Actually. I got banned for posting a nuclear explosion .gif and then the awesome dancing baby Entity gif Sparky made forever ago. You will now revel in Ooga Chicky's glory:
I do believe that was the single funniest moment I have ever seen on any forum, anywhere. A true, tears running down my face, trying to catch my breath moment. I vaguely recall discussing it with Tom as being funny because it's just funny, not because it makes you look silly, which I sincerely believe to this day. Clearly some of you enjoyed the "it does make Tom look silly" angle more, so maybe he was right to not believe me. Good God that was a hilarious post Bill. How the fuck you avoided getting banned for that one is beyond me. If I ran QT3 at that moment I would have either banned you on the spot or appointed you as an Admin.
My relationship with Tom deteriorated fairly quickly after my podcast appearance. I believe it started with Tom baiting Matt Gallant, but whenever he would troll and/or ban a person who I considered a good friend, I couldn't help poking the man. I believe I even banned myself for a time because I was so fed up over his treatment of Not One of Us. I'd get caught up in the forum drama and make some comment that I knew would piss him off. This happened often enough that Tom began to treat every post I wrote with suspicion. I mellowed out quite a bit by late last year, but to Tom I was still an undesirable and was one of those given the boot when he made his Grand Return. Much of my interaction with Tom during that time was petty and immature, but I don't regret standing up for the folks he treated badly. tl;dr Tom is a horrible mod and I'm happy to be a part of Broken Forum.
My interactions with Tom at that point were basically nonexistant though I'm sure he would have tried to give me shit if I had ever been in an argument with him. Never really did care much about movies and Tom never seemed to care about the games I liked so we didn't cross paths much. What I love most is that he outright asks you to email him in his own rules post on the forums and then doesn't reply to email about those rules. Most of the outright anger has gone now that I know that he doesn't have anything to hold over me any more but I still wouldn't piss on Tom if he was on fire. The lies and the disrespect were a lot to swallow at the time and if it wasn't because I put so high a value on this community I would never have been stubborn enough to get a response, or humble enough to drop the issue once I had achieved the result I was after.
That's why it took so long for me to jump in here, even though I sorta kinda predate the switch (I did only lurk before because, well, Geldon/Vetarnias/etc. I was just in it for the occasional Prokofy Neva drama.) I was reading QT3 mostly because the drama was linked elsewhere and a lot of people seemed like a pack of raging dickbags a lot of the time, eevn considering the circumstances. I don't know why it mostly hasn't continued here but I'm surprised at how few times I've had to hit the ignore button.
I've seen lots of people emphasize that Tom is a terrible mod, all those crazy moments on QT3 demonstrates that he isn't good at moderation, and similar things. At the risk of turning this (even more than it is) into a 2 minute hate, I would say that those episodes indicate that Tom is a terrible human being. To say that he is a terrible mod indicates that he lacks certain skills that moderators need. And there are many skills that fall into this category: the ability to spot disruptive elements to the community, the ability to handle difficult situations diplomatically (or at the very least in a manner that's acceptable to the community), and so on. I don't think his bahaviour demonstrated a lack of *those* skills. Rather, it seemed to demonstrate fundamental flaws in his character: petty, shallow, disingenuous, excessively worried about public embarrassment while being at the same time privately shameless and self-righteous, etc. So, I guess my question to anybody narrowing the criticism to Tom's skill as a mod is: why? Why the limited scope?
Sounds like me! Thank fuck I don't run a forum, I'd feel really sorry for anyone under my tyrannic prerogative.
I'm not. Tom asked me in his weird way if I really thought it maybe might be best to not be around anymore in the same bout of emails he sent to a few others while summarily banning a bunch of others. He would have totally understood. But I just said "I'd rather not be banned". Then I didn't post apart from when someone I cared about passed away, which makes it easy to stay unbanned.
I think if you were to go to Tom Chick's house to join Shoot Club* you'd probably have a good time and find he is a good conversationalist. I didn't agree with a lot of his opinions on things and the bad moderation is the thing that finally got me to stop posting on Qt3, so I think that's why people talk about the moderation part. If he had just backed up and let someone else handle it, it would have been fine. He would have still been obnoxious at points, but let's not pretend none of us ever get that way.** I mostly just didn't interact with him and what I resented the most was something that's been brought up before: he had to ban you for the good of the forum, even when it was totally clear that was not the case. You just couldn't stop. He had to stop you. It's for your own good. What the fuck? No. If you don't like someone, just fucking own it. I think I posted that at one point. The whole secret banning thing where the gestapo would apparently come in the night and people would disappear and it Could Not Be Discussed was such bullshit. It wasn't to stop drama from happening, it was to stop people from rightly saying that yet again, Tom banned someone he didn't like for something stupid. I tried to tell him to back off and calm down and that he needed a thicker skin to run an online ANYTHING (I've done it, I know how stupid people are) but he never listened to me and anything I ever posted in disagreement with him he would imply was because I was just posting for Bahimiron. Lum has absolutely got it right here. There is no shadow of a doubt that he'll let you fight it out until you piss him off and he's usually in that thread before you get to that point to warn you that you're getting dangerously close to making him care. I'm of the opinion that we're all adults here (at least we should be. LOOKING AT YOU Demon G Sides) and you can sink or swim with the rest of us. The internet's been around for awhile. Everyone's an asshole on the internet at some point. Perhaps, at all points. Not everyone is going to get along all the time. Very, very rarely should that lead to someone getting banned. And never over a fucking movie. *Not that I could ever do that, what with being a woman. ** Fuck you fans of Supernatural!
I actually expected that you would say that what you resented most was that to Tom you were never anything more than an extension of me, the male member* of his forum. *lol
I managed to avoid the "female attachment" for ages, until Tom learned that I was Union Carbide's sister, and then well, he pretty much held it against me from then on.
I think you mean Ryan's sister. (I actually don't remember UC's real name, but I couldn't pass up the chance to rag on Tom's love of using peoples' real names against them.) Edit: Bolding the part where I said that 'Ryan' was me pulling a name out of my ass, for all the Ryans who might have missed that part.
How many people here wanted to smack the smug smirk off someone's face when they said that "You don't know what happened between Tom and (banned person) in PMs?"
No, the people I want to smack are the Qt3 denizens who call BF "toxic" and the like, especially those that have come over to tell us to our faces. The irony is so thick it's almost performance art.
I think this is over a line. I understand, believe me, the frustration with Tom's moderation skills I passively-aggressively expressed the same. But please don't go trying to discern the quality of the man from that. I will always be grateful for the kindness and grace he expressed following Scott McKinnon's (Mink Staccatto) death and he provided an electronic ear for me to vent my spleen into. He made a terrible time for myself and Scott's family slightly less terrible. As to moderating, he made a lot of choices I neither understand nor agree with (I rarely post at Qt3 anymore, it is, with some notable exceptions, an ocean of idiots) but with all due respect, chill.
I wasn't trying to call Mark out specifically, and I apologize if it seems that way, I was just trying to remind folks that while it is always fun to burn a witch, that witch may be somebody's mother. Or something. EDIT: By the way, I love the forum drama, I find the story of how Tom Chick trolled his own forum, almost to death, facinating. Carry on with the autoposy, just saying it isn't hard to critique Tom without making things up.
Why has all this Qt3 rehashing started all over again? Is it because we're coming up on the anniversary of The Great Exodus? I never got banned. I don't think Tom ever really noticed me, except the one time I was on the podcast. I just stopped posting there and started posting here. Y'know, because of avatars, sigs, and likes.
It's coming up again because fools love to talk about this stuff. It's why the "don't talk about bannings rule" led to so many bannings. It's like me at a cookout not getting no cake. Not gonna happen.
I know, there's a lot of distasteful stuff in musical lyrics. It's 2012, you wouldn't drop a "that's gay," so let's keep elevating things. Apologies for the soapboxing.
I don't think Mark made anything up. I think every trait he ascribed to Tom is accurate, but those traits don't make Tom a terrible human being. They are character flaws, and everyone here has them. Except for Elyscape and I think you know why.
There is literally no Other-Forum-person who now posts here on BF as far as I know (and I do hit most of the sub-forums and topics) who is a valueless shit. Make no mistake, there are people I disagree with all the time, but they aren't asses. All the true douches either stayed away or have since left of their own accord finding themselves unwelcome. Break out of your shell man. FREEDOOOOOOOOOOOOM! (QT3 freshman class of 2002 if it matters) My first banning (I am #1 or #2 on Albert Woo's graphic I believe, so yeah here's my street cred motherfucker) involved my roommate at the time but Tom didn't know we were roommates and riffing in threads. He thought we were going at each other on the Huffman/Smart topic as some kind of online enemies or whatever. So once he found this out that was my first unbanning. Confession time. I was a real jerk for alot of years on QT3. But round about the time that these (above quoted) things started happening is when I realized it. Not because I refer to women as so-and-so's wife or whatever, but just the guilt by association thing. When TC started holding-it-over Angie about Matt* I decided I was probably done there. Funny thing is only a few months before I sent my "sorry for the years of being an ass" PMs to a number of people there. Shortly thereafter the mass bannination. Then we get here and now I'm acting like a damn Buddhist or something trying to get everyone to "clean slate" as I had done personally inside myself. And I'm not banned now but just don't really participate there anymore. Anyway, that's my story. Damn Jesuits. *notably I had not been particularly friendly with the Gallants for all those years but still this whole thing was so egregious.
