manhattan the madhatter

The BBQ Pit
1

I would like to say good bye to everyone. For all those that I have offended I am sorry. It was my intention all along to be accepted here and use the opportunity to provide verbose, witty and subtle remarks with friendly verbal jesting and original takes and surmisings. I share some of the same interests as all of you and recognize all of you in the upper percentile of intelligence. Certainly I have made mistakes as I negotiated the message board but I never once deliberately broke the rules.
The reason I’m leaving is that my wife’s internet access has been threatenned by Manhattan. His E-mail to me is of such a nature that I believe all of you should be aware of what he is capable of. It begs the question,“Do Dopers who are banned face subsequent retribution such as eliminating their access to the internet?” The following is his email to me.

Date: Sat,06 Jan 2001 00:32:41 -0500
From: “manhatten SDMB”,<manhattan91@hotmail.com>
To: grienspace

greinspace: (sic)

This is a follow up on the official warning I issued you in your thread about the sun and earth orbiting each other and the perception thereof:http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=54086

To be clear: We have thousands of members with thousands of legitimate questions to be answered. Your intentional misposting in order to start a **“philosophical discussion” ***(bolding mine)*is inexcusably rude to those members who want their straightforward questions answered.

I will not put up with that behavior in General Questions. You will not do it again, or you will lose your posting privileges and I will harrass your ISP endlessly until they terminate your account*(bolding mine)*

Do no bother to respond to this email – I am not interested in discussing this. You will obey without question or you will be gone.

-Manhattan

I will leave it to you to decide for your self if I misposted.

  1. I did not intend nor did I start a ** philosophical discussion** It was a scientific question regarding how important our planets were in order for us to calculate earths relationship to the sun.I couched it in words that would appeal to the more intelligent of us rather than ask directly "How can we tell if the sun is bigger than the earth,and by how much, if we never had the planets, and when did the last piece of pertinent information/data enter the scientific domain.

" Whats the point?" the Dr.(one of the replies) asks. After all, you don’t answer an opening post like that right away, it takes a little research,and thought. I answer in philosophical terms expounding on the profundity of the question. I hope someone sees as I do that we have a worthy question of some effort here. I don’t know the answer, and no one else does, unless they are knowledgeable about all the tools we have to determine the relative masses and spend a little bit of time on the research. This is not an artsy fartsy question. There is a distinct scientific answer here.Its either yes, we have all the data required developed independantly of our knowledge of the planets or not.Perhaps a modicum of knowledge in physics and mathematics would allow one to realize that.
If the Dopers can’t answer it I thought * rather vainly perhaps*, it was ** suitable for Cecil** to put his research team on. After all, a 4 inch difference over 6 miles was enough to generate a significant amount of ink.**Now pray tell me where am I supposed to post a question for Cecil?
**Sheeeeesh
Now lets look ar some examples which
Manhattan has no problem with because they ask
straightforward questions.All of these were on the top the same day as my thread.

Why are doctors reluctant to give pain medication?
Why don’t they make people kibble?
Why are movie credits tiny and unreadable?
Is there anyway to reason with a pirate?
How are you going to tell what you are going to earn in 5 years?

Now this is really vague, and philosophical;

Was the Roman Empire on the verge of starting the Industrial Revolution?

IMHO this man has lost it. He is not only performing his task improperly he is uttering threats of action that goes way beyond the scope of his position. He is prepared to considerably inconvenience third parties solely for the purpose of retribution.

Manhattan I did not email you, your threat was clear. If you carry out your action I will make sure everyone knows including the Newspaper.I have copies of all the pertinant documents.

Sincerely,

Grienspace

2

Golly! What a shock! Manhattan enforces the forum rules?!? The devil you say!

3

Bye bye! Can’t imagine you had anything really relevant to add if you pissed someone off so hard so fast. Really now! I’ve been here for over a year and I call myself a bitch and (frankly) most other posters agree yet I’ve not been banned or got a “slap down” like you.

Really, if you got one it was warranted and if you are leaving because of it I’m glad. Oh, yeah, and don’t let the electronic door hit you in the ass on the way out!

4

That is the policy of the Straight Dope Message Board… if someone harasses the Board, they do what they must to stop it. Such action has been threatened against another poster, and as far as we know, it stopped HIM… why don’t you take the same hint?

This one really cracks me up.

You think any court will side with YOU against a private company that provided you with a service which you violated?

If you lose your Internet service, it will be your own damn fault, you fucking idiot.

5

I suppose I’m not going to have to bother actually trying to solve that damn tidal difference on the horizon problem anymore. Cool. Personally, it does surprise me that Manhattan would be quite so upset on someone’s first infraction, but I can’t say that I really disagree with him.

6

Ooo, scary. In my opinion Manhattan needs a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

7

Thanks G. Nome. We all know how unbiased you are in this matter.

grienspace, manhattan was basically doing his job. He also is aware of the recent problems you got involved in with that MPSIMS thread, as moderators share that sort of thing. Just two days ago, I advised you to pay better attention to forum descriptions. Yet, you post the OP at hand in GQ. It basically says “Well, I know the following premise isn’t true, but let’s discuss what would happen if it were”. That’s not a general question. Hence, closing the thread was the logical option.

Your internet acces isn’t in jeopardy. You just need to pay a little attention to our (very simple) rules. Since you failed to do so twice in two days, manhattan got pissed off.

I don’t see his threat as hollow, but I know he’ll be the first to congratulate you if you do shape up. And one more thing: posting private e-mails on the boars is in very poor taste. Disappointing.

8

The number one rule here is “don’t be a jerk.” You’ve been a jerk over and over, grienspace. 'Nuff said.

9

And FTR, I’ve always seen Manny as more the Cheshire Cat type.

10

First comment: Incorrect use of “begs the question”.

Second comment: It is quite often a part of an ISP’s Terms of Service (TOS) that the user follow the rules of whatever online community he or she is a part of while using said ISP. In this case, a loss of internet access wouldn’t be “retribution” by the MB. It would actually be a consequence of not following the terms of service you agreed to when you signed up for your internet access.

For example, the following is from AOL’s guidlines:

My own ISP, Verizon, considers all of the following to be violations of its TOS:

All of which are relevant to behavior on the SDMB.

So blaming the threat of the loss of your internet access on a moderator after not following the SDMB’s rules is like going to jail for armed robbery and blaming your loss of freedom on the security guard at the bank who tackled you when you ran out of the vault with several thousand dollars.

You’ve demonstrated an apathy for the rules of this MB, and perhaps an apathy toward your ISP’s terms of service. That’s not a good thing.

11

Manny,

Consider yourself very, VERY lucky. He could have pulled out the big guns and called you a “sour cream puff”. Just ask andros, there’s really no way to recover from something like that.

12

Grienspace,

Ta-ta. Write if you get work.

:rolleyes:

13

I haven’t exactly followed grienspace’s exploits night and day, but I suppose he must have been a major asshole prior to this point to be threatened in that kind of language for a thread that I frankly found interesting and that everyone seemed to be enjoying. Threads that are in the wrong forum are routinely moved, even threads that are Pitworthy. I’m afraid I really don’t understand the reasons behind this action.

14

It is official. I am now scared shitless of Manny. And I am jealous of grienspace. Manny has never sent me an e-mail. What do I have to do to get something in my mailbox from that long-haired island dweller?

Oh, I know! First, I’ll do something misguided that will make him notice me and give me a warning. Then I’ll go over to MPSIMS and a post thread about nasty moderators. Then start a few other threads about specific nasty moderators. Then I’ll ignore the advice given to me by said moderators because --well, they’re nasty.

And then, after I have thoroughly pissed off Manny, I’ll go and post a non-question in GQ. Be hearing from you soon, manhattan.

15

It’s certainly not the first time grienspace tried to piss off the mods. Remember, the whole thing about Mod Overkill or whatever…

Oh well. Sheesh, we KNOW all about it. Manhattan is the head of the Illuminati, and with this board he will take over the world. All the mods are in on it. I thought you knew-everyone does!

16

Hey! Have you been reading over my shoulder???

(an obscure reference to Part 2 of The Horror at Cecil Cove, hopefully due for posting by Wednesday…)

17

Dearest, I have been reading THROUGH your shoulder, with the special glasses sent to me by the One Who Cannot Be Named…

Ooops, I said too much already…

18

It’s all part of manny’s evil plot to surpass David B in number of Pit threads dedicated to him.

19

grienspace,

I don’t know why I’m doing this. You probably won’t read it. You probably won’t care and I’m in a hurry and I’m wasting my few minutes I’ve got to spend online before running out to try to legitimately respond to you.

I’ve been warned by one of the moderators here. The mod deleted most of my post on an inappropriate topic and told me never to do it again. I knew what that meant if I did. Banning.

Now, do I agree that my post stepped over the line? It probably did. Do I agree it should have been deleted? Irrelevant.
The point is that I had two options from that point forward: post again on that subject and be banned, or suck it up and not post on topic X again. It really wasn’t too terribly difficult of a decision.

In fact, I went one step further and e-mailed the mod appologizing for my actions. For while I didn’t fully agree with the decision, I can clearly understand the stance that was taken and I accepted that others might have been offended by my remarks
In short…if you wanna leave, leave. You wanna stay, stay. But you need to follow the rules. This is a worldwide message board with posters spanning across the globe. Anyone, and this goes further than grienspace, that shouts about their God given rights to freedom of speech needs to be slapped across the border of America and realize how the rest of the world opperates.

20

Damn skippy. I’m still reeling.

grienspace, there is no plot against you. However, this board is a purely written medium, and therefore the rules are specific and must be enforced. I’m sorry you feel persecuted, and I’m sorry you feel you were being threatened, but, well, you were. It’s a bad idea to make waves anywhere in cyberspace.

I hope you find another online community whose rules you can live with more comfortably.