Hasta la vista, baby.

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Citizens of the Imperium - the Cheers of scum and villainy on the internet.

"Where everybody knows your name...."

Well, they know our names anyway Jeff, most people here use a nickname. I use my real name just in case I meet somebody at a convention or vacation trip. </font>[/QUOTE]You know, we ought to have a Tennessee Traveller round-up one of these days. There seem to be a lot of us from that state.

 

[Seanr451]

I suppose that everyone will answer in the negative to the following question then.

Is it possible that JCD would still be with us if not for the rude manner in which he was treated be some members of CotI?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Seanr451:
I suppose that everyone will answer in the negative to the following question then.

Is it possible that JCD would still be with us if not for the rude manner in which he was treated be some members of CotI?

Bottom line, I don't think he was treated rudely by most of CotI.

If some people used slightly harsher than normal terminology in JCD's general direction . . . well, it's the RW here. Let's not all have paper thin skins and cry "Mommie!" every time someone says something we don't like. If I had turned tail the first time someone said something I didn't agree with, or attacked my position strongly, I'd have disappeared long ago. It takes a certain amount of backbone to post to the message boards, usenet groups, and mailing lists of the Internet. For every poster, there are many lurkers. Sometimes, would-be posters discover they can't hack it.

I have my own opinion of JCD, and what happened, and I could easily share it here, but I won't. As I mentioned, for the most part, I don't think the treatment was rude.

 

[far-trader]

I had chosen to just stay out of this (and the other thread) after my one post on it here despite the rising desire to respond to certain issues. I can't any longer. Or I should say won't.

Originally posted by Seanr451:
I suppose that everyone will answer in the negative to the following question then.

Is it possible that JCD would still be with us if not for the rude manner in which he was treated be some members of CotI?

Nice bit of assumption there Seanr451. Might as well ask is it possible that J.C.D. would still be with us if not for HIS rude manner in which he treated some members of CotI. Don't forget he was the one who started this with his hate campaign against a person from another board who isn't even here to defend himself.

He was asked, at first politely enough (and even to the end by some) to kindly cease and his response was to take it as a personal attack and bite back or ignore. Perhaps because some of it was public he felt he had to save face. Well I also PM'd him, early, to avoid that, and as far as I know he never even read that, despite being publicly asked and made aware of it sitting in his inbox, twice, to which he never replied either. Here is that PM, you tell me if it is rude:

Date: August 16

Subject: Please read this.

Message: Have you noticed a few posts that asked you to change your sig? Maybe you missed them. I think you missed an excellent post that did mention the real life Q-ships of the German Navy and just how effective they were so you might have missed the suggestions to dump the sig too. Please heed our freindly advice and drop it. Thanks.

After he finally relented and changed his "hate" sig he still missed no oppurtunity to plug a hate message whenever he could. We continued to, perhaps with less patience, tell him to get over it or at least drop it from his posts, but we never attacked or were rude in his posts on topic. He continued to ignore us. He had also at some point replaced his sig with a negative polititcal slogan and then added his public snub of a member of CotI who was doing nothing but trying to help him.

Of those of us who publicly asked and advised him, it was done to try to keep the forums a nice place for all and avoid having to bother Hunter at this time. We were just trying to help him get smoothly into the generally pleasant place this forum is. There were some "report posts" made when it was clear he wasn't getting the message but as far as I know from his attitude there were no measures taken directly from them. The report posts came after days or a week of his attitude and obvious denial that we had any "right" to tell him what was accepted behaviour. I again apologize for having to resort to bothering Hunter with this but it seemed necessary for the good of the board.

It was only when MJD stepped in and, politely enough from accounts, asked for J.C.D.'s attention to his attitude. And what did MJD get for his troubles? A typical answer from the sounds of it.

Meanwile I went to see what the latest was on a discussion I was in and the thread was gone. I at first thought another member had simply deleted their own post and so I couldn't find it but it soon became obvious that other posts were missing and the member I thought had a hand in it obviously couldn't have. I thought maybe it was a board refresh problem, for about 5 minutes, when I saw this thread. That answered the questions.

Not only had J.C.D. taken his ball and gone home vowing to never play with us again, but he broke our bat and threw the bases in the creek. And you wonder if we were rude? Now maybe he didn't know that deleting his first post would delete the whole topic but I doubt it. And even if he didn't know the disruption it would bring I'm pretty sure he didn't care, and from his attitude would just take it as a nice bit of bonus revenge for his perceived abuse.

Like I said, good riddance. I was willing to, and did, cut him a lot of slack early on. I figured he just needed to see that this was a different board than any he had likely ever encountered. It is a nice place and I'd like to keep it that way. If he had just dropped the 10ton chip on his shoulder he would have been very welcome here. His posts were great when he wasn't slipping in a hate message, which sadly was too often. If he were to come back with a fresh attitude he might be able to earn the trust and respect he lost but it won't be easy and I don't think he has it in him. Maybe when he grows up.

So, no Seanr451, I don't think J.C.D. would still be with us if not for the rude manner in which he was treated by some members of CotI because it was J.C.D. himself that caused the friction that wore away the polite manner in which he was treated with his rudeness and petty vendettas and ignorant attitude. I think it was inevitable that he would leave this board, voluntarily or not, like he has at least two other boards. And that is all I will say on it.

I apologize for the length and thank you for your time.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Seanr451:
Is it possible that JCD would still be with us if not for the rude manner in which he was treated be some members of CotI?

No.

I'd say "even ignoring his history..." but that wasn't possible because he was the one that insisted on reminding people about it. One bit of netiquiette about discussion boards - do not bring baggage from other boards with you.

His first sig (which went along the lines of 'SJG forums: A great board ruined by one lousy moderator') was just asking for trouble. Particularly since some of us knew that the moderator wasn't the problem. The fact that he couldn't resist sniping at Andrew with such immature crap as how he'd white-out his names on the credit pages of books or how he wished his picture was used on a target location chart showed that he had serious issues - particularly when JCD's banning from the SJG boards was very clearly his own damn fault. He had a history of initiating antagonism there, and what's more he tried to sneak back there after he'd been banned (which is another discussion board no-no).

If people have been banned from one board then I think people on other boards have a right to keep an eye on them at first, lest they just think they can act the same way here too - think of it as a kind of probationary period. Moderation here may be a lot less strict than elsewhere, but we do still have moderators.

Everyone is welcome here but when known troublemakers come from elsewhere then I think we are well within our rights to scrutinise their actions a little more than anyone else's at first. Unfortunately JCD just carried on here as he did on the SJG board and got on everyone's nerves pretty much straight away.

On that note, you yourself were also banned from the SJG forums. In your case, I do know that Andrew was not the one who banned you so stop blaming him for it. However, I do know that you were very insistent about dictating to SJG what they should do next, which undoubtedly annoyed them immensely and contributed to their decision to boot you. I also know that you managed to directly and piss specific people off at SJG with your behaviour (I'll reiterate MJD's comment on the 'recent unpleasantness' thread - "We're the people writing the game. This forum is your means to influence us. If you annoy us, we'll stop taking any notice of you."). So far you've not been as much of an idiot here as JCD was here though.

It's very much up to you whether you stay here or not - obviously if you were to attack the people at QLI like you did the ones at SJG (which I can't imagine you doing since I doubt you have as much interest in T20 as you do in GURPS) then I can guarantee that you won't be on these boards long.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

I have to chime in here on this, Malenfant and far-trader are correct in their assessment of J.C.D.'s attitude. From where I am sitting it looked like J.C.D. came to the board with a chip on his shoulder and then grew that chip into enough wood to form a cross upon which he promptly crucified himself. A lot of people were polite to him in voicing their disagreement. It didn't seem to matter. Whatever process that was operating inside J.C.D. did not require any outside input at all, it just happened and we're left with the mess.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
His first sig (which went along the lines of 'SJG forums: A great board ruined by one lousy moderator') was just asking for trouble.

Time is mitigating your memory of the severity.

It went:

Originally a Sig by J.C.D.:
SJG Forums: A great board ruined by one worthless excuse for a moderator.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Everyone is welcome here but when known troublemakers come from elsewhere then I think we are well within our rights to scrutinise their actions a little more than anyone else's at first.

I think that's unnecessary. A person's behavior will speak for itself.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Is it possible that his intention all along was just to harass the forum and then turn-tail leaving a long line of havoc behind him? I've been reading up on web harassment of late and find that this is a favored M.O. Maybe he was just trying to piss off a lot of people he had a grudge with from this other board.

Dameon

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sir Dameon Toth:
Is it possible that his intention all along was just to harass the forum and then turn-tail leaving a long line of havoc behind him?

One of my favorite maxims is: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by thoughtlessness[1].


Hans

[1] Actually, the word I usualy use is 'stupidity', but I thought the other was more politic.

 

[Malenfant]

Doubt it. I think he came here because he found another GT board after he got booted from the SJG one. He probably thought that nobody here would have heard of him (so it was rather stupid to come on with the same username as he had at SJG) and doubtless he imagined that he was completely without blame for what went down at SJG and didn't see any need to change his behaviour.

I don't think he was a hit-and-run troll here, he just clearly hadn't learned a darn thing from his experience at SJG and decided to blame everyone else except himself.

I think in an ideal world you should have to send the mods references before joining discussion boards. Then they can decide whether to let you join. That'd weed out a lot of troublemakers, but it'd be impossible to implement.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think in an ideal world you should have to send the mods references before joining discussion boards. Then they can decide whether to let you join. [...] but it'd be impossible to implement.

Yes, it would be impossible.

 

[RandyT0001]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think in an ideal world you should have to send the mods references before joining discussion boards. Then they can decide whether to let you join. That'd weed out a lot of troublemakers, but it'd be impossible to implement.

In this ideal world how would one come up with his first set of references to join his first board? How would one decide who can join, only those that have proven in the past to agree with the moderator or a polled majority of board members? What if they are clever enough to use a different nickname than used on other boards where they may have been kicked off, how would one handle that?

Of the over 6000+ members of which maybe about 300-500 have made a post, of that probably 100-200 have posted regularly we've had how many troublemakers? Four, six, eight? Let's not become emotional and overreact.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
[QB]In this ideal world how would one come up with his first set of references to join his first board?

You do know the meaning of 'in an ideal world', right? And you did actually read the bit where I very clearly said 'it'd be impossible to implement'?

I don't need to explain hows or whys, it's just idle daydreaming with no thought behind it.

 

[RandyT0001]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
You do know the meaning of 'in an ideal world', right? And you did actually read the bit where I very clearly said 'it'd be impossible to implement'?

I don't need to explain hows or whys, it's just idle daydreaming with no thought behind it.

I just thought that with your background as a planetary scientist that you might have been contacted by undercover Zhodani agents. Anyway I'm going to put my tinfoil hat I bought off the inernet a few months ago back on. Never know who's reading my thoughts (and I pity the poor guy assigned to monitor me; he'll die of boredom once my only bright idea dies of loneliness.)