Seems like a pretty slow year Scratch and you had to struggle to come up with ten.
Mr. Stak wrote:10. The Nehor is Booed Off of MDB. After racking up well over 10 thousand posts, the space-cadet TBM poster dubbed "The Nehor" finally called it quits. His career, as several noted, was marked by a very slow decline: from earnestly naïve perpetual missionary, to increasingly cynical uber-nerd, to fist-shaking lunatic. By the end, The Nehor was probably irredeemable as a poster. In a "farewell" thread launched by Liz, Mr. Stakhanovite perhaps summed up The Nehor's MDB posting career succinctly:
I was holding back, given how much Nehor sucked both as a person and as a poster, I could say a lot more. I’d rather have Nehor waste his brain cells huffing glue than rolling that pallid face across the keyboard to share his version of “the gospel” here.``But hey, don’t let me stop you from talking about Nehor like he was some estranged co-worker who hung himself last night in the garage, because God knows, deleting a message board account calls for a wake and a round of anecdotes about the deceased
Really? Wow. Really Nehor is a decent guy. You think his leaving this board was a happening?
I think this is really rather mean of you.
9. Kerry Shirts is "Absent" from the FAIR Conference. The 9th most significant "happening" in the world of Mopologetics in 2011 was actually a non-event: Kerry Shirts failed to cinematically document that all-important Mopologetic gathering, and thus we were deprived of all the goofiness, back-slapping, consumption of high-sugar beverages, and general bloviation that we've all come to love so much. Indeed, the absence of a new entry in the Shirts oeuvre led some to wonder if the image-conscious FAIR board had actually barred him from attending, which would make this at least the second time that FAIR has gone out of its way to make an enthusiastic TBM defender feel unwelcome. (The other being jskains.)
I have met Kerry and know him though I have not spoken to him for some time. Another very decent person. Why pick on him?
8. Droopy Shows Even More Signs of Insanity. Well, there you have it. That and the fact that, per him, he seems to have been "welcomed" into one corner of Mopologetics' "Inner Circle." In a staggering post, he suggested that he has been receiving emails and/or PMs from Will Schryver, which speaks volumes about the state of amateur Mopologetics in 2011.
Droopy is not insane though he seems like a very angry man at times.
7. Leonard Arrington is Given the "Frankenstein" Treatment on MST. The Daniel Peterson vanity project known as "Mormon Scholars Testify" reached its nadir position when the Administrator in Chief cobbled together a plagiarized/manipulated version of LDS scholar Leonard Arrington's published works in order to make it seem as if the late, revered and venerable Arrington had given his endorsement to the Website. This signified an important change in policy at MST: whereas earlier deceased "testimonies" featured clear indication that permission to reprint materials had been gotten from the deceased scholars' significant others, there was no such indication for Arrington. Furthermore, given the propagandistic nature of the site, along with the deeply problematic nature of the reputations of the people involved, there is extremely good reason to suspect that Arrington would have had major problems with seeing his name associated with this endeavor. Nonetheless, Daniel Peterson continued to stubbornly insist that he'd done nothing wrong (this despite the fact that he and his editorial team swiftly went in to make edits to the entry). Indeed, his locked-out profile here at MormonDiscussions still contains a pithy dismissal from him that's a direct reference to this incident.
I am torn on this one. Maybe I will give it to you.
6. SeattleGhostWriter Issues a DCMA Takedown Notice . MormonDiscussions.com--the beacon at the center of online Mormon discussion boards--was briefly shut down in June of 2011 after a TBM called "SeattleGhostWriter" went ballistic. The normally very low-key and congenial Chris Smith posted a thread inquiring about SGW's odd Mopologetic Website, and he (i.e., Chris Smith) wondered how and to what extent the Website/blog constituted a legitimate "academic" endeavor. What ensued in the wake of this OP were a series of astonishing events, the most notable of which, perhaps, was the discovery of SGW's purple-prose-laden erotica. Seething with rage over the notion that anyone would dare mock his epistolary efforts, SGW flew off the handle and began plotting a kind of legal revenge. Rather than contacting Dr. Shades, or calling for level heads, SGW immediately hit the Lawyer Button, and before anyone knew it, MDB had gone dark. Key posters were forced to regroup at The Foyer and The Ex-Mormon Forums while Dr. Shades ascertained what had happened. Before long, the board was restored, but the SGW Incident remains notable as a case where an angry TBM used legal threats to stifle discussion.
This deserves to be on the list.
5. The Birth and Death of "The Cafeteria". Some time in July, the well-liked MDB moderator Liz3564 launched her own, "private" messageboard dubbed "The Cafeteria." The purpose of the board, as Liz later explained, was to provide New-Order Mormons with a place to discuss Church-related issues "in peace." Her board ran quietly up until The Nehor packed up his things and left, at which time Liz launched her "Nehor Has Left the Building" thread, and the existence of The Cafeteria was revealed on a wider scale. This immediately led to Liz utterly locking down her messageboard so as to prevent the public from seeing what was discussed there. Suspicions swirled about Liz's motives: Did she really support Shades' vision of a free-speech environment? Was her board merely an invite-only means of gossiping about MDB? Was The Cafeteria really for NOMs, and if so, why had DCP and ttribe been invited? In spite of some strong words that were exchanged, every thing was smoothed over, and Liz continued to run her board under the cover of darkness.`
Then, in late October, the board imploded after Dr. Peterson began a series of threads complaining yet again about his various obsessions. This irritated a number of the members of The Cafeteria community, who began "leaking" word of DCP's "Meltdown of Epic Proportions." Unsure of what to do, Liz first re-opened her board for public viewing (after deleting several key threads), and then deleted the board entirely, apparently in order to put out the fires of a "board war" (which are wholeheartedly encouraged per Dr. Shades's Doctrine).
I see you left out YOUR contribution and role in this event. And by the way you still hold to a distorted purpose of the board. It was never intended to be just a place for NOMs. Get it straight man. So Liz inviting TBMs and even a prominent apologist was a ok. And some of us really do like Dan Peterson and ttribe.
Several posters noted in the wake of all this that Liz's intentions were noble: it's admirable and understandable that one would want a messageboard "safe haven" to discuss Mormon-related issues. On the other hand, near-unanimous opinion indicated that the biggest mistake Liz made was in inviting DCP to the party.
The opinion of busy bodies like you who had no business butting in. I don't think many posters there minded Peterson at all and most were glad to have him.
Thanks for your part in helping to destroy it. Chalk it up to another one of your malicious anonymous attacks that was successful. Liz did not deserve this from you.
You know over the past few years I have become more tolerant of you and even started to like you some. I have to rethink that due to this event.
1. Schryvergate. Really, what more can be said about this? The key Mopologetic event of 2011 was the "defeat" of erstwhile Mopologetic here, William Schryver. After the unfortunate failure of his KEP FAIR Presentation, Schryver was continuing to lick his wounds until MsJack delivered a series of hydrogen bombs which blew his credibility to smithereens. In post after withering post, MsJack demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that Schryver is a terrible liability for any publishing venue that wants to maintain a shred of respectability. The thread left no doubt as to Schryver's deep-seated misogyny, vulgarity, and duplicity. So profound and thorough was MsJack's critique that it led two concerned, Melchezidek priesthood-holder MI apologists to voice their issues to the Maxwell Institute "powers-that-be," and as a consequence, Schryver's supposedly upcoming MI publication was "canceled," due to fears of negative publicity.
I would have to agree this one is number one.