As a vet of several defunct fora, I'm in a position to make the following observation:
One very effective way to destroy a forum is to goad the biggest mouth on the forum into making a bunch of wild accusations against Admin. Then campaign for same to be banned. Once he's banned, you start shooting down all his sympathisers. A good way to do this is to circulate a bunch of nasty rumours about them, with emphasis on "dishonesty" , so that any inconvenient truth that leaks out can be easily dismissed as a lie. Whilst circulating said rumours you offer a very pausible reason as to why your identity should not be made public, of course.
Eventually you get a good half of the forum either at each other's throats or paranoid as fuck. Or both, ofc. Eventually Admin succumbs to the toxic atmosphere and pulls the plug. If you're really clever about it, the whole fiasco gets blamed on Motormouth, and you come out smelling of roses.
I thought that kind of thing was unlikely to work on I2, but I'm seriously beginning to wonder. On the surface of it, this surely looks like a variation on that theme. And even if nobody's pulling our strings after all (that's pure speculation on my part) it surely is a toxic atmosphere, and cries of "Liar!" are not helping in the least.
You seem convinced that strings are being pulled. I don't think that's the case and I've been around for some time, too.
Al's said that he'll contain his bs to this thread which should be enough to contain the toxicity, too. We'll see. As you might have guessed, I don't trust him.
Just to make myself clear: there's a big difference , in
my vocabulary, between "beginning to suspect", and "It's a fact". Also, in my vocabulary, "that's pure speculation on my part" is more than a meaningless blast of hot air.
On other fora , I've been in the unusual position of knowing exactly what was going on, exactly who was resposible,
and was able to gather a bunch of hard evidence. I've even been personally targetted by one or two of those subterranean smear campaigns, on account of my knowing too much. If the same were true here, I'd be a lot more explicit . I wouldn't limit myself to pointing out worrying patterns, I would bloody well pounce.
It's not just a question of being " around for a long time" . How many fora have fallen to pieces around you, Odeon? And how much did you learn about the subterranean goings-on? I learned a lot more than your average Admin would ever learn - largely because people tend to share their personal problems with me, and these things
do get very , very personal. And I ask people questions like "WTF happened to your self-confidence?" and the answer occasionally turns out to be a ruthless bullying campaign, that nobody knew about, nor even suspected , because it all happened behind the scenes. (and yes, I've seen the actual damning PMs)
Meantime, the people running to Admin and making complaints and accusations were
not the people who were being damaged; quite the opposite, most often.
So, I think I most likely know a lot more than you about that sort of thing. But I'm open to being surprised.
