Revision of the Community Guidelines

[Timminz]

dress it anyway you want Chang, but it's plain to see that when you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

...a sexy pig.

[Mr Changsha]

Yet Timminz and Stoneham believe they would use my heartfelt suggestion against us all?

Not to pick, but I don't recall saying that, and as far as I know, you can't read my thoughts. I think you may have me confused with MeDeFe, in this instance.

Indeed I did. Apologies.

[stahrgazer]

Yet, we had two members (timminz and stargazer) who actually stated that when they reported flames themselves, they were directed to foe the user (etc etc) and nothing was done about their complaint. I feel this certainly seems to weigh the argument in my favour.

I can't speak for timminz, but I can speak for myself (stahr, with an h, a southern drawl phoenetic spelling

I reported flames. I reported harassment. I reported abuse. Stuff that went on for months. A mod or two were playing favs, including instigating some of what I was experiencing so that it expanded to others. Another mod who saw what was going on and was trying to correct it also came under attack so became less willing to stick up for what was right. Some of the members who got dragged into the anti-stahr bandwagon continue to hassle me because I came back to the site and went very public about my experience here, (naughty me, mod-bashing as it were.)

But, unlike some, I do not believe it's mod-bashing to state accurately, and frequently, that some of those too-vague guidelines that enabled the problem to exponentiate as it did those months ago, are still too-vague guidelines that, unaddressed, will continue to enable problems like that exponentiate in future.

If it happened to me, it can happen to you.

I said that to someone. Interestingly enough, there's now a thread by that person. Woodruff, who, like me, was once a happy pro-mod, pro-community member, is now so unhappy with lack of things being done due to some harassments and threats he was seeing, that went unaddressed or insufficiently addressed, that he, too, left the site. Will he return in a few months to state a little more loudly what his experience was? I don't know. If he does, will he experience a bunch of members harassing him for accurately stating what occurred? I don't know. Will he hear, as I did, "if you don't like it, leave," - or did he hear that? Is that why he left?

Maybe Woodruff is being "too sensitive" as I was accused of for a while. Maybe, if he returns to express his concerns for others to be aware of, a little more frequently or loudly, he'll hear -as I keep hearing- that he should leave and stay gone rather than be an over-sensitive complainer.

The main mod who was protecting and instigating has since realized the error and apologized for those actions unbecoming a moderator.. cool, shows a sign of some maturing going on.

So ask yourself.. why would a mod apologize to me months later, explaining and admitting the favoritism and refusal-to-address-the-situation-and-stop-the-harassment errors made, if it was all in my oh-too-sensitive head?

As Mr. C. indicates, sometimes a little more info does weigh arguments in favor.

By the way, it's only fair to note that, while several mods are obviously "not real happy" with me for my bout of forum posts since returning... it's not mods or admin who're currently harassing me for making noise about what happened. But... neither am I seeing signs that they're working to close those loopholes. Yet.