| |
|
The topic was Dead Megatron's birthday. I shared my feelings on the topic. The number of times someone has had an off-topic, "animus"-fuelled pop at, say, Haus, and not had their posts deleted, needs hardly be brought up again, does it? Or are we going with good old paranoidwriter's "Birthday threads are special and nice!" after all?
Ganesh, going back to your post earlier, then I was indeed goading reidcourchie to start a thread about having a moderator removed - because I was confident he could not make a convincing case for that, and was talking shit. I don't know why you think I'd deny that.
Let's run through some things I'm not going to do.
Exchanging PMs with Dead Megatron is about as appealing a prospect as becoming penpals with Chris Moyles. Why on Earth would I want to enter into such an unedifying correspondence? No.
I haven't started a thread about him, because - well, I'm not sure what sort of thread it's being suggested I should start. I don't believe that it would be possible at this point to build a case for Dead Megatron to be banned based on his posts on Barbelith thus far, especially given how slow and equivocal the process of banning much more clearly offensive people has been. Looking at Haus' post above (the one that links to the bell hooks incident) and the reaction to it ("Birthday threads should be nice!"), it seems pretty clear to me that such a thread would be a re-enactment of the trial of Jack McCall. No.
So the alternative would seem to be for me to start a thread detailing the sustained low-level idiocy punctuated by moments of out-and-out jaw-dropping wilful stupidity and fucked-up attitudes that has characterised DM's posts since he joined the board, ranging from forms of stupidity which are just head-slapping (aesthetic), to ones which are outright dangerous and harmful (political) - and unlike some people I see no evidence that he has changed, only that he has become a little more aware of what he can and can't get away with, which is not the same thing - merely to explain why seeing his name on the board gives me hives. I've been tempted, believe you me - I think "Has Dead Megatron ever posted anything of worth to the board?" would be the title, and the question still stands. But would the situation we find ourselves in now be any different? Would I really have avoided the calls for that to deleted, for me to be stripped of my moderator powers, banned, etc.? No.
So, what I did do, then, was to try to make it clear to DM - at a time when he has recently been given a form of validation which he would benefit not him, nor Kali, nor anyone else in the world who ever has to encounter him, but especially not the people of this board who aspire to it becoming anything better than a Maxim messageboard - that there are some people here who are not happy with him being on the board if he carries on posting as he has done for the past year. Now, it seems that this may have been ill-advised, strategically, and may have upset a significant number of people. For that, I apologise.
If anyone does think that as a result of my behaviour towards Dead Megatron, I should be either banned or removed as a moderator, then make the case, and I suppose the outcome will give us some pretty clear pointers as to what kind of place Barbelith wants to be.
Two other things:
I'm glad DM has mentioned the Transformers movie thread. It's a good example of how he has helped reduce the general standard of discussion just by his very presence on threads. He didn't provide a link, though. I wonder if that could be because to describe my behaviour as "abusive" and his as "responding in a difusing-the-bomb kinda way, showing respect and trying not to escalate things" would be revealed as, well, total utter bullshit if anyone actually read the last three pages of the thread? For example, here, I make a point about the madness of 33's view that it is some kind of travesty to turn alien robots into... alien robots. Not even directed at DM, then. DM's response?
Still with the sarcasm, boy?
If that's not goading then I don't know what is.
Secondly, I'd prefer it if people didn't link me in with Triplets as if we were somehow in cahoots - I'm sure he can answer for his own distinct behaviour just as I will answer for mine. I think the basic problem with his post was a failure to understand what an abortionist does... |
|
|
