Response to DCP before it is removed

[_Tim]

Jack,

That is exactly why I stopped posting there years ago. I wasn't even causing trouble but when I saw that "the elect" could break board rules with no repercussions I knew it wasn't a place I wanted to participate. My fear was that I would get banned for reporting bad behavior. You just validated that fear.

[_Tim]

I have gone on a banning rampage. All this shenanigans between critics and defenders will stop today. It is getting us nowhere and frankly I am tired of wasting my time as a baby sitter. Everyone review the board guidelines and start following them. I don't expect Relief Society or EQ, but I do expect people to stop purposely sabotaging threads to get them shut down. LDS need to stop calling others on their behavior, that is our jobs as mods. We set the tone of the board not you. Critics just because you don't agree doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it. There are ways to disagree with a position that promote discussions.

Nemesis

might explain something. It of course makes sense to ban someone that requests that the rules be followed after an explanation like this.

[_bcspace]

For the benefit of those who can't read MDDB.

And for those with stereoscopic vision, one for each eye.

[_EAllusion]

Apparently. I have been banned from the forum. I wonder what kind of convoluted justification they'll come up with this time. Obviously I broke no rule

I noticed last night that one of the members of MDDB is breaking their own forum rules by utilizing a quote from me in his signature line without my permission. Furthermore, the quote comes from a private message exchange that we had in July of 2010. It's my response to him after he had called me a liar (that I was perpetrating an "intentional falsehood" were his words). His signature suggests that it is "demonstrating the kind of civility [MsJack] finds appropriate for online discussions," when in fact what it demonstrates is the kind of civility which I find appropriate towards men who have just sent me private messages calling me a liar.

I hit my "report" button and asked the moderators to please comply by their own rules and remove the offending quote. Within minutes, they responded by perma-banning my account. The illicit quote remains in the signature line.

Just in case we needed more evidence that MDDB is a terrible, terrible place to post. This place honors the sanctity of private messages, and no one is disciplined just for utilizing their "report" button on a poster who is clearly in violation of the forum rules.

(I'm leaving out the name of the poster in question because I'm aware that he doesn't like having his real name mentioned on this forum, and it is under his real name on that forum that he is violating the rules. If he doesn't remove the quote from his signature by tonight, that will change.)

Really brings into focus the absurdity of those who claim that MAD just has stricter rules for civility and those who complain can't handle that, right?

[_Kevin Graham]

What's missing in Nemesis's "explanation" is any acknowledgment that he has enforced new rules without warning and he has done so with extreme bias. How many faithful LDS posters were banned? Was Dan or Pahoran banned? Of course not. And where does Nemesis acknowledge or explain the preemptive move to ban MsJack, who hadn't even been involved on the forum for a while? It is as if they decided to clean house by getting rid of anyone who had ever upset Dan and his side-kick hatchet man.

These are the guys who started all of this, going directly against the rules by starting a board war, dragging over to that forum things that were posted here and then attacking me for it, and doing so by misrepresenting what was said.

All I did was respond to their misrepresentation and then Dan has a meltdown. He feels it is important to keep reiterating how much he dislikes me, all the while claiming to strive for civility. Well, the feeling is mutual Dan. I think you're an anti-truth propagandist with little to no integrity on half the things you yap about. You do not have the courage to stand up to your refutations on any given matter, and you're constantly resorting to this pathetic "poor persecuted me" defense. You did it with Ritner, and you're doing it now. People should see this side of you. You're not always a respectable scholar who is interested in education. On religious matters you're essentially Will Schryver on Prozac. You both hold the same values in that you when it comes to attacking dissidents and lying for the Lord.

[_why me]

Apparently. I have been banned from the forum. I wonder what kind of convoluted justification they'll come up with this time. Obviously I broke no rule but merely responded to Dan's attack piece. I suspect he gave them an ultimatum - either he goes or I go. What an overgrown child.

Not quite. You were most likely banned because your posts may have been considered obnoxious. I tried to tell you about your tone. Always aggressive toward posters that would disagree with you as if you were eating sour lemons and limes. This kind of tone brings nothing to the discussion, only rancor which sets people off.

[_RayAgostini]

Ray mentioned the Middle-Eastern Texts Initiative, which is supposed to be Dan's claim to fame, but looking at the publications one begins to question what role Dan plays in these works. It appears as though BYU is dishing out tithe payer money so that other scholars, presumably those who understand Arabic better than Dan, are the ones doing the translations. It is unclear what it is Dan is doing with this project, if anything at all.

He's the founder and editor-in-chief of METI. Editors don't do all the writing, and often only minimally contribute. Lyndon Cook, for example, is the editor of the David Whitmer Interviews. His contribution? Acknowledgements and Introduction. That's it.

[_Kevin Graham]

Ray mentioned the Middle-Eastern Texts Initiative, which is supposed to be Dan's claim to fame, but looking at the publications one begins to question what role Dan plays in these works. It appears as though BYU is dishing out tithe payer money so that other scholars, presumably those who understand Arabic better than Dan, are the ones doing the translations. It is unclear what it is Dan is doing with this project, if anything at all.

He's the founder and editor-in-chief of METI. Editors don't do all the writing, and often only minimally contribute. Lyndon Cook, for example, is the editor of the David Whitmer Interviews. His contribution? Acknowledgements and Introduction. That's it.

Yep, that was my point.

I thought we were talking about whether Dan spends his time honorably by doing what he is the tithe payers think they are paying him to do. I also thought we were discussing his warped ratio of apologetics to scholarship. Virtually everything he writes is about downing critics of his faith in some way, while at the same time avoiding the arguments. Every time I mention Dan to other Islam experts, they tell me they've never heard of the guy. Granted, I'm only talking about a few, but still.

I'm not saying Dan doesn't know his stuff on the subject. You don't get a phd from UCLA and walk away uneducated. But he has allowed that to take the backseat to his real passion, which is apologetics. The same is true of John Gee, which is why his Yale professor recently disavowed him in publication!

Since Gee has publicly claimed that his Yale degree justifies his apologetic interpretations, I was constrained to deny that I (as his former advisor)
had any involvement in these writings. See the sarcastic claim by Gee 1998, p. 176: “Since I have a Ph.D. in Egyptology, I am an expert. All anti-Mormons should therefore unquestioningly accept my opinion.” Gee’s apologetic assertions, I stress again, would not have been acceptable in his coursework. I gained no personal pleasure—and remain deeply saddened—by the need to disavow my former student.