THE JERSEY GIRL MEGATHREAD

[_moksha]

She does have a response including her message to Dr Shades on Liz's board which includes a vehement denial of the accusations. She claims not to have threatened to sue. You can just use a previous link to go there and view it.

Her final posts did seem like an ultimatum with attached consequences if her demands were not met. Personally, I would have included the provision of chocolate-chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts on my list of demands, but never the request that someone else be banned for saying crazy stuff. That last part would hit too close to home.

[_Shulem]

Her final posts did seem like an ultimatum with attached consequences if her demands were not met. Personally, I would have included the provision of chocolate-chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts on my list of demands, but never the request that someone else be banned for saying crazy stuff. That last part would hit too close to home.

What do you mean "did seem like"? It WAS an ultimatum and was fully backed with threats from an enraged person who has anger management problems. I hate to say it and I don't mean to be nasty -- could it have been her time of the month?



Paul O

[_Yoda]

No they can't. Most of the pertinent information is unviewable in the mod forum. Where can readers learn that Harm believes in moderating people based on how much value she thinks they have for the board, with Jersey Girl, her personal friend, apparently being a high value poster? Where do people get to read that? Or when you initially denied that Jersey Girl made any legal threats for quite some time despite direct quotes indicating the opposite? Where do people get to read PM's from Jersey Girl about her thought process at the time? How about the tortured attempts to create a distinction between why Joseph's banning was Ok despite it not violating a rule, but Jersey Girl's not? Or how about the promises to defend Jersey Girl to the bitter end because of previous friendship from her? Honestly, I'm not even sure people have seen the webhost complaint.

Now who's spinning?

Publish the whole damned thread from the Mod Forum. That is fine with me. LDST is free to publish the PMs that Jersey Girl sent him. SHE is fine with it.

Again, this is no longer about getting Jersey Girl reinstated. This is about the truth.

[_Dr. Shades]

In the interest of time, rather than quote each point, I'll just post my responses to the major themes that have appeared so far.

POINT ONE: Never at any time have I lied or misrepresented anything. All I have done is quote Jersey Girl's own words and responded to their plain English meanings. To prevent having to jump back and forth between posts and threads, let's do it again here, emphasis added in all cases:

From viewtopic.php?p=570194#p570194 :

I consider the above to be a threat directed towards MCB, Dan Peterson and MYSELF and if you don't have the f*****g spine to block this guy, EA, in favor of political correctness, you guys are gonna have a legal f*****g fight on your hands and I'll initiate it.

POINT TWO: She didn't say "DreamHost will have a legal f*****g fight on its hands and I will initiate it." She also didn't say "Darrick will have a legal f*****g fight on his hands and I will initiate it." See the difference? "You guys" was the operative phrase.

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.

Like now.

POINT THREE: She didn't say "DreamHost is in it up to its eyeballs if they don't knock this guy off the board." She also didn't say, "Darrick is in it up to his eyeballs if he doesn't leave the board." See the difference? "Admin" is the operative word. The context makes clear that she meant the moderators, since those were the ones whose arms she was trying to twist.

From viewtopic.php?p=570200#p570200 :

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.

POINT FOUR: Liability for what, if not legal liability?

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.

15 minutes, starting now.

POINT FIVE: She didn't say she would end with filing a compliaint. She said she would begin with filing a complaint. In the English language, "end" and "begin" have two entirely different meanings. . . opposite meanings, in fact. So her after-the-fact excuse that she was only going to contact the webserver is contradicted by the plain-English meaning of her own words.

So, the only reason she stopped there is because A) Darrick ended up getting banned anyway, and B) most of not all law offices are closed on Sunday, thank God.

From viewtopic.php?p=570208#p570208 :

I know exactly how "banning works" here, EA. I invite your attention to the fact that MormonDiscussions has a contract which employs Terms of Use and an Acceptable Use Policy, both of which place liability for illegal conduct squarely on the shoulders of the owners of this board.

POINT SIX: That is a false statement. The Terms of Use and Acceptable Use policies specifically state that DreamHost is not responsible for odious conduct committed by its clients. It does not state that individual website owners who lease its bandwidth and server space are responsible for every little thing that their sub-users do. Therefore, this message board was never in violation of its terms of service.

Now that her direct quotes are out of the way and you can all see that I have neither lied nor misrepresented, let's move on.

POINT SEVEN: People seem tempted to blame poor Jersey Girl for being a random victim of circumstance, that if it wasn't for Darrick forcing her to sue us against her will she never would've threatened it. In point of fact, Jersey Girl's ban has nothing to do with Darrick. Jersey Girl was banned for Jersey Girl's actions, not anyone else's. She has no one to blame but herself. (She could've threatened to sue Darrick if she had wanted to, remember. Either that, or just log off her computer.)

POINT EIGHT: Liz, you and harmony may not have felt threatened, but I most certainly did. You two feeling threatened is not a prerequisite to me defending myself and others when necessary.

POINT NINE: Which is the real Jersey Girl? The Jersey Girl when she's in full-on "Jersey Mode," or the Jersey Girl when she's in "Oh crap, I never thought Shades would actually defend himself; I'd better cook up some lame-ass excuses A.S.A.P. to save my ass from getting banned" mode? Some here seem to believe that the latter is the real Jersey Girl. I believe that the former is the real Jersey Girl.

With that in mind, it's clear her attempts at "clarification" posted by Liz are nothing more than feeble justifications cobbled together after-the-fact to prevent herself from becoming "the bad guy." Is that an unfair, a mistaken, or an uncharitable assessment, you might ask? No, it's not, and here's why: The reason the first sentence of this paragraph is correct is because of the extremely readable, plain-English, straightforward and unmistakable statements that she herself authored. Re-read the blockquoted portions above if you're still in any doubt.

POINT TEN: I don't keep bringing this up. I am perfectly content to never mention this incident again. The only time I ever discuss it is when A) someone else sees fit to bring it up first, and B) he or she suffers under a misunderstanding of the facts.

So, if you want me to stop talking about it, stop bringing it up. It's that simple.

[_Chap]

With that in mind, it's clear her attempts at "clarification" posted by Liz are nothing more than feeble justifications cobbled together after-the-fact to prevent herself from becoming "the bad guy." Is that an unfair, a mistaken, or an uncharitable assessment, you might ask? No, it's not, and here's why: The reason the first sentence of this paragraph is correct is because of the extremely readable, plain-English, straightforward and unmistakable statements that she herself authored. Re-read the blockquoted portions above if you're still in any doubt.

I have watched Jersey Girl on this board for a couple of years, and I have read most of the material on this board relevant to this discussion. On that basis, I am inclined to agree with Shades' judgment above.

Jersey Girl was one of those posters who seem to think that being angry a lot does something to enhance the credibility and interest of their contributions to the board. Others believe that obscenity and cuss-words do the same for them. In the case of Schryver we saw that come spectacularly unstuck when he abused Emma Hale Smith as a "prize b***h" on this board - at a time, I may add, when I was online and saw the post go up. He clearly regrets the consequences that have followed from that and other abuse directed against women, but he acted as he did, and the inevitable consequences have followed. The same applies, changing the variables to fit the different case, to Jersey Girl.

In the case of Jersey Girl, the language she used could, in my view, quite reasonably be interpreted as containing threats of legal action that could affect Shades personally. When he read her posts, Shades was faced with a judgement call that only he could make. Based on those posts, I think he made the call that I and many other posters on this board would have made, and banned her.

Jersey Girl is now apparently claiming that it was all a misunderstanding, and that she was not intending to express an intention to take legal action that might have harmed Shades. Maybe, maybe ... But since I don't think Shades is under any obligation to take any personal risks in a matter such as this, I think we have to leave it to him to make the final decision here.

The take-home lesson for Jersey Girl is, I suggest "If doing angry online floats your boat, make sure that even when you are in full flood you take the time to make your real meaning quite clear." And, in the well-worn phrase "It's time to move on".

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think Jersey Girl just needs some GTL, and move on...

- VRDRC

[_MCB]

This is about the culture of the internet. Although it has settled down in recent years, flame-wars, board wars, trolls, and related behaviors give the internet community a bad rep. Board moderators have a responsibility to prevent their boards from coming under the scrutiny of Homeland Security.

Jersey Girl was just slow to change as internet culture changed.

[_EAllusion]

For what it is worth, the mod forum does contain this interaction:

About 10 days and 4 pages after the incident in Liz writes this post:

Show me exactly where, in Jersey Girl's post, that she threatened legal action against us, as moderators, or the board, for that matter:


Jersey Girl wrote:

Your position is that of moderator. If you don't know when to pull the plug on someone, then you need to give up your position.

My position is that of one who has received a threat by a poster whose mental state is fully in question and who presents obvious signs that he intends to hunt down posters on the ground in order to do harm. I invite you to look at the posts that Darrick made wherein he appeals to this board multiple times to gather in real life information on MCB.

When someone starts talking about bloodshed and searching up in real life information on a message board, it's clearly time to block the poster.

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.

15 minutes, starting now.

She said that she would file a complaint...that she wanted an investigation done. And that is what she did. She filled out an inquiry form with Dream Host. She didn't sue anyone!

So I, again, respond:

You are aware that Jersey Girl wrote more than one post, right? You should be, as it's been pointed out to you in this thread more than once. In a post previous to that one she flat threatens legal action against either the board or its admins. That's what the "liability is a bitch and so am I" comment is in reference to in the post you are quoting. She was saying the complaint she was filing was just her opening step in initiating action.

Tell me, what do you think she meant by, "if you don't have the f*****g spine to block this guy, EA, in favor of political correctness, you guys are gonna have a legal f*****g fight on your hands and I'll initiate it."

?

Scottie chimes in:

Liz, I gotta go against you here. The way she worded it, it was pretty clear she was talking about filing legal action against the MDB board (whoever that is). I certainly read it that way. She didn't have to come right out and say it. It was implied pretty strongly.

Then Liz quotes this post from Scottie and says,

Agreed, and I concede my point about legal action. However, I do know Jersey Girl personally, and so does Shades. Jersey Girl would no more sue either one of us than fly. That, I will bank on. She was scared, and rightfully so.

It looks like Liz stopped conceding the point sometime between then and now. What happened?

[_Shulem]

POINT TEN: I don't keep bringing this up. I am perfectly content to never mention this incident again. The only time I ever discuss it is when A) someone else sees fit to bring it up first, and B) he or she suffers under a misunderstanding of the facts.

So, if you want me to stop talking about it, stop bringing it up. It's that simple.

I've noticed that nothing draws your attention faster than when someone calls attention to you needing to own up to your own words as if you don't understand the English language. When that happens: Here comes Shades!

Clearly you understand the English language and poor JERSEY GIRL has lost all credibility.

Paul O

[_Shulem]

At NO TIME DID I THREATEN TO SUE ANYONE!!!

That is a Goddamn lie.

Paul O