Is this true? I can't believe the accusations I have read

[Truth and Beauty]

I know these comments come from another board, but since it concerns the administration of DoMeBo and the way the board is run I thought I would post my questions here.

On another board, an ex-poster here claims the following:

It was great at first. And then the snarkers came, beginning with Excalibur (formerly known as Excalibre), who luckily arrived just a tad too late to derail the hate speech vote with his out-of-the-blue threadshitting. But after that, they began to come in droves. And not just primary accounts. There were socks. But the rules on socks changed over time. And when I say "over time", I mean day by day. The noise level increased rapidly. I secured a ruling from the board's owner that we could register socks for the purpose of holding Socratic dialogs, which was all that I could see would be the last vestige of something enjoyable to me there. And then that was stripped away suddenly, upon the huffy grumbling of the ever so nice What Exit?, who never met a person's business that he did not believe required his interference.

and also I see this kind of stuff:

I agree that the other board has a lot of scruffy in-laws frequenting it, but occasionally something gets my interest. Threads over there tend to die quickly, which doesn't encourage me to return to them for contributions, so I usually gravitate back here where participation is better. What's his name, the cooking guy who was banned here a couple years ago, made a brief appearance, but has apparently abandoned the board as a bad bet.

I doubt much of what has been said, though I will admit that What Exit? has a tendency to be churlish with the posters he doesn't like, but I don't really believe that this board is at the point yet where it's overrun by trolls and basically a dead forum. What's the true story?

P.S. cite: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/sho ... p?t=517412

[OneCentStamp]

Wow, they let liberal back in?

[Truth and Beauty]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

[What Exit?]

Hi T&B, it is nice to see Liberal is remaining his classy self after offering friendship.

I'm sure Liberal thinks what he posted was true and part of it was true by his definitions. But I would vote for the fact it was mostly garbage.

He hates Excalibur and thus bitches we allow snarkers. He decided the Sock rules meant one thing that they never meant. He makes his own interpretations and treats them as reality. Hell, I and several other mods were rightfully accused of bending over backwards to accommodate him. His repayment of the effort is greatly appreciated.

So the truth is in the eye of the beholder I guess, but remember the source in this case.

[prr]

Which is too bad, because I found him to be capable of honesty, honorable behavior, good fellowship, generosity, helpfulness and other sterling qualities, after our relationship initially got off on a very rocky footing. I'm disappointed that I've (mostly) found DoMeBo to be a place I'm generally comfortable posting, a community where Lib and I were getting along just fine, and he encountered treatment here that, correctly or no, made him withdraw. I'm doubly disappointed that he chose to retreat back to the SD--I don't really see how it's disputable that the modding there is organized on no principle known to rational thought, and Lib rather prizes rationality sometimes.

[SeeOhTwo]

Why doesn't Lib start his own board so he can spend his days talking to himself and bitching about the way he treats himself?

[Chimera]

There's salting the earth.
There's burning bridges.
There's poisoning the well.
There's scorching the earth.

Then there's Liberal. Who is intent on sewing the earth and wells with flaming radioactive salts.

[featherlou]

Why doesn't Lib start his own board so he can spend his days talking to himself and bitching about the way he treats himself?

It appears that that is the only thing that will satisfy him.

[Guinastasia]

As far as "letting him back", I don't see why they wouldn't, since he wasn't banned in the first place. He's just getting a lot of (well-earned) shit for doing so.

[What Exit?]

Why doesn't Lib start his own board so he can spend his days talking to himself and bitching about the way he treats himself?

[maggenpye]

Isn't 'talking to himself and bitching about the way he treats himself' pretty much what he was doing with the sock account?

[Guinastasia]

Sometimes I think Lib's pretty cool -- but then he goes and pulls something like this. It's hard to know where he stands.

[ivan astikov]

He's definitely no dummy, but he does like spitting it out.


(Standard Liberal response: "Waah, waah, waaaah! Why are you calling me a baby?")

[maggenpye]

He's pretty open about the cyclic nature of his OCD and all. Like Guin, I miss the cool Lib and get confused by the unhappy Lib. It's just a bloody shame he can't seem to take a break (from any board, apparently) without trashing the place and posters/mods as he goes. Makes it harder to welcome him back as he swings through this arc of the cycle again.

[Guinastasia]

I've never heard of OCD cycling like that though. Mine certainly never did.

[sublight]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

I recommend reading through any long SDMB thread from at least a few years back and see just how many of the posters have 'BANNED' under their name. The vast majority of them were not spammers.

And as for Lib's "And when I say "over time", I mean day by day," please. This board has been in operation for just over two months. Any changes made would have to be day-by-day, or they wouldn't have happened yet. I notice he doesn't mention all his posts requesting special changes to be made just to suit him. Requests, I might add, that came in on at least a daily basis at times.

What's the true story? The true story is that some people are drama queens. They aren't happy unless everyone's attention, good or bad, is firmly on them, at which point they can then complain that everyone is out to get them. They want the people who dislike them to keep talking, and the people who are sincerely trying to help them to jump through an ever-increasing number of hoops whenever the whim takes them. The one thing they can't stand is the people who just don't care about their shit and stop rising to the bait (i.e., "Threads over there tend to die quickly, which doesn't encourage me to return to them for contributions, so I usually gravitate back here where participation is better.")

I put Lib on ignore years ago at the SDMB because I was tired of him constantly shitting in threads with nothing but "lookitmelookitmelookitmeeee" posts. And I can scarcely recall a single instance where it was necessary to un-block a post of his because it contained something relevant to the discussion.

[maggenpye]

I've never heard of OCD cycling like that though. Mine certainly never did.

OCD and all. I'll admit to not knowing his whole list of symptoms and syndromes, some of them are cyclic, some are not. The 'I must leave this awful place' thing seems to come and go.

All I know about OCD, I learned from Monk.

[featherlou]

The interesting thing about this board is that it is lending itself to the personalities of the posters becoming clearer and better-known (at least to me) - I've discovered that Liberal is indeed a drama queen who wants the world and isn't happy when he gets pretty much everything he asks for. I didn't notice it nearly as much on the Dope. On a more positive note, there are some of you who I am coming to really like.

[Elyanna]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

Ha! The SDMB is almost as ban-happy as Something Awful.

[prr]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

Is it? One of the effects of the splinter boards is that (without an announced change of policy that I ever heard of) they've gone from "Look at Ed or Lynn or Tuba Diva cockeyed and you're banned before you're done hitting 'Submit'," to "No one gets banned--just warned. For now."

This new policy has all the earmarks of an interim policy. It seems to me that Ed (or more likely his twenty closest advisors screaming into his ear-trumpet) realized that if he maintained his "My way or the Highway" rules that immediately preceded to splinter boards, he'd have a board that consisted of newbie dummies with a few "Wouldn't say shit unless they had a mouthful" veteran diehards mixed in. But it really can't last, and I suspect they're keeping careful tabs of the warnings accumulated. In a way, that's even worse, since that just means that they have evidence accumulated to ban anyone eventually, which will come when people piss Ed off someday, one by one. "PRR is banned for a snide remark he made back in spring of 2009, for which he was warned, and today's snotty comment about Ed's minuscule dick size."

[Tuckerfan]

Wasn't Liberal the guy who started the Pit thread compaining about the lack of media outrage when a black CNN reporter called another black reporter "boy"? I remember it took about 30 seconds to post that the OP was just stirring the pot over nonsense, but it wasn't until a couple of pages into it before the OP confessed to basically trolling with their OP. Didn't he also bitch about how he was being oppressed for being Native American? Or am I completely wrong about all this?

[silenus]

Didn't he also bitch about how he was being oppressed for being Native American? Or am I completely wrong about all this?

Nope. The dude's monomaniacal loathing of Andrew Jackson long ago went from "interesting" to "comical" to "annoying."

[Q.E.D.]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

Ha! The SDMB is almost as ban-happy as Something Awful.

Really. I can name a dozen banned posters just off the top of my head who were decidely not banned for spamming. Hell, most of them weren't banned for trolling, either.

[OneCentStamp]

Really. I can name a dozen banned posters just off the top of my head who were decidely not banned for spamming. Hell, most of them weren't banned for trolling, either.

Me too, and Baldwin is three of them!

[Sarahfeena]

If you're not a spammer it's pretty hard to get banned from the SDMB.

I recommend reading through any long SDMB thread from at least a few years back and see just how many of the posters have 'BANNED' under their name. The vast majority of them were not spammers.

I've been noticing this, too...it's amazing. And who knows why they were banned, but they mostly seem to have participated in a perfectly normal fashion.

[Zuul]

I've never heard of OCD cycling like that though. Mine certainly never did.

I'd never paid much attention to Liberal drama on the Dope, so never noticed all of the things people are complaining about now. However, what's being described here sounds more like Borderline Personality Disorder than OCD. "ZOMG I love you all. We shall never part! No wait, fuck off and die, you bastards!"

[Exy]

I've been noticing this, too...it's amazing. And who knows why they were banned, but they mostly seem to have participated in a perfectly normal fashion.

That was always one of the worst things about the place. Long before they ever banned me that had banned a million other posters who were usually okay.

It was so incomprehensible. Liberal does this shit, over and over. Sampiro has pulled similar stunts on multiple occasions too. I'm not necessarily saying those two should be banned, but there's a whole hell of a lot of people who were banned for less. And not only are they still posting, but there's no attempt to even corral their behavior. (Instead there's just tomndebb making up crazy lies to defend Liberal.)

It's just hard to understand how they can be so bad at something that's basically not all that difficult.

[Sarahfeena]

I think it comes down to something as simple as that they feel bad and a little protective of folks who seem to have genuine mental health issues. Which is understandable, but unfortunately it's somewhat enabling, as well.

[Guinastasia]

Wasn't Liberal the guy who started the Pit thread compaining about the lack of media outrage when a black CNN reporter called another black reporter "boy"? I remember it took about 30 seconds to post that the OP was just stirring the pot over nonsense, but it wasn't until a couple of pages into it before the OP confessed to basically trolling with their OP.

No, that wasn't Lib -- I can't remember who it was, but it wasn't him.

And hey, I LIKE Sampiro. He doesn't cause NEARLY that much drama. Just in his stories.

[Feirefiz]

Damn. Sure, he has his occasional Kinski moments, but I like him.
And I say that as someone who disagrees with him on, well, lots of things.

[Tuckerfan]

Wasn't Liberal the guy who started the Pit thread compaining about the lack of media outrage when a black CNN reporter called another black reporter "boy"? I remember it took about 30 seconds to post that the OP was just stirring the pot over nonsense, but it wasn't until a couple of pages into it before the OP confessed to basically trolling with their OP.

No, that wasn't Lib -- I can't remember who it was, but it wasn't him.

Actually, it was him. (I feel dirty for having searched that.)

[Guinastasia]

Damn. Sure, he has his occasional Kinski moments, but I like him.
And I say that as someone who disagrees with him on, well, lots of things.

Who -- Sampiro or Lib?




ETA: Oh, I was thinking of another thread where some guy did something similiar -- he posted in a follow up: "You call a black man 'boy' and see how he reacts" or something like that.

[Feirefiz]

Who -- Sampiro or Lib?

Ah, sorry, I meant Lib. I read the whole thread in one go and somehow the context seemed clearer when I wrote that.

[Inigo Montoya]

I got nothing on Lib. He confuses me so I just figure I'm not smart enough to follow along and get back to JibbaJabba or MPSIMS. 'course, it IS kinda lame to slag one board on another. Really no different than talking shit about someone behind their back. Can we change his DoMeBo title to something like "Poo-Head?"

But the OP title cracks me up. Because every time I hear/read the phrase, "Is this true?" I flash to Ghostbusters and the decidedly hilarious deadpan reply.

[Tamerlane]

And who knows why they were banned, but they mostly seem to have participated in a perfectly normal fashion.

Ugh. I don't like playing defender of the SDMB administration, but I'm gonna disagree. I've been there a long ass time now and IMHO 80-85% of the banned either fully deserved it ( under the SDMB rules, such as they are ) or were treading the line close enough I couldn't really argue much about it. The vast majority flamed out or ignored multiple warnings. You can argue some of the SDMB rules suck or are vague, but they're still the rules.

Now some of them certainly didn't deserve the ban stick - I despised december as a poster, perhaps my least favorite ever, but he didn't merit his banning IMHO. I think he was just such a hassle for the staff that they gratefully seized on an opportunity to kick him out on a technicality.

But most of them ( including some favorites of mine, like col )? They were asking for it, one way or another.

[Exy]

[ . . . words . . . ]

If you click through old threads on the SDMB, huge numbers of former active users were banned. Why don't other internet communities have the same problem? Why is it that the SDMB ends up eventually needing to ban such an oddly large share of its membership, when other places don't?

[Tamerlane]

[ . . . words . . . ]

If you click through old threads on the SDMB, huge numbers of former active users were banned. Why don't other internet communities have the same problem?

We know they don't? Honest question - I get around some to other forums, but not an enormous amount. But I have seen multiple "old timers" with hundreds or thousands of posts get axed at other places.

Why is it that the SDMB ends up eventually needing to ban such an oddly large share of its membership, when other places don't?

I've heard some are worse, such as TWOP.

But at any rate, assuming that's the case it could be any of a number of reasons, led by, I suspect, tighter than usual moderation. Now folks that like a more free-wheeling, anarchic environment ( and no, I know it needn't be a binary choice ) might not have much use for such a forum. But I think it's a large part of the equation.

Is shitty or uneven moderation/adminstration part of the equation? Almost definitely - I think that's always going to be a factor. I'd even agree things have been getting worse since, say, the beginning of the PtP era. Neither Zotti nor Tuba Diva, his principle lieutenant, have ever filled me with great confidence for their awesome people skillz.

But my opinion that most of those banned at the SDMB deserved it, at least under the SDMB rules, stands.

[Exy]

But my opinion that most of those banned at the SDMB deserved it, at least under the SDMB rules, stands.

I wouldn't really argue with this statement, but to me what that shows is that the rules don't seem to work very well.

[Tuckerfan]

But my opinion that most of those banned at the SDMB deserved it, at least under the SDMB rules, stands.

I wouldn't really argue with this statement, but to me what that shows is that the rules don't seem to work very well.

It all depends upon what those rules are trying to achieve. For example, over at the Bad Astronomy forums, failing to back up an assertation with a cite or further information can get you banned, depending upon the thread's subject matter (mainly those dealing with conspiracy theories). This is done because it gets tiresome having someone blather on and on for pages, while repeating the same crap over and over again (a certain poster on the SDMB springs to mind), and its obvious that they're not going to be bringing anything new to the table.

You'll also get banned there for use of obscenity (this is because they want children to enjoy the site) or flaming another poster. I've seen very few complaints about the moderation there being heavy handed. In the SDMBs case, I don't think that they've really thought about some of the rules they've enacted, and enforcement has been spotty at times.

[Baldwin]

Really. I can name a dozen banned posters just off the top of my head who were decidely not banned for spamming. Hell, most of them weren't banned for trolling, either.

Me too, and Baldwin is three of them!

Well, the second time, SkipMagic said I was spamming. The third time, I was definitely breaking the new rules.

I never really "got" Libertarian/Liberal. (Incidentally, I'm still wondering whether the Libertarian on this board is yet another of Lib's socks. His misspellings seem more like an affectation than genuine ignorance.)

Lib always seemed like three people to me: a depressed, cranky, mildly delusional old man; a teenager with a high IQ but not much experience, who thinks he can prove the existence of God to all us stupid atheists; and a fairly smart, decent guy who could talk reasonably about almost any topic. I don't know what brings on his prolonged drama-queen crises.

[Guinastasia]

I don't think he's Libertarian. Lib's really touchy aout being called by his former name, and considering his almost hysterical reaction to Andrew Jackson, I highly, highly doubt it's him. I definitely think it's someone else trying to get his goat.

[prr]

I don't think he's Libertarian. Lib's really touchy aout being called by his former name, and considering his almost hysterical reaction to Andrew Jackson, I highly, highly doubt it's him. I definitely think it's someone else trying to get his goat.

Jeez, can't we do a little sock-hunting, check out a few IP addresses, look for some patterns in the prose style, and get a definitive answer to this burning question? WWM23D?

[Stink Fish Pot]

I am no fan of Lib's, but has he really done anything to get banned at SDMB?

Personally, I'd love to see it, but as someone upthread has mentioned, the boards I'm on that Lib has been a part of seem to bend over backwards for him. Obviously, they know him better than me, but he's just not worth the drama. I often wonder about his family and what a roller coaster it must be to live with someone like that. I think he's about old enough to be my father, and if that were the case, I'd lock him in a rubber room.

Putting him on my ignore list is the simplest solution until he gets banned. And since I don't see that happening, I can live with it. Folks that know him personally may feel different, so I'll give them the final say (unless he breaks a board rule that they can shut him down with).

Why anyone would want to create a sock to argue with themselves is so bizarre to me that it defies my comprehension. Who would read that? What in the world would he accomplish? Show his intelligence? His personality disorder? Another odd cry for attention? Does it really matter?

SFP

[Truth and Beauty]

I agree with Stink Fish Pot. If you don't like a poster, then just start ignoring her posts - no need to insist that just because you don't like that person, the rest of the board has to conform to your personal preferences.