Apologists Harassing Critics

[_Jesse Pinkman]

And that's why last Wednesday, on a dedicated thread for all to see, I offered to do just that. But the poster in question left anyway. My solution would have solved the percieved problem. Self moderation. It had come to a point where I didn't want to see the "fracas" continue.

For some reason my solution to the perceived problem wasn't acceptable.

Notice that I've said "perceived problem". My other posts upthread on pg.1 and pg. 2 go into a bit of detail as to why I describe it this way.

Regards,
MG

What frankly frustrated me about BOTH you and Grindael is that neither one of you was willing to just put each other on Ignore. This was after SEVERAL posters, some in Moderation management and some not, made the strong suggestion to do so. Why weren't either of you just willing to TRY that suggestion? If you didn't like it, you could always quit. But it would have been nice if you had at least been able to have given it a try, and seen if that had made a difference.

[_Jesse Pinkman]

This may be a lame question, but oh well, can a poster be q'd from threads that are authored by a certain poster?

In other words, can MG be put on the q for grindael's OP threads? And maybe DrW threads? The rest are fair game unless there are reports/rule violations/personal stuff/////etc. fill in the slashes. ???

It's not a lame question. It's a matter of technical capabilities of the board itself. You are either on the que, or you're not. The frustrating thing for MG about being placed on the Que, is that any time he posts something, a moderator will have to view his post and decide whether or not it can be posted before it appears on the board. It is also a labor-intensive situation for the Moderators on the board. If there WAS a way to only que MG from certain threads, that would be ideal. But I don't believe that this version of PhpBb allows for that possibility.

[_RockSlider]

"Do not make threats or take actions to disrupt the smooth operation of this message board, either through hacking, spamming, frivolous complaints, lawsuits against the board or its moderators, or any other means. Please do not do this via e-mail or private message, either."

Has not this board been 'disrupted' from its smooth operation the last month or so? This is the only violation that I'm aware of that has gotten a poster banned. And yet here we are, long time valued posters leaving. What greater threat might exist for this board than a loss of long time valued posters over a disruption in smooth operation?

Suspend all who have contributed to this, who have violated the Jubilee and previous pleas to simply walk away and ignore each other. All should be suspended who have participated in this 'disruption of the smooth operation of this message board'.

Who of those participants could/would complain if the hand slapping was universal and fair?

[Guest]

[What frankly frustrated me about BOTH you and Grindael is that neither one of you was willing to just put each other on Ignore. This was after SEVERAL posters, some in Moderation management and some not, made the strong suggestion to do so. Why weren't either of you just willing to TRY that suggestion? If you didn't like it, you could always quit. But it would have been nice if you had at least been able to have given it a try, and seen if that had made a difference.

Jesse, grindael has not posted on a thread started by mentalgymnast since December of 2016. However, his threads have continued to be overrun by trolling right up until the day he left. Grindael DID try. He tolerated as much harassment and trolling of his in real life, personal and professional self as he could.

It's a significant point that his troll posts totally anonymously, but used grindael's in real life details to troll and harass him.

[Guest]

What frankly frustrated me about BOTH you and Grindael is that neither one of you was willing to just put each other on Ignore. This was after SEVERAL posters, some in Moderation management and some not, made the strong suggestion to do so. Why weren't either of you just willing to TRY that suggestion? If you didn't like it, you could always quit. But it would have been nice if you had at least been able to have given it a try, and seen if that had made a difference.

Hi Jesse, back a while ago I did just that. It didn't work. The poster in question would come into threads that I was participating on and make multiple postings that I was blind to. It's sort of a handicap while having a conversation with others to have someone come in and say whatever...and you don't even know what they're saying. So yeah, I could have UN ignored him to see what he's saying, etc., but then I might as well not have him on ignore.

That's why the commitment I made last Wednesday.

I could/would still see what he was coming up with and saying on the threads that I was participating on and he jumps in. At least in my own mind I would know that he's either 'out to lunch' and others can probably see it too, or that he might have something that I ought to listen to, assimilate, and readjust my thinking and thus my comments, etc. Even though I would be somewhat handicapped in that I wouldn't be able to respond to him either directly or indirectly. But I was willing to live with it so as to avoid the kinds of things which were frequently occurring.

He would have actually had the advantage because he would have been able to say pretty much whatever he wanted to without response from me. And knowing him, he would readily do so. But then it would die a slow death when I couldn't respond back. Mission accomplished.

Not that I might have reported inappropriate stuff to the moderators.

Regards,
MG

[_Tator]

It's not a lame question. It's a matter of technical capabilities of the board itself. You are either on the que, or you're not. The frustrating thing for MG about being placed on the Que, is that any time he posts something, a moderator will have to view his post and decide whether or not it can be posted before it appears on the board. It is also a labor-intensive situation for the Moderators on the board. If there WAS a way to only que MG from certain threads, that would be ideal. But I don't believe that this version of PhpBb allows for that possibility.

Thanx JP, darn!!

[_RockSlider]

Good god Jessie, please have some self control here and don't address/respond

[_Res Ipsa]

I think Kish's analogy is interesting, but I'm actually not sure how to think about it. One of the consequences of placing a high value on free speech is having to dodge the cowpies. On a message board, dodging the cowpies requires minimal effort. I have a couple of posters on ignore because, in my opinion, they produce nothing but cowpies. Or, if I don't use the ignore feature, I can choose not to read. Or if I read, I can choose not to react. It's like something some famous guy said: "freedom of speech means freedom for the cowpies we dodge." Or something like that.

Yeah, I know. You are right. Hey, I grew up on a farm so road apples and cow pies were part of life. I am not so personally put out by them. I do think that we will remain a pretty small, self selecting group because of what we tolerate in both directions. We relish the lampooning of Mormonism, even obviously highly offensive lampooning, and on the other hand we welcome the few Mormons who will brave that, and, with notable exceptions, those few who can are not infrequently mentally quirky people.

It just burns to see people leave. I hate it. And the people I see leave feel more like family than mg ever will. I would dare say that I feel more of a loss to have Simon Belmont gone, and I am happier to have Stem back, than I would be about mg one way or the other. It's just that I don't connect with mg. I am sorry I am making this very personal, but his reaction to the strong challenges to Mormon faith he sees here is very annoying and, also, quite personal in connection with grindael. That is where I see a real problem.

If DCP were here and Shulem were stalking him on the board calling him names and making fun of his personal appearance, I think we would ask the mods to do something about it, even if DCP is wildly unpopular here. Mg has been given a surprising amount of latitude to shadow grindael and harass him. I wonder why that is. Is the fact that he is one of the only Mormon apologists of any sort who can stick around for any length of time such an asset that we are willing to put up with him more than we would tolerate one of our own acting similarly?

Is my perception of this hopelessly skewed?

I don't think it's even skewed, Rev, let alone hopelessly. It burns me to to see people leave, too. And I don't have nearly as much time and depth of connection here as you do.

I don't have a handle on exactly what the extent of MG's shadowing and harassment was. Understandably, no one's had the time or inclination to review old threads and determine how pervasive a pattern of shadowing and harassment there really was. I've seen Lemmie's example from 2014, but that doesn't mean there has been a continuous pattern of conduct since that time. I started going forward from there to find some kind of pattern, but really didn't see it in what I've reviewed so far. The interaction in November 2016 was definitely an example, but I haven't looked at the interactions between then and last week's blow up. I'm aware of people's subjective impressions, but I'm kind of a stickler for data. Occupational hazard I guess.

I don't know how to explain the inconsistencies in how we react to interactions between folks here. Why, for example, are folks aghast at MG's interactions with Grindael, yet didn't seem to be bothered by some of the genuinely ugly treatment of LDSfaqs by some folks? I don't know. When I read back through old posts, I was surprised to see that Grindael has some pretty sharp elbows and is not afraid to use them. He's said some pretty ugly things to Nightlion that no one seemed to flinch at. Why not? I don't know. Why did Lemmie pick an example of MG's conduct toward Grindael in her question about what kind of stuff to report when she could have easily picked one of dozens of comments by Grindael to MG in the same thread that were similarly egregious? I don't know. It's all puzzling to me and I have a hard time wrapping my brain around it. Maybe expecting consistency from human brains is a fool's errand.

[_Jersey Girl]

I withheld comment until I had time to think more about it. The first thing I want to point out is that this isn't the first time that what is essentially an uprising has taken place on MDB, so don't worry, this isn't a watershed moment. It's nothing new. It's business as usual. At this point in the conversation, people need to vent and that's exactly what they're doing. That folks need to vent is both predictable and necessary. Just do it.

What's clear to me is that folks needed to either put people on ignore or report posts in violation of board rules long before this. Sometimes people fail to report because they don't want to bother the mods or they think that free speech is part of the process in dealing with nuisance posters, so they fight it out in the threads. But, for what reason people resisted putting each other on ignore, I don't know.

That said, like many here, I don't agree with Shade's reasoning in his decision. And yet, I do agree with the outcome. MG has one strike and he's on the queue. One. Surely we can wait for him to modify his posting behaviors knowing that that one strike is available and the queue soon to follow if he does not.

I'm concerned about grindael and I hope he's reading here. One thing that grindael can do (besides putting MG on ignore) would be to make his important posts in Celestial and reserve one thread here in Terrestrial for the announcements of such threads. If folks are truly interested in his topics, I would hope they'd be willing to follow them in the Celestial forum and engage his material there. But maybe...grindael prefers the more free wheeling nature of Terrestrial for himself and others. I can't know what he prefers, but linking up to Celestial might be a solution.

Okay, that was business. This is from the heart.

I don't like it when a poster feels driven away from this board, particularly when it's clear to me that his content rich posts likely serve as his cathartic process. Every time I come to this board, particularly in Terrestrial, I believe I am being invited to the journey of another. I have followed the journey's of so many posters here over the years, some going back 18 years now.

I see the shifts in their thinking as expressed in their posts. I'll name a few--Jason Bourne, Don Bradley, Philo Sofee. I have seen people share their hardship, their sorrows, their joys, their anger and share the excavation of enormous amounts of information and material here, and share their process. I love it whenever Philo Sofee comes back from one of his "digs" and shares his enthusiasm about it. That's the community we all started building years ago and we're all a part of it.

You guys let me step into your world. And every now and then, I get a chance to welcome you to step into my world of children when it seems relevant. :-)

I want grindael to come back when and if he is ready. Not because I'm into Mormon History, because I really don't care about it. But I do care about grindael and I want him to have space here for his process and his journey.

It matters to me that he has it. It matters to me that we all have it. This is our shared community.

[_Lemmie]

I don't have a handle on exactly what the extent of MG's shadowing and harassment was. Understandably, no one's had the time or inclination to review old threads and determine how pervasive a pattern of shadowing and harassment there really was. I've seen Lemmie's example from 2014, but that doesn't mean there has been a continuous pattern of conduct since that time. I started going forward from there to find some kind of pattern, but really didn't see it in what I've reviewed so far. The interaction in November 2016 was definitely an example, but I haven't looked at the interactions between then and last week's blow up. I'm aware of people's subjective impressions, but I'm kind of a stickler for data. Occupational hazard I guess.

I'm a stickler for data too, and I have a memory for stuff like this that is more a curse than a blessing. One way I deal with too many memories is to write stuff down, especially if it is adversely affecting me or my family and friends. If you'd like my statistical analysis of the continual trolling, let me know and I'll dip into my memory journals.