting from a small ISP in Northern Illinois that has no out of state dialup numbers, a fact that my primary ISP will confirm. Hugh lives in Reno, literally thousands of miles from me. How could we possibly be the same person?
The whole thing is absurd and it's a kind of absurdity that ePlaya is getting deservedly notorious for - random sock puppet accusations, used as a form of mudslinging against the newbies whenever an argument isn't going the way one of the regulars would like. This is part of what Rockdad did to me, in response to the fact that when he was less than forthcoming about what one of his cited sources had to say, I called him on what he had done. That's not a "difference of opinion", Spec, that's just wrong under any civilized standard of behavior.
If I had gotten really angry about that incident and started venting about it, I would have been 100% within my rights, but I didn't do that. Instead, I joked about the absurdity of a scenario that keeps playing itself out on this board over and over, and will continue to do so as long as defamation of character continues to be a respected tool of debate in this forum. Demonstrating that somebody has lied about what one of his cited sources had to say is not defamation of character. That's just responsible scholarship in the face of fraud, and demonstrate the point I did - just follow the links. On the other hand, slinging irrelevant personal accusations designed to provoke ridicule for the purpose of constructing an ad hominem argument IS defamation of character, and I should hope that a moderator would know the difference. May I assume that you do?
If so, then with all due respect, I would say "please lighten the Heck up". Joking about a genuinely, outrageously offensive situation is a lot less provocative than screaming about it, and in the long run, friend, it is one or the other. Anger does not stay bottled up forever; it is either released at the right moment, in the rough direction of the person who has earned it, or it gets choked back, held in deep until the person who has been angered forgets who he is angry at and why, and his anger spills out, barely disguised, onto some innocent bystander. I'm not going to poison my own spirit and the lives of those around me, even a little, taking the next small step in the direction of becoming that kind of person, just to go along with an exaggerated and misplaced sympathy for a misbehaving member of the board, who wants to make a scene about the fact that he's been called to task for his misbehavior, by somebody who's backed up his accusations with solid evidence.
Like Hugh said, this is just a board. If the mods want to treat people fairly, and their good spirit sets a good tone for the place, maybe it can become a good board to post to, but if the rule is going to be "tread lightly around the crazy people, because they make the rules", forget it. Been there, done that, don't need another ulcer that badly and certainly not over a darned board. At every point, I'm going to do what I know is right. If that's good enough for the mods, cool, and I look forward to being a constructive presence on this board - an assertively constructive presence. If not, it's your loss and I sure as Hell am not going to work that hard to get out to spend $250, if being expected to swallow somebody else's excrement is now going to be a nonnegotiable part of this vacation package. I doubt very seriously that I'll be alone in feeling this way, especially given the reality of the glaring loopiness of the discussion that lead up to this, in the first place.
Clear enough?
