I’ve been a member here for years and years now, and this is only the second pit I’ve started regarding the moderation on this board. Given the only other one was earlier this week, but that was more tongue-in-cheek.
Here’s the link. Though it leads nowhere unless you’ve got yourself a nice and shiney mod hat. It was the thread titled “About Devnull”, and in it there was discussion about the banning of that member/guest/whatev. Now at around the same time of the Devnull banning it was noted in TPTSNBN’ed that long time poster Excalibre had been banned as well. Curious due to the coincidence in timing as well as no announcement I simply asked if these were in any way related to one another. I got three types of responses. Half the members were puzzled that **Exy ** had been banned and there was no announcement, the other half of the members asked “how did you find this out”, and TPTB gave a big NO!
The thread began to then get* very* bizarre, and I will try my best to recount it by memory. The first thing that made me :dubious: , was that the first person who asked where I learned of this news was good ol’ carnyK, which if you know the history than you know that’s why I didn’t answer him. I was under the impression he was just trying to get me to mention TPTSNBN’ed. Then two other members asked so I just PM’ed them to let them know. No need to bring it up, and get smacked around by a mod.
It was either **samclem ** or Skip that quickly dismissed any connction between the two bannings, but then **Tuba ** comes on and gives a very long and very detailed account of what happened. I won’t say the whole thing because I feel like it might be one of the reasons the thread disappeared, but if she was telling the truth then Exy attempted an odd form of sock puppetry. But the only reason he was caught was this ridiculous IP address back tracing. It really was bizarre.
Let me also make it clear that I am not upset that Exy’s banning was unannounced. If the reasons for banning lie outside what normal members see and hear than why bring it up. But like I said earlier, the timing was what made me curious.
The matter was discussed a little more, and then I get an alert email letting me know that someone else posted to it, I click on it, and I see the same page you all saw that the top of this.
Ah, it was wished away to the cornfields. But why?
I know that sometimes there are subjects that TPTB wish to remain off the boards, so they always tend to encourage emailing them with questions about those things. Tuba’s forum, **Tuba’s ** explanation, hmm, I’ll email her. I get no word back. Well she was logged off anyways, let’s see who else. Oh good, Dex is green, he’ll know what’s up. I emailed him. I haven’t heard back, I emailed them on Friday. I am pretty sure I was clear in the email. I included my reply email, my SDMB username, the thread in question, and my curiousity about it’s disappearance.
I know you guys have lives, but it’s been almost a week. Now I’m bringing this up here. Also, I have several crazy conspiracies theories in my heads as to the reason, but I will keep them to myself for now until thing become clearer.
Then there was another About Forum thread that went poof earlier this week. In this one some Doper, can’t remember name, asked flat out what/where is TPTSNBN’ed. Now as I said earlier, regarding that other thread, that I dodged around answering where I found out about Exy. I know the mods hate that, so I stayed away.
For me this was a different case. Last time I checked we were a question and answer board. People have questions, like this member did, and other members try to help them out. That is the spirit of this place, so I now believe that I should honestly answer this person. I don’t see what the harm really is in discussion of TPTSNBN’ed. I know the credibility and maturity at the other board is lower than sewage, but why not make a good example by showing that we can rise above that here.
I was really surprised at the most recent Boston Dopefest, when someone brought up TPTSNBN’ed. It was one of the last person whom I would have expected as well. He brought it up and we were able to talk about it without Tuba bursting into the room with flash grenades and erasing our memories. Some people knew of it, other’s didn’t. Some liked it, other’s hated it, other’s couldn’t even bother to have an opinion.
And in another thread in the About Forum, Weirddave got a warning for bringing up The SM incident. Granted, it was not directly related to the question asked in that thread, but we get hijacks all the time that do not result in warnings. And he did relate it to the Administration’s value on personal information of members. I can understand closing the thread due to the hijack, but the warning seemed a little harsh and smelled badly of TPTB simply looking out for themselves.
Maybe I’m crazy, but ever since we found out that The Reader has new ownership the Administration and Moderation have seemingly circled the wagons, and perhaps become a little quick on the trigger. Careful to keep this place cleaned up and hide all the stuff they don’t want to be mentioned. But that’s the conspiracy theorists in me talking.
Oh well, this is the Pit, so if I’m wrong I’m wrong; and this can all end badly. At least I have my foil hat to keep me company.
