In persuit of ignorance

Psst I’ll let you all into a little secret.

Carefully hidden on this website or, if you are a super-human, directly accessed from a link on the home page are a set of rules and regulations that us mere mortals, otherwise known as members, have to adhere to. Else if we are naughty boys and girls the good and the great will make us wear the dunces cap, make us stand in a corner and not allow us to have our milk and cookies.

And further down that same page are the methods that the great and the good, if they have bothered to read them, are meant to adhere to in handing out their punishments. Since if they cannot do that then there is no democracy around here.

I will take a quote of a very respected Congregationalist minister who for many years was the centre of society only to find himself sidelined as attitudes changed. “The minister, one felt, no longer belonged integrally to the life of the community. It was like standing on the touch-line, observing others at play, free to make criticisms or raise a remark in one way or another, but in the end a spectator.”

I left this community for various reasons one of which is that I felt I no longer had the support of the community just like my dear friend above. But after watching “on the touch-line” for a few months I felt there was a need to a voice as certain things were happening here that needed voicing. So Jack_Hacket was born as the conscience of these forums. To remind certain individuals of their perceived ignorance.

Yet unlike the minister it seems that you are not free to make criticisms or raise a remark in this community.

For his troubles he was:

1. Told that he could write his comment in a just a few lines rather than many.
2. Going of topic. But if a topic is about ‘model’s info’ and the post is about that then how can he be ‘off-topic’
3. Spamming topics. Now in my book that means repeating the same message in numerous topics. I challenged that opinion but never received any reply either in the topic I was accused of spamming or PM

For me, the final straw was a well respected poster quite deliberately ignoring the rules about video posts - rules he had kept to for many years. He was not publically admonished for that post. In fact no less than four moderators thanked him for it. My post was deleted so there was no record of the violation. A few days later, a forum newbie did exactly the same thing. Now I can imagine the great and the good now warning this member not to do it again which will just make him confused having seen another member being allowed to do it and being thanked for it. And it is clear that he was warned as his next video post was correct.

Now despite the posts I mention at 1. 2. and 3., there was no indication of a warning that continuing in such a vein would lead to a suspension and the rules also clearly set out the democratic methods to be employed. I think one could reasonably expect a PM to that affect. But no. No warning in the forum and no PM either. The next time I logged in I was greeted with the message in red “Your Account is Suspended”. I read that message AND ONLY THAT MESSAGE no other words on 6th July. I repeat, I had received no explanation why my account was suspended and at that junction I had no inkling of how long that suspension would last. In fact with no indication of the length it would be quite reasonable to conclude that the suspension was of a permanent nature.

Now it is common knowledge that RS premium accounts are basically crippled for new uploads. I had over 400 active files comprising some 35 gig. I do contribute to other forums and if I was not to delete the vast majority of them then I could not – I do not see why I should go to the trouble and expense of more upload accounts. So files which I no longer had the use of would have to go sooner than later. So I deleted practically every video I was sharing in these forums. And these are my property. In my mind the site had had good use of them and there were plenty of other videos for the free-loaders. Now if it was possible to delete every single post that referred to a video then I would have also have done that. Then the forum would be ‘clean’. But that was not possible as others had contributed to topics and also some posts were initial ones so they could not be deleted either. Yet I fully intended to clean up as much as I could but it would take a little time.

Now for that action, which I believe I am perfectly entitled to do, I, or rather the artist formerly known as DB has received what is effectively a life-ban. So now those topics can not be cleaned up. And true to form no question was raised. No PM was sent and no explanation received of what rule he has broken to warrant that. And the great and the good know perfectly well that the email addr stored here is un-reachable but they only had to ask someone close to them for the new one. Yet another example of ignorance.

Yet I now read of others who state they will allow their RS videos to lapse. Will they also be banned ? I guess not.

I do not expect any outflowing of sympathy over that. In fact I trust that whoever pushed the buttons for the suspension (which actually lasted some 28 days – nowhere in the sanctions is that stated for an initial suspension) or the ban (which was rather pointless as I had no intention of using that nick again) can sleep easy over that. There will no longer be a voice of conscience in these forums. We all sign up to the rules and it would be reasonable to expect that the great and the good would abide by the sanctions as they are written and not make them up as they go along. The sad thing is that this place is no longer the same as the one I stumbled on to in 2005. That’s right, 2005. There is hardly a proper post or topic in the whole place. Now, ignorance rules. The voice of reason is ignored and punished for it. And the great and the good will have to do it all themselves now. One day they could live to regret it.

So even if I am not suspended again, or even banned, for this truth I will save you all the trouble. You will not hear from Jack_Hacket again.

Ignorance rules.

When I read this kind of posts I'm really sorry:

I remember the time when I saw my posts deleted in 5 minutes without any explanation.
I remember the time when we had no PM service, and the communication was not so simple.
I remember also the time when we had no smiley-buttons.
I know that everybody can be wrong (I put myself in the first cathegory of members who can be wrong).

But nowadays:
- we have PM service, which make life easier for communication,
- we have smiley-service, which help us to make other members better understand the spirit behind our words,
- we know that everybody can be wrong and nobody is God, so a good way to moderate a forum is to do it in a friendly way (when you see that a member is not a simple troublemaker),
- we have a team of moderators who do their best to do their job in a 'friendly' way, without giving us the idea to be always in a 'jail (...)'.

Now I admit:

Even me and you had some 'problems of communication' but I never denied the contribution you gave to this forum.
Was it really necessary to come to this 'break-point'?
Or is it something that can be sorted out, with some good will from everybody ?

you have a thing about e before r
[hidden link - please register] as in trivial

I guess I didn't read enough Chaucer

bye