Well, you’re wrong, Satan—Mel and I were actually asking where you’d been lately, and I kinda still miss Quaddel.
And where IS TennHippie, anyway?
I have always enjoyed Melin’s posts. I’ve found them to be insightful and often they have brought something to light that I had previously missed.
Whether or not she did send the letter, which obviously she did, makes no difference to how much I enjoy her postings.
Im sorry she is gone and Im sorry that it had to come to this.
As far as who is missed and who isnt missed. What difference does it make? If you have formed relationships with people from the board, then likely you talk to them outside of here. If people want to post then they have the freedom to do so, but as well, if they make the decision not to, then they certainly shouldnt be whining about whether they are missed or not as its those people that truly do make this into a popularity contest.
We are, each of us angels with only one wing,and we can only fly by embracing one another
Tris: the point of my analogy was the absence of any real clue as to the seriousness of her threat. Ed’s confirmed that it was indeed serious, so that’s settled now. But until then, it seemed, IMO, that we didn’t know whether the remark was innocuous or serious; we didn’t know whether Melin’s threat to sue was a brief bit of yapping off (like the guy at the party who trips on the front steps and jokingly yells, “I’ll sue!”), or something to be truly concerned about. Anyway, now we know.
Sorry if I was less than clear.
I always found Melin to be an intelligent, coherent, respectful poster. I thought she added a lot to the message board and I will miss her presence here.
That said, it’s Ed’s party and Ed’s toys and he has every right to decide who gets to stay and play. I don’t have any right to second-guess his decision, much as I may disagree with it, because, as has been established before, this isn’t a democracy.
These two positions are not mutually exclusive.
Good luck Melin; we’ll miss you. 
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Everybody just shut up. I’m willing to believe Ed’s a reasonable guy that likes this board, otherwise he wouldn’t be moderator. Kicking people off this board has got to be a pain in the ass. So, if a reasonable guy goes through the trouble to kick someone off I gotta believe she had it comming. So you guys can go to hell.
Ed, thanks for banning Melin, and thanks for having the curtesy to inform all of us what you did and why you did it.
Keep up the good work.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
I dont know what to say.
Not that anything I say will make a bit of difference.
I would like to see Melin and the authorities come to some sort of understanding ( a la Contestant #3 - Krispy Original) but somehow I doubt it will happen.
I wish I had the fortitude of Bricker…but I dont. If you read this Brick…email me.
There are just a couple of things I need to address:
- The Chicago Reader is NOT running this site because its a ‘good thing’, nor are they operating at a loss. For the love of pete! Get your heads out of your asses! Newspapers dont do ANYTHING that doesnt generate revenue! I am disgusted that a group whose collective intellect I so admire could be so incredibly naive. Picture the board room of the Reader…the owner/CEO/whoever askes what this continous drain is coming out of the revenue. Someone replies: its our message board, I know its losing money, but its a good thing to have.
Give your head a shake!!!
- Melin wants to bring this place down huh?
This explains why she registered all three of her kids for when they are old enough to post the user names they wanted wont be gone.
I quote form the “Master List” thread from ATMB
I’m in!
Also registered are: Eldest Son, Middle Son, Youngest Son, and Highlander (hubby)
You should really delete all the posts she ever made, and in a week we will all forget who she was, sheep that we are.
We all better shut up too!
Ed might get “fed up” with the whole board and close her down…
oh wait, its only a couple of hours to the daily crash anyway…
What I REALLY like about stuff like this is how we all pull together as a group to support one of our own.
I will miss Melin too, even though she sent me some odd emails when I innocently asked about something JillGat said that Melin took offense to. (This is what led to Melin’s being fired as a moderator. Do a search in About This Message Board for the relevant threads.) I won’t divulge the content of the emails she sent me because I promised her I would not. I made that promise over a month ago. Also, my web-based email is down again and I can’t access it now anyway.
I will say this: In my last message to her, more than a month ago, I said, “Let it go.”
I guess she couldn’t.
This matter is also being discussed at http://fathom.org/teemingmillions/bbs.html
When all else fails, ask Cecil.
So either you think
- Zotti is a liar, Melin didn’t make the threat
or
- We should support people even if they might bring down the board
Which is it?
I’ve thought and thought and thought about this, and wrote and wrote and wrote some more, and pontificated, and babbled incoherently, and scribbled and scratched, and drafted all sorts of things, but everything I have to say can be boiled down to this:
Ed needed a way to get rid of people for any or no reason. The rules were changed to suit this desire, and Melin was the first to be hit with it.
It sucks.
Additionally, Ed’s initial misrepresentation as to why he was banning her (“She persisted in provoking us with various two-bit irritants I won’t bother to describe”), followed by his later admission that she was banned because “if you don’t think having a guest on your site threaten to sue you is sufficient grounds for banning her, I can’t think what else I could tell you” (particularly since one needn’t be a board member to sue the Reader), just leaves Ed looking rather skeevy at this point.
Melin’s banishment diminishes us all.
-T (expecting to be next)
I repeat, the Reader LOSES money on this site.
When we were on AOL, the Reader was paid very nicely for Cecil’s work. When that contract expired, the Reader could have just walked away and not had any of our headaches to deal with. Instead, they moved us over to their website and we went to work without missing a beat.
There are very few IF ANY sites in cyberspace that make real revenue, from the biggest to the smallest. It’s more a question of how little or how much money you’re losing. Yep, we’re just like Amazon except they order their red ink by the tanker car.
In today’s market climate, companies that don’t have a presence on the web (especially a communications entity, like a newspaper) is asking to be as obsolete as the buggy whip. You get your company out there, or you get left behind; you ignore the Web at your peril.
Since the Reader needs to be here anyway, even if in a token fashion, they’re willing to carry Cecil’s columns and this message board. We are not making them a buck and in fact we are costing them money. We are not the be all and end all, either; the site is a placeholder for when they DO figure out a corporate cyberspace strategy and find it necessary to implement it. We might get to stay, we might not. (It would be nice if we could figure out a way to make this pay, that would help.)
Reader management is willing to be bled for a little but they’re not going to take a big hit. And having to do things like defend against lawsuits, that’s damned expensive.
A lawsuit would put us out of business, guaranteed.
For those that want to put a nasty “Big Business” face on the Reader, you don’t know the paper at all. (Have you even SEEN a copy?) Yes, the Reader is a corporate entity, but one founded by former hippies. It’s an alternative newspaper, always was, always will be, and there is a bit of that old-time 1960’s let-the-sunshine-altruism still at work. Appreciate it for what it is and what they do. We’re lucky they put up with us at all.
Also please appreciate that if we are too much of a hassle for them, they’ll close the gates of our playground and we’ll all be the worse for it.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope
Anonymous Handsome Anti-Nazi Guy at the Bar, after Peter Lorre is Dragged Out Kicking and Screaming: I hope, Rick, that you will be of more help when they come to take ME away.
Humphrey Bogart: I stick my neck out for nobody.
– Casablanca
You are absolutely right tuba…what would I know about it, I only WORK at a newspaper.
Why, are you planning on suing us?
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope
Because of the few times the good Melin came out, we will miss her… Because of the many bad times that came out, we won’t. She was basically in the market to make arguments. Her degree is in that and it showed through in her personality. It was interesting to follow her logic pattern even if the pattern irked me just because they were often well constructed. It was more irksome to find the inconsistencies with her ideals and what she actually practiced. (No, I will not post any of them.)
Will I miss her? No.
If I was bastard enough to try throwing out litigations towards the Straight Dope, I would hope that I would be banned too. Not only that, if anyone threatens litigation, I would hope they would get banned. The sentiment has been expressed here many times and will again. Keep up the good work, Ed.
HUGS!
Sqrl
I guess management where you work isn’t as nice as the folks at the Reader. That’s too bad.
your humble TubaDiva
I already indicated my disbeleif that she had any intention of doing anything to the board.
You are a smart guy, figure it out.
and as I fully expect Diane to appear shortly, shred my post into quotes and all that, I ask, just this ONCE Diane, let me be.
Man, they must REALLYsuck!
Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.
kelli: trust TubaDiva on the nature of alternative newspapers. They’re small; they don’t report to any big corporate overlords. The people working there got into the business because they believed in an alternative to that sort of world. And because they’re free from the impersonal demands of CEOs and shareholders, they can, yes, do things for altruistic reasons.
And Tuba’s got the nature of the Web right too: everyone knows they have to be there; few (except the porn sites) have figured out to make any money. And it’s not like the Chicago Reader is going to have a hot IPO, so they can’t even sucker money out of investors.
I, too, want to hear Melin’s side of it. And no matter what the truth is, the good that I saw in her is still real. (And the side of her that SqrlCub saw is real, too.) But I also have to assume Ed’s not making the lawsuit business up out of whole cloth, or exaggerating the truth of it beyond recognition. (If so, he’d be opening himself up for a libel suit.)
You know, when people that you like and/or respect really don’t get along (ran into an instance of this at the office today), life can just plain suck. You don’t want to think bad of either side. But sometimes the reality is that we all have feet of clay, and that includes the people we care about. Nobody says you have to stop caring about them because of that.
Once again I have ventured to the pit to voice my humble opinion on somthing that I find, at the very least, puzzling.
When I read what the moderators posted in the “Can I be a moderator” thread in MPSIMS, I noted that being unbiased and level-headed were two of the key characteristics sought after in a moderator. Keeping that in mind, I am trying to decipher those characteristics in the OP. It could just be that reading the text without emotion attached makes it difficult to judge the true reason behind this action, but certain sentences automatically form questions that I wouldn’t mind having answered…
Shouldn’t these statements have used the words we??? because using the word I says to me, that you, Mr. Zotti took this issue personally and it was your sole decision to have Melin banned?
I do not know Melin, nor do I know the circumstances that brought about this banishment, other that what I have read here. I do know that as a participant of this board, I would like to know that each action taken by the moderators/administrators are done so with professionalism and unbiased behavior and not by a personal vendetta. I bring this up because the way the original post sounds to me, is it wasn’t a group “do what’s best for the board” moderator decision, as much as it sounds like a “last straw” impulse from an individual who has never wanted Melin here in the first place?
Then again, it could all be how I interpreted your written word, which is why I would like more clarification. If it was indeed a group decision that she was a “threat to the board” then I will respect it.
If it wasn’t, then I will chose to move on, as freedom of speech on any message board is an important part of why I chose to participate. As I stated in my post about Michael Masterson here in the pit, regardless of how I feel about any poster, I chose not to participate in any form of discrimination.