I read the initial message that was sent directly to Idle Thoughts. Attaching the word bully to it is ridiculous in my opinion. In the end Shodan was inconsequential to what happened.
Shodan was not relevant to what happened and his PM to the mods was quite mild and respectful. He had nothing to do with the outcome here.
I’ll concur. I’ve read the PM Shodan sent and it was reasonable and easy going. More a heads up than a complaint.
NM. No point.
Can mods read other people’s PMs, or did IT share the PM with the other mods? Or did Shodan forward it to all of you?
Just curious. Thanks.
We cannot read PMs for other posters. Or, if we can, I’m unaware of it.
Yes, it was shared by IT.
Yeah certainly not on our level. Maybe the tech guy? I don’t know. I don’t remember ever having any need to find out.
Thank you for this thread, Ed. Having read Idle’s thread at the other place, I’m not surprised by your decision.
I’m sorry to see Idle go as a poster.
Thanks for your explanation, Ed.
Idle Thoughts poured a lot of time and thought into being a moderator, and enjoyed it. I am sorry about these events, which I know have wounded his spirit. I hope he will come back and contribute his “idle thoughts,” which often led to merry discussion!
Message boards can sometimes be difficult waters to navigate, for users and moderators alike. I am so glad that many here in our community have the capacity for understanding and empathy for those involved in this situation.
In peace,
Ellen
There is no way for a Moderator to read other poster’s PMs.
Anyone can forward a PM to anyone else. They aren’t totally private.
There is no way for an Administrator to read a PM while logged in as themselves. That said, Administrators can change the password on any account. This is for a good reason which is to help people who have lost their passwords. So an Admin could change someone’s password, login on that account and then have full access to their PMs. They wouldn’t know what the old password was though so the victim of that scheme would find themselves locked out and, if they were suspicious, someone even at the Moderator level could check IPs and figure out what happened.
Just reading this, it sounds to me like Idle admitted it after Shodan reported it. That’s not “Idle admitted it himself.” That’s “Idle had to come clean after Shodan had reported him.”
I do not know how I personally feel about this. This is the first I’m hearing of it. I mean, I knew Idle was fired, because that sort of language is obvious, and his response (of leaving the board) was clearly of someone who felt like he’d been wronged. But I avoided that Shodan thread when I saw the OP was about his “Regards” again, and have not gone to that other board in a long while.
Again, I’m not laying any blame. (For one thing, I’m not big on the whole “tattling” concept in general.) My emotions are all over the place right now. But I did want to point out that I can see how someone, given the same facts, would not see Shodan’s report as completely disconnected from the events. If they did view “tattling” as wrong, and viewed what he did as tattling, I could see why they might be upset at him.
I do know, however, that all the insistence that he had nothing to do with it when the story as given says he does is starting to bug me, though. Hence why I finally decided to go through with this post.
BigT What you’re describing isnt entirely accurate.
Shodan didn’t report anything. He PM’d IT and ECG (as he was also asking about it the possibility of an ATMB thread) directly.
No one knew about Shodan’s post except the two mods until IT brought it to the mod’s attention. He was not coming clean after a report. The reason we say that Shodan’s report had nothing directly to with it is because the reason things escalated has nothing to do with anything Shodan said. The assertion that Shodan tattled is false- he raised his question to the mod in question and not to directly to Ed.
The mods then pointed out the clear rule we agreed to that his thread violated. IT disagreed with that rule applying to his situation. The decision to part ways was between Ed and IT. Mods weren’t privy to that discussion.
Besides, this Board has long relied on members to [del]tattle[/del] report apparent rules violations. Heck, there’s a button on every single post to let members [del]tattle[/del] report apparent violations.
And, one of the long-standing Board rules is not to trigger board wars with other message boards. I can easily see why Shodan may have thought Idle’s posts at the other place may have been treading on that rule, and thought it worth bringing to a mod’s attention, just like using the [del]tattle[/del] report button for apparent rules violations on the SDMB itself.
I don’t see the basis for any allegation of “tattling”, given that the Board has a strong culture of relying on members to draw possible rules violations to the attention of the mods.
Also don’t forget this was not some secret that IT was hiding and someone exposed it. It was a public post on a board where several current mods are members. (Full disclosure I think I signed up there too but I don’t remember my password or if I ever posted)
I must say, all this chatter about Shodan “rattling” is taking me back to kindergarten days…
Isn’t kindergarten a little old for a rattler?
Having read some of IT’s posts over there, it seemed to me that he was seeking approval from them, which seemed odd to me.
All this thread has accomplished is to permanently taint Shodan with the crybaby label. It would have been way better to let this matter die unnoticed by the 99% who had no clue it was happening…
It’s okay. You can sock it up there. 