Cal, your description of WP comes as a surprise. Maybe Alex changed for the better at some point?
Alex changed many times. Remember, he was a kid when he started the site.
That said, he was a teenager back then. Did that change, later on?
Yes. I believe he no longer is a teen.
He was during the liberal period I referred to.
The other significant repression of free speech on WP , IMO, comes from hearsay (but from pretty reliable sources) . which is that Alex would unceremoniously ban people just for criticising him- even by PM! as well as erasing said criticism, so the board was chockfull of shiny happy people on the face of it.
He was almost entirely hands-off during the period of which I speak - and since, AFAIK, given that he
suggested I come back, but couldn't unban me without upsetting his staff.
WP isn't the only place that operated like that. But if you want freedom of speech, then freedom to criticise authority figures is probably the most impiortant aspect of that. Take that away, and all sorts of outrages become possible. So that's something that I particularly look for in a spazz forum.
Agreed. And having all your posts obfuscated (as Odeon did to me and others) is, IMO, worse than
banning. It's bullying and taunting, on top of silencing.
if you 're calling Odeon's occasional usage of the Blabberiser,
Occasional my ass. He used it to silence opposition to closing down the democracy experiment here.
then that's laughable,
Yeah, okay. Silencing your opposition at a key moment, for a significant period.
You must think Putin's a riot.
IMO. You can call it childish; you can make a good case for "inappropriate usage of Mod Tools, occassioned by butthurt" but repression of free speech? FFS, Scrap wasn't saying anything we hadn't heard before, and it wasn't what you'd call a serious crit, just another nasty little taunt.
So here's the gripe there: only those we supposedly should trust have access to the admin panel.
I don't give a shit if Odeon did what any other member could do, even if one SHOULD expect a bit
more than we do of those not in positions of power. But no. He goes beyond not simply wading into
the tiresome tactics of not responding with anything but the bullshit single word or image posts
to sometimes serious complaints, but he also abuses the admin powers themselves, to further
his ends in bullying.
Some people will keep pushing into that grey area between reasonable criticism and gratuitous personal attacks
.
Yep. And there's ONE staff member whose petty ways encourage that behavior.
These things escalate, but Odeon's got such a fragile ego, he can't bear being attacked.
Very much like Alex - just with different retaliatory practices.
Like I said, a fucking baby. Not what you'd want to entrust a community to.
He quite literally can't do right.
I have more hope that this isn't an incurable personality flaw. That rather, he could actually
learn from others as to how to engage without just making himself seem a bigger baby each time.
That he's been triggered into responding in like kind more than once only makes that task more impossible. More fool him, but what's done is done and there appears to be no going back from there now
Maybe not for him - or perhaps you'd be the same. Others learn to grow up.
