Monday - April 24, 2006

The Other Side

Good morning, troops. I hope you’re having a good time today as the week starts. I’m writing this on the Friday before the day you’re reading this. I’ve got a lot on my mind so I might as well get it started. This post concerns the recent events surrounding several fights and arguments breaking out between a few members here, the resulting banning of those offending members and their childish attacks on me for having booted them out. Before I begin, I want you to read this first:

All messages posted at this site express the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the owners and administrators of this site.

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Do you recognize that text? You should. Before you can become a member here, you have to read this on the registration page and click “I Agree” to these terms and conditions before you become a member. If you don’t click, you don’t become a member. If you did click, you agreed to abide by the terms and conditions stated. The terms consist of only four sentences in three paragraphs. They’re so simple that any individual over the age of 6 can understand them. Unfortunately, some people still fail to grasp the concept. Possibly because their adult development stopped in Kindergarten.

Here it is in a nutshell for everyone out there: (1) this is my blog, I pay the bills; (2) I provide the posts and give you a place to express your views and discuss them among others, I do this without requiring any fee or compensation; (3) you are free to donate to offset the costs but are not required or even badgered to do so; (4) donating does not give you a stake in this blog nor does it give you any control over this blog in any manner whatsoever; (5) you may say what you please in the comments but I may not agree with them; (6) if you post comments that I consider offensive your ass may be booted out; (7) I may decide to edit your comments or delete them whenever I deem it necessary.

Now, some believe those rules are arrogant, unfair, censorious and/or “toxic” (actually, these are the standard “terms of service” that ship with the ExperssionEngine blog software - I saw no reason to alter them). My reply to that is simple: refer to item (1) in the paragraph above. This blog is neither a democracy nor a corporation of shareholders. It is a “Benevolent Dictatorship”, as my former partner used to say. In fact, if you check around the blogosphere you’ll find the same rules apply at just about every blog out there. Don’t believe it? Try going to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller and telling Misha, “F**k you, you miserable fat c**ksucker!” You’ll be lucky if all you get is thrown out. More likely, you’ll get an earful of choice language regarding your parentage and THEN thrown out. Still don’t believe me? Then try going to Democratic Underground and post a comment saying, “I like George Bush and I think all you pricks are full of s**t”. You will be swiftly banned and the members there will still be attacking you three days afterward.

So what’s the beef from these members who were banned here last week? The hell if I know. Every one of them, with one exception, was given a chance to settle down and stop behaving badly. Some were given several chances. In the end, I could not reason with any of them so the Secret Service was called and all of these terrorists were frog-marched out of the blog and deported.

That’s when the temper tantrums started. They formed a cabal of Taliban-wannabe’s and flocked from one sympathetic blog to another, screeching their hatred and Cindy Sheehan-like madness at me from other platforms. A vicious e-mail campaign was launched expressing hatred of me and encouraging people to avoid coming here. Public statements were made, and are still recorded out there, in an effort to harm me and this blog. Slander.

Slander

A type of defamation. Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person’s reputation or standing in the community. Because slander is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement. Some statements, such as an untrue accusation of having committed a crime, having a loathsome disease or being unable to perform one’s occupation, are treated as slander per se since the harm and malice are obvious and therefore usually result in general and even punitive damage recovery by the person harmed. If the statement is made via broadcast media—for example, over the radio or on TV—it is considered libel, rather than slander, because the statement has the potential to reach a very wide audience.

-- Westlaw

Now slander is sometimes difficult to prove unless the offense is especially egregious and proof is readily observed that actionable harm has been done. At least that is what I have been told by legal counsel. We shall see.

I will recount for you what happened as briefly as possible. The whole dispute started between OldCatMan and Z-Woof. The antagonism between these two had been building for weeks and I had been trying to keep an eye on their comments and separate them when it became necessary. I sent several private e-mails to both asking them to “tone it down”. Finally, on April 9, I posted a stern reprimand to “certain members” with the sincere hope that these two would take a hint and knock it off. Z-Woof disappeared for three days. OldCatMan decided to start a war.

OldCatMan: The next day, OldCatman decided to launch a personal attack against me in a vicious e-mail campaign, spamming everyone in his address book - which included quite a few members of this blog. There are two things I won’t forgive and will get you banned from this blog in a heartbeat: (1) personal attacks against me and (2) spamming members of this blog. OldCatMan was banned for both reasons.

OldCatMan continued his vicious e-mail campaign and even began to escalate his attacks. At that point I decided to fight back. I don’t fight fair. Period. Make a note of that. I did a little research at LexisNexis and managed to uncover OldCatMan’s true identity, his address and his phone number. I did this because he has (1) taken great care to hide his identity while (2) publicly posting about his cultivation and use of drugs. I then sent him an e-mail with the identity information as well as the address and phone number of local law enforcement in his community. I told him I had turned him in. Of course, I hadn’t actually done any such thing but I needed the threat to get him off my back since no amount of reason was working. It worked. He has left me alone, preferring to hide behind the skirts of another former member who was also banned.

SouthernDoll: this young lady was banned because she decided to publicly defend OldCatMan here in the comments. I asked her to stay out of it as her participation was only serving to keep the whole sorry mess going. She became enraged at me and sent several e-mails accusing me of censoring her and trying to convince me to ban Z-Woof. I told her it was not my job to take sides. My job is now and has always been to keep the peace. Again, reason did not work so I banned her to keep her from feeding the flames of the dispute. More than that I cannot say about her as there is legal action pending.

Annoying Little Twerp: out of this entire bunch, Barb is the one I regret having to ban. I have never had a beef with her and I even helped her get her own blog started last year. Unfortunately, she must have figured since everyone was jumping on me about banning OldCatMan and SouthernDoll that then would be a good time to jump on me about another member who was banned several months ago. This was in the third day of this miserable mess and my nerves were shot and my temper was boiling. She publicly posted a request for information as to why the other person had been banned. I replied privately that it was none of her business and to leave it alone. She persisted and publicly posted an argument against me for having banned this other person. If Barb had kept it private and simply e-mailed me, I would probably have given her an explanation. I had already done this for another member who inquired. Since she made it a public confrontation, I had no choice but to boot her out. My temper got away with me and I used some very bad language in the notification e-mail. I apologize for that but the ban stands.

Oink: he doesn’t understand why he was banned and to tell you the truth there was no clear-cut offense given by him to merit being banned. This was just a case of “preventive action”. During the first few days of OldCatMan’s rampage, I received dozens of e-mails from distressed members who had received these hateful e-mails from OldCatMan. Some of them received these e-mails from Oink. Oink and OldCatman have been close friends for quite some time and in spite of the avatar games I’ve played with him, I’ve never had a real beef with Oink. He does love to taunt people occasionally and sometimes he crosses the line but has always apologized and backed off when he has offended someone. Oink followed OldCatMan to a few other blogs where several hateful, vicious statements were made about me. Oink did not defend me even once. He was also coming back here, reading the posts and commenting here. I perceived a man sitting on the fence who seemed to be helping his buddy attack me in e-mails and at the same time coming here to enjoy my hospitality. I waffled a long time over this decision but in the end decided to ban Oink and eventually sent him a simple polite e-mal telling him so.

Z-Woof: Z-Woof did stay out of the mess for several days. However, just when I thought things were finally going to calm down and return to normal, he decided to go after OldCatMan and Oink at a few other blogs, relentlessly pursuing them from one to another and starting the same fight. Oddly enough, he also started sending me e-mails about another member at this blog who he had decided was “acting weird”. Enough is enough. I banned Z-Woof for reasons of temporary insanity.

That is the entire list. No one else was banned. One person thought she was banned because she was unable to access the site. Explanation: when I banned OldCtMan I also blocked his ISP to keep him from reading here. I do this to some people I ban to give them a chance to cool off without any access to the blog. In this case, Diamond Mair just happened to be on the same ISP. She sent an e-mail to the webmaster of this blog’s e-mail which is the one given on the IP Block Page. Unfortunately, that is a dead-letter e-mail that I rarely, if ever, check. I was not aware of her misconception until someone sent me an e-mail regarding a comment she made at another blog. That’s all there is to it. The ISP block was lifted after a few days, as it always is (except in one unfortunate case last summer).

A few other members have left and gone to other blog sites to post vicious comments about me and join the group named above. I have quietly cancelled their membership. Why? Because they condemned me after hearing only one side of a dispute. I have no use for people who start throwing stones before hearing both sides of an argument or dispute. To them I say, “Go in peace. You won’t be missed.”

One thing you have to remember: no one is forcing you to come here. There are about 16 million other blogs out there. I encourage you to visit them and get a wide and diverse set of opinions to better enable you to make decisions and understand world events. I am immensely thankful that you choose to stop here, read my amateur attempts at editorializing and open discussions with each other. I appreciate everyone of you.

Just remember that a blog is no different from someone’s house. You are there because the host allowed you to come in and participate in the party. If you have any sense of decency, you would never go to someone’s house party and run around screaming “F**K YOU!” at other guests and tearing up the furniture.

Social skills and etiquette do not stop when you enter the blogosphere. If anything, we all need to observe a better decorum than we would in a face-to-face encounter at someone’s house. When we are in the physical presence of another person, we can judge their reaction to us rather quickly thanks to facial response and body language. You don’t have the benefit of those signals when you’re sitting behind a keyboard staring at a computer monitor. Step lightly, children. There is too much real evil in the world around us to allow us the luxury of arguing over our petty differences whether real or simply perceived.

One Final Note: Because of the above described events, I have made a few changes to the blog. First, all new members must wait 72 hours after registration before being allowed to comment freely. All comments submitted during this period are queued and must be approved before they will post on the site. Other bloggers, including some really big sites like Fark, also require this. The reason is that people sometimes drop by, see something that enrages them and they quickly join to vent their anger on that one subject then run away. Seventy-two hours is long enough to give you time to think before you make an ass out of yourself. Second, all posts over seven days old are automatically closed to comments. If you can’t get it out of your system in a week, you’re obsessing. Give it up. There are on average about 5-7 posts daily here. There’s plenty to talk about. So go ahead and get it off your chest. Argue all you want. Debate all you want. Try to convince me and others of your viewpoint. You can even use bad words - as long as you don’t aim them directly at another member in the comments (it’s still alright to call John Kerry an asswipe since, despite repeated invitations, he refuses to visit here).

This blog site is for adults. Act like one. At least, as best you can. Over and out.

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/24/2006 at 05:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Personal •  
• Comments (48) • Trackbacks(2)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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