August 24, 2020, 01:42 PM
parabellumquote:
Originally posted by NavyGuy:
Speaking from experience, as each year rolls by, our eventual mortality sinks in and other than trying to lead a healthy life, there's not much else you can do about. It's a saddening jolt to reality.
This isn't about my mortality. As a matter of fact, two months ago, in late June, I thought I was a dead man walking. A trip to the hospital, a surgical procedure, and I've been handed- potentially- twenty or more years of life. It's an odd and exhilarating feeling, thinking you're a goner, and then getting a "new lease on life." I loathe that trite expression, but it fits what has happened to me.
No, what's bugging me are other things. Like all of you who live in the United States, my life has been affected by the ridiculous way public officials have reacted to COVID-19. Like all of you who live in the United States and who care about this country, my heart is heavy at the destruction being wrought in it and, again, by the poor handling of matters by public officials. The world is upside down and sad right now. All of this was preventable had the
supposed adults who are in a position to quell these shameful disturbance simply done their jobs.
We have the best, most effective POTUS any of us will see in our lifetime, and he is hated jus about all career politicians- even in his own party- and we can barely move the needle on bringing to justice those officials- including Barack Obama- who sought first to interfere with a presidential election and then made criminal, seditious attempts to remove President Trump from his duly elected office. It's frustrating and utterly maddening.
All of this would be more than enough for me, but then, there's SIGforum. It's true that over the years, I have played my cards close to my vest and kept my own counsel when it comes to this forum. However, since events of a couple of months ago, I've felt more open to letting you guys know some things about me and about the way I do things in this forum, and I'm about to share one of those things now. The way things transpired has bothered me for quite some time now and I am going to get this off of my chest, whether or not that proves to be a wise idea or helps assuage my conscience at all.
At first, I thought I might tell you about this without mentioning any member specifically, but then I realized this is not practical and being vague would serve as a distraction to my remarks, with members unfamiliar with the situation trying to figure out who was being mentioned. I want all of you to know- and I say this with the utmost sincerity- none of what I'm about to tell is intended to embarrass any member of this forum. We are all adults and I considered the effects of my saying these things for quite some time.
jimmy123x has been a member of those forum for 15 years. He has 20,000 posts in this place. He's a daily regular in this forum. He forms part of the very backbone of this forum, as do all the frequent, active posting members here. jimmy has his own way about things. He stands out in the forum, and the reason for this is jimmy posts heavily on certain topics, those dealing with mechanics and maritime subjects primarily. I don't know enough about the things he posts about to contradict most of the things he states, but quite a few of you know about these things, and jimmy can at times become- without intending to- a distraction is such threads. This has happened quite a bit over the past few years. I have had to intervene many times in such threads.
I'm firmly convinced that jimmy means no harm whatsoever when he states his opinions and experience in such threads. No harm whatsoever. He's not malicious, doesn't have a tendency to dig at others. He just looks at these things differently. Again, regarding the specifics of these disagreements, I do not know enough to take a side. All I know is what I see, and what I see is jimmy on one side and lots of other members opposing him.
One of my primary functions here is to maintain order in the forum, so when I get members reporting threads to me and I see bickering going on, I address the arguing in an effort to get the thread back on track. Consequently, jimmy has been cautioned many times by me. Unlike some other members in this forum, present and past, jimmy takes it in stride. He doesn't argue with me, question my decisions or anything like that. A member who may be a bit of trouble in the forum- even over a long period of time- but who takes my direction without giving me any static, probably never has to worry about being removed from this board. I do recognize that we're all individuals and there are going to be disagreements. As long as a member listens to me and shows at least some effort to make course corrections, their membership here is safe. Such is the case with jimmy. He's listened to me bark at him quite a bit. Keep this in mind.
Around a month ago, jimmy started a thread about a storm system threatening coastal Florida. In the past, jimmy had made some eyebrow-raising claims about the behavior of storm systems as they make landfall and these claims generated a lot of cat-calling. This followed jimmy into his latest thread on the subject.
Here's the part where things go haywire. I was alerted to the thread by a longtime member whose screen name you would not recognize if I mentioned it, so I'll leave that out of it. He rarely posts, but up until three weeks ago, he functioned as a quasi-moderator because he was by far the most prolific user of the forum's post-reporting function. Although he has a tendency to interject personal opinions into his reports, his reports were actually quite helpful to me many times. He's not a fan of jimmy.
I posted in that thread and asked jimmy why all this seemed so familiar, and for the first time I can recall, jimmy pushed back. He asked my why I always single him out, when in fact there are three members of the forum who habitually razz him. He named these members.
I want you guys to put yourself in my position. Here's a member who is a bit of trouble for me, but who doesn't seem like a bad guy. He has been dinged by me many times and effectiveness of my direction aside, he has always been cool about it. I'm not going back and looking at the specific threads, but unrelated to the thread I'm talking about now, not too long before all of this, jimmy got put on Moderated Status for a week. So, here's a guy who has taken his medicine quietly- a
lot of medicine, guys- and now he's getting some more and he finally speaks up out of frustration. I know I give the impression that I don't listen to anyone, but this is not necessarily so. People don't come here to get beat up on by the admin. Jimmy took all of it until he couldn't take any more, and he then said "why always me?" You can disagree with him if you wish, but he seemed sincerely frustrated. Remember- I find no malice in this man, at least not more than any other person walking around on this rock. So, when he named these three members, I said OK, you three guys he named are instructed to leave jimmy alone from now on. Don't respond to his posts. If any of you three take issue with something the man posts, alert me via the report-this-post function and I'll take a look.
Of these three members, one of them is still posting so there's no need to mention him. The other two have ceased visiting the forum, and it's my fault entirely with one of them, and the other did not care for my directive to him.
RHINOWSO has been here 12 years and has almost 46,000 posts. Over the years, Rhino had a tendency to be something of an agitator in threads. A while back, I addressed this behavior with him in a calm and detached way- no threats of expulsion or anything like that. I was very pleased to see his behavior change after that. I was so pleased that before the things I'm now describing transpired, I had intended to create a thread praising Rhino. His posts had become pleasant to read, and they were informative as well. Really, it was a huge difference from the old Rhino and I was very proud of him. After I told him to leave jimmy alone, he asked me if that meant completely, in any thread. I asked him sarcastically if he was going to miss his pleasant exchanges with jimmy. I don't recall his response precisely, but he didn't object. That was the last day he logged into the forum. I can only assume he did not care for being constrained, even in this small way, and felt this directive to be unfair.
The question arises- should jimmy- despite his occasional difficulties here and the preponderance of opinion against his own- continue to be subjected to what he feels is unfair treatment by a small group of members? I think not. If we are to be fair about this, the man should feel comfortable coming here to participate in this forum. Having admonished the man so many times, I felt it only fair to hear his appeal about having what he considered harassment to cease. Quite frankly, I felt pretty bad for jimmy at the time. Again, do people come here to be beat upon, by either forum staff or fellow members? Given all that had transpired over the years and given my desire to have the bickering and post reports cease, I took what I consider to be reasonable action. However, the net effect appears to be the loss of a longtime member who had recently turned a corner and appeared to be on the right track finally. It's unfortunate, and, speaking as honestly as you'll ever hear me speak, I miss the guy. Rhino had finally come into his own here, and because of this one thing and what I can only assume he perceives to be the unfairness of it, the forum has lost a member.
And now, we come to the last of those three members, V-Tail, and here is where I made an egregious and regretful mistake. After I told V-Tail to leave jimmy alone, he posted that he would do so. A couple of days later, the member I've not named- the one who posts rarely but was always reporting posts to me, alerted me to a post involving jimmy and V-Tail. The member who reported it characterized the post as jimmy taking a jab at V-Tail, which he most certainly had done. V-Tail had responded to jimmy in kind. The post which was reported as not the original post, but rather, a quote of the exchange by another member (again, I'm doing all this from memory). the post from jimmy was from before the day I told everyone to cool it, so I didn't address that at all. However, it appeared to me that V-Tail was defying my directive, and this made me angry. The mistake I made was looking at the post too quickly. The
quoted post was made
after I told everyone to cool it, but V-Tail's remark was actually made
before my directive. This was my mistake, and it turned out to be a bad one, because I came down
very hard on V-Tail, admonishing him strongly and then placing him on Moderated Status. It was only after the fact- a day or two after this, that I discovered my mistake, thanks to Excam_Man. As soon as I realized what I had done, I removed the Moderated Status from V-Tail's account and posted in that thread to state the mistake I had made and apologize to V-Tail. By that time, though, V-Tail was gone and my feeling is that he's not going to return and as I said subsequently in that thread, he has every right to be angry with me and to feel as if he was treated unfairly. I can't do any more than own up to my mistake and apologize for it but here we are. Furthermore, I left in place the post in which I admonished V-Tail. It would have been too easy to delete it and say "I hope not too many members noticed." I didn't want to try to hide from my mistake.
Interestingly, the member who rarely posts but reports posts to me all the time logged out of the forum on the same day and has not logged back in since. It may be that he felt I was entirely wrong and unfair and that he wants nothing else to do with this forum. What it may be, though, is that he feels some measure of responsibility for bringing things to my attention and, seeing the result, has simply decided to cease his quasi-moderator duties. Since he rarely posts, not being logged in is unnecessary for him. Whatever the case, it was interesting to see him go away along with the two members already mentioned.
So, there you have it. If you're a casual member of this forum, I doubt any of this will be of much interest to you. If, however, you're a daily visitor and perhaps have logged thousands of posts here, you need to know that these things matter to me. The people mentioned in this thread matter to me, and you- the daily visitors to this forum who take the time to contribute and make this plce what it is- you matter to me.
I had to get this off my chest, guys. Take it for whatever it’s worth.
. I'm with ya on living in a mad world but we have to play the hand we have been dealt. I sometimes feel like I am behind enemy lines where I live but I come here to reaffirm my beliefs. The work you have put in has enabled us to have a place like this to come to. I know it can't be easy but I appreciate it.