Great and welcome commentary,
svpii. I realize my feelings are neither unique nor universal. I am well aware of all of the angst floating on the board
now. Where was all of that angst last August or September or October or November or December or January or February.
Ozstamps hasn't changed a lick in those months, yet the outcry against him has always been minimal (so has the support except for his hundreds [or thousands] of supporters who never post but only 'email' him). And whatever outcry
he has provoked have been met with cries of 'just ignore him', 'walk away', 'he's the new improved ozstamps', 'can't we all just get along'...
And because so few
got it, the garbage continued to pile up and pile up until some said enough is enough. And they are gone because,
as a community, no action was taken. Please do not equate 'just ignore' as a course of action. It is turning your back to the problem.
And for crying out loud, how do you ignore someone who posts in every fora at a profligacy rate that is 10x that of the next closest??? (well, sorry
doc, make that the second closest!)
Someone does own this board after all. So how exactly is it that we would remove a destructive force without the participation of that ownership?
And that is the nub of it. If
they cared one wit about
the community, they would have taken action long ago. The only voice of community at WebFlyer was
Bryan Sacks and he's loooooong gone.
FT is, and always has been, a commercial enterprise.
Merry was the first among us to leave the early founders because he could only stomach so much of the patently false proclamations of our hosts that 'they care'.
Nick, you were right. You saw it before all of us. And see what it has wrought...
And who among us remember how much verve, wit and intelligence
Merry brought to our boards. Anyone else miss his sense of humour, irony and sarcasm?
So the strong bold action of our hosts is to exile someone for a week. As if that would cure anything (it does however allow us to converse without ozstamp's ad hominem attacks and other forms of BS [see Jon Toner's Over and Out thread])...
It took the very public and very sad resignations of some of FT's brightest lights to even get the community in an uproar.
The time for
real action by both the community and our hosts was
long ago.
We don't expect that Randy really wants to get into reacting to an ad hoc subset's opinion of who disrupts the homogeneity the community.
And that's the essence. After all your cogent points on this issue, you can still consider it 'an ad hoc subset's opinion' that ozstamp's has disrupted the board...
ozstamp's has despoiled this board with his presence and I certainly did expect Randy to take action.
What a naive fool I am...
[edited for formatting and familial peace]
[This message has been edited by onefreeman (edited 03-03-2001).]