Adios Folks

[Chap]

The nonsense posted by Binger/Cultellus and Atlanticmike/multiple socks is worthless. Their stated intent is to destroy this forum.

Certainly. The departure of somebody like KG is a step in the direction of their ultimate success.

The mods bend over backwards, on a post by post basis, to give them this opportunity.

I am very reluctant to criticise the mods, who do, I know operate within difficult constraints set by Dr Shades. But it does seem to me sometimes that he would not be too unhappy to see parts of this board become a kind of private zoo populated by trolls in comfortable but secure enclosures, where there is the minimum of interference with their sacred rights of self-expression, even if it is a zoo that nobody wants to visit because of the noise and smells. Oh, and apart from the zoo, maybe a few threads about word games and a book club.

Thank goodness we don't also have the virtual equivalent on this board of a Second Amendment as well as the First.

[Marcus]

And of course, the animals in spirit prison quoted my post from here, titling it "The Bitch being a Bitch".

Thanks, mods, for protecting free speech. Your dedication to the letter of the law is erodibg our forum, but still, thank you.

[Kishkumen]

I am sorry to see Kevin go. It bothers me. He has been a part of the MDB community for many years, and I value his participation here. I regret that we could not work this out.

[Binger]

I am sorry to see Kevin go. It bothers me. He has been a part of the MDB community for many years, and I value his participation here. I regret that we could not work this out.

Did you ever consider asking him to not stage his own nuclear war on Ajax in Paradise?

[honorentheos]

Hey Kevin,

On the off chance you read this, I appreciate your contributions and will miss what you bring to the forum. While we've disagreed at times and agreed at others, it's always seemed to be valuable discussion. And, beyond the board, you seem like a good guy with a great family and I wish you all the best. If, as you say,...

I don't feel enlightened or inspired by anything I read here anymore. I only feel disgust and disappointment, and that's been true for about a year now.

...then it is probably for the best. I don't disagree that there are fewer interesting or informative discussions. I personally took a break from the board earlier this year for similar reasons. It seemed I was devaluing my time and had to rethink it. Part of my decision in coming back was to try and tend the garden more by inserting things I hope have some value. I'm enjoying our group check-ins on the games like Worldle and Globle. I'm excited for the reading group discussion which I hope is successful largely because having a positive topic to discuss is just one other way to foster a healthier garden that keeps out the weeds. But I get it.

Best wishes.

[Res Ipsa]

Dear Kevin,

I'm sorry to see you go. You've been a long-time participant here and there are many folks, me among them, who both like you and appreciate the posts you've made over the years. I wish you and your family nothing but the best, and I hope down the road you'll stick your head in from time to time to say "hi" and let us know how you are doing. We'll leave the light on for you.

Normally, when someone leaves, I'd stop there. But sometimes people who leave a community they've been attached to and emotional invested in not only try to burn bridges on the way out, they try to burn down the community itself and the people who remain in it. For that reason, I'm going to go through your post and respond to things that I think are unfair to me and more broadly the site itself.

I've about had my fill with this pathetic pandering to despicable humans.

Let's stop here for a second. Over a period of months, you'd adopted the practice of referring to a couple of people here as "human garbage." When you classify individuals as "human garbage" or "despicable humans" it's extremely easy to justify treating them in ways that you would not normally treat people. What you describe as "pandering" to Ajax is nothing more than applying the rules equally to the both of you -- I'd suggest that it looks to you like "pandering" only because you don't think Ajax deserves the same level of treatment that you deserve. As a mod, I don't have separate standards for "despicable humans" and other humans. I do my best to apply the rules based on conduct -- not whether I think they are worthy of equal treatment.

I've been informed by the mods that if I try to defend myself from ajax's lies by doing precisely THE SAME EXACT THING HE DOES (by constantly referring to things I NEVER SAID), that I would be in violation of some rule about making the forum run "smoothly" or some horse crap. Ajax can do it, and it's all kosher because dishonesty is just in his nature so we have to give him some leeway there. But if I do it, then it's time to whip out the microscope on the rules again and whine about "smooth running."

This is a complete misrepresentation of the interaction between us yesterday. Because I check my notifications first thing, I didn't see your report, posts and PMs in the order you made them. But, to describe what happened from my point of view, I'm going to report the order in which I saw, read and acted.

The first thing I saw from you was a report of a post by Ajax. It was specifically about this sentence in Ajax's post: "But as Kevin says, there's no such thing as heroes who use a legally owned weapon to take down a murderer."

Your report said:

Tell this mother idiot to stop lying about things I said or ill bombard the forum with so many fake quotes from him it'll make your head spin. So siick [sic] of the BS from this despicable piece of crap.

This was only the second time that I'd seen a report or PM from you on this subject. The first was shortly after I became a moderator. The second was yesterday. What you reported is something that is quite common on message boards, this one included: A makes a statement about B's past comments, views, opinions, etc. and A feels B has misrepresented him. A's motives can range from innocent misunderstanding to malicious lying. B's responses can range from "no, my actual view is X" to "LIAR LIAR LIAR."

There is no rule that addresses this kind of disagreement. Nor should there be. Playing umpire whenever one person thinks another person mischaracterized their words or views would be a full time job. Moreover, it's the kind of issue easily resolved by the board participants themselves. Accordingly, I closed the report and sent you the following PM:

Kevin,

I received your report of this post: viewtopic.php?f=7&p=2784826#p2784826

I understand how frustrating it is to have someone misrepresent or misinterpret your words. However, the mod team is not charged with refereeing arguments over the truth or accuracy of the contents of posts. If you think Ajax has misrepresented your position or something you've said in the past, you are free to correct him or ask him for a reference to your past posts.

Please do not threaten to flood the board with anything to retaliate against Ajax or for any other reason. Threatening to interrupt the smooth operation of the board violates UR 8:

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.

If you choose to retaliate against Ajax, please do so within the rules.

Thanks

RI

First, this has nothing to do with "defending" yourself. My PM to you gave you examples of ways you could defend yourself: explain your actual views or do a CFR. What you are talking about is a retaliatory attack. And what I told you on that subject was: "If you choose to retaliate against Ajax, please do so within the rules."

Second, my comments about UR 8 were directed at your threat to "flood the board." We've just gone through a long, board-wide discussion about how "flooding the board" disrupts the ability of users to carry on a conversation. That led to the mod team's decision to treat disruptive trolling as a violation of UR 8. You threatened to disrupt the board if the mod team didn't do something you wanted us to do. I asked you please not to disrupt the board, whether in response to Ajax or for any other reason and reminded you of the applicable rule.

When I handle a report on a thread, in addition to responding to the report, I also check out the thread in general to see if there is more going on that what was reported. At that point, I discovered that you had already retaliated against Ajax by responding in kind (i.e., attributing something to him that he never said). Unfortunately, you chose to use one of the two "forbidden" words on this site. In fact, you used it twice. You tried to technically evade the rule by substituting a couple of asterisks for letters, but it violated the spirit of the ban, as it was obvious which words you were using. I deleted what was required and labeled the deletion FR 1 because the language was not acceptable in Paradise or any other forum.

[To be continued]

[Kishkumen]

Thanks for explaining all of that Res Ipsa. I appreciate you holding the line on the rules. They apply to all of us, even people we like.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

& , brother Graham. See you after your sabbatical.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

[Part 2]

I next received and read the following PM from you:

Ah, so here we go again. Wash rinse and repeat. You back the Nazi and then find a way to interpret some rule to prevent me from defending myself against his flat out lies. What a damned joke this place has become.

To which I responded:

Kevin, when I sent you the above PM, I had not seen that you had already responded to Ajax's post. Your response was in no way, shape or form "defending" yourself. You made no attempt to correct Ajax, ask him for a reference to a previous post of yours, or even accurately state what your views are. Any of those would qualify as "defending" yourself.

What you did instead was counter attacked -- you punched back. Unfortunately, you chose to punch back using one of only two words that Shades has banned from use in any kingdom. That's not me finding some way to interpret the rules against you. That's you breaking the rules by using one of only two banned words.

As I've said before and will continue to say, if you choose to retaliate, you must do so within the rules.

Res Ipsa

I note that your original complaint was about Ajax misrepresenting something you said. You then went on to completely misrepresent your conversation with me as a reason for why you made the choice to leave the board. I'll also note that, although though you accused Ajax as lying about what you've said, you never actually informed me or anyone else about why what he said was inaccurate, let alone a lie. You misrepresented what I said, and I defended myself by showing what I actually said. You claim Ajax misrepresented you, and what you did was retaliate. See the difference? And your retaliation would have been fine, except that you decided to use one of the two forbidden words.

Lately, the report button means absolutely nothing unless you're a known racist or bigot. I think I've clicked on it two or three times in over 10 years, each time getting some BS explanation as to why "nothing can be done about it."

This is completely false. Ajax has used the report button fewer times than you have over the last eight months.

The first time you contacted me since the mod team was reported was about Ajax's signature, which purported to quote something that you didn't think you said. Contrary to your claim that I said "nothing can be done about it," I contacted Ajax and asked him for the source of the quote, which was from the old board. After neither he nor I were able to find it, he voluntarily deleted it. So, in fact, I fixed the problem you reported.

The second time was about people who were identifying your current screen name with screen names you had used in the past, but not with "Kevin Graham" which you had used as a screen name in the past. In other words, they were linking Alf O'Mega with Icarus with Hawkeye, etc. But, no one was using your in real life name, Kevin Graham. I explained to you that we had no rule against trying to "out" sock accounts with other sock accounts. In fact, it's something that happened all the time. But, a precedent had been set in the case of Rosebud that people in your position could reclaim anonymity. So, I asked you to let me know if anyone used your real name in connection with any of your screen names.

I also informed you that your signature line on a past screen name basically gave away your identity as Kevin Graham -- basically you had inadvertently outed your own in real life identity. I offered to have that signature line deleted to protect your in real life identity and, with your agreement, had it deleted.

So, the second time, I not only informed you of what I could do to protect your confidentiality, I went out of my way to point out that you had outed yourself and offered to fix it.

The third was yesterday.

After I've been repeating the same things mods like EA had been saying for years (i.e. pointing out reasons why ajax's Nazi background matters because credibility matters in public debates), suddenly I was told this represents a violation for... wait for it... "personal attacks" ...

I'd ask for a CFR at this point, as you should be able to find EA saying this for years. In fact, to my recollection, this subject was discussed exactly once in a fairly short back and for between EA and me. His argument was that it couldn't be a personal attack if it was true. I disagreed. I don't recall EA basing his position on anything to do with credibility.

Frankly, I think your whole "credibility" argument is a weak excuse for wanting to punch a piece of human garbage because it makes you feel good. Credibility is important when you need to rely on someone as a source of accurate information. When I talk about legal stuff, the fact that I've been a practicing attorney for decades lends me some credibility in terms of having some expertise in the area. The same with Doc when he talks about military issues. Or you when you talk about real estate. If it turns out that I am, in fact, an unemployed 17 year old who lives with my mom and has never studied law, that's relevant because I, in fact, would have no expertise to back up what I say. It would be the same with stolen valor, only stolen valor is much more serious in my opinion.

Ajax isn't presenting himself as someone who has expertise that he doesn't have. He's presenting his opinions. And quite a bit of what he says is repugnant -- not because of who he is or what he did 15 years ago -- but because of the substance of the views. Things he says would be just as repugnant if you said them or I said them. So, what he did 15 years ago is irrelevant to evaluating the ideas and opinions he expresses.

What you are are actually promoting is the classic ad hominem fallacy: Ajax is a Nazi, therefore anything he says about race can be dismissed. Committing logical fallacies is not an important part of public debate -- just the opposite. So your whole argument that what Ajax did 15 years ago is vital to public debate is pure nonsense. In fact, it's the kind of pure nonsense that made the Mopologetic wars so toxic.

We had a long public discussion about why calling Ajax a Nazi is a personal attack. Although you gave several excuses for why you thought it was okay to call him a Nazi, you never got around to explaining why it isn't a personal attack. It's personal -- about the person and not what they posted -- and it is certainly attacking to equate someone with the perpetrators of the holocaust. So, it literally fits within the rule. What you and a couple of others had been doing was responding to almost any post by Ajax by effectively jumping up and down and yelling NAZI NAZI NAZI! That's not an important component of public debates. That's personally attacking someone to try and make them shut up.

Let's be honest. Quite literally every thread on this forum contains something that could reasonably be deemed a personal attack.

.

Okay, let's. Your statement is bull. Most people here can and do interact -- even strongly disagree -- without personally attacking each other. But's let's be completely honest -- throwing an elbow once in a while in a heated argument is not comparable to having a NAZI NAZI NAZI gangbang when Ajax posts something repugnant.

Since when does ajax ever "attack an argument and not the person", or the Democrats, or some black woman, or the Leftist media, or whatever boogeyman Brietbart has conjured up for him that day?

The personal attack rule applies only to members of the board. You routinely demonize conservatives in your posts, and moderators don't treat that as a rule violation. The Leftist Media is not a member of the board. Ajax is a member of the board.

Yet, I'm the one violating that rule for simply pointing out historical facts about someone's obvious bias as a former member of the notorious white supremacist cult Stormfront. Hell, I can't even say anything like, "You're quoting a source that white supremacists love." That's not directly calling him a Nazi, but it is close enough for the mods hovering over ajax as a shield.

This is where the spirit of the rule comes into play. When asked to stop doing something that violates the rules, most folks here simply stop and life goes on. Others try to technically avoid the rules while still achieving the result that was a problem in the first place -- a combination of grudging, minimal, technical compliance combined with rules lawyering. That's what you are doing here. Deliberately posting things that have the effect of calling Ajax a Nazi without using the word "Nazi" violates the spirit of the personal attack rule. That's what the spirit of the law means. I'd also request a CFR on the bit about quoting a source, but you're not here. by the way, to the extent the mods are hovering as a shield, we're hovering over everybody. The difference is that no one else has been targeted with the volume and degree of personal attacks that Ajax has.

RI was even bold enough to suggest to me that the sudden shift in that "policy" was likely just a retaliation against me for previously complaining about Shades... He said something to the effect of, "you wanted Shades out now this is what you get" or some B.S. like that. FTR, I never wanted Shades "out," so I don't know WTF he's talking about.

And I don't know WTF you're talking about. For reasons that I'm not at liberty to discuss, the personal attack rule had not been applied uniformly in the pat. In my opinion, the reasons for that were well intentioned and had nothing to do with favoritism, but the result was that you were one of the beneficiaries of this uneven application of the rule. When I volunteered to moderate this time around, I conditioned my offer on a couple of things. One is that the uneven application of the rule would stop and that the rule would be applied based on the content of posts. What you describe as a "sudden shift" is actually nothing more than uniform application of the rule. For those that hadn't benefitted from the previous uneven application of the rules, there was no shift at all. None of this had anything to do with Shades stepping down. It had everything to do with the team discussing standards for applying the rule in as consistent a manner as we could. And I first raised this with you several months ago.

]Meanwhile, when I report the fact that ajax is repeatedly lying about things I never said as he has done repeatedly lately, Res can't bring himself to interpret this in any way that violates a rule. No way to interpret it as a "personal attack" maybe? No, of course not. Intentionally lying about something someone said isn't a personal attack, doesn't matter how attacked that person feels. Like when he lied about me calling Allen Keys the N word. That's not a personal attack apparently, but stating verifiable facts that pertain to credibility is a personal attack because that person should be allowed to conceal the fact that he's a racist bigot who hates interracial marriage, calls black people inferior, etc ... and the lead mod is only happy to accommodate him and facilitate in that effort.

You made one report yesterday, about one sentence that Ajax posted. You claimed he was repeatedly lying, but supplied exactly one example. You didn't mention the incident about Allen Keyes. And as I've said, people feeling that others have misrepresented their words or opinions is a common occurrence that is easily remedied by correcting them. Accusing the person as "lying" is the most extreme of many reactions people have to that kind of thing. If you wanted to make the case that what Ajax was doing qualified as a "personal attack," you could have done that in response to my PM. But you didn't and just used it as part of your excuse for quitting the board. The fact is, we try to determine what is a "personal attack" by looking at the conduct. People can feel "personally attacked" by all kinds of things, so using that kind of subjective standard would not allow us to apply the rule in anything like a uniform manner. And your notion of Ajax concealing his bigotry is nonsensical, seeing at how it is blatant in what he posts. (I'm also not the "lead mod" -- I just talk the most.)

So I was forced to ask myself, after this, why the F am I still hanging around a place that bends over backwards to find ways to make a Nazi feel welcomed, and me so unwelcomed? One thing I've learned in this life is that some people are just toxic, and I suppose that can apply to communities too. I don't feel enlightened or inspired by anything I read here anymore. I only feel disgust and disappointment, and that's been true for about a year now.

Why do you equate not being permitted to participate in NAZI NAZI NAZI gang bangs in Paradise with not being welcomed? Why would having the rules apply to you the same way they are being applied to everyone else make you feel unwelcome? Did you think to stop and ask yourself whether your own behavior was contributing to the toxicity you perceive? Do you think misrepresenting your conversation with me is toxic? Do you think trying to portray a disagreement about how to apply the rules as some kind of personal vendetta is toxic? Instead of playing the victim, why not think about how you affect the environment here and how you could make it less toxic? If you don't feel enlightened or inspired, why not post something enlightening and inspiring instead of NAZI NAZI NAZI or "Conservatives are evil?"

Yeah yeah, I know what you're thinking. Sure Kevin. Sure you're leaving. You left before, but came back. And you're right. I did. But this time it's for real. The mental exhaustion trying to reason with the powers that be here, is just not worth whatever benefit there was to posting here (a benefit I've long forgotten, if it ever existed). Anyone who knows me here knows my social media account and can reach out to me there as some of you already do. It sucks that I need to burn this bridge of more than 20 years of community participation, but it has to be done.

You think "trying to reason" with the powers that be is exhausting? Try being one of the the powers that be who has to try to reason with 20 different people about dozens and dozens of different issues. But, look, if hanging out here is bad for your mental and emotional health, by all means do what you need to do. If you've arrived at a place where you don't see any benefit to reading or posting here and are questioning whether there ever was any benefit, then find something else that does benefit you. Better yet, find something that brings you joy. I mean, don't you deserve that? I think so. And I don't understand the need to "burn this bridge." People come, people go. People change, a board community changes. It's part of life. Why try to burn things instead of just wishing everyone well and going on to something that will make you happy?

Shades, you know where to reach me. Maybe we can chat some day about how your forum took one giant step closer to becoming Stormfront. I suspect ajax is going to bring some of his old Nazi buddies over to the forum now that he understands the protections that's afforded to them.

Like this. You know, Kevin, you've said lots of good, interesting, and positive things over the years. But, as you chose this for your exit line, it's going to be hard to forget. Why leave this as our last impression of Kevin Graham?

I hope with the passage of time and the perspective that distance brings, you'll find a way to pop back in and say hello. I will miss you here, and I know I'm not alone.

Res Ipsa

[Res Ipsa]

& , brother Graham. See you after your sabbatical.

- Doc

I'll join in on that.