First Gul, then Aurora and now Storm

I seem to recall a little teensy, tinsy part that is being left out: Not only did Nick set up another domain, he also copied the entire database--member list, posts, everything, and was going to load that to the new board. Going and starting your own board is one thing. Going and starting your own board, already populated with all the content and membership from someone else's board is something entirely different.

Mrs Albert? I thought Ted was banned for being creepy to you?

That's my recollection as well -- there was definitely something involving a backup of the database to be transferred. Note, too, how this is the biggest charge leveled at borgs, and yet both sides intended to do this. Elwood's post is useful to a certain extent, in that I think it is honest, but I don't for one minute think it tells the entire story. What happened in these negotiations? What kind of leverage did each side bring to the table? It's clear from borgs' actions after the "sale" that he wasn't happy with what happened. That tells me that there was something peculiar in the ownership negotiation.

Take your pick. Was there anybody he wasn't creepy toward?

This is why I will never unban Borgs. He was going to involve the entire board membership in an illegal activity without even telling us. When I found out about it, I communicated my displeasure in very clear terms. I think I mentioned Interpol. Thou shalt not rope me into illegal activities, especially across international borders, and expect to get away with it or be forgiven.

I think it was a bit of an overreaction to be so upset over the torrent website and probably comes from a misunderstanding of how torrents and the internet in general work. Yes, copying the user database was shitty, but there was nothing tying you to illegal activities unless you were actively sharing illegal torrents.

Elwood's version seems pretty accurate (the only blatant inaccuracy I saw is that torrents themselves are NOT illegal, they are simply a way to transfer data), although it does underplay the whole copying the entire database to Havenbbs, so the threat was a bit more than just 'I'll go start my own board.' As someone else said Borgs was basically made an offer he couldn't refuse.

NOW, I believe it was for the good of the board. Borgs was making the board unstable and the torrentforge concept was... ill conceived at best. But that is from my perspective as a member. Had I been owner, I would have been pissed to have something I bought and I paid to maintain and I worked hard on to suddenly be taken away from me.

So I can understand why he was angry and lashed out. But even that said, trying to get us shut down was a dick move. As has been said, that was fucking 7 years ago. Has the dude done anything since? Would letting him back increase his ability to harm the board?

The reason the board was "taken", from him in the first place, is he kept sneakily trying to remodel Wordforge into Torrentforge.

The database copying version was his last resort, and the final straw.

I was a mod then, I remember this shit.

Yeah, I get that he was doing some stupid shit, so his being relieved of the board was a good thing for the membership at large.

I'm just saying that it is also understandable that in the immediate aftermath he would be pretty pissed at having his board taken from him.

So he lashed out, did a very dickhead thing. But that was a fucking long ass time ago, I mean it was 7 years ago in RL time. That's like 32 in internet years.

It's not like he is MORE of a danger as a poster than as a non-poster so the only reason is spite. Fuck man, let it go already...

I think you need to look up what torrents are. And also how Interpol works.

I think, youngster, that I know a good bit more about it than you do. The torrents Borgs wanted to operate were illegal ones, to circumvent copyright law. Music, videos, computer programs . . . y'know, stuff that people usually have to pay for.

Just getting the sequence of events right, is all.

And how would you or anyone else at Wordforge have gotten in trouble for that unless you were actively sharing those illegal torrents? Just having a matching username would not have gotten anyone here in trouble. And ultimately, if illegal torrents were being hosted, as the owner Borgs would have been legally responsible.

This is exactly it. I'm not at all pleased with how it all went down, but keeping the board going was paramount. I'd just prefer that everybody come clean about the whole affair, recognize why borgs responded as he did, and let bygones be bygones.

But this is WF. We always have drama over nothing.

Yep.

This is a nice little trip down memory lane, but I don't see the point in discussing this. Even if they unbanned him, there is no way Borgs is coming back. Whatever he is doing now, I'm sure he has moved on.

I do wish miniborg still posted here though. She was cool, don't think anyone here had a problem with her.

Probably a good idea to keep Ted banned however. He was a weird dude and he probably would have scared off the few remaining female members we have here.

Everyone else? Let 'em back in... besides the duals of course.

Borgs would probably never come back, but you never know. Just like many here are willing to recognize that mistakes were made on both sides and to let bygones be bygones, maybe he is mature enough to do the same.

Can't hurt to unban him and invite him back to say hi.

I have no problem keeping the non-contributing zeros/perpetual asshats banned though. Ted, Tasvir, Starguard, etc. I don't think we need a one size fits all policy on what is unacceptable here, common sense is a good thing. If ALL you ever do is flame/troll/spam etc fuck you, we don't need you.

We have more enough people who do it part time to more than take up the slack.

I'm glad it was done. I don't do torrents and I don't want to be linked to that shit.

Fuck Borgs and fuck his ass kissers.

Here's the disconnect:

Yes, the testbed site Nick had for testing Wordforge was renamed HavenBBS...just in case everything went to shit.

Borgs did not know about it, nor was it used as any kind of leverage. It was an emergency back up plan in case Borg's had a fit of anger and erased the board.

What put Borg's over the barrel was two-fold: There was a poll started in the Red Room by MarcB. asking the community who they would rather ran the board, Borgs or the just resigned Elwood and Borgs was losing by a very large, embarrassing margin...I still have the PM where Borgs upbraided me for starting it because he assumed it was me without reading the author's name. Anyway...it was clear the community was not happy with his leadership.

The second thing, which really was the threat is that most of the staff was ready to walk out. You guys don't understand what a dick he was to us. Listkeeper and I got "yelled at" after we started the Gray Room for not doing our jobs and the proof of this was that we weren't giving enough warnings. He had other staff members take any heat from him because he didn't want to deal with...well, anything. All he wanted was to use WF as a testbed for his hacks and pet ideas and fuck what anyone else thought about it.

I was the one who posted the thread about the torrents because the staff was valiantly trying to convince him that you don't just sign people up to a new website without their permission...let alone a torrent site...and his site was going to be for illegal shit, he wanted to be the bigger, better Pirate Bay. I figured the only way it could be stopped was public knowledge...and while I got a lot of shit for it, I feel it was worth it.

Even so, when Elwood came back as owner, Borgs was head Tech Admin and he promised no more shit. No random hacks or taking the memberlist or anything.

So, one day when he knew Elwood wasn't going to be there, he put a link on the front page to his new site...and unfortunately for all of us, the hosts noticed it before any of us did and took Wordforge down for having a link to illegal file sharing. Elwood had to contact them and explain and promised it would never happen again...and it wouldn't because that was when he was removed from Adminship.

That was when he went on the rampage at VB and lied about us and went looking for hackers to help him break in and once we saw that, he was banned.

So if Borg's was a victim, it was of himself. The only overt threat that was ever made was that the staff was going to walk and that was because we were sick and tired of being treated like crap.

Fuck Borgs.

How did Cass decide on Borgs as her successor? And why did she give up the board in the first place?

I don't recall now because it has been too long...

She was tired of doing it and offered to sell it to people on the staff. A few of us said we'd be willing to contribute money but weren't interested in the headache of owning. Borgs was willing to take on the entire thing.

I say we give the board back to Borgs.

I've got mixed views on this. As has been suggested, in my view it's the production of files that is the illegal activity. When you download from a torrent link you are comminting piracy. Being a member of a board with torrent links is not, in of itself, an offence.

However, one might compare liability for a board owner to that of The Pirate Bay, which has been shut down several times by the courts in it's host country, with the owners of it spending time in jail (although it has not stopped them running it). So offences beyond downloads seem to only apply to those who operate websites promoting illegal torrents. In this case, if Borgs were the owner of said board, irrespective of the membership details he had transferred, surely the only person who was putting himself in the frame was himself throw the operation of his other board. I'm not sure how this would have impacted WF in any way.

In reference to your earlier post above, what did this have to do with you at the time anyhow? You took over from Elwood years later.

I'd give a fuck, but I already gave the one I had to your mom last night.

Wait, this was happening while Borgs was the owner?

Since when has this ever mattered?

Well, I can't comment on the pet ideas, but you are talking about a man who was very young at the time. Do you never give anyone the chance to grow up a bit?

Well, like I said above, while copying the board membership list was rather unsavoury, I'm not seeing how this provided a problem for either WF or members. He was the one putting himself in the firing line in terms of illegal activities. The only way a member here was at risk was if they had followed him to the new board and actively used a link to download an illegal file.

That seems to conflict with Elwood's account. Why leave Borgs as admin once the board was taken from under him if he was causing a lot of shit. Does make sense to me.

So basically his real crime was posting a link.

Hang on, this is not the account given above about a dodgy licence email. How do you know that he was looking for hackers?

Well, like I say, a lot can change in 7 years.

The big question that you, or none of the others who support the continued ban, seem to be anble to answer is, if he was looking to hack the place or bring it down, why hasn't he done it already. How does a ban provent it from happening?

Did you use the giant space cock?

I don't care about any of this except to enter into the public record again one crucial bit of info:

the name HavenBBS was MY idea.

This is why I wouldn't mind him coming back.

And, I've never heard this "he was looking for hackers", part of the story either.

Sounds like horseshit to me....

Look, the second board was always there to my knowledge.

It was Nick's testbed copy of Wordforge and I believe Borgs knew about it.

Unlike Borgs, when Nick was going to install a hack for WF, he would test it out on the copy first, to look for bad reactions, incompatibilities and such without harming the primary board.

That Nick had a full copy of WF was not shocking and it was not held over his head, despite the accusations. More than likely Order2Chaos or Nick probably have a testbed somewhere now. It's a wise precaution when installing and coding things.

As for Borgs being Tech Admin when Elwood took over...weren't you here? Don't you remember any of this stuff? None of this stuff was secret!

At the same time as the crap on the VB site, he had made posts at a couple different sites looking for hacks or advice on getting into a BBS' Admin panel. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. And I knew it because I started searching out what he was up to when he lied to VB about us. And there is no real discrepancy between me and Elwood...he got the e-mail stuff from VB as owner I wasn't privy to Elwood's e-mail...I remember the public posts he did there better since I actually saw those.

In fact, his public crap is still availble to read:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-106913.html

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-173211.html

Unfortunately, where he was looking for AdminCP code no longer exists, so I can't show you that one.

You'll note, Borgs even mentions he was Tech Admin there.