Personal Attacks

[Laodicean]

[barracuda]

Whatever. You were not suspended for that single post, and you know it. I call that a lie.

prove it then. put up or shut up.

Happily, I'm not required to do either!

[barracuda]

But if you insist...

I sent you a formal warning [Board warning issued] for your little trolling run of this post, this post, and this post, which you responded to by sending me an insulting personal message, something you, of all people, know very well we simply don't countenance here.

I then suspended you pending Jeff's review of the thread, as an adjunct to a long ongoing thread regarding your behavior in the moderator forum. He eventually determined to agree with my decision. So I did not suspend you for that remark alone, your chronic bad behavior brought it to a head, and in fact did not suspend you on my own, but in consultation with the board admin, who I relied upon for final dispensation after extensive discussion and time spent on your case by the mods.

The difference in the two cases could hardly be more stark.

[OP ED]

CROSS POSTED FROM GD thread of INFAMY AND INSUBORDINATION
:: ::

It was at this point, amazingly, that she made the "officious, self-serving and petty abuse of power" comment, which was clearly an abusive comment.

"Officious, self-serving and petty abuse of power" is a descriptive criticism of incidental behavior, which is not inherently abusive, as much as it might hurt. I don't see any purely insulting, non-constructive terminology, aimed at denigrating the central character of the person. But then, I'm not in any position to determine for another person what may or may not feel abusive. Mods are often required to put themselves in such positions however, the difficulty here is that one party in this conflict is a mod. I think once the discussion felt as if it were turning personally abusive to you, Bruce, it should have been referred to a third party, preferably to the other mods. That's one way to avoid officious, self-serving and petty abuses of power. Please forgive my presumption if this was indeed the case.

"Officious, self-serving, and petty" are all attacks on character. In this particular case, though, it was even more offensive because, as I outlined above, no such abuses of power had taken place.

perhaps they had not, but they have now.

or at least it really really looks that way from here.

of course, OP ED would point out that someone's actions can be construed as officious, self-serving and petty without it being necessary to assume that the person indicated is inherently officious, self-serving and petty.

[also, assuming they were inherently a character attack indicates a reading of the grammar much different from how OP ED reads it, that is, as being descriptive of the "abuse of power" itself rather than the so-called "abuser"....i'm sure this seems like splitting hairs to you, but i don't consider what she said to be any more of an inherent insult than the "finding it interesting which posters question the enforcement of rules" bit of draconian rhetoric which was engaged in at the start]

all of which is to say that it isn't nearly so obviously "abusive" as you may be attempting to convince yourself of. at least, certainly not so obviously abusive as actually calling someone a dickhead or whatever.

[although dickhead is a pretty lame insult, hardly worth the effort to type]

[OP ED would've suspended the Fish for not coming up with something more original]

....

But that sidesteps the bit that seemed to be your point, which was that no one on this board could have known before yesterday that they could be suspended for a week for referring to someone as officious, self-serving, and petty.

Well, now they do. Precedent and whatnot.

I find that a bit disturbing. If you're going to exercise any kind of authority over other people, you have to expect to be criticized, and sometimes rudely, and unfairly. Being able to remain measured and fair in these scenarios is part of what generates confidence and feelings of safety in those over whom you exercise power. Appearing to retaliate is going undermine that confidence.

I'm reticent to continue this discussion, but I'd caution about creating the precedent that you can't get angry at a mod.

Posters can get angry at mods all they want. They can get angry at non-mods all they want as well. I would just caution them to keep the arguments issue-based, and to not call people names, or make attacks on people's character. Again, especially when the attacks are based on nothing more than the attackee trying to do his thankless job.

posters can get angry at mods all they want as long as they don't disagree with their [incorrect] understanding of informal fallacies and/or [mis]construe ANY of their actions whatsoever as being out of line or even (gasp) possibly self-serving.

[it was, at the least, ill considered]

[given that you ended a discussion about whether YOUR behavior was abusive by suspending the other participant in the discussion, winning said argument by default. although i'm certain it will eventually become apparent that this was a Pyrrhic Victory at best]

[its like arresting someone for not being a party member, even if your intention is perfectly pure and you have no emotional investment in the discussion whatsoever, it comes across as extremely heavy-handed]

[unless of course your "job", as you put it, is to negate any discussion of the arbitrary nature of enforcing posting guidelines and to generally stir up resentment among long-time board members who naturally have formed what used to be called "friendships" after many battles together]

....oh, as for the other thing, to be clear:

In this particular instance, C2W's "rational and non-abusive discussion of the rules" boils down to her putting words into my mouth, repeatedly accusing me of making a non-existent ad hominen attack on her...

After explaining multiple times to C2W that I did not make an ad hominem attack on her, that the meaning of my comment was simply that I couldn't believe that multiple posters seemed to be defending the right to call other posters names

actually what you SAID originally WAS:

I also think it's interesting to note which posters seem bothered by the enforcement of a rule that has always existed

[emphasis added]

now perhaps you didn't intend for such to be read this way, but she was [is] correct in calling this ad-hominem, a character attack. indeed, this is almost the definition of the term as listed in several links provided by myself and others previously. at any rate it just as easily falls under the heading of that particular guidlline, albeit the second half, as any of the more overt methods of personal attack, such as name-calling.

[i actually don't even remember a "rule". i remember a "guideline" that actually has the word "please" in it and is phrased much less harshly than all of the other guidelines, most of which end with "is not permitted"]

but for whatever fucking reason, some of you seem to be opposed to that, and are willing to engage in endlessly exhaustive methods towards that end.

we have our reasons. some of mine are personal, but then again, so are most of my reasons for most of the things i do. i actually think that a little heat in the debate brings true feelings to the surface and examines the actual integrity of an idea much more efficiently than walking on eggshells or worrying overmuch about people's feelings with regard to their attachment to their pet theories or whathaveyas. just a personal preference.

[during an election cycle none of the things that have resulted in suspensions this week would've raised even the tiniest eyebrow's worth of attention]

"Fire is the Test of Gold"
{Seneca, the Younger}

of course, he also said:

errare humanum est

[at least i think that was him]

[norton ash]

Impersonal Broad-brush Attacks

I think it's far more pernicious when a member repeatedly posts odious Bircher, Dominionist, FOX news, no-planes/false-flag/crisis actor-type jive shit, spatters the whole board as being 'complacent' 'asleep' 'willfully ignorant' 'gatekeepers' or 'members of a cult' when challenged on it, and then howls to the mods that he/she is being personally attacked when other members tell that member that they really don't like the shit he/she drags in, make an effort to end the arguments and acrimony that he/she thrives on with homely old facts and evidence, maybe reveal the provenance and dangerous intent of the member's 'sources'... or even go so far as to call that member an asshole because they simply won't listen, take part in an adult conversation, or argue reasonably.

Purely hypothetical, of course, but it would be bad if that were to happen at RI. It would get really frustrating.
I'm an asshole, it's true. Strictly speaking, I've just committed ban-hammer suicide!

My thanks and sympathy to the mods, as sometimes difficult judgement calls must be made. To make the punishment fit the crime is an object all sublime, or so I'm told.

[semper occultus]

...slightly disappointing to see the enthusiasm...the alacrity...the almost unseemly relish with which we seem to rush to pile-on to these threads of verbal eye-gouging whilst those concerning rather more significant events seem to merit 2 replies .....navel-gazing followed by the outies & the innies then abusing each other seems the order of the day...

.

Bruce imo does a commendable moderating job for no reward...(....well apart from the small monthly stipend from Jeff to a private swiss bank in black eagle gold coinage that just barely covers Mr Dazzling's hookers & cocaine outgoings...) ...as "petty exercises of power" go then acting as net-mum to a little backwater forum of about 30 active posters is about as petty as it gets..I seriously doubt the guy's doing it to enjoy the power-trip...

[Bruce Dazzling]

Cross-posted from here.

:: ::
actually what you SAID originally WAS:

I also think it's interesting to note which posters seem bothered by the enforcement of a rule that has always existed

[emphasis added]

now perhaps you didn't intend for such to be read this way, but she was [is] correct in calling this ad-hominem, a character attack. indeed, this is almost the definition of the term as listed in several links provided by myself and others previously. at any rate it just as easily falls under the heading of that particular guidlline, albeit the second half, as any of the more overt methods of personal attack, such as name-calling.

No, what I said comes nowhere near to fitting the description of an ad hominem attack. What I said was a statement of fact.

I did think it was interesting to note which posters seem bothered by the the enforcement of a rule that has always existed.

It's worth noting that I didn't name any names initially, yet C2W seemed to immediately believe that my comment was directed at her, when in fact it was directed at multiple posters, none of whom (besides her) seemed to take personal offense.

It's also worth noting that after being pushed by C2W, I was able to document two recent occurrences where C2W made the exact type of name-calling posts that led me to find it interesting that she, among others, seemed to be bothered by the enforcement of the rule as it pertained to barracuda's "dickhead" comment. I said I found it interesting, and I still do, and it's still not an ad hominem for me to say so.

I've addressed this situation multiple times at this point, and I really don't think there's any more to be said about it, and as I said elsewhere recently, I really don't have the time or the patience for marathon cut and paste rhetorical gymnastics. I've made my position perfectly clear. There's no more clarity to be gained from yet another post.

Oh, and I thank you for your support, semper. (And for keeping my stipend quiet for as long as you did.)

Edited to change the color of the last line to the fine shade of I'm-not-really-serious-green.

[barracuda]

...slightly disappointing to see the enthusiasm...the alacrity...the almost unseemly relish with which we seem to rush to pile-on to these threads of verbal eye-gouging whilst those concerning rather more significant events seem to merit 2 replies .....navel-gazing followed by the outies & the innies then abusing each other seems the order of the day...

.

Having and supporting opinions on the mechanics of the forum and its rules is important, as much as you may find it belly-buttonish. Realistically, the amount of interest in the subject helps create and sustain the disposition of the rules and their enforcement here. In point of fact, if you examine the rest of the subjects included in this sub-forum, many of the rules on the board exist simply because of discussions just like this one, discussions filled with passion and heated disagreements, but which eventually resulted in more concise definitions of just what ought be permissible in this environment. That is what is happening here. It is a process, a messy process, but one which is necessary for the health of the board and the inclusion of the members of the board in the environment in which they submit what are often very personal and difficult thoughts.

I am interested in this board because I consider it to be a writer's forum primarily, a place established by a writer of both esoteric research and satire as well, and a place where the boundaries of societal propriety are by necessity approached in order to even begin discussion about many of the subjects. Many people here, I realize, view the place as a convenient news-aggregation depository, a place they can come and see what is happening in the world and if those happenings, usually in the form of cut-and-pate from news outlets, are deemed by members to be worthy of an RI approach. I, personally, am more interested in the ability of the best writers here to startlingly delineate exactly what the RI approach really is, often through a cutting examination of the opinions of other posters. In this regard, I have rarely been disappointed by compared2what?'s slant on the subject, among others.

Peoples' opinions often represent the core of who they think they are, the projection into the world of themselves and their personalities. Violations of those projections are going to be painful, almost by definition. And the limits of allowable pain in that regard in this context is what is under discussion here. It matters.

[barracuda]

A message I received from a a friend...

It's also worth noting that after being pushed by C2W, I was able to document two recent occurrences where C2W made the exact type of name-calling posts that led me to find it interesting that she, among others, seemed to be bothered by the enforcement of the rule as it pertained to barracuda's "dickhead" comment. I said I found it interesting, and I still do, and it's still not an ad hominem for me to say so.



I'd really appreciate it if you stopped rewriting history. I appreciate that's how you experienced/understood it. But you're not impartial. And your word carries the imprimatur of authority. So please recuse yourself.

What happened was:

I was completely baffled by what your standards and guidelines were for determining whether something was or wasn't name-calling/a personal attack. So I asked for elucidation and/or guidance and/or an index of terms/phrases.

You chose to regard this as a defense of name-calling.

You cherry-picked two instances of what you regard as name-calling out of the total of perhaps a dozen or so you'd find in a close examination of my eight-thousand-plus posts, which, let's face it:

It's less interesting that you were able to document than it is utterly predictable since I'm completely sure that Canadian_watcher reported them at the time, along with what were doubtless who-knows-how-many false positives.

Because that's the only explanation for your even having been aware of something as completely unexceptional as my having asked stickdog99 why he was being such a douche to me when I was respecting his request from earlier in the thread to begin with. Nobody else would have noticed or cared. Or been incapable of understanding who was attacking whom. Or been so narrowly focused on my actions to the exclusion of all else as to construe it as an instance of my bad behavior. That takes a unique kind of genius, that I've come to recognize as my friend, Canadian_watcher.

It also explains why it is you can't see that my having called Mac an asshole was the direct result of my shock that after fighting with him for years without any loss of respect or affection on either side, he was suddenly unable to see that I would never do anything as low or bad-faith as invisibly, maliciously back-edit my posts. Which is a completely specious concept that owes its existence to the same person who'd insinuated (as she has previously outright stated) that I was barracuda's sock-puppet only days earlier.

And, seriously. I'm sticking strictly to the instances of her making an effort to influence and/or interfere with threads for no other reason than that it was disadvantageous to me that are pertinent to this flare-up. A comprehensive catalog of them would be book-length. She thinks she has a righteous cause. So she doesn't recognize any limits or care whom she hurts. And that's assuming that she's even capable of acknowledging the pain of others. The last time I objected to being victimized by her, she mocked me for it. It was one of the most painful things anyone's ever said to me.

Despite all of which, I like and respect her, I should add. She's got a right to her feelings. And to her opinion. Within limits THAT THE MODS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENFORCE.

I can't post here if the moderators can't tell the difference between the attackers and the attacked. Speaking of which. That might be for the best, though. I'm just saying.
_____________________

Anyway. Of course your understanding of what constitutes disruptive name-calling is going to appear incomprehensible and biased to sensible people if you're getting it via Canadian_watcher's tunnel vision. Anyone whose views weren't as blinkered would be saying to themselves:



But name-calling isn't now and never has been a significant or frequent or chronic cause of conflict. On the contrary, as any search for words such as "asshole" or "dickhead" or "douche" instantly reveals, when nobody Canadian_watcher hates does it, it rarely disrupts the thread for as much as a single post or upsets a single poster, as (for example) here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35841&start=795#p489853

and here:

viewtopic.php?t=35447&p=478140#p478095

and here:

viewtopic.php?t=36241&p=497465#p497369


(Apologies to those three blameless posters.)

And if you think those are cherry-picked examples, do your own search. What you'll see is that those appellations have only ever been the source of sanctions when they were used by someone who was engaged in the kind of sustained chronically hostile or angry personal assault on another poster or posters that can and do also frequently occur without any name-calling whatsoever. Because THAT'S what leads to most of the conflict and thread-derailment on the board.

As it did here.

________

That said, I'm not personally a fan of name-calling. I just could not, for the life of me, figure out what your standards were, since they didn't appear to be based on any organized or systematic principles I'd ever come across or could think of any way to discern via inference. And that's why I kept asking you what they were.

Now that the penny's dropped -- and, btw, I find it interesting which posters didn't think they needed any explanation -- they make perfect sense to me, though.

I kind of can't believe it took me that long to figure it out. Please accept my sincerest apologies for having mishandled our exchange as badly as I did. The reason I said that post was a petty abuse of power was less because it seemed to me that you were threatening me with suspension for asking a question (which you were, it turned out) than because I couldn't understand where it was coming from. So I'm very sorry to have added to your difficulties. I wouldn't have done it if I'd realized what they were.

Not that that's an excuse. It's just a reason. But fwiw, I am sorry. I appreciate your hard and thankless work on the board's behalf. And....TBH, it's once again become more stressful than it's worth for me to post articulately while at constant risk of assault for any random, exploitable word that could conceivably be construed as problematic. So my judgment's probably a little more compromised than it should be. But once I get over that, I promise to do better in future.

As for the rest:

What you said was ad hominem. But since I don't really care and it would be a very linguistically technical and minute case to make, I'm willing to retract it if you can't live with it. And I definitely do retract the abuse-of-power thing, as well as apologize for it with much shameful remorse. I completely misunderstood what was going on.

And....I wouldn't be surprised if none of this seems sincere or on-point to you, even still. Actually. We're not really proceeding from a shared perception here. So communication is a little chancy. But that's due to factors beyond my control. And I am sorry. So there you have it.

I apologize in advance for skirting the ban with this. But after a certain point, rebuttal becomes obsolete. And you're really being very unfair.

[Canadian_watcher]

holy fuck man.

someone's bound and determined to make this my fault. In complete honesty I had nothing to do with this thing between Bruce and c2w. I didn't report any of her posts.

I've never in my entire life met anyone so hell bent on a vendetta (over what I seriously do not know) as barracuda has been since I was made a mod without his consent.

to the other posters on this forum: Obviously my presence here will continue to be a disruption FOREVER - no matter what I say or do - because until I'm GONE FOR GOOD these people will not rest. They just won't. I'm going to have to be painted into corners, belittled and baited and you're all going to have to keep on putting up with it unless one of two things happens:

1. They are told once and for all to DROP IT. or
2. I leave.

You all let me know, because you know what? If the people who have something against me that they just cannot get past outnumber the people who really have no problems with me then I'll leave. We can have a sort of vote. Because one thing I'm NOT going to do is just give up because of a handful of people.
If you don't want to do it in public, then PM me. This decision will be mine, based on the responses I get.

thanks peeps, and I'm really, really sorry that I've somehow become this lightning rod for a few prolific people who are like dogs with a bone. It's very disruptive, and I recognize that.

You decide if you want to belong to a board that forced a person out or not. It's up to you. At least going forward you'll know the content of the people's character as you debate with them, or if you think they're 'smarter than you.' They ain't.

[Bruce Dazzling]

A message I received from a a friend...

It's also worth noting that after being pushed by C2W, I was able to document two recent occurrences where C2W made the exact type of name-calling posts that led me to find it interesting that she, among others, seemed to be bothered by the enforcement of the rule as it pertained to barracuda's "dickhead" comment. I said I found it interesting, and I still do, and it's still not an ad hominem for me to say so.



I'd really appreciate it if you stopped rewriting history. I appreciate that's how you experienced/understood it. But you're not impartial. And your word carries the imprimatur of authority. So please recuse yourself.

What happened was:

I was completely baffled by what your standards and guidelines were for determining whether something was or wasn't name-calling/a personal attack. So I asked for elucidation and/or guidance and/or an index of terms/phrases.

You chose to regard this as a defense of name-calling.

You cherry-picked two instances of what you regard as name-calling out of the total of perhaps a dozen or so you'd find in a close examination of my eight-thousand-plus posts, which, let's face it:

It's less interesting that you were able to document than it is utterly predictable since I'm completely sure that Canadian_watcher reported them at the time, along with what were doubtless who-knows-how-many false positives.

Because that's the only explanation for your even having been aware of something as completely unexceptional as my having asked stickdog99 why he was being such a douche to me when I was respecting his request from earlier in the thread to begin with. Nobody else would have noticed or cared. Or been incapable of understanding who was attacking whom. Or been so narrowly focused on my actions to the exclusion of all else as to construe it as an instance of my bad behavior. That takes a unique kind of genius, that I've come to recognize as my friend, Canadian_watcher.

It also explains why it is you can't see that my having called Mac an asshole was the direct result of my shock that after fighting with him for years without any loss of respect or affection on either side, he was suddenly unable to see that I would never do anything as low or bad-faith as invisibly, maliciously back-edit my posts. Which is a completely specious concept that owes its existence to the same person who'd insinuated (as she has previously outright stated) that I was barracuda's sock-puppet only days earlier.

And, seriously. I'm sticking strictly to the instances of her making an effort to influence and/or interfere with threads for no other reason than that it was disadvantageous to me that are pertinent to this flare-up. A comprehensive catalog of them would be book-length. She thinks she has a righteous cause. So she doesn't recognize any limits or care whom she hurts. And that's assuming that she's even capable of acknowledging the pain of others. The last time I objected to being victimized by her, she mocked me for it. It was one of the most painful things anyone's ever said to me.

Despite all of which, I like and respect her, I should add. She's got a right to her feelings. And to her opinion. Within limits THAT THE MODS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENFORCE.

I can't post here if the moderators can't tell the difference between the attackers and the attacked. Speaking of which. That might be for the best, though. I'm just saying.
_____________________

Anyway. Of course your understanding of what constitutes disruptive name-calling is going to appear incomprehensible and biased to sensible people if you're getting it via Canadian_watcher's tunnel vision. Anyone whose views weren't as blinkered would be saying to themselves:

But name-calling isn't now and never has been a significant or frequent or chronic cause of conflict. On the contrary, as any search for words such as "asshole" or "dickhead" or "douche" instantly reveals, when nobody Canadian_watcher hates does it, it rarely disrupts the thread for as much as a single post or upsets a single poster, as (for example) here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35841&start=795#p489853

and here:

viewtopic.php?t=35447&p=478140#p478095

and here:

viewtopic.php?t=36241&p=497465#p497369

(Apologies to those three blameless posters.)

And if you think those are cherry-picked examples, do your own search. What you'll see is that those appellations have only ever been the source of sanctions when they were used by someone who was engaged in the kind of sustained chronically hostile or angry personal assault on another poster or posters that can and do also frequently occur without any name-calling whatsoever. Because THAT'S what leads to most of the conflict and thread-derailment on the board.

As it did here.

________

That said, I'm not personally a fan of name-calling. I just could not, for the life of me, figure out what your standards were, since they didn't appear to be based on any organized or systematic principles I'd ever come across or could think of any way to discern via inference. And that's why I kept asking you what they were.

Now that the penny's dropped -- and, btw, I find it interesting which posters didn't think they needed any explanation -- they make perfect sense to me, though.

I kind of can't believe it took me that long to figure it out. Please accept my sincerest apologies for having mishandled our exchange as badly as I did. The reason I said that post was a petty abuse of power was less because it seemed to me that you were threatening me with suspension for asking a question (which you were, it turned out) than because I couldn't understand where it was coming from. So I'm very sorry to have added to your difficulties. I wouldn't have done it if I'd realized what they were.

Not that that's an excuse. It's just a reason. But fwiw, I am sorry. I appreciate your hard and thankless work on the board's behalf. And....TBH, it's once again become more stressful than it's worth for me to post articulately while at constant risk of assault for any random, exploitable word that could conceivably be construed as problematic. So my judgment's probably a little more compromised than it should be. But once I get over that, I promise to do better in future.

As for the rest:

What you said was ad hominem. But since I don't really care and it would be a very linguistically technical and minute case to make, I'm willing to retract it if you can't live with it. And I definitely do retract the abuse-of-power thing, as well as apologize for it with much shameful remorse. I completely misunderstood what was going on.

And....I wouldn't be surprised if none of this seems sincere or on-point to you, even still. Actually. We're not really proceeding from a shared perception here. So communication is a little chancy. But that's due to factors beyond my control. And I am sorry. So there you have it.

I apologize in advance for skirting the ban with this. But after a certain point, rebuttal becomes obsolete. And you're really being very unfair.

[DrEvil]

@C_w: I have plenty of problems with many of your opinions and views on things, and sometimes your attitude towards people who disagree, but I don't want you to leave.
It would be incredibly boring around here if everyone agreed.

[barracuda]

I've never in my entire life met anyone so hell bent on a vendetta (over what I seriously do not know) as barracuda has been since I was made a mod without his consent.

Here's the thing: I supported you assiduously when I felt you were correct in your perspective and under attack, i.e. back in the days of the misogyny thread. In fact, I'm looking right now at an email exchange we had during that time when everything was hunky dorey. To be honest, I don't remember what my opinion was regarding you becoming a mod, but the thread is still in the mod forum if those guys wanna check and see. I do remember strenuously advocating for a female mod at that time, though. And I don't recall ever, ever working against a fellow mod when I was a moderator.

Essentially, my support around here has far more to do with people's ideas than their persons, in general. It was when your ideas began to rub me the wrong way that I started watching what you had to say more carefully, probably around the time you started advocating for intelligent design. Again, I honestly haven't tracked the evolution of our little conflicts, but I do remember that being a bit of a red flag for me at the time.

You say stuff I agree with pretty often. You just can't see me nodding my head at my laptop. It's the nature of the venue, and of my own posting style. It's usual for me to silently assent but vociferously dissent.

I don't want anyone to leave the forum, especially people I disagree with. They provide the dirt for my flower to bloom.

[Project Willow]

Please forgive this completely OT test post, just trying to figure out why these entries are going off the page.

[Canadian_watcher]

I've never in my entire life met anyone so hell bent on a vendetta (over what I seriously do not know) as barracuda has been since I was made a mod without his consent.

Here's the thing: I supported you assiduously when I felt you were correct in your perspective and under attack, i.e. back in the days of the misogyny thread. In fact, I'm looking right now at an email exchange we had during that time when everything was hunky dorey. To be honest, I don't remember what my opinion was regarding you becoming a mod, but the thread is still in the mod forum if those guys wanna check and see. I do remember strenuously advocating for a female mod at that time, though. And I don't recall ever, ever working against a fellow mod when I was a moderator.

Essentially, my support around here has far more to do with people's ideas than their persons, in general. It was when your ideas began to rub me the wrong way that I started watching what you had to say more carefully, probably around the time you started advocating for intelligent design. Again, I honestly haven't tracked the evolution of our little conflicts, but I do remember that being a bit of a red flag for me at the time.

You say stuff I agree with pretty often. You just can't see me nodding my head at my laptop. It's the nature of the venue, and of my own posting style. It's usual for me to silently assent but vociferously dissent.

I don't want anyone to leave the forum, especially people I disagree with. They provide the dirt for my flower to bloom.

barracuda, I have quite a few issues with your account of your support of me back in the day. I recollect you stating point blank on the misogyny thread that we should all PM Stephen Morgan and ask him to come back and this was after we'd had discussions behind the scenes about how problematic he had been. You also sat idly by while Norton called me a twisted little vampire. and there were other examples, but I'm not going to bore everyone.

And by the way, I don't advocate for intelligent design - I advocate for academic freedom and that includes theories that are not scientifically proven to the standards you might like them to be.

BUT.. that's history.

Seeing as you've decided to speak to me like one human adult to another for a minute, anyway, I'd like to ask you something current. It might shed a little more light on your assertion that you're more interested in my ideas than my 'person.' Here's my question:

Why did you see fit to post the post, above, which is obviously from c2w and which clearly drags me into the middle of this? Which of my ideas were you having a problem with that led you to sideswipe me that way?