Zixar

WW: Right-click on an offending item on the page and select "Remove this object". Poof. Nuked.

Oh, quit crying and leave, already. There never has been the "freedom of speech" at GS that you seem to want to indulge in, so find someplace that will let you be as offensive as you want to be. Just quit being such a baby about it. I had a post deleted last night, too. You don't hear me squawking about Nazis deleting it. Nor do I try to deny I ever posted it. Maybe you should write down your lies somewhere so you can tell them the same way twice. Not here, of course, but somewhere.

Chuck: You have a very overinflated view of your own importance. So you had a post deleted, big deal. Cry about "freedom of speech" somewhere else. Maybe you can find a new forum where you can be a smarmy jerk and have people slobber all over you for it. You know where the door is. Don't let it hit you in the ***.

Long Gone: I stand corrected. Sorry if I mistook your intent.

Now that the issues are being addressed, do you feel any better about the future direction of GS?

Cute, Chuck. Real cute.

Another excellent idea. That should close that door, too. Thanks for the quick response.

Paw: Ok. Sorry if I took that out of context. Do we have any thing left to discuss on the matter? I've pretty much covered all the issues I had.

Chuck: You know perfectly well which post I referred to but I never said you wrote it on the 4th. I said I reported it on the 4th. Check the quote you just posted, it's right there. The post is gone now, and I don't care to repeat what you said in it again.

deleted

Probably not any you wouldn't find fault with. But if you want to go on a scavenger hunt, be my guest.

Fair enough. How about some specific points where you disagree strongly?For what it's worth, though, the new Forum for less-serious threads was a very good idea. And the specific offending threads/posts were remedied--eventually. I understand you can't be everywhere at once, but a better response time from the moderating staff sure would go a long way towards alleviating that problem. As for the content problem, I know good and well you can't stop people from posting offensive material, the only thing you can do is clean up after it. I don't know if all this will cure 100% of the unrest, but at least it's a positive step towards it.

Unless you can come up with something to back it up, you've done nothing but "because I said so" either. That's declaration by fiat, not a rebuttal.

Worm my way out of what? I think that was one of the best threads I ever started. What's odd is that Long Gone brings it up as some sort of hypocrisy impeachment on me, when he clearly makes the point that no one objected to that thread. If anybody actually goes back and reads the whole thing, instead of only LG's Michael-Moore-like edit of it, that has got to be the tamest belief argument ever conducted here. Especially relative to what's gone on here the past six months or longer. Anyway, LG's argument isn't exactly valid even if that thread were full of four-letter words and death threats. The reason is that, illogical as it might be, different groups respond differently in similar circumstances. Sure, the agnostics and atheists may have gotten irritated, but none of them was so flat-out offended by the question that they quit the whole site altogether over it, nor even uttered an objecting peep to Pawtucket. The closest parallel I can offer is this: There is no racial slur a black person can throw at me that is as offensive as if I were to call that person a "nigger". Honky, redneck, cracker...big deal. There's just nothing even close to being as offensive. Now is that fair? No. Shouldn't they just "get over it" by now? It's not really for white folks to say, is it? It's the same way with Christians and their reactions to aspersions cast upon Christ. You question atheists, and you get that old thread LG brought up. You attack Christianity, you get all this. It's not an atheist's or agnostic's place to decide what Christians should and should not take offense to.

MC: Why should I care?

I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit. I'm a pheasant plucker, I pluck mother pheasants. I'm the most pleasant mother-pheasant plucker you ever saw!

Paw: I reported Chuck's BS post on July the 4th. It was still there yesterday. Don't push this off on me. Apparently there are quite a few people in that "silent majority" you spoke of that don't report posts either, but are still unhappy with what's been going on. This is hardly just between you and me. I didn't know what happened to Dot until she emailed me. You want to know why I haven't just left this place over it? Because unless something is done about it, you'll have more casualties just like her. I didn't see it coming, maybe you didn't see it coming, but we can see it now, right? Dot Matrix was not an acceptable loss. In hindsight, we both should have done something, but that's water over the dam now. In foresight, it will happen again if there isn't more consistent and timely moderation of the site. Whose job is it to moderate this place if it's not yours? The poll was not loaded, no matter what anyone might say. I already told you what I expected to happen and was just as surprised at the outcome. Dmiller's poll is showing even worse results at the moment. Have you considered for the tiniest of moments that while a lot of people are all sweetness and light to your face, others may not have the guts to disagree with you publicly? It's not the polls' fault, Paw. No matter how ....ed you are at me, I only voted once. There are always going to be some malcontents and troublemakers in every crowd, so you're never going to get a 100% approval rating. That's just normal. But when two anonymous polls show that at least ten other folks aren't happy, even given the small sample size, it's time to do something. Using your anti-son-of-a-bitch stick on me will still leave you with at the very least nine unrelated people disappointed in what this site has become. If it is a representative sample though, you've got a lot bigger problem. Fires are always the easiest to put out when they're small.

Okay, so when I speak up about something, I'm bullying people. What is it called when you speak up about something, then? Doesn't it bother you that so many people feel GreaseSpot has changed for the worse? Don't you want to do something about it, if you can? As you should be able to tell, it bothered me plenty, yet when I spoke up about it, some [expletive deleted] got so bent out of shape over a mere figure of speech that the whole thing became a joke, and not a very funny one at that. Guess we need a new term, because "snowconing" a thread isn't meant to be malicious.

It's not like I can read your mind, Tom. You were the one who created this whole "mud-slinging"/"manipulative" song and dance, and then you try to blame ME for it. That's a a classic example of building a strawman. Then, you get all bent because I called you on chopping up the last sentence so you could take the rest out of its context? I don't see how you can honestly talk about my supposedly being manipulative when you're doing that sort of thing.

AdBlock rules. SpiderZilla is pretty cool, too. If you want to download an entire site, just load up the home page in Firefox and tell SpiderZilla to grab the whole thing.

Oh, I see. The first poll isn't right because it's supposedly "loaded" and people aren't smart enough to pick the right answer, then the second one isn't right because people are too stupid to make up their own minds how they really feel? Have we been infiltrated by Gore campaign staffers or something? No matter how many times you count the votes, you get the same result.

Ok, that covers 3 of the 4 "middle" votes. Still doesn't explain the 10 out of 16 "downhills", though. :(-->

Tom: Funny how you left out the last six words of my post. Funnier still how you can accuse me of being "manipulative" and "subversive" while completely ignoring the whole point of my message. No one's "herding" anyone, Tom. Ask Psalmie and Zshot if what I said affected their own observations in any way they weren't already troubled about. What will you do if they say they never communicated with me about this? Ignore them, too? So you don't like me, Tom, I get that. Subtlety has never been one of your longsuits. If you'd just look at what I'm saying, rather than what you wish I said, you might come to the same conclusion as all the people who voted "downhill". Than again, you might not. I'll ask you this, then. Should there be no rules at all here? Should people be free to say whatever they want just so they don't have to take the effort to be polite? Is "censorship" a greater evil than "decency"? Should the Wierwille-worshippers get to accuse his victims of being vicious, character-assassinating liars? Should people be allowed to post gay Jesus porn? How about if we just started calling everyone who disagreed with us a "c**kb****g m*****f****r", 'cause we can? (It's not like we couldn't have said that in TWI, after all. Didn't Martindale use that phrase in a teaching at the Rock one year?) Or perhaps maybe, just maybe, it's worth watching what we say for the sake of a little more peace? Accepting responsibility for what we say instead of hiding behind some "right" to say it?

Well, someone finally removed the "bull****" post, so that's a step in the right direction.

krys: Maybe you'll get a free upgrade to 3Mbps cable soon. Which provider do you use?