After some thought, I've decided to post publicly about this - on the grounds that a) it's likely to influence the way Barbelith operates generally, and b) may affect Barbeloids individually. I'll do my best to 'anonymise' the situation, but am aware that it's not exactly difficult to work out the personalities involved.
In short, I have been, and continue to be, threatened by another poster - and those threats have taken on a Real Life dimension. I feel quite justified in describing them as 'threats' because the poster concerned has strongly intimated the possibility of impending legal, social and professional harm to myself - if his demands are not met.
The dispute is a long-running one, and concerns actions I took as an Administrator with which he later disagreed, and considered offensive. He PMed me several weeks ago requesting that X, Y and Z be carried out - or further steps would be taken. He attempted to restart a one-to-one dialogue between us which, for a variety of reasons, I resisted. I did, however, discuss the situation with the other Moderators and, on balance of consensus, decided not to accede to his requests.
Fast-forward to this week, and several new PMs, again attempting to start a correspondence on the subject - and making more explicit threats. These were vague on (legal) specifics but threatened contact with my ISP, Tom Coates' ISP and the company which hosts Barbelith. The poster also quoted a separate email account I use for work and family purposes - dr*************@hotmail.com - and which has never appeared on Barbelith. Not being especially 'Net-literate, I have absolutely no idea how this poster obtained this information - but the fact that he had gone to such lengths to discover my personal details seemed, in and of itself, moderately threatening.
After conferring with other Moderators, I was in two minds whether or not I should simply ignore this poster's PMs. A further, yet more intimidatory one arrived, adding additional threats to contact the police(?) and my workplace(??); while clearly hyperbolic, the growing element of Real Life involvement increased my feeling of being under threat.
So... after further discussion, the Moderators decided to compromise on certain of the poster's demands - although this seemed (to me, anyway) uncomfortably like giving in to blackmail. I received one further PM from the original poster, acknowledging the changes but intimating darkly that he would get back in touch with me after a month or two in order to attempt, once again, to 'discuss things'.
Why am I posting this? Because it occurs to me that this particular poster might make similar threats to other Barbeloids (particularly Moderators), and they might wish to react accordingly - changing passwords on their PM and email accounts. Also, I feel that PM threats carrying over into Real Life situations crosses a certain line. I'm not sure how Barbelith, generally speaking, will change in response to this line having been crossed, but I'm pretty sure there will be changes...
Be warned. |
