THE JERSEY GIRL MEGATHREAD

[_Shulem]

All this crap about how Jersey Girl didn't really mean it or wouldn't hurt a fly is not worth defending.

Look, when someone walks into a crowded theatre and yells, "FIRE", there is only one way to react, head for the exit. That is what Jersey Girl did, she created her own exit by walking into the theatre and crying, "FIRE".

Jersey Girl has been arrested, tried, found guilty, and is doing her time in the slammer (away from Mormon Discussions) for the rest of her life.

Paul O

[Guest]

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[_LDSToronto]

I was sad to see Jersey Girl go and she was extremely provoked at the time. I don't know if she actually took any legal action or even actually meant that she was going to. I can understand why anyone would be shook up if they could be facing a lawsuit and the cost and stress that involves so I can see where Shades is coming from.

The main question I have is if there was a rule before Jersey Girl made that comment to say that anyone implying or directly threatening a lawsuit against the board or owners would receive a permanent ban? If not it does seem harsh to have done it retrospectively. Maybe she could be let back now the rules have changed and everyone is aware of them? I don't know. It's tough because I think both sides have a point it just seems to me that the board lost someone who contributed quite a lot. As a lurker and intermittent contributor though it definitely isn't my call to make.

Thanks,

Hasa Diga Eebowai

There was a rule in place at the time; about 6 months earlier a character on the board made legal threats and contacted the ISP and had the board shut down for a few days. A couple of things are noteworthy:

1. Jersey Girl contacted the board ISP - that was part of her threat, and I have PMs where she admits, firsthand, to contacting the ISP to see if she could get the board shut down.

2. Jersey Girl knew she was violating a rule and knew she may get banned - once again, she sent me PMs that state the fact.

I won't spill the PMs here because that would be a violation. But, Jersey Girl did make her own bed, now she needs to sleep in it.

H.

[Guest]

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[_Shulem]

Even if there wasn't a rule in place had someone come at me and threaten a lawsuit in that fashion I would have cut their throat and pulled the plug. What do you do with a threatening enemy who points a gun at you? You shoot them dead! That's exactly what Shades did.

Good for Shades. He did the right thing. He sent that bitch packing. Hopefully she learned a lesson after making a total ass of herself.

Paul O

[_Yoda]

*sigh* It appears as though there's still some lingering confusion in the ranks regarding the Jersey Girl incident. Allow me to explain again:

This board is (part of) a self-contained legal entity. We even have an attorney on retainer (or whatever the lingo is). It's entirely possible to sue this board; if one does so, I won't be affected at all.

Now, we have received legal threats in the past. One I ignored because it wasn't credible, even to me, a layman. The other two were indeed credible and referred to material that I judged to be legally actionable. Even so, the two threats in question weren't so much directed at me so much as directed at the board itself as a legal entity. On top of that, they weren't aimed at embroiling me (or anyone else connected with the site) in a legal and financial morass with the intent to ruin my life; they were aimed at merely getting the objectionable material removed, nothing more.

In Jersey Girl's case, her legal threat wasn't aimed at the board itself as a legal entity, it was directed at me and my moderators. And it wasn't just to get objectionable material removed, it was to embroil us in a legal and financial quagmire as punitive punishment for not bowing down to her demands. To make matters worse, it wasn't because of anything me or my moderators had done; it was something done by a completely unrelated third party when I wasn't even online! Now, I can handle a legal threat against me for something I have done, if it's legally objectionable, but I simply cannot shoulder the liability for what everyone else does when my computer isn't even turned on.

In spite of all that, I still could've ignored it or otherwise brushed it off, but then she took specific, tangible steps to prove to us that she wasn't bluffing and had every intent to carry out her threat. It was only at that point that I had to do what needed to be done.

TL;DR:

Threaten to sue the board to get actionable material removed: O.K.
Threaten to sue the board just to be a dick: O.K.
Threaten to sue me personally for something actionable that I have done: O.K.
Threaten to sue me personally over the actions of a completely unrelated third party: **NOT** O.K.

Now, are we all completely clear on this issue? Can we finally say we understand how Jersey Girl's legal threat was in a class altogether by itself?

Shades, I really don't understand how you came to the conclusion that Jersey Girl ever threatened to sue us, as Moderators personally. You keep stating the one comment she made about "you guys are going to have a damned legal fight on your hands."

OK, I can see how that might have initially been misconstrued. However, Jersey Girl emailed you multiple times, and clarified what she meant. Also, the action that she actually did take, which was to file a formal complaint to the Webhost about Darrick, would indicate that if anything, she was threatening to sue the board, which you have stated here would be OK with you.

With Jersey Girl's permission, I am posting two statements authored by her.

The first one is a clarifying statement that she made on my board:

Not providing a link. This is from the "thread restored" by Rockslider.

In Jersey Girl's case, her legal threat wasn't aimed at the board itself as a legal entity, it was directed at me and my moderators. And it wasn't just to get objectionable material removed, it was to embroil us in a legal and financial quagmire as punitive punishment for not bowing down to her demands. To make matters worse, it wasn't because of anything me or my moderators had done; it was something done by a completely unrelated third party when I wasn't even online! Now, I can handle a legal threat against me for something I have done, if it's legally objectionable, but I simply cannot shoulder the liability for what everyone else does when my computer isn't even turned on.

In spite of all that, I still could've ignored it or otherwise brushed it off, but then she took specific, tangible steps to prove to us that she wasn't bluffing and had every intent to carry out her threat. It was only at that point that I had to do what needed to be done.

TL;DR:

Threaten to sue the board to get actionable material removed: O.K.
Threaten to sue the board just to be a dick: O.K.
Threaten to sue me personally for something actionable that I have done: O.K.
Threaten to sue me personally over the actions of a completely unrelated third party: **NOT** O.K.

Now, are we all completely clear on this issue? Can we finally say we understand how Jersey Girl's legal threat was in a class altogether by itself?

I did NOT threaten to sue any person. I did not threaten to sue at all.

I said that "you guys would have a legal damned fight on your hands" (meaning a conflict with the WEBHOST due to a violation of the terms of service regarding the transmission of in real life threats).

When I went to the WEBHOST site and read over the policies, I decided to see if it were a true violation of the terms of service first.

I mistakenly said in public that I was filing a complaint with the WEBHOST. I did not file a complaint, I submitted a damned inquiry.

At NO TIME DID I THREATEN TO SUE ANYONE!!!

This was explained to and clarified for Shades by myself and others.

And yet, he continues to perpetuate LIES about me!

Not much makes me truly angry online, being misrepresented is one thing that does.

He is outright LYING about me.

Color me ticked off!!

The second post contains portions of an email she sent to Shades which further clarifies her position:

Dear Dr. Shades,

I am writing to tell you that I have confirmation that you and I do not come from the same planet. As per Liz's encouragement, let me offer you clarity with which to work.

1. Darrick is a known in real life stalker who has, according to the Tanner's website and other websites that track his activity, as well as DCP's account, has acted out publicly.


2. When I saw Darrick begin to press for the in real life identity of MCB after he didn't like a statement she'd made about his credibility AND saw that he was escalating in his excessive use of vulgar, threatening and inflammatory verbiage, I began reporting his posts as well did others, for his behavior demonstrated evidence of cyberstalking.

Here are his own words to me:

i like to know WHO is DISrespecting me. Not cowards behind avatars.

or,..in your case...a cocksucker behind an avatar.


Jersey Girl wrote:
Back to the OP.

I agree that this board enables Daheshist. I regret my exchanges with him earlier. I did try to interact with him civilly on other threads. When he put up the inquiry for MCB's in real life, that crossed a line with me.

I will do my darndest to try not to feed him again. I suggest others do the same and let the administrative chips fall where they may.

Following that statement, he posted the "Sometimes...one has to FIGHT for respect! Sometimes, blood has to be shed." post.


3. LDST described this activity in his "Compassionate Banning" OP as follows:

Mods,

Derrick is out of control and is now seeking the identity of posters on this board (see his request for MCB's in real life information). I think there is little doubt that he is mentally ill. While I'm all for freedom of expression, his posts are disturbing.

This board is enabling him and I would vote that he is banned, for his own good, and potentially for the safety of others.


4. Before logging off that night, a poster informed me that another poster (not named) had contacted the FBI with regards to the nature of Darrick's interaction on MDB.


5. When I looked in on the board the next day, I saw that LDST had posted his Boycott thread wherein he described Darrick's behavior as follows:

Board,

The mods are slow to react to the latest Derrick 'break from reality'. Derrick has insinuated violence against MCB and Dan Peterson. This place has turned into a gong show.

I am starting a boycott - "You get me, or you get Derrick, you don't get both". Until Derrick is removed from this board, and a commitment is made to ban any and all Derrick-like sock puppets as they pop-up, I will not associate my name with this board. I will have no hand in Derrick carrying out a violent act towards any person.

Consider this my last post until Derrick is gone. All who will join this boycott, make your last post in this thread.


LDST was of course, not the only person who saw Darrick's behavior as unhinged.


6. At that time, I saw EA enter the thread. He showed no signs of having acted on the reported posts and showed no signs that he took the various pleas to ban Darrick seriously.


7. In an attempt to force EA's hand to block Darrick at least temporarily, I issued an ultimatum. The posts in question and the corresponding reports sat on the board overnight and for hours, without attention. I gave it 15 minutes to get it over with and be done with it.


8. Let me try to make this perfectly clear to you.

- At no time did I threaten to sue the board.
- At no time did I threaten to sue the moderators.
- At no time did I threaten to "take the board down".


I said you guys would have a legal (expletive) fight on your hands and that I would initiate it. Why on earth anyone would think that I would a) sue my *friends*, b) use my personal funds to sue a message board or my *friends* when there is already a contractual agreement in place, is beyond me. To imply that I would sue my *friends* is more offensive to me than any of the statements that Darrick directed my way.


9. LDST gave me the name of the web host, so I looked it up. I looked at the Terms of Use and the General Acceptable Use Policy. Based on this:

General Acceptable Use Policy
Shared Hosting Addendum

General Acceptable Use Policy

PROHIBITED CONTENT AND ACTIVITIES
Illegal Activity
Customer may only use DreamHost Web Hosting’s Server for lawful purpose. Transmission of any material in violation of any Country, Federal, State or Local regulation is prohibited. To this effect, child pornography is strictly prohibited as well as housing any copyrighted information (to which the customer does not hold the copyright or an appropriate license) on DreamHost Web Hosting’s Server. Also, using DreamHost’s servers or network to conspire to commit or support the commission of illegal activities is forbidden as well.

I thought that there might be a possibility of having DreamHost intervene and get you all to ban Darrick from the board since his activity constituted cyberstalking, but I wasn't sure if this were a valid complaint with regards to a violation of Terms of Use and General Acceptable Use Policy, so I filed an inquiry instead. I think you have seen a copy of that inquiry, since I sent a copy to Liz.


9. In a recent post EA made this comment:

Jersey Girl's inquiry was worded to rhetorically ask if the board was violating its contract with dreamhost after supplying her case wherein she seems to think it was. "This happened: I don't know if this is a violation of of the board's contract with you, but please check it out and respond" I think should be read as more than entirely benign. Especially when you consider that she threatened to take legal action over it.

The legal action that I took WAS the inquiry to DreamHost. It would have been a complaint and I've already explained why it wasn't a complaint. I said I would "initiate" and that's exactly what I attempted to do.


10. In yet another post, EA made this comment:

Darrick, after all, didn't break any codified rules that have banning given as a consequence. His banning is based on context information that we might not have anticipated a rule for.

I invite you to review the Rules section of MDB and read this comment by keene:


Board wars are okay, posting links are okay, posting links to illegal information, typosquatting, and other illegal activity is not.

To the best of my knowledge, cyberstalking is illegal activity. Is it EA's assertion that because keene's statement regarding illegal activity does not appear in the "codified" rules that suddenly, illegal activity is okay?


11. Here is a somewhat revised excerpt from a message that I sent to a friend, that best explains my motivations.

Contrary to what some have assumed, I was not afraid of Darrick's threats to me. I was pissed as hell. This guy is a proven in real life stalker of DCP. He has the wherewithal to locate people (and yes, I'll admit that DCP is a visible presence around BYU which makes it easier to locate him versus locating me), put that together with obvious obsession and mental illness, and then the package becomes something I don't want to see show up on my property.

My family has had enough drama in the past year and a half and I'll be damned if some deranged internet lunatic is going to show up on my property and enter into yet another family drama.

My thought was that if Darrick had remained on the board his obsessions could have escalated to the point where he had the potential to act out in real life. I figured that if the mod team showed no signs of taking it seriously, that I'd take a shot at the web host to see if they could pull the plug on this guy if his conduct were deemed a violation of the Terms of Use or Acceptable
Use Policy.


12. All that said, after I submitted the inquiry to DreamHost, I saw that Shades was online (this is starting to feel like a deposition, folks) and immediately contacted him to heads up him about what he was walking in to. PM's started flying back and forth. He told me that EA had already banned Darrick and yet, there was no confirmation of that on the board. As I was writing my last reply to Shades and tried to submit it, I saw that I was banned from the board. I would have liked to have explained the inquiry that I submitted to the board, but I was busy trying to address Shades, got banned and I never had the chance to do so.


13. When I looked at my email shortly later, I received a "multiple address" email from Daniel Peterson which was a notice to Shades and in reference to an original message sent to him by LDST. (Why does LDST keep showing up in this series of events? ) Let me explain. I have never corresponded with Daniel Peterson. The only reason that he had my email address was because of a long ago "multiple address" email sent from another person. In this email, he essentially stated that he was upset and going to contact the Orem Police Dept. on account of Darrick's interaction on MDB. I didn't reply to the email.

So, let me make this clear to you all once more.

At no time did I intend to:

- Sue the board.
- Sue the moderators.
- Take down the board.

My one and ONLY intention was to get Darrick off the board. Take away his access. Take away the time/exposure needed for his obsessing to further escalate.

Why wasn't it yours, Shades?

Having a known in real life stalker openly engaging in cyberstalking on MDB is the threat to MDB, not this Jersey Girl. I maintain, that if there were ever such a thing as a no brainer mod call, this was it. At least three posters saw Darrick's behavior as exhibiting evidence of clear and present danger. One notified the FBI, another the police, and I submitted an inquiry to the web host. Shades, if you don't wish for things like this to happen on your board, then you shouldn't allow people like Darrick to roam free or tie the hands of your moderators from taking action when they eventually and predictably hit the fan. When the community sees that admin has done nothing, and to their knowledge, that the moderators aren't doing anything, the posters will eventually try to take matters into their own hands and that's exactly what three different posters did.


Here are my comments for you to share with EA:


EA, what part of you doesn't understand that Darrick has acted out in real life and approached people such as Daniel Peterson? What part of you doesn't understand the need to immediately remove an obsessive person's time and opportunity? You had your hands on the keyboard, access to the mod panel, you had a handful of reports on the same guy from different posters, and you sat there and did nothing to pull the plug on a known stalker who exhibited clear signs of cyberstalking. All you had to do was say, "You know what, I'm just going to put him on temp ban until we can get this sorted out. Everyone sit tight and we'll get back to you." Had you done that, had you addressed the reports, had you displayed any evidence at all that you took Darrick's behavior seriously, I would have never contacted DreamHost. Members of the community were pressing for his banning and you sat there blathering about precedence and an agreement with Shades. I ask you, how important would clinging to precedence or your agreement have been had this guy harmed Daniel Peterson?

Do you (EA and Shades) not realize, that there are people behind the screen names? How many of us want a poster like Darrick jumping off the screen and into our private lives? If either of you had perceived a real threat to yourself or your family, or someone else and their family, wouldn't you do everything you had at your disposal to prevent it? How is it different when three other posters do the same? If I am not mistaken, Shades, when the Z trolls were going at you and posted using a screen name containing the name of one of your family members, you yourself contacted EZ board because you felt increasingly threatened.

Do you not grant the posters of your board, the same opportunity to address illegal activity in much the same way, when they see that no action is being taken? At what point do you begin to understand that you cannot allow a poster like Darrick to run free on your board without it eventually turning into chaos? At what point do you begin to understand that the people on the board are real people with real lives and real families?


Request: I would like to see this statement be posted on MDB with people's names removed, as in: [edited out in real life] If you choose to post this on the board, I would like Liz to do the editing on it. In any case, I hope you will post it directly into the Mod Forum in it's original form. Please note, I am neither asking to be un-banned or to remain banned. The decision is yours, Shades.

In closing and just so we're clear, under NO circumstances would I ever sue my friends. If any of you can think that about me, then you don't know me at all. My friends, on the other hand, know better.

Jersey Girl

Also, don't you think that Harmony and I would have been concerned had we felt threatened? I can tell you that I do not relish the idea of "having food taken from my children's mouths" either! My brother in law is an attorney. If I felt at all threatened, I would have contacted him immediately. Neither of us felt personally threatened because THERE WAS NO THREAT.

Even the action that Jersey Girl did go forward with, which was filing a formal inquiry....(not even a complaint..and inquiry) with the webhost goes to the fact that if she was planning on suing anyone, it would be the board, itself, not us.

Shades, in your own words above, you stated that suing the board did NOT concern you. Jersey Girl didn't even do that, but if there was any indication of threat at all, it would be toward that end, not a personal lawsuit against us.

Let me also state here that Jersey Girl has no interest in being reinstated to the board. She is a moderator on MY private board, and is very happy there.

What she does resent, and as her friend, I also resent, is being lied about.

Also, LDST, you mentioned that Jersey Girl had sent you PMs to you indicating that she was planning to sue. Were they indications that she was planning to sue the board, or that she was planning to sue Shades, EA, Harmony, and myself? There is a vast difference there.

And, according to Shades own statement here, even if Jersey Girl was planning to sue the board, that would be OK with him.

[_Yoda]

For LDST, the classless piece of crap himself, my comments regarding Jersey Girl can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24868&p=615162#p615162

[_EAllusion]

Huh. That is a quote of Jersey Girl's email comes from a lengthy discussion in the moderator forum where two mods were going to bat for her. She clearly was kept up to date on contents found therein. My comments informing it and responding to it, since it addresses me at length, are found there in the flow of conversation. Unfortunately, that is locked away.

If Jersey Girl is arguing that she didn't threaten to sue anyone and resting of the technicality that she merely hoped to threaten to provoke someone else into initiating a legal fight because "liability is a bitch and so am I" that's not much of a distinction to be hanging her hat on.

[_EAllusion]

There was no codified rule against making legal threats or submitting passive-aggressive inquiries to the webhost that threaten the board at the time of Jersey Girl's banning. There was, however, precedent in that Joseph was banned for highly similar behavior. He, nor Darrick*, violated any rule that has banning as a consequence either. Jersey Girl was aware of this precedent and the similarity between her and Joseph's behavior, for what it is worth. Take that what you will. There is a rule against it now.

*Jersey Girl seems to think that Darrick was engaged in criminal cyberstalking on this board, but, uh, no he wasn't.

[_Yoda]

I have one more additional comment to add from Jersey Girl:

Shades

Apparently you don't know her as well as I do. She says precisely what she means and means precisely what she says. She even takes pride in it.

Oh hell yes, I take pride in it.

And I did exactly what I said I would do, and actually to the very minute. :-)

I said I would initiate a legal fight and contacted the webhost...where MDB has a standing contractual agreement that spells out various policies.

Did I say I would engage in a personal legal fight against the Moderators? Nope.
Did I say I would initiate a legal fight with the Webhost? Yes.

Can Shades read? Yes.
Can Shades think? Nope.