The reason I have been reluctant to weigh in on this is because I don't like kicking a person when he or she is down. Specifically, I prefer not to mention when someone has been banned, much less the reasons behind it, because he or she is
ipso facto not around to defend him- or herself.
But apparently you want to hear my reasoning anyway.
After a dust-up with Daheshist, Jersey Girl made the following threat in
this post, emphasis added:
". . . you guys are gonna have a legal f*****g fight on your hands and I'll initiate it.
Keep in mind that there are no published disclaimers on this board so admin is in it up to their eyeballs if they don't knock this guy off the board."
Note that she didn't say that "
Daheshist is gonna have a legal f*****g fight on
his hands and I'll initiate it." Nor did she say that "
Daheshist is in it up to
his eyeballs if he doesn't voluntarily leave the board." In other words, we moderators were going to be sued, not him.
In
this post, she declared her seriousness by saying:
Liability is a bitch, EA, and make no mistake about it, so am I. No part of me is willing to stand idly by while a person makes threats against myself and others without moving on it.
I'm giving the mod team 15 minutes from the time this post goes up to block Darrick and assure this community that he has indeed been blocked. If I don't see that happening, I'll begin with filing a complaint.
We typically don't announce people's bannings for the reasons I outlined at the beginning of this post, so EAllusion was under no obligation to post on the board itself that Daheshist had been banned. If she had been curious, she could've sent a PM to either him or any of the other moderators inquiring whether or not he had indeed been banned (he had been).
Nevertheless, she proceeded to file her complaint, thus "sealing the deal" on the fact that she was 100% serious and not just making idle threats.
Note that she said that she will
begin with filing a complaint. She didn't say that she would
end with filing a complaint. The fact that she got what she wanted is the only reason we haven't been served with papers. (Thank God that this happened on a weekend and all the lawyers were out of their offices.) If we had failed to meet her demands, the "legal f*****g fight" would be in full swing right now.
People have said that she felt threatened. Well, if she had felt threatened, then the correct course of action is to threaten DAHESHIST with a "legal f*****g fight," not us moderators. Or call the police on him. Or just log off the computer.
Here's my thought process: I can handle it if the board gets sued. Heck, if I'm guilty of some sort of wrongdoing, I can even handle it if I get sued.
But what I simply can't handle is if me and my moderators get sued for something that a completely unrelated third party does. What makes it worse is if a lawsuit can come crashing down on my head due merely to my
not being online during an arbitrary 15 minute segment of time.
You see, I am a man of limited means, and I simply cannot afford to have the bread taken out of my children's mouths for something that someone
else might do. Nor do I want my moderators subject to the same liability. Sure, people have said that such a lawsuit would be frivolous, but defending oneself from any lawsuit, frivolous or not, requires untold amounts of time and money.
I'm sorry, but I simply can't live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my neck 24/7. I simply can't risk having the bread taken out of my children's mouths the next time some wing-nut pisses her off 15 minutes prior to my logging in to the board.
Yes, she has been a cyber-friend of mine for many years now. Yes, it pains me that I had to make a choice between her continued participation and, quite possibly, becoming unable to feed my children.
But moderatorial consistency demands that I don't treat my friends any differently from the way I treat everyone else.
There. Satisfied?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
--Louis Midgley
