Praise to the Man!

[¥akaSteelhead]

The following sentence does feel like a giveaway:

The tactics are covert and obvious at the same time? That's quite a trick.

The general diction of the post referred to from 'MrsAtlanticmike', and the sentiments expressed there and in her more recent 'all my husband wanted was not to be called a white supremacist' post, are both highly reminiscent of him, and on that basis I would say two things:

1. It is likely that Atlanticmike has been suspended or banned. As always, ordinary posters have no way to be sure of that. But if he never reappears, that would be an obvious explanation.

2. I do on the whole tend to think that 'MrsAtlanticmike' is a sock puppet of Atlanticmike.

However, so long as the person posting as MrsAtlanticmike' does not start doing the things that AM did do disrupt this board (and he did them big-time and long-term), I have no great objection to reading 'her posts', if she feels she has something to say. If she just goes on about how nice her husband is, and how sad it is that he was mistreated, then so long as she does not keep derailing posts to say such things, that will not be very interesting, but it will not be much of a problem.

AM hasn't made a new post since Wednesday - odds are good he is on ice for a while.

[K Graham]

The general diction of the post referred to from 'MrsAtlanticmike', and the sentiments expressed there and in her more recent 'all my husband wanted was not to be called a white supremacist' post, are both highly reminiscent of him, and on that basis I would say two things:

1. It is likely that Atlanticmike has been suspended or banned. As always, ordinary posters have no way to be sure of that. But if he never reappears, that would be an obvious explanation.

2. I do on the whole tend to think that 'MrsAtlanticmike' is a sock puppet of Atlanticmike.

However, so long as the person posting as MrsAtlanticmike' does not start doing the things that AM did do disrupt this board (and he did them big-time and long-term), I have no great objection to reading 'her posts', if she feels she has something to say. If she just goes on about how nice her husband is, and how sad it is that he was mistreated, then so long as she does not keep derailing posts to say such things, that will not be very interesting, but it will not be much of a problem.

AM hasn't made a new post since Wednesday - odds are good he is on ice for a while.

More than likely he's not smart enough to figure out how to use a proxy server, so the IP shows up the same when he now posts as his "wife."

[¥akaSteelhead]

Well, if they are the same house they would likely look like the same Natted address at the ISP. But I have a sneaking suspicion the Mrs and Mr are one and the same.

[K Graham]

Well, if they are the same house they would likely look like the same Natted address at the ISP. But I have a sneaking suspicion the Mrs and Mr are one and the same.

Exactly. And if Mike has been suspended as some suspect, then creating another profile just so he can keep posting is precisely the kind of thing we'd expect of him because he's addicted to posting here.

[Moksha]

But I have a sneaking suspicion the Mrs and Mr are one and the same.

Could we test out this hypothesis by the hair growth on Mike's palms?

[Dr. Shades]

I don't remember Dr. Shades ever participating on either forum, aside from the time I called him out over his claim that the Church just arbitrarily added a million members to its rolls. He had posted an article on his website about this and I wrote a response refuting it, which led to him showing up and addressing my critique.

I was a regular participant on both boards for quite some time. In fact, the impetus that convinced me that this board needed to be invented was when I was permanently banned from FAIR.

So at some point, for whatever reason, the owner of ZLMB decided to drop the forum. This was around 2005-2006 when I just moved to Brazil, so I didn't really have a lot of time to keep up with the details about how that all happened.

I was the one who inadvertently but innocently destroyed it. See this opening post by Doctor Scratch from July of 2007 wherein he explains it all.

So, anyway. To the point. One day Shades had an emotional fit over my board getting more traffic. I can't remember if it was something he expressed publicly or maybe just privately to me, but I remember hearing him made me feel bad because running a message board seemed to really, really mean a lot to him. For me, it was just a side hobby and I was able to attend to it on a daily basis because I worked from home. But for him it was something much bigger, and I sensed his pain when he saw that more people were preferring the features and the aesthetics of my forum.

Boy, I hadn't remembered this at all until just now. Anyway, your memory differs from mine. I most certainly don't recall having an "emotional fit" over it; I only remember facing the fact that if your board was better able to do the job, then rather than have two forums competing for posters and time spent therein I asked if you thought I should just shut my board down since your board appeared to have better bells & whistles.

Because unbeknownst to all of us, Shades never had the time, the desire nor the financial means to keep up with this board.

Now hang on just a moment there. It was more like I didn't have the computer science acumen to fix problems as they arose.

Shades doesn't do a damn thing except enforce dumb rules like "don't make fun of my Japanese fetish."

I can't believe I'm revealing this in public, 'cause I was hoping to see how long it'd take before someone figured it out, but that rule is a lighthearted joke meant to get a chuckle by throwing the reader for an unexpected loop. I never meant to actually enforce it.

When the board was on the verge of collapse (due to Shades' mismanagement and lack of transparency about who actually controls it) . . .

Whoa there. From the very beginning of the board, anytime it came up even remotely obliquely, I always was quick to explain that Mav is the legal owner of the board and that he appointed Keene to be its technical supporter. When Keene dropped out of sight I was similarly quick to explain that problem X can only be fixed if or when I can convince Mav to do it for us, since I don't have access to the nuts-and-bolts software and probably wouldn't know to fix it anyway even if I did have access.

I re-explained this in various threads probably five times a year, minimum. Just ask Jersey Girl; she was the one to whom I needed to re-explain it most often. So please don't think--or imply--that there was any lack of transparency from me.

[Chap]

From the very beginning of the board, anytime it came up even remotely obliquely, I always was quick to explain that Mav is the legal owner of the board and that he appointed Keene to be its technical supporter. When Keene dropped out of sight I was similarly quick to explain that problem X can only be fixed if or when I can convince Mav to do it for us, since I don't have access to the nuts-and-bolts software and probably wouldn't know to fix it anyway even if I did have access.

I re-explained this in various threads probably five times a year, minimum. Just ask Jersey Girl; she was the one to whom I needed to re-explain it most often. So please don't think--or imply--that there was any lack of transparency from me.

What Dr S says is borne our by my own recollections of what he has (repeatedly) explained about the different roles of the people who were behind the creation and initial maintenance of this board.

[Kishkumen]

I'd also (to get back on topic) like to repeat my gratitude to Dr Shades for creating and maintaining this board.

Amen. We have had a great run. Lots of good memories.

[Moksha]

What Dr S says is borne out by my own recollections of what he has (repeatedly) explained about the different roles of the people who were behind the creation and initial maintenance of this board.

I've wondered if talk of Maverick and Keene stood as a metaphor for a Council of Mods in the pre-board-existence.

[K Graham]

Boy, I hadn't remembered this at all until just now. Anyway, your memory differs from mine. I most certainly don't recall having an "emotional fit" over it; I only remember facing the fact that if your board was better able to do the job, then rather than have two forums competing for posters and time spent therein I asked if you thought I should just shut my board down since your board appeared to have better bells & whistles.

Yes, our memories differ, and yours might be closer to what actually happened. It wasn't an important historical incident that left a permanent mark on me, but I do remember feeling bad because you seemed to be ecstatic and much more passionate over the creation of your board which is why I chose to step away from hosting mine. And I genuinely regret having done so because had I known then what I know now, there would be no need to see thousands of discussions from 2006-2019 lost like a needle in a haystack (yes, I get that they're technically still there, somewhere, but good luck trying to find anything.)

Whoa there. From the very beginning of the board, anytime it came up even remotely obliquely, I always was quick to explain that Mav is the legal owner of the board and that he appointed Keene to be its technical supporter. When Keene dropped out of sight I was similarly quick to explain that problem X can only be fixed if or when I can convince Mav to do it for us, since I don't have access to the nuts-and-bolts software and probably wouldn't know to fix it anyway even if I did have access.

I re-explained this in various threads probably five times a year, minimum. Just ask Jersey Girl; she was the one to whom I needed to re-explain it most often. So please don't think--or imply--that there was any lack of transparency from me.

I found out about the chain of authority directly from you when we had dinner six years ago. Unlike most websites, you never provided an "about" section explaining any of this. You may have mentioned this stuff to others privately but I see no evidence of you explaining and re-explaining this to the forum. The search engine here is relatively useless for finding direct quotes, but it will pull up single words so long as they're not "too common."

Using the search engine * Keene pulls up 60 pages worth of hits, and aside from your comment on today's post, the most recent mention of Keene was back in May of 2008.

The earliest mention of Keene's official role that I could find was April 4, 2008 when Yoda posted about Moderator Transparency:

Here is the list of Mods:
Dr. Shades(Founder of the Board)
Keene (Site Administrator)
Liz3564
Bond..James Bond
Jersey Girl
Scottie

A search of *Mav pulls up only three pages of hits, with nothing mentioning him from 2007 until the forum's predicament in 2020.

A search of *Maverick pulls up only 6 pages of hits and again, aside from the four mentions since last month, the most recent was back in 2008 and it was mostly used as an adjective.

Again, not saying you never said this to other people, but you can probably agree you could have done a much better job at transparency. A couple years ago when me and several others were trying to salvage the board, I got the sense that some of them were kinda surprised to know you were never the official owner.

Aside from Res' insinuation that I've been trying to pull a coup d'etat to take over your board, I'm not at all emotional about this.