You could have been less critical. Snopes could have been less Draconian. If you’re banned, you’re entitled to see this as Snopes’s loss.
That’s the point, ianzin, and well said. Doghouse Reilly didn’t exactly follow their unwritten “be civil” rule, but I don’t think that Snopes necessarily does the same, either.
I suppose it’s just as well. My posts (though not my visits) to the URLP board were very scarce, and my time most likely better spent here.
John
as per your helpful instructions above, I have carefully selected condoms to wear while posting.
Question - since I’m female, do you have a suggestion as to where to ‘install’ them??? 
What pepper said.
I think this is the first time I have EVER seen someone banned from Snopes. Ever. Maybe a warning would have sufficed, but who knows?
Snopes, I’ve noticed, has an extremely dry sense of humor. Sometimes he comes off as snarky, but to me it’s merely tongue in cheek. I think that the Mikkelsons have been very gracious-especially if you read some of the e-mail and crap they get.
They’re also doing this out of their own pockets-they aren’t affiliated with a business, as the SDMB is.
I guess as sort of a conclusion to my thoughts here, I concede that I shouldn’t have come across quite as brusque as I did in that photo gallery post–if it were the SDMB, I would have definitely included something like a winking smiley with it. But I also admit that I’ve been kind of fed up with Snopes’s manner for a while, so maybe I subconciously let things get to a head. (Contrary to what some are saying, I did begin posting to the Snopes board at least three years ago, and was fairly active for a while before breaking off. This was back when they had that primitive last-post-on-the-top-of-the-screen format, and an odd brown on black font color.) I’d also say I’m sorry again for mentioning Barbara in my rant.
On the other hand, I will say I’ve never agreed with this business about being especially deferential to mods or administrators. Appreciative, certainly, and respectful if they deserve it, but to play along with their hypocrisy if and when they break their own rules? Nah. The analogy some draw between a message board and a party may be somewhat accurate. But in my experience, it’s been the hosts of parties who have to be especially mindful of their own behavior, since they set the tone for the whole gig. In the case of the Snopes board, the co-host’s curmudgeonly behavior is causing something of a bad vibe to run through the place, and I really do wonder if it has anything to do with the behind-the-scenes marital problems that he seems to be hinting at. I’ve always felt that a good host should never take out his personal problems on his guests, but I guess that’s my opinion.
Anyway, Last Words On The Subject. Thanks for listening to my rant.
DHR
I’ve never seen anything like that. And for crying out loud, how the FUCK is that any of your damn business?
If you were really sorry about mentioning Barbara in your rant, you wouldn’t need to make such nasty remarks about the Mikkelsons’ personal lives.
It was Snopes who was drawing bizarre analogies to their marriage.
Since I see a lot of people saying that the administrator of the Snopes board acted unfairly, let me present the point of view from the people of the other side of the fence.
As a board administrator, you have to learn to deal with 90% complaints and 10% appreciation. And the people who complain the most are often the people who thank you the least (and vice versa.) In the case of Snopes, a website/message board that offers a lot of useful information for free, the griping can really start getting on your nerves. So when you see someone taking a “free ride” at your expense and in addition griping at the smallest inconsistency, you may lose your temper and do something that might not be entirely justifiable. Being a board administrator is in many ways like working at a job where you constantly have dozens of people constantly staring over your shoulder and criticizing the way you do things.
Doghouse Reilly, you ask “What other choice did I have?” What I think you should have done, instead of going to another board and continuing your feud, is e-mail Snopes and say “thank you for your great site and your free message board. I probably came on a little too strong in my post in pointing out what I thought was an inconsistency in your moderation duties.”
Arnold is indeed wise.
What is with this “second post” bullshit?
First of all Doghouse Reilly claims to be an old-timer at the Snopes board. Secondly, even if he were a “newbie” his complaint was valid.
If y’all are going to get pissed off when people talk about “cliques” you might want to remind yourself not to bitch about someone whose biggest crime in your eyes is being new.
I’m not gonna comment on the Doghouse Reilly situation and what I’m about to say is actually irrelevant, since Doghouse ain’t a newbie there.
I disagree with you about the “new” part.
If you’d had a friend of 30 years, you’d been through hell and back with him and he’d never once been a jerk, how would you react if, at a party, he got drunk, barfed on your carpet and made a lewd comment to your wife? Most likely, after 30 years of friendship, you’d forgive and forget.
Now imagine if a complete stranger wandered in the door and did exactly the same thing. There is a different standard for newbies and there always will be. Until the newbie has shown…cripes…I can’t think of a better phrase: “good intent” (and there’s no magic number of posts. I can remember some newbies doing right out of the gate and there’re people in the low hundreds who I don’t know or “trust” yet) they’re treated differently*
(I might add, that on the SDMB (and on most message boards), there’s also reverse standard too: if I called someone a “fuckwad” in Comments on Cecil’s Column, and told said “fuckwad” that I was going to find them and belly-shoot them, and then linked to porn and warez sites, I imagine I’d be gone so fast my head would spin. A raw newbie…might be able to say “I didn’t know the rules well enough” and get away with it.
To pretend that we don’t treat people differently depending on how long we’ve known them is silly.
Fenris
*I Am Not A Mod: of course the Mods and Admins do their best NOT to let stuff like I’m describing get in the way…but I’ll also bet that being human (…except Coldfire 
) they’d also admit it does have an effect.
True, it is only human to be more forgiving of people you’veknown longer, and I don’t think this board is any more “cliqueish” than would be expected given human nature. But throwing people’s post count in their face, as was done here, and as I’ve seen far too many instances of on this board, only gives ammunition to those who want to claim they are being shut out.
It might be more effective, no matter what your argument with another poster, if post count was left out of it. If you find you don’t have an argument without mentioning post count you probably shouldn’t post.
[sub]I would just like to say “post” a couple more times… “post”.[/sub]
Sorry, I don’t see how his post count was “thrown in his face.” It was pointed out that it’s just commen sense that it’s not a good idea to wisecrack at the host when you’re on unfamiliar ground. That’s true for any situation - IRL or online. It wasn’t a matter of him being the “new kid” and shoved around on the playground.
To be quite honest, the remark would have not been well recieved from any board member in the tone that it was presented. A long time regular may have been given a bit more of a chance to get their head screwed on straight, OTOH, a regular might have been even more quickly booted because they should have known how to behave appropriately for that board. So in a sense, as far as snopes is concerned, post count was probably irrelevant.
As far as the board community is concerned… if this had been between Doghouse and another poster… his newbie status may have been valid in the sense of some of us sitting back watching the show trying to form an impression of what kind of person this is -this could go either way. We don’t know you from Adam and suffice it to say, posters who contribute without starting a ruckus when they join the board, generally tend to make a better overall impression. However, if it were a case where it seemed like people were ganging up on a newbie, his newbie status would be working in his favor. It surmounts to shoving the new kid around on the playground and the hosts aren’t accomodating to that kind of behavior…and neither is the majority of the community.
That’s a good point. I don’t think, however that was intended here.
I know of friends who have sent emails to Snopes questioning some of their articles and in almost every case, the responses have been rude, crude and socially unacceptable.
Could it be the Snopes owners are getting a bit big with ego wanking, especially when it seems everyone uses them as a cite now for ULs?
Arnold, I’m certainly inclined to defer to your knowledge of running a message board, though I would say that if a mod or administrator finds him or herself disliking this activity so much that his/her ire manifests itself as rudeness, then I’d say that it’s time for him/her to take a break. This applies to any sort of life activity, including running a message board.
As for “what other choice did I have”: not to blow things out of proportion, but even if I did privately e-mail snopes to thank him and apologize–which, I can assure you, I have absolutely no inclination to do–I would still be unable to post my side of the story on the Snopes board. See, that’s the disadvantage of cutting off someone at the knees without any warning whatsoever. Moreover, I suspect that if I hadn’t started this thread, the posters over at Snopes wouldn’t be questioning his recent decisions (e.g., the “penalty box”) the way they are now.
Oh, well. Tempest in a teapot at any rate.
Doghouse - You keep complaining about the fact that due to your banned status,at snopes, that you are unable to tell your side of the story. I think that your side of the story, ie - the intention behind your post,was told, quite specifically, by Doc J’s reply to the same thread. It was also pointed out, very specifically, in the thread regarding the penalty action taken by snopes. You say that there was no e-mail interaction, so what more about your side of the story is there to tell?
As for your post here being the catalyst for the thread regarding the penalty box forum, it’s questionable nature(to some), it’s use, and it’s possible abuse. The thread in which that course of conversation resides was started before you posted your OP, on this thread, here. I don’t think that it was the inspriation.
What I am left to wonder is, why is it, that you have stated, numerous times in this thread, how unimportant it is, to you, that you were banned from snopes, that it, essentially, is no skin off your back, and yet you continue to reply to this thread as if you really do care? So you had a negative experience, you came here and vented about it, to get it off your chest, but you’re over it now(although you still hold contempt for snopes), and could care less. Well, then, let it go. Continuing on, at this point, leaves me with nothing more than the impression that “Me thinks thou protest to much”, and I’m willing to bet that I am not the only one.
It is obvious that snopes is not worth your time, so let it go already.
~V
Well, maybe I continue to participate in this conversation due to my interest in organizational behavior issues in general. The question of moderator powers vs. responsibilities interests me, and I’ve seen a number of replies here that I thought were worth replying to. I think I’m past the point of “complaining”, since I’ve said all that I really wanted to say specifically about the snopes board.
As for how important the Snopes board is to me–well, I’ll still read it for entertainment once in a while. But not being able to participate there really doesn’t have much of an impact on my life; not nearly as much as if I were unable to post to the SDMB. As I mentioned before, I only posted twice at Snopes in the past three months, versus a couple of hundred times over here.
So what makes me (and any other poster) attach more importance to a board like this one? Lapsing into academicspeak, I might venture to say that the SDMB has much more robustness as a community, and a lot of that robustness may be attributable to the more respectful (“heedful”) interactions between the people who run the board and those who participate. So my perfunctory, no-warning, no-appeals banning at snopes is interesting to me in sort of an academic sense: how does this arbitrariness affect the strength of the community they’ve built over there? I’d be interested in the question even if it had happened to someone else.
So, I hope you don’t mind if I stick around to see what else emerges, VDarlin.
Then following that argument, if a person dislikes inconsistent moderation so much that they start being rude to administrators of message boards, they should stop posting at message boards? You saeem to think “It should be my right as an internet user to go to any message board I want and criticize the people that are offering me this free service”, but an administrator might not view it that way.
a) Perhaps Snopes would have let you back.
b) In any case, you should e-mail Snopes and thank him not because you expect any benefit, but because it’s the right thing to do. He provides a valuable and free service that according to you, you have used for years. So a thank you note is basic courtesy.
Fair enough, Doghouse.
~V
By the way, having been a lurker at Snopes for a while, the defense Snopes geve for his post seems like total BS to me. Judging from the first few responses in that thread, if it wasn’t posted as “look at the funny pictures” the OP wasn’t clear enough to get the intended response. Exactly one poster treated the picture as anything other than a joke- after Snopes got pissy the brown-nosers came out of the woodwork saying it was “obviously” a serious post asking an “implied” question.
The general “tone” of the Snopes board is the reason I’m a lurker there- The “signal-to-noise ratio” is very low and a lot more hatefulness between posters seems to be tolerated there than is here.