It’s the unstoppable Force vs. the immovable object.
Scott needs some help in that thread :)
I think this has merit. Although I’d just hide P&R from anonymous users (people not logged in) rather than trying to police people’s behavior.
I hope we don’t. This guy could be an asshole (I honestly don’t know since I haven’t read his contributions), but I’d rather not set a precedent of silencing dissenting opinions. I don’t want this forum to become like the other one.
Besides, we’ve always had at least one Brian Koontz since the forum started. He’ll get bored or flame out at some point and the next iteration can fill the void.
I think it’s important to point out here that regardless of what you think of the merits one way or another, this is the first time in recent history (as long as I’ve been really active) I’ve seen our members clamor publicly on the forum for someone to be removed. For all of you that are afraid of being singled out, added to a list, or general precedent setting, this is literally a singular case, there is no list, and we’ve all lived with the rest of you on this forum this whole time and never once publicly demanded that you are removed from the forum. This isn’t a slope because you can’t infer a slope from a single point.
The only thing even close that I can remember was this dude’s actual IRL roommate, if we take everything he says at face value.
I love how we’re here wasting time arguing about the removal of somebody who we suspect is purposefully wasting our time. Frankly, I have no problem with @gman1225. Post away, man. It’s easy enough to choose not to engage. You know, you don’t have to involve yourselves in every flame war on the internet. I find it spectacularly bizarre that Wumpus flamed out over this. Y’all should go post about some games.
This is probably my favorite post in this thread. @Clay…you are such a good dude.
Or movies. Write more stuff about movies. Also, please somebody come to see Skyscraper with me. I’m dreading going alone. I asked Marquardson but he’s busy being in Canada.
-xtien
Where’s the like button? Oh…right.
Except we have great posters here, like Rod Humble, who are disengaging for this very reason as well. The fact is we spend leisure time here, and not many of us want to spend free time reading drivel. Until we can mute users we don’t have a choice whether we read it or not, either, as having to sift through threads to get to more attractive stuff is almost as bad.
But whatever, he’s only in one thread or something and personally I was never too bothered to begin with, but if great people start to leave or disengage because of it I value that more than some rando getting exiled for being annoying to the majority of people.
I do, too. There’s tons of good stuff to read here. No need to poke around in the musty corners looking for irritating people. I’ll be sad if Rod Humble goes elsewhere – I like his perspective – but the same holds true for him. The Amanda Chen issue pisses me off far more than anything gman ever has done.
I’ve been staying out of this thread because I don’t want people to think I’m trying to sway the community on this subject, but I do want to give everyone a couple of observations.
Discourse is great. I like it a lot. I was concerned about the switch at first, mainly because I wasn’t sold on infinite scrolling, but there were enough plainly positive features that I felt it might be okay. Well, Jeff was right about his product. It’s good. Like, really, really good software. Going back to vBulletin would be painful. Kudos to him and his folks for what they’ve made.
Jeff’s hosting and generous contribution to Tom’s income was appreciated, but I was always apprehensive about a possible misplaced sense of entitlement on the forum. Tom got assurances from him that it would not happen before the deal was struck, and Jeff mostly kept to that promise. Behind the scenes, he did a lot. He supported the forum software and he was generally helpful by educating us admittedly amateur moderators on how to utilize Discourse’s admin features and spotting spammers.
I think his passion for the software and weeding out bad actors on the internet sometimes got the best of him. As Tom said, he abused his admin access a couple of times. What Tom hasn’t said (because he’s such a gentleman) is that Jeff could be downright pig-headed and confrontational in PMs about these things. It got kind of ugly. He was right a lot of the time, but his approach and proposed solutions were abrasive. The Big Lebowski’s “You’re not wrong Walter. You’re just an asshole.” comes to mind.
I want to stress that I like Jeff a lot. Even now. I think his heart was in the right place. I’m disappointed at how this ended up, and I’m definitely not a fan of the ultimatum (and subsequent hit to the site) he gave Tom, but I think Jeff taking a break for a while from here is for the best. I do hope he returns someday. I’ll continue practicing with the yo-yo he sent me, so if he does come back, I’ll maybe be able to wow him with some granny tricks.
I did state my opinion about gman in another thread, which was quickly followed by my apology of sorts although I still hold to my original stance on banning him for political views. I will say that I’m coming around on the idea that you can follow all the rules, be polite and sincere, and still be a disruptive - even harmful - force on a forum community. We’ll see how that goes.
tl;dr - Jeff leaving kind of sucks. Most of you didn’t see the drama backstage, so you don’t have all the info. My opinion of what to do about gman is taking a turn. I hope Jeff comes back after cooling off.
PSA: This is an active thread. Don’t forget that Discourse / the forum is going down at 10 pm Eastern time for several hours. That is in 12 minutes. Don’t get caught with a long post in your buffer, folks.
Rowr.
-xtien
Again, the “Tom’s home” analogy seems so simple here. If you’re carrying on a conversation and someone constantly jumps in to break apart your sentences and challenge everything you say, dripping with politeness, you’re probably going to be annoyed.
The error was framing this in terms of political persuasion.
*shrug*
I still don’t see the problem, as he agreed not to post in P&R anymore, except for the thread actually about him. OK, and one other that didn’t start in P&R.
It’s clear he was legitimately disruptive and if he had stayed in P&R at his old posting volume I would have taken action. But since that isn’t what happened, I’m genuinely unclear why people are upset.
Downtime comin’ soon!
Hi folks, while you are here, and since you’ll be frantically clicking refresh for the next however long… consider spending the downtime adding a few bucks to your Patreon for Tom. :)
WE ARE BACK! WOO!
I’d go with you if I lived in the same town. My exterminator told me he liked it better than Die Hard. Though, to be fair, he’s the first person I’ve met who didn’t like Die Hard, so his opinion is suddenly suspect.
Fixed that for you.
A friend from Connecticut just offered to go with me as well. But…I’d have to get to Connecticut. Also, you should all know that whenever I say Connecticut, I pronounce all three 'c’s in Connecticut.
-xtien