hajario, while I appreciate your explanation (and agree with it, BTW) I specifically want to know what would happen in this exact situation from someone who is in the position to make this call.
This is so unfair. With the URL deleted, how can we verify that a SSN is needed or that you don’t need to put in a referral name?
Hmph.
Yea, I realized after I used that example that it was a bad one, obviously something that others are doing for a person is not analagous at all to the situation at hand, but other, better examples have been posted here. Posters who have a book published and announce it will presumably get royalties when someone goes to buy it, web designers answering questions about the cost of websites may move themselves to the front of the mind of a poster looking for a website, heck, people have asked me about the business I’m in, if they had been posters in my state where I’m licensed to do business, I might very well have gotten business from them.
This situation turned out not to be a clear cut as it seemed at first, I can not fault UB for what he did since he obviously investigated the website in question fully before making his decision, what can be fairer than that? However, Opal’s account of the T-shirt situation is very accurate AFAICR, I thought she got badly treated on that one, and London_Calling’s post ( even though he is not a Mod ) is exactly the type of attitude I was questioning.
If ya pulled off my socks and tickled my feet, I’d have to admit that I think opalcat posted her thread simply because she thought she had found a neat way to make a few bucks in her spare time and wanted to share it with the rest of us. Unfortunately, it seems that this one probobly does walk just a bit over the line to meet the rules of the SDMB. I doubt that she was intentionally flouting these rules, however, but that’s just one man’s opinion.
Yeah, I chose “Seattle Weekly” when I signed up. It was extremely difficult to do, as they made me sign a written affadavit and provide the actual copy of the Seattle Weekly that I claimed to have seen it in, but I managed. If you did type in a name, it may have let you pass through the page, but it certainly wouldn’t have gotten any credit to me, since nowhere on their site did I use the name “opalcat” and they don’t have usernames, just ID numbers. I suppose there is an outside chance that if you’d typed in my full real name then it may have caused an error in their back end during some part of the process and a human may have looked at it and decided to look up my name and see if I was a participant, then edit your registration information to insert my PIN but I think that is highly unlikely–don’t you?
Um, that’s IF they used me as a referral, which I wasn’t trying to get from here, and which I didn’t provide the information for them to do, so it doesn’t “settle” jack shit. :rolleyes: In fact, I have been contacted by two people who wanted to sign up but couldn’t because of the link being deleted and I gave them the url and told them to choose one of the newspapers from the dropdown menu as a referrral.
So NO I WOULD NOT AND HAVE NOT MADE ANY EXTRA MONEY FOR ANYONE SIGNING UP THROUGH THAT THREAD. I understand this is difficult for you to wrap your hate-shrivelled mind around, but it’s the truth.
I did not post that thread to earn money for myself. I will swear that on an axe hanging over my firstborn’s head. Sorry if you are so clouded with your dislike of me that you can’t possibly believe that I have anything other than evil motives, but that’s your problem not mine.
London_Calling: Fuck off, asswipe. You don’t know me or anything about me so you can just go take a flying leap.
Why’s that?
I place 100% of the blame for my coding error on the fact that I’m not accustomed to using this laptop keyboard.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Opal–who is posting from a little cabin in the mountains, surrounded by in-laws.
I don’t understand why there is so much hostility against Opal from some of the mods and members. All I know about her is that whenever the Dope is down, a lot of Dopers flock to her site. And she welcomes everyone with open arms knowing full well that they have no intention of hanging around long-term, but are just using her as a temporary “fix”. She never initiates any sort of heavy-handedness either there or here. She’s almost like the Anti-Collounsbury — knowledgable about a wide variety of topics and quite agreeable in discussing them. Whatever the reason for the hostility toward her, it is very unseemly from here in the Quantum Plenum.
Pffft. The rules are made by the Adminstrators and Moderators, and they apply them on a case-by-case basis. We all know this. Anyone who says, “You treated so-and-so this way, so I demand the same treatment” can filibuster all they like, but we all know it’s the Mods’ call, consistent or not, and that’s that. They rarely (have they ever?) “cave in” to popular demand - they make their decisions and stick by them, right or wrong (for lack of a better phrase). Do they take a lot of flak for it when they’re not consistent? Hell yeah, and we’re lucky we’re allowed to bitch about it. But the bottom line is, we abide by their decisions, or we leave. That’s the way it goes around here.
Esprix
Sure, they cave in (or at least appear to) to popular opinion on occasion. The reinstatement of various posters over the years might be taken that way.
We have never reinstated a banned poster solely because popular opinion demanded it. And we never will, either.
Just thought I’d clear that up for you.
As for the rest of this thread, well, at least she isn’t accusing me of having a “hate-shrivelled mind” this time around. Have fun, Unc. 
Yeah, I can totally see that.
I don’t post a lot, I will be the first to admit that. However, in the time I’ve been here OpalCat has been one of the posters, along with Satan to bring up other terrible memories for essentially no reason, who I’ve seen the mods and admins treat with remarkable patience and attempted tolerance. But apparently bending over backwards for some people just gives them a clear shot at your nads.
:eek: OMG! IT’S A SDMB CLIQUE! :eek:
Appearance of unfairness on the part of moderators --> posters leaving, threats of dire consequences, general bemoaning about how the board is not as good as it used to be, predictions of decent into USENET-ness, insulting emails, offers to cause physical harm to posters/moderators/admins, months of veiled insults, grudges brought up years later, etc.
We do try to be fair. We do recognize that we will not always be seen as fair, but we do make an effort to let posters clearly understand the criteria of the rules so that we do not get ramapnt accusations of unfairness. The accusations of unfairness may not make us change our minds, but they’re a pain anyway.
There’s nothing to clear up. I said nothing of the sort.
Uh, huh? Then what’s this:
I’m sure it must be my poor grasp of the English language.
It must be. Relax.
I said they appear to. I also did not say that it was “solely” the reason. I also said it “might” be taken that way.
Yeesh. You oughta be in politics, dan.
Split hairs much, dantheman? You sound a lot like many of my patients. Their problems all seem to stem from other people misunderstanding them.
I calls 'em as I sees 'em, Mr. Coldfire.
I didn’t mean to impugn you guys like that. I just meant that when a person “comes back,” it seems like it’s after there’s been a huge hashing-out among we wee folk, with a lot of people clamoring for a reinstatement and a few or a lot happy to see the person gone. I’m sure you don’t lean on any one thing when you make your decisions, but I would be surprised if you ever let someone back in who was a real jerk and was thoroughly disliked by all.
I’m not splitting hairs, Qadgop. Since what he said I said wasn’t really like I said (or what I meant), I was merely correcting what I’m sure was a simple oversight.
Here’s what I don’t understand:
Why would someone (speaking in the general ‘you’, as I have seen this complaint among various posters) that feels unfairly persecuted by the mods, someone that feels they must watch every step in regards to posting… why post here?
I don’t know if this is a similar analogy, but if I went to a store and I felt like the management was unfairly treating me (walking around and asking me if I need help in a tone that implies otherwise), you can rest assured I would no longer shop there.
I do have a question fo rthe mods, though:
is it ok to have a website (on your www button below) in which merchandise is sold? I have a business and wouldn’t want to link to it if that’s not ok.
I think a better analogy would be if all your friends were at a bar where the bartender and waitstaff wasn’t too crazy about you. You go because it’s got cheep drinks, good music and lots of friends and put up with the slow service and glares from the bouncer. ( From the hypothetical “You’s” POV )