Johnny,
I don't blame FX for his posting in the secondary thread. He made a bad choice, and having made it, backed himself into a corner he knew he couldn't fight his way out of. He's been here a long time, and if I try to put myself into his mindset, I would have bluffed to save face in that scenario, too, hoping to cow or threaten any opposition into dropping the subject and walking away.
His misfortune was in assuming that a) nobody would call his bluff, and b) that his tenure here would dissuade the mods from acting against his interests. He just underestimated how disgusted many people were with his actions. As Beleth said, the person most responsible for punishing FX here is FX - none of us will likely ever trust him again, and it will be a long time before many of us even bother to read what he writes.
It's a shame. FX is one of the first friends I made when I became truly active on these boards. I didn't feel good about what he did, but I felt worse about going up against him when he called me out for stating my displeasure. I'm sad to say he's graced the top of my ignore list now, and that's a shame, because he always made me laugh.
-B.
PS: Also, "forthright" is such a nice word. It implies intent, direction, and rectitude. So much better than "bitter asshole on the brink of leaving because he's become tired of all the trolling and intellectual dishonesty around here," which is how I would define myself.
I just move on now and ignore 90% of the threads on here now. Some forum members have been allowed to get away with far to much for to long. The place kind has that powder keg feeling again like it did for a few months before MMP got banned.
Agreed. Something's gotta give eventually. But I'd say that it's not about permissiveness or quality of moderating - just the natural ebb and flow of day-to-day life on the forums. A disciplinary event like the A220/MMP situation arises, and people cool their heels a bit. Then, over time, certain types of posters slowly build confidence again, and it returns to a head.
I earnestly believe that this is the best forum on the web. Unfortunately, the best forum on the web is still a forum, which means no matter how amazing our moderators are, everything still sucks from time to time, because forums are, of their nature, wild, lawless places where rules are pushed and people do horrible things to each other.
On any other forum, what FX did this week would be
de rigeuer. The fact that so many people were up in arms about it speaks to the quality of this place. But no matter how much we claim that this is a reasonable place for reasonable discourse, I'll always view the mods as being a little more Earp family and a little less FBI. There's no law here but the law we make for ourselves, and it's only the implied social contract of this forum that made what FX did so disturbing.
