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An inquiry on the needless authoritarian-like deletion of the Bop/Illfigure account

  
 
Rage
09:12 / 12.03.02
Big Barbelith really is watching.

A comrade of mine wanted to post on this closed-registration board, and after getting no response in regards to my can-he-register question, I decided to let him have my Bop account. He changed the title to Illfigure, which was his fictionsuit of choice. Suddenly, I arrive here to find that the Bop/Illfigure account has been deleted. At first, I was humored by the deletion of Bop. Then, I started to really look at things.

What gives?

While I agree that Illfigure's comments on the prison system were ignorant, misinformed, and ridiculous, I see not how they differ from other ignorant, misinformed, and ridiculous, comments that are made here.

This place is getting to become a contradiction of everything it stands for. A week or so ago, I started the "I'm never coming back here" post as a mock-type-thing. If I don't receive a logical explanation for the needles deletion of the Bop/Illfigure account, this mock-type-thing will surly spinal tap itself into the realms of reality.

The deletion of an individual voice who holds his own opinions and perspectives at the barb is horrid, mind blowing, and even apocolytpic. This is not The Knowledge +1 that we're talking about here.

I hereby request a decent explanation of this needlessauthoritarian-like deletion of the Bop/Illfigure account. Failure to receive one will result in my departure from this cyberspacial location.

Thank you, and have a nice day. All hail Eris!
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
09:33 / 12.03.02
I think that perhaps yr ideas of what Barbelith 'stands for' is an ideal that isn't quite what the community is in fact built on.

Barbelith is a bit like a rich neighborhood - we're very happy with the way it is because it's pretty quiet, it's somewhat homogenous in that most everyone shares the same basic values, and we'd all like to keep the riff-raff out, thank you.

The reason why these fictionsuits get the ax is the same reason why rich neighborhoods often have zero tolerance policing. It's the broken windows theory:

if the first broken window in a building is not repaired, then people who like breaking windows will assume that no one cares about the building and more windows will be broken. Soon the building will have no windows....

If you had a respect for what you think Barbelith "stands for", then you would not have ever done that silly little Bop prank.
 
 
autopilot disengaged
09:58 / 12.03.02
hm. flux - i'm really not sure abut yr zero tolerance/rich neighbourhood analogy... i think i might differ with yr BarbeDefinition myself.

but:

as far as i can see, illfigure pushed a hot button at a bad time. i thought his initial post about how all us fux didn't know what was comin' to us was really entertaining - but it did degenerate pretty quickly into generalized homophobia. which was dumb with a capital 'DUMB'.

he did get the shaft pretty fucking abruptly - but in the wake of TK+1, a newbie turning up and teritorially pissing his way along the threads wasn't going to go down well. especially when new memberships were supposedly, temporarily on hold. maybe he'll be able to re-apply in the after-future...

but i'm sure tom'll be along presently to set the record straight.

quite possibly with a thought-provoking ian brown quote.
 
 
Tom Coates
09:58 / 12.03.02
If you want to leave, leave. I won't stop you. If you'd read the foully offensive e-mail/pm that I received after pausing the illfigure account, an e-mail which hadn't even waited to hear why I had felt compelled to temporarily suspend it - the e-mail/pm being extremely aggressive, unpleasant and insulting to me personally - then you'd probably have made the same judgment that I did. I in fact sent two messages in swift succession - the first apologising for the need to suspend the account, and the second saying that from their recent behaviour I was clearly more than right to do so.

I decided that without any evidence that the person could say anything without proving their own stupidity and insulting others, that there was nothing to come but in-fighting, squabbles and the regurgitation of the pointless Knowledge discussion if they remained.

The new version of the board will hopefully have more functionality which will allow people to decide what aspects of a discussion they want to get involved in and which they'd rather not. This should help people filter out stupid arseholes. In the meantime, for good or ill we have moderators and me.

When the board goes over to the new system, I won't have to be even slightly involved in stopping Barbelith descending into 'why are you censoring me when I wanted to stay up all night say rude words' -style arguments. In the meantime, I would rather actually talk about SOMETHING than listen to yet another idiot make gay jokes and yelling about their freedom to be totally fucking stupid.

This is not a particularly sensitively written reply and I wish I could approach this with rather more equanimity, but frankly who the hell do you think you are demanding an explanation from me? You haven't kept this fucking place ruinning for the last three years - you haven't had to deal with this kind of situation every few months since the site opened.

So until I get paid a salary for keeping this place open (when perhaps you will have some right to protest about the level of 'service' you are getting), I would ask you to have the good bloody graces to treat me with the respect that you would afford the vast bulk of the other people here - the respect that frankly I that I think I deserve - and ask sensible, unmelodramatic, intelligent questions and be prepared to be admit when you might be wrong.

I'm closing this thread because it's bloody stupid. If you'd like to apologise then my e-mail address is
tom@barbelith.com .

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: Tom Coates ]
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:58 / 12.03.02
Edited to say that this whole post is now utterly irrelevant given the info above, but I'm letting it stand because I think it's still sorta relevent in a general sense... just not in this case. So, big out-of-date warning:

Whist I wasn't exactly fucking impressed with Illfigure's contribution to the board I'd be a bit worried if ze had been kicked with no explanation.

I'm certain this is going to turn out to be one of those techno-fuckups. Like, maybe the Bop suit got wiped because no-one realised it had been reactivated, or summat. Unless Illfigure posted a lot of chronic fuckbakery which then got wiped, of course.

Ulitmately, I think most of us trust Member #1 not to shitcan someone without a solid reason.

Monsuier Coates- any input? I forsee many accusations of reptilianess if this is not speedily resolved.

End out-of-dateness.

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: Mordant C@rnival ]
 
 
Tom Coates
09:58 / 12.03.02
Apologies Mordant.

I have got rather stroppy above, because I'm irritated with people demanding explanations for my behaviour - when they could just ask. But the thing with illfigure basically comes down to (as I said above) stuff that happened off the board.

As I said above - due to my anxieties about early posts, I suspended the account so that I could think about what the best approach would be without deleting it, and while giving me and them some space to consider what we were and or should be doing on the site.

I received a fairly reasonable e-mail, which I answered as fairly as I could, and then as it was being sent, another foul and abusive lunatic rant. Frankly I decided that this was enough evidence as to their character and behaviour and deleted their account.
 
  
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