Forum behavior

[Dave Hicks]

(05-10-2018 03:28 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  I think the only person that should be "on vacation" here is Dave. He had so much fire to put out lately he'd go on vacation to Hawaii now if he could, would be easy to recognize him, the only one with an umbrella and a drink, chilling with his feet dipped in lava, feeling totally refreshed.

Edit: I see more new posts... Come on, people... let's put this to rest and give Dave the break he deserves...

Thank you! There are times when people ask me how I doing or why I'm looking disturbed or grumpy and my usual answer to this is because there's a big flare up on my web forum. And the replies to that are typically in the range of: "What's a web forum?" to: "You mean you let random people say things on your website? Is that wise?" or: "Does that have any relevance to reality?" Well, those help me keep things in perspective.

Honestly though, I've got to point out that Den (who is now d b) has been on the front lines more than I have. Someone said his heart is in the right place, and sometimes I think that's a problem for a moderator. He has a lot of heart, feels a need to protect newbies and lost post count "shy" posters etc. I think in one of the GPL threads he felt a little protective of a newbie whereas I tended towards the assumption that the newbie had signed up just to be a troll. No way of knowing who was right really.

That said, let's move on to Thomas. Gene sent me this timeline as he recalls it:

Quote:1 – Thomas had requested that his account be deleted due to the SM / GPL threads and the bad behavior of some posters (which I agreed with).

2 – I responded to Thomas with the following on 4/22/18:

“You are a valued contributor to the forum and we would all be worse off if you leave. Please don't leave the forum entirely. For me personally if no other reason?”

3 – Thomas responded with this reply on 4/23/18:

“Gene, with all due respect, I stand by what I said… Do me a favor and delete my account. Seriously.”

4 – Also on 4/23/18, I responded with this:

“Hi Thomas. I didn't see a way to delete your account. I ended up "banning" you but only did it for a month. I hope you will reconsider after that time. Please take care and best wishes to you. Sorry about all this.”

5 – Thomas replied with this on 4/23/18:

“I'd rather have my account deleted, just to make it clear that the people engaging in misinformation and slander aren't going to get a response from me.”

6 – Therefore, I banned his account since it could not be deleted.

7 – On 4/24/18, Thomas emailed me:

“Gene, Could you reverse that ban? It seems like the conversation is heading back to saner territory, so I won't be leaving after all.”

8 – on 4/30/18, I unbanned Thomas and emailed this:

“I un-banned you earlier today. My apologies (for not sending you an email about it) as I thought for sure it would send you a notification. That's my ignorance in being a brand new moderator. I don't know the ins-and-outs yet.”

9 – Thomas came back and posted a couple of times about the GPL, etc. again, and was upset.

10 – Thomas emailed me again on 5/2/18:

“Hi Gene, Could you do me a favor and delete my MoHPC account? I'm done here. I don't mean "ban me," I'm already banned. I want my account to be gone. I want it to be clear that I'm not an MoHPC member any more. I want to wash my hands off this whole thing. If you can't delete my account, please forward this email to someone who can.

Thank you. Thomas”


11 – I did nothing as I cannot delete the account. Deleting his account would remove (I suspect) any and all of his posts which I would not want to happen. But since accounts cannot be deleted, they remain present and Thomas remains banned more or less at his own request.

That seems like a good summary. One additional detail is that the 2nd ban, was by Den, who may or may not have been aware that the first ban was by self-request.

During this initial ban event (one month Ban by Gene in response to Thomas' request permanent deletion), I also received requests from Thomas to make the Ban more permanent/deep/severe or delete whatever. I ignored em. Why? Because I've followed those requests before and they made the requestor mad - at the precise timing of when I pushed the button - see, he wanted to get the last word in - by getting banned - but I didn't get the message until after his opponent got a response in.

Here's another odd factoid for you. I can remember 3 people who wanted to be banned/deleted from this forum. All three were arguing over GPL and its correct use/interpretations. Two of the people were on opposite sides of the same thread. Wild. As I said in another thread, I have to wonder if arguments over old HP calculator manuals flare up with this kind of intensity on GPL forums.

So a day or two later, I got another request from Thomas to be let back in. Not a big surprise. Everyone that I have ever seen leave any forum and make a big deal of it has come back. Meanwhile thousands of people just stop using forums every day and never say a word.

Then during the second ban event I also received another request to make the ban more deeply seriously obvious. Thomas just doesn’t like "On vacation" but we have one label for that category (of mostly spammers) and I'm not all that concerned with someone who doesn't come here anymore being concerned about the label on his account.

But the good news is Thomas wants to come back and I've already said he is welcome in a couple of places, so he is re-unbanned. Honestly, if I was going to create a status/label just for Thomas' bans, it might be: "On a BRIEF vacation" because they don’t last very long!