Oh, I can. But by and large he's done a fantastic job, especially when faced with the task of trying to facilitate the merging of two disparate communities, which has gone much more smoothly (especially of late) than I would have expected.
I can. I've run out of cheevos to gain and titles to aspire for. If I post now, it has to be because I feel I have something to say. That's just wrong, man.
You don't have There Are No Girls On The Internet yet, and I'm pretty sure fixing that is covered by insurance in your country.
This has all brought back my favourite Tom mod memory. And it's all preserved in emails, which I might as well share. Tom gave me a week-long ban for insulting Tim Partlett, it was probably deserved but I wasn't very happy about it. I sent him this email. Then, without telling me, he changed it to a perma-ban. I found out trying to log in and noticing that the duration of the ban no longer had an end date. I sent him this email. He did not respond. So I tried another email I knew he had used, a day later, wondering if maybe I had tried the wrong email address and he had moved on to another address. Still no response. I sent another email to the first address because I was now pretty sure that he was intentionally not responding. So I emailed him his own forum rules. With relevant sections highlighted I also I made a comment on one of his front-page articles basically saying that Tom should answer his email. At which point I finally got a reply. He wouldn't respond to emails until I called him out in public, basically. Then we finally got to have our email conversation. Like adults. I'm still left with the feeling that he turned my account back on just so I would stop asking him to explain what he permabanned me for.
Nope. you're right. I don't have that. Having that would be gaming the system. I'd never do such a thing. No siree, not me...
I thought Vetarnias had some worthwhile posts (the Wurm Online stuff and maybe a few others) and I could ignore his crazier ramblings, but I didn't care enough about his ban to say anything at the time (or maybe I did - I forget).
This is drunk confession time. I didn't feel it was the place of a forum to balls to the walls attack someone. I thought a forum (and society) in general should steer munky towards not being a moron and doing things properly. I really didn't like the unbridled hostility (which I totally understand) and thought that someone looking for advice and help should be helped to be a better person rather than attacked. And I especially thought this as the person was part of a forum I thought was a community. Don't get me wrong, I can fully understand why the reaction was the way it was. And that reaction made me wary of Broken Forum for quite a while. I was totally wrong about BF though. It's probably the place I feel most at ease online. The attitude is completely correct here. It's one of the few places I feel I don't have to watch what I say, or think about dealing with an "attitude." And I love it for that.
I remember his ban, it was pretty goddamn justified. It was in the thread about the shooting in Aurora, where he suggested that the parents of the baby that was shot were the root of all things wrong with America IIRC.
Vetarnias did have some good posts - I remember him holding forth about painting and art (wasn't that him?) and it being really informative and interesting. Unfortunately he also had a lot of really awful, vile opinions and a tendency to use tragic events as a platform to spout them off to an unwilling audience.
Hey I'll be honest, too. I didn't like the way the Munky thing was handled, either. But it was bound to go nowhere pleasant. It's nice to think that people could have approached Munky in a more civil manner and reached him but I am not really certain that was even a possibility given the tone of his OP. I don't feel it justifies digging up personal info at any rate but seeing as how it sniffed out a rat in that case, as it were, the whole thing is a wash. An ugly wash, but a wash.
Seriously, is he twelve? It's weirdly fascinating. My favorite thing about him that I've seen is all the "baby why you gots to make me ban you" shit, though. Something about it makes me laugh every time.
Nah, it's a valid point. One that people can disagree on (perhaps heatedly so, but we're adults) - I only saw the aftermath of that thread - the only thing perfectly clear after that incident was Toms fucked up handling of it and how quickly he picked a side. And what a side.
ISTR pissing a few people off during the second wave of Munky bannings because that was one of the few times where we actually knew where the line was and people gleefully leaped over it. Taken in isolation, Tom's motives over all that were fine. With the benefit of hindsight, well... My fun ban stories are: a) Copping a week ban for i) getting pissed off at being called a racist during a football thread, ii) realising I was pissed off and walking away from the argument and going to bed, ii) waking up to find myself banned b) Being banned during The Great Purge when I suggested on his OPEN DISCUSSION ON THE BANS thread that what he was doing was a terrible idea - I prompty got banhammered because "he'd forgotten to ban me originally". Despite the fact that I had been on his side in most arguments about moderation and had never crossed swords with him before. Eventually he apologised and unbanned me. It was all so very odd.
My favorite ban was when he banned a friend of mine, Nate, for having a screenname too close to someone else he wanted to ban, Natus. That was a fun email I got that day: "WHY THE FUCK AM I BANNED FROM QT3?!?!" I never got banned, even though I was accused of being part of the Great Bahimiron Conspiracy. I thought that maybe Tom would listen to me as someone who (at that point) still really liked him, as evidenced by the Secret Santa gift I got him. NOPE.
Yeah, that's how I think about it too. It brought out a lot of ugliness. And all in all it was a case that's pretty much the most deserving of ugliness. If there's anything that should get people angry this is exactly one of the cases where it's totally appropriate. I guess in my mind it'd be easier if it was a real life case where you could yell at people and everyone knows that "holy shit, yelling means this is serious business" or you could go Australian parliament on someone on express your displeasure at someone by knocking out their teeth (for all the good and bad of such an action.) I just don't think the internet has progressed to a level to deal with a scenario like that to a level where it satisfies people. And all in all BrokenForum is pretty much the greatest result of something like that. Because I fucking love this place. It genuinely feels like somewhere where I would be happy to live in a techy-hippy commune with everyone.
It's very very weird. Heck, he joked and laughed with Frank Austin on the podcast about their differing views on moderation and then banned him in the mass ban. Sadly, of course. It was just something he had to do.
FrankA getting sucked into the purge because of clearly having such a long history of public disagreement with his moderation, such as on the podcast where he was invited to speak publically about their disagreement with his moderation and no other identified instance is what killed my original Michael Scott metaphor for good, as leaping past comic incompetence into malevolent incompetence. Malcompetence. Also it made the batshit become much clearer in hindsight, and was pretty key to me joining the exodus quietly in the background.
Nooteh's the one that dies at the beginning of Alien 3 right? maybe a ripleh joke would've worked better
My nits mostly fall into the "why did it take that long to ban that guy for good?" file. Which are a pretty good variety of nits, because Pazuzu knows I wouldn't have nearly those reserves of patience if anyone foolishly gave me power.
BTW, it likely seems a little creepy that I know so much about Qt3 even though I didn't post there. I lurked from Day 1 and probably read more posts than most of its permanent residents. I lurked only, because I found the dominant group of posters intimidating. Most of those intimidating people are among the Banned of Tom. I could have jumped into Qt3 when they left, but the things discussed in this thread made me not want to be on Tom's board. Ironically, those same intimidators are among the dominant posters here, but it's all good. There are still a couple I try to avoid direct interaction with . . .
I don't understand. How can posters be intimidating? I mean, the worst that you'll get from a poster in an online forum is a tongue lashing. And, well, a tongue lashing on the Internet is like getting wet when you're swimming: only avoidable if you're really, really skilled.
Some of us are more easily intimidated than others, and Qt3 seemed to have a special knack for putting newbies through the "that was a really stupid post" ringer. It didn't seem worth the aggravation.
It's more that Qt3 felt like an established community and that can be intimidating to jump into. I more or less did the same thing as Oz, except for the SWTOR thread. Once the transmigration took place I felt more comfortable posting and joining the community. Edit: Also Broken Forum is a hell of a lot more woman friendly.
If you feel the tongue lashings happen too often, or happen for no good reason that you can see, or happen to the new guy because lolhazing, it's pretty easy to not want to get directly involved in a community. I have a much, much, much thicker skin than I did when I first joined the ~internet~, so it takes a lot more to scare me off (I am more likely to fret that the posters I like won't like me and they're so cooool and omg I can't post what if they think I'm dumb I could just die these days, and even then I have very few fucks to give in that department), but I can absolutely understand the sentiment. EDIT: And there's also just not wanting to be The New Guy, even when everyone is totally nice!
Heh, here's my last PM from Tom, which was the last conversation we had anywhere, before he decided to add me to the list of people to dangerous to keep around on the new and improved QT3:
Tom banned you because he found out that you had been lying about the inventor of Skype being a Dane.
Yeah, I thought about that. But he still answered and said he wanted to do the thing - I was the one who postponed. And then shortly after, a weird mass-PM.
I love that he described you sending him two emails as 'hounding'. I'm surprised he didn't give you shit about it when you came back. I once sent Tom three big emails* while banned and after I got back every time I had a disagreement with him he'd try to call me out with shit like 'I would think someone who BEGGED to be reinstated like you would behave better!' As if he could embarrass me into shutting up. Come to think of it, all of that Astromarine Skype bullshit was basically the same bullying routine. *One was asking to come back. One was asking him to let me edit one of my posts. One was me asking him to just edit my post for me. He never replied to any of them.
