case studies

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:34 am

Again, in defense of emily, in the absence of moderators one active admin can only do so much, and I appreciate her avoiding getting more caught up in the middle of disputes.

III · Post by **III** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:46 am

agreed that this is not emily's fault, but the fault of a system that has people who are not in touch with the situation making the thumbs up/down decisions.

i find it interesting that one possible motivation for having the thread deleted was that it erased evidence of not only a violation of section 7b of the tos, but an admission implicating the administrators in said fraudulence. (k admitted to not only using the cardinal sock puppet, but claimed that it had been assumed with the help and full knowledge of the administrators.)

i don't believe the admins would have done such a thing, especially knowingly. but in this "letter of the rules" climate it does paint an awkward picture.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:52 am

I see nothing here but a bunch of whiners.

Fact:

1. Badger will only be gone for a week.
2. what Badger did was wrong and how no one can see how it was not is pretty stupid. IMHO.
3. Badgers only gone for a week. Grow up and get over it. It's not like he's gonna be gone for something like .....A Month

Come on people. Get A grip.

I cannont beleive that this has gone on for this long. JEEEEEZZZZZZ.

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:02 pm

I don't see anything wrong with discussing a suspension of any length in the Case Studies thread, and I think there is ample support here for the notion that Badger's post was in poor taste.

The ultimate goal of this thread is to help clarify these matters with respect to future posts and their possible consequences.

That understanding is far more likely to happen in a discussion than it is in silence.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:05 pm

Hey,

Nice ta see ya Don. Boy this has brought out all the 3playans today.

Maybe this aint all that bad after all.

rodent · Post by **rodent** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:33 pm

Well, the broken egg can now never become a chicken so we should try and at least make soufle'

What went wrong?

What can we collectively do to prevent something like it from happening in the future?

Can it be done without adding more rules?

---
rodent (putting the eek in geek)

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:42 pm

rodent wrote:Well, the broken egg can now never become a chicken so we should try and at least make soufle'

What went wrong?

What can we collectively do to prevent something like it from happening in the future?

Can it be done without adding more rules?

---
rodent (putting the eek in geek)

I say,

Next time leave the offending thread up and lock it so that others have an idea what not to do.

Plus I believe it would be in the best interest of the org to leave offending threads up in case the offended or otherwise need to use it as evidence in court or for getting a restraint.

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:52 pm

I too would leave it up, although I would probably move it into an area designed to show examples of inappropriate posting.

Tancorix · Post by **Tancorix** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:18 pm

I second DM's last post even though the offensive and incorrect content was directed towards me.

I'm wading in here with some comments.

1: Trey, it is a verifiable fact that I helped with the formation of the eplaya TOS and CG's. I was on the very first conference call and so was Precip...she ended up having to leave a little after 8 pm my time as the call went on. I also sent in feedback and suggestions and worked with Technopatra up until the final copies were sent to BM legal for review. I may be able to dig up copies of the e-mail correspondance once I get back to KC so you can have "cites" or hard core proof. And that work on the CG's and TOS is what helped me get my Extranet access, it was part of the eplaya task force and there should be others who can verify from e-mail headers and the like that I was part of that group.

2: At no time did the admins alter Card's account. Card sent Emily a forwarded request for help and that was it. When I couldn't get back in I asked for and received his permission to use the account so I could respond to charges and countercharges. The smear campaign had to be addressed and he agreed.

3: I am not happy that Badger was suspended. There is no smiling or gloating here. Anytime someone like Badger is silenced we all lose. His wealth of knowledge is very valuable to the board and I wish it didn't have to turn out like this. But it did, the decisions are made, we all need to learn from it and move on.

4: One personal note. Regardless of if anyone believes me or not, I have to live with this. I have lost friends. There's been some real damage from this. It's been a very costly ordeal in many ways. It's not performance art, it's something I live with every day and continue to live with and it's not going away soon. I don't want anyone's sympathy. Sympathy doesn't get you very far, but a swift kick in the rear can really help. So I ask for understanding and acceptance. Everyone knows my story, my issues, my fight. Can I be part of this community? I want to be. It's just like being on the playa...will you embrace someone who's different? I hope so.

Thank you Emily and the admins for handling the burden I put on you, and thank you to those who have offered their support.

rodent · Post by **rodent** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:21 pm

Don Muerto wrote:I too would leave it up, although I would probably move it into an area designed to show examples of inappropriate posting.

"compost quarantine"?

(com-post, ouchie... that's a double pun!)

I agree. Lock it down and place it's head on a pike as a warning to others.

---
rodent (putting the eek in geek)

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:31 pm

Kinetic, forgive me if either of these questions are made in ignorance, but without the history I would like to know:

1) Were you in a coma?

2) Is Cardinal a sock puppet or a real, flesh-and-blood person that is also not you?

jimbobby · Post by **jimbobby** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:37 pm

Can I be part of this community?

no

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:47 pm

jimbobby wrote:
Can I be part of this community?

no

Don Muerto wrote:Kinetic, forgive me if either of these questions are made in ignorance, but without the history I would like to know:

1) Were you in a coma?

2) Is Cardinal a sock puppet or a real, flesh-and-blood person that is also not you?

Can we at least give Emily at least a little bit of respect here?
As she stated earlier:

emily sparkle wrote:and also a reminder that the case studies thread is not a welcome place for thread drift, uncontributory remarks or bickering. if you are lodging a formal complaint, please email the eplaya administrative team (the address is at the bottom of every page) with the urls of the offending post(s), quotes from the posts, and the TOS/CG section it violates.

thanks.

This thread for a few minutes seemed like it was going to move foward and accomplish a few things till the sillyness came back.

Can we try to pretend to be productive at least?

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:50 pm

While I get you on the jimbobby quote, I fail to see how asking questions pertinent to the suspension are unproductive.

Maybe I just don't get it.

jimbobby · Post by **jimbobby** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:52 pm

Can we try to pretend to be productive at least?

after you

Zane5100 · Post by **Zane5100** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:18 pm

Emily, let me state that the following is nothing personal and that I have nothing against you. I am sure you are a lovely, wonderful person and I would be honored to meet you and to get to know you. Most of the following comments are directed to the eplaya administration team collectively.

The thread Isotopia/Badger posted was slanderous to Tancorix insinuating that his claims of illness were untrue, self inflicted or drug induced.

Are you so sure it was slander and not just derision (albeit in questionable taste)? Do you have proof that Badger/Isotopia was wrong? Before using terms of that strength, it is your responsibility as admin (and thereby the figure of authority and the representative of the organization) to be accurate in your use of language and have the facts to back it up, whereas the rest of us have more leeway. It ain't fair, but that's how it is. (This is due to the power differential--we have none, and you have it all.) If you're going to enforce the same level of accountability from the participants here, than shut down the board down, reconfigure it, and start over with someone, preferably a lawyer and an English major, acting as referee/moderator.

There are a number of people who feel very strongly that Tancorix has little to no credibility and has, in fact, demonstrated a proclivity for exaggeration, and at times, out right deception. There is a very long and complicated backstory to this and you are acting on one drama out of an epic that makes Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, seem like a musical short.

I'm not accusing Tancorix of any of these things--and frankly I don't give that much of a shit about it--he hasn't done anything to me, personally. However, it has been demonstrated by others that they do believe he has committed these actions repeatedly and was, in this case, perpetrating a rather cruel hoax.

Additionally, the tone of his thread was hateful and the eplaya administration team is becoming less and less tolerant of this type of content.

Hateful content is nothing new around here. Are you going to be more diligent in policing the threads? I believe that if you don't like how this is going, you'll really hate it if you're going to play thread/language cop.

Look you guys. You are making my little job on the eplaya less and less appealing.

It is not our responsibility to ensure your enjoyment of your job.

Part of being an admin is playing the enforcer (particularly if posters have no power to filter or ignore those things that they find objectionable) and very, very few people end up liking enforcers. Respecting them, perhaps, but rarely liking them.

To use a metaphor, you're the bouncer in a pretty rowdy bar, and I know I would get tired of mopping up as much blood as you’ve got around here. The teeth in particular are a pain to get up if they've gotten lodged in the cracks of the wood flooring...

If you don't like it, then you (collectively) better start thinking about what kind of environment it is you maintain in here and how it attracts and keeps around the kind of elements that are and are not a problem. Generally, this place seems to run with the attitude that anyone is welcome and you won't step in until someone screams, and then you (collectively) make snap judgments without the full context of the backstory. It's a shitty way of running things and it lets things get out of hand far too fast and too often.

I don't want to mediate this crap.

Fine. Then provide the tools for us to mediate ourselves (i.e. ignore threads, plonk users, let the owners of threads block posters). It works, and it works well. If you don't have the manpower or skill availability to implement those kinds of changes, then you've got a problem and the rest of us have no choice but to just deal with it.

It sucks to be in your shoes, but quit complaining about it--it's part of your job. However, it's always an option to quit--to just walk away.

If you don't want to quit, then there are alternatives: Kill the board. Let it go to the dogs completely and quit trying to mediate. Whatever ... but don't complain about it, because you (collectively) are the only ones in the position to fix the problems. Not us--and this is by your (collective) design and choice—you have no one to blame but yourselves for the problems here.

Believe it or not, I have a great deal of empathy for you, Emily. I have nothing against you personally and I've been in similar situation (albeit with a room full of drunks and real blood was involved), but I don't see how minimizing your responsibilities is in any way a service to you, to this bbs, or "the Burning Man community."

You've got a shit sandwich in front of you and I have to admit I'm glad I don't have to eat it.

However, I'm sorry that you do.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:20 pm

Don Muerto wrote:While I get you on the jimbobby quote, I fail to see how asking questions pertinent to the suspension are unproductive.

Maybe I just don't get it.

While giving an answer to jimbobby's quote deserves no dignafication, Your question does.
Maybe you dont get it but that's ok. I refer to Emily's previous post:

emily sparkle wrote:the admins were asked to review the situation. we did. we decided. we acted. period. we do not have to justify our decision.

I AM REALLY GETTING SICK OF THIS YOU GUYS.

Asking Mr. K. the questions you asked only rehashes what really has already been explained to the group at large and does not need any more explaining.

Hope that explains it?

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:55 pm

Reading Zane5100's post kinda cracks me up.
It's has the flavor of Zane5100 dictating to Emily what she is supposed to do or "it's her job" to do what Zane5100 says is her job.

I'm not trying to be mean nor am I insinuating anything negative here when I say,

Emily is doing eplaya a favor. She need not do anything she does not want to do.

I have no idea why the org feels that it needs to make everyone happy. They can’t, no matter what they do. It just won’t happen. That's just the way life is.

I do though have a very simple solution for those that do not like eplaya.

Leave. Simple. Sounds rather harsh but I don’t see how any of the people that really have a distaste for posters they don’t like on this board will actually improve the board by dumping negative hurtful, hateful attacks at whomever they feel is not of their Clique, political belief, as naked as the rest of whomever, smells different or whatever.

What's the big deal? The people that complain are not the majority of the users of this board and are not of the majority that pass happy vibes.
If those that don’t like the board (and I am including those that do no contribute in anyway to actually make this board better either social nor with the programming.) were to leave, the org would be better off without them.

When I was suspended I hardly complained and accepted my responsibility by admitting I was wrong. No delusions about it. To top it off, while I was suspended I made sure I did my part to help keep eplaya online. I kept an open line to the admins and engineers when eplaya went down despite my suspension.

So far all I am seeing out of this whole Badger thing is a ton of people wanting to bash whoever they want without any consideration of how what was done by Badger to be wrong.

Plain and simple. People are missing the big picture here by complicating the matter and making something that is really nothing into a big big complicated nothing.

Moving on is not a concept with some in this bunch.

Zane5100 · Post by **Zane5100** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:46 pm

Reading Zane5100's post kinda cracks me up.

I'll sleep better at night knowing that.

I have no idea why the org feels that it needs to make everyone happy. They can’t, no matter what they do. It just won’t happen. That's just the way life is.

Part of my point in a nutshell.

The main thing is that they could allow us to police ourselves, with the right tools. It's up to them if they are willing to let that happen. Not saying it would be easy, but the current environment is not condusive to allowing that to happen.

Do I expect anything to really change--fuck no. Too much inertia and investment in the current system and things aren't that bad yet. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be better.

I've said my piece on the matter.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:55 pm

Zane5100 wrote:
Part of my point in a nutshell.

The main thing is that they could allow us to police ourselves, with the right tools. It's up to them if they are willing to let that happen. Not saying it would be easy, but the current environment is not condusive to allowing that to happen.

Do I expect anything to really change--fuck no. Too much inertia and investment in the current system and things aren't that bad yet. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be better.

I've said my piece on the matter.

I agree with you totally here.

the ETF is actually working on solutions and have been working on solutions for awhile now.

The Plonker/ignore feature has been in debate and several versions have been sent to the web team but no matter how it gets implemented it will not solve anywhere's close to some of the problems eplaya is having because most of the problems that eplaya is having are social problems and damaged lines of communication.

Most of these things are plain and simple up to the individuals to solve for themselves.

Rian Jackson · Post by **Rian Jackson** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:58 pm

Yes, but there are situations where the person who is *more* responsible for the problems repeatedly refuses to modify their behaviour. Plonk could make the world a better place.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:04 pm

Rian Jackson wrote:Yes, but there are situations where the person who is *more* responsible for the problems repeatedly refuses to modify their behaviour. Plonk could make the world a better place.

I know for a Fact that it wont for several reasons that I will not go over right now.
I'm just intersted in pushing it online on eplaya a.s.a.p. so that eplayans can start complaining about that instead.

rodent · Post by **rodent** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:08 pm

If I can offer an analogy here.

It is kinda like a downtown city square. You've got your agressive panhandler, dirty stinky wackjob, and the raving lunatic shouting "CHIIIIIRP" at the top of his lungs, yet you can still cross the square, get your sandwich and latte and be back to work before lunch is over without much problem.

---
rodent (putting the eek in geek)

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:10 pm

rodent wrote:If I can offer an analogy here.

It is kinda like a downtown city square. You've got your agressive panhandler, dirty stinky wackjob, and the raving lunatic shouting "CHIIIIIRP" at the top of his lungs, yet you can still cross the square, get your sandwich and latte and be back to work before lunch is over without much problem.

---
rodent (putting the eek in geek)

awesome.

Better than anyway I could have explained it.

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:14 pm

But that raving lunatic shouting CHIRP makes it really fucking hard to play a game of chess, or to sit down and discuss a book or the news with some friends. I don't come to the Eplaya to pass through and get something I need. I'm not on an errand. I want to be able to enjoy conversations with the diverse group of people who hang out here.
Idiotic and anti-social behaviour seriously hinders one's ability to do so on this board on occasion. Your analogy doesn't hold.

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:28 pm

what really has already been explained to the group at large and does not need any more explaining.

I'm sorry, but having an admin tell me: "the admins were asked to review the situation. we did. we decided. we acted. period" is not much of an explanation. It goes nowhere towards understanding the history, context or actual details of the incident.

However, I think a yes or no answer as to whether K was in a coma or not would do much more towards clearing up the situation. After all, it goes right to the heart of whether or not Badger acted in the defamatory manner for which he was suspended.

I have never been of the school of thought that says "done is done, so let's just forget it." I think any punitive action should be subjected to, and be able to withstand, the most ruthless analysis in the interests of learning and preventing mistakes.

I would like to know and understand, so I'll ask again.

Were you, Kinetic, in a coma when it was said you were?

and

Is Cardinal, the persona making the announcement, a different biological entity than yourself?

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:37 pm

You know, I'm a moderator on another PHPBB, and one of the tools that I have is the ability to view the IP addresses of posters at each post, as well as all other IP addresses from which that user has posted, and all other users which have posted from the same IP address. If the admins on this board have those same resources, they should be able to answer quite easily the latter of those two questions.

precipitate · Post by **precipitate** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:32 pm

> If the admins on this board have those same resources, they should be
> able to answer quite easily the latter of those two questions.

Really? Because all computers in my household post from the same IP
address, and we definitely have more than one biological entity here.

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:37 pm

They could at least, then, tell us whether those posts come from the same computer or geogpraphical location. I guess that wouldn't be informative if Tancorix claims to cohabitate with Cardinal.

Don Muerto · Post by **Don Muerto** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:47 pm

The question isn't so much whether it is a perfect tool, but rather was it a tool that was employed. If used it might not provide an answer, but unused it never will.