What did I miss?

Questions to the staff, including me, regarding this announcement should go here.

Nick Walczak, Wordforge Daily News, I have a question:

How does it feel to be so important that if you leave for a week that this place falls apart?

Excellent.

Hopefully that will put some of the to rest.

So are you saying El doesn't deserve to have a life off the board? Especially when he has left the board in the hands of his senior staff?

Why? Do you have so little faith in El's judgment to choose his senior admin?

I think that this is the LAST thing we ought to be worried about tonight, but as always, your mileage may vary.

The whole Techman thing should really put some perspective and do some good into uniting this board.

Well, that, along with the return of Enterpriser, which seems to be uniting folks quite nicely.

Elwood, I pretty much agree with you -- you deserve a life outside the board, and that life is and should be private. The one quibble, which you should think through at some point, though now is not the time, is the amount of latitude you grant to your deputies in your absence. Many questions were answered with, "I'm stuck with the instructions he gave me." I think Tamar and Lanzman can do better than that, and should be empowered to do more in your absence. The problem wasn't the decision, it wasn't your vacation or break or what have you, it was the paralysis.

^ What paralysis? What needed to be done was done. Elwood has made that clear. The only thing that could have changed was that if some posters had had more confidence that Elwood had good reasons for the instructions he gave, there would have been no reason to go beyond the ordinary curiosity about the situation. The problem is not with Elwood, with the instructions he gave, with the fact that there was no leeway in those instructions (because he wanted it done that way), or with the fact that he was gone. The problem was with the lack of confidence a few people have in him, shown by the attitude that says, "We won't approve of this decision unless we have the information it would take to make it, and can check up on whether or not you are right."

The reaction was thoroughly overblown, as usual. The board was not "paralyzed" in any sense of the word, and nothing terrible happened. Just a few posters who wanted to make their own decision, based on woefully incomplete information, who had to wait a few days to learn a little more about a situation that, ultimately, was not their problem or threatening them in any way.

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Sure here is my question, Elwood. Does this rule apply to ALL posters or just the owners and/or populat members of this board. I mean this in all seriousness, since last summer when I told you straight out she was crazy, stalking me, you decided I was being dramatic/ full of shit even though I never called for someone to be banned before or since. I was instead forced to leave the board for six months ( not to mention change my phone numbers and e-mail accounts and passwords but I digress)
So I would like it on the record that your decision and ruling applies to ALL members of Wordforge. Thanks.

Asyncritus: It wasn't entirely overblown. It looked at first as if Goldeneye had gotten the boot without any substantial reason. Nobody saw fit to mention there was evidence of wrongdoing until two or three days later, when the shitstorm was well and truly underway.

And Listy in particular was being a jerk. Period.

Elwood knows I respect the hell out of him...but I would hope he'd respect me well enough to listen if things appear to be going out of control.

Elwood, speaking for myself I appreciate what you do for us by maintaining running the board, putting up with the shit etc. Thanks and good luck with everything in your RL.

I say, bring back Borgs.

























































































*hides*

What evidence did we have that she was stalking you?

Did she ever post personal information about you on the board?

Did she threaten you via PM?

In your case wasn't it all "he said/she said" hearsay?

In this case on the board regarding GE it is very much a case of "he said/he might say" though isn't it?

Hey, Elwoods board, ultimately his decision who is allowed to post here. However there haven't been piles of evidence given for that decision either.

Not that I'm saying there need to be for the public, just pointing out...

Yep -- Elwood can chose not to justify it, but if it looks hinky, people will raise questions. And I agree Vandy wasn't treated the same way regarding the lack of evidence she presented, just as more recently, Jenna was hounded off the board for much the same circumstance.

As far as Jenna goes, she wasn't run off, she left...she essentially got pissed and stamped off in a huff.

Her mistake with that Teddy thing was not reporting it in the first place. Staff nor the board as a whole can't be blamed for that. Jenna had no grounds on which to freak out - had she reported what Ted did, no doubt there would have been some Ted beating going down (this place has never hesitated to have a blanket party for Ted before).

Crazy Monkey showed her true self here eventually. We never believed Vandy because she's Vandy, she's always been a bit over dramatic. It really is a Boy Who Cried Wolf kind of story.

Perhaps, but vandygoddess was talking about cheekymonkey, and therefore so was I.

Okay...

GoldenEye: Last night in chat, he was allowed back in given the circumstances of Techman's passing, so he could participate. Even then, he wanted to force the issue about CM...when he was told that now was not the time and it would be discussed a little later...he continued to try and force the issue resulting in having to be banned from chat.

Vandygoddess: We had no evidence anything was wrong beyond a spat. You gave us PMs...but so did she...it just looked like to two of you were having personal issues and a catfight. We couldn't just ban someone outright for no reason because a poster says so. Your PMs to her were as bad as hers to you. It was decided it was best to let the two of you handle it amongst yourselves until something definitive was forthcoming. It was the fairest way.

The board was never paralyzed. Some people were upset that I wouldn't go against orders to leave GoldenEye banned and no matter what I said about it didn't seem to penetrate. Sometimes the answer is simply "no" and that is it. Of course debate is what we live for, but I think it is unfair to say the board was "paralyzed" because the answer you got was one you didn't like.

And finally...God, how stupid does any of this seem right now? It's like it doesn't even matter, I'm just too sad to really give a damn.

Sorry.

Exactly. If we had been told the reason for his banning, the shitstorm wouldn't have been nearly as massive. The reason we weren't told was because anyone who asked publicly about it were labeled trolls by Listy.

Did all of that happen in the chat room? Because from what my logs show, he signed off to go to bed, and was never banned. He even said in chat that he wasn't going to talk about that.

Commands to the server don't show up in channel, Timmy.

So he was banned from the server after he logged off and went to bed? Was he causing problems via queries or something?

I sometimes wonder why we seem to think we need to know all the workings of the board, and the reasoning behind every executive decision.
Why are we supposed to be privy to those things?

I don't know about you, but when someone is banned I'd like to know why, mostly so that I don't do whatever it was that got them banned.

Also, we routinely get to see the inner workings of this board via the Shelter releases.

It's the same reason folks like to keep guns. Transparency assures us that things are on the up and up, something we didn't get at big blue. Yes, Elwood earns and has our trust, but to keep it, he needs to be as open as he can be.