David B. can be loud and persistent in expressing his opinions, many of which I disagree with. But I doubt sincerely that he engaged in board disruption as was done here, or that he was so cowardly as to hide behind an anonymous SN. Furthermore, I bet he didn’t come over there trumpeting the fact that he was a moderator here and using it as some excuse to engage in warfare there. He went as a private person, not as an SDMB rep.
-Melin
That crispy, crackly noise you all just heard was the sound of hell freezing over.
God does work in mysterious ways: the LBMB brought Melin to DavidB’s defense.
Tom~
Bagnall, exactly how many people from SDMB posted with any regularity on your site? Five? Six? Eight? We hardly overran the place. And we certainly didn’t see this as a conflict. Maybe an attempt to bring light into the darkness. And it seems the darkness comprehended it not, interpreting it instead as an attack.
And (as has been repeatedly mentioned now) we hardly conducted ourselves there in a manner unworthy of your site. But your response seems to be one of closing threads, and tattling. Tattling?! Does that mean we’re back in third grade? No, not that; I’d hate to have zits and adolescent awkwardness in my future, rather than my past.
Not that we’ve done anything to tattle on to begin with…
“Be prepared for the worst. I’ve just been informed we’re under attack from idiots on another message board.” - mbagnall
Sho wrote, in his/her first post to this thread:
Get straight with which god? Shiva? Zeus? Odin? Apollo? Allah? Not that Yahweh creep, I hope. Bleah.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
To any of the Left Behind folks still here, and to their administration, I offer my apology for my participation in this mess. It was never our intention to attack or to spam or anything like that. As others have noted, this was an attempt to enlighten, misguided as that attempt may have been. I participated in this without the knowledge of any member of the SDMB administration – today was the first they’d heard of any of this, and they were not happy about it, to put it mildly. As a moderator here, I should have considered that my participation would reflect poorly on this message board, The Straight Dope, and The Chicago Reader. I did not really think about it. As has been noted by others, I went in as an individual, representing nobody but myself. Still, I apologize for any poor reflection on others that this may have caused.
I will do my best to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, and I certainly will not participate in anything like it in the future.
That said, I think the new year is a good time to put this behind us and move on.
– David B
So … anyone know who tipped 'em off?
(I’d bet you dollars to donut-holes the informant’s initials were Phaedrus.)
Well, I’m already straight, but I always pictured God as kinda old and grandfatherly, so I don’t think I’d go for him. Jesus was pretty hot, though.
Dear me, decisions, decisions. Is it worth the expenditure of my mental energy to compose a response to Phaedrus? After all, it does take up a significant percentage of the available supply, perhaps more of one than would be necessary to some of our more distinguished members.
I suppose I could point out that a turnabout of the situation would not result in LBMBer’s hounding of my every post. Rather, there would be a small smattering of wisecracks, with perhaps here and there a mild and respectfully worded post pointing out an inconsistency in someone’s argument.
More to the point might be to observe that I regard the Internet primarily as a divertissement, by which I mean that posters are not likely to find my contributions to be about things that are particularly important to me. I’d think that you might have noticed that about my posts here.
As to your assertion that
well, I’d have to point out that, in the words of some guy calling himself Phaedrus, that’s your subjective opinion. I’ve gotten many a chuckle out of some of the posts on this thread. I am also aware that most examples of humor involve the recognition of the ridiculous aspects of what we observe as we go through life. This tends to include a lot of observation of the ridiculous aspects of the things our fellow human beings do and say. Saving a detailed debate on the nature of humor for another thread, I will here merely suggest that everything that is funny is also mean, from someone’s point of view. That said, I do not assert that everything that is mean is necessarily funny.
Which aspects of a Jewish Message Board might you expect to see addressed with challenges in the way that the LBMB has been addressed by the infiltrators from this board? The things on LBMB that I have noticed being challenged include sanctimoniousness, a tendency to be exclusionary, shrillness, apparent demands that total strangers submit their innermost beliefs for inspection and judgment by the Grand Inquisitors (does the phrase “kicking back with a tub of popcorn and a bottle of root beer” ring any bells?), willful ignorance, and an insistence on a unanimity of opinion that brings to mind thoughts of totalitarianism. To be sure, some or all of the same traits can be found in posts appearing on the SDMB. The difference is this: on the SDMB, when such traits appear, there is a good chance that someone will feel free to point them out. I think even you would agree that this freedom is an important quality of the Board. My visits to the LBMB have not yielded much evidence that such a perception of freedom is present there. And should we be directed to a Jewish Message Board where such traits were rampant, with the LBMB’s same apparent level of tolerance for dissenting thought, I wouldn’t call someone an anti-Semite for strolling in and providing the service of reality-checking that we tend to take for granted here. Not that I expect such an occurrence to arise.
I, too, believe that persons of faith have a right to peaceful co-existence with their fellow human beings. But I don’t think of the LBMB as a place where persons of faith come to co-exist peacefully with their fellow human beings. As far as I have been able to see, it looks like a haven from the rest of humanity. IMO, such a haven is not a healthy environment for either the intellect or for faith. I’m not claiming that the infiltration from this board can be justified as being something “good for them,” but I flatly deny that it amounts to any attempt to abrogate the right of people of faith to “peacefully co-exist” with their fellow human beings (unless, of course, you want to contend that the term “human being” applies only to fundamentalist Christians, a contention that would not be without precedent in this weary world of ours; but I really don’t think you want to contend that).
You may be prepared to argue that these people of faith have a right to peacefully co-exist with their fellow human beings solely within their Message Board, possibly implying that their fellow human beings should stay out and leave them to themselves. Should that actually be your argument, I have no words to defend the infiltrators. But I do declare that the argument itself is worthy of debate.
“Perhaps other actions can be taken to stop [me?]” First, allow me to point out the irony of directing the statement at me, personally, as I am, after all, an EXTREMELY minor player in the saga of the past several weeks. It’s very ironic. Second, allow me to suggest such an action: Post a link to this thread in the LBMB. I confess that I’ve toyed with the notion of doing so myself. However, were you to do it, there would be yet another irony to enjoy; to wit, the fact that in an earlier post to this thread I gave YOU credit for being a good enough sport to restrain yourself from outing us to the LBMB. But as SoulFrost said, and I implied (a bit more obliquely), this infiltration does seem to have pretty much run its course. The notion of ending the charade with a bang instead of a whimper carries a certain appeal. I wouldn’t cry if the outing were carried out today, but I won’t presume to make that decision for the posters who have distinguished themselves on that site far beyond what I have contributed. If you should choose to do so, of course, knock yourself out. But be aware that I will be dropping by to observe the reactions. And I might think some of the fallout is funny. On your own head be it. 
Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain
IS MY FACE RED!!!
I guess that’ll teach me not to take nine hours to compose a post.
Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain
My offer to relinquish the screen identity of Tim Barnes is hereby withdrawn.
The point is moot, since the ban has been imposed, but mbagnall sems to have gotten his panties in a twist about the offer, and has informed his flock that we were sharing passwords.
I made an attempt to post again to deny his charges, but I got the message SoulFrost shared with us. In any event, in the post I wrote, I promised that I would formally withdraw the offer, and I might as well make the promise true, even if it did turn out to be essentially a promise to myself.
By the way, if you read mbagnall’s thread we are under attack, it becomes quite clear that Phaedrus is the agent of our outing. Well done, Phaedrus! I still think posting a link yourself instead of just tipping off mbagnall by e-mail would have been more elegant, and therefore more satisfying, but you chose the path that seemed best to you, I suppose. I also suppose I thank you for not including my screen name (here) in the e-mail you sent to mbagnall.
Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain
Woo hoo! They’ve noticed me!
I just tried posting to the “Y2K Power Outages Now” thread in the LBMB’s End-Time Events forum, under my username of JoshuaTenForty, and got the now-famous message:
I feel so special! snif
Congrats, Tracer!!!
Now you can go to hell with the rest of us!
-David
Didn’t you guys realize that you’d get caught? Sometimes, people think they’re getting away with something, but eventually, and without warning, they get caught. It’s just something that happens.
God bless!
Victoria Rose
There is a reason for everything, no matter what happens to us.
Yeah, we were being SO deceitful there, posting on (cringe) a different message board than this one, and discussing (horrors!) the heathenous idea that maybe, just maybe, the latest microchip technology isn’t the Mark of the Beast.
And the blasphemous notion that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old (which the Catholics have no trouble with – oh, but I forgot, many of you don’t think Catholics aren’t true Christians anyway).
Yep, we sure were acting as agents of Satan, all right.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Yeah…boggles the mind to think of all the detective work that went on to catch us!
IMAGINE! Us covertly sneaking around on a public message board!
Seriously–there was nothing to catch us at. We were not hiding anything. Maybe we didn’t advertise, but there was nothing hush-hush about it.
Hell, I even used the same name on both boards.
-David
Well, okay, my JoshuaTenForty identity DID take pains to avoid mentioning that I’m not Christian. (Although my choice of scriptural passage for my username DID catch Navigator’s attention. )
Actually, no one was ‘caught’ - a member of this board forwarded a rather joking post made on this board to the admin of the other board in an attempt (successful) to stir up trouble. I don’t think this qualifies as ‘catching’ somebody.
Carpe diem - Seize the day
Carpe noctem - Seize the night
Carpe cerevisi - Seize the beer
Vicki, darlin’, MBagnall posted a similar message on the previous page of this thread. Feel free to read my reply, and to regard it as applying to your post as well. And do have a great 2000.
Mr. Zotti: Thank you.
Yours,
Phaedrus
Phaedrus, what are you thanking Mr. Zotti for? Just curious, as your post seems totally unrelated to the rest of the thread.
BTW, tracer, they are still saying your Atlantic Monthly review is just a hoax.
Carpe diem - Seize the day
Carpe noctem - Seize the night
Carpe cerevisi - Seize the beer