Part 98: The Boards
As hELLrAISER’s posts started to become less frequent and less revolutionary, the members of UNBAN started to wonder if she had been silenced by the mods. One of her last posts before she disappeared (or was disappeared) entirely was a full-throated assertion that the mods had not censured her, censored her, or contacted her in any way. But since if the mods were controlling her speech they would also be controlling her saying she wasn't being controlled, this didn't convince anybody. And the timing was awfully suspicious, coming as it did in the wake of the second ARW.
After the OMB Squad declared that they believed in bans, not blocks, the UNBAN movement (still under the direction of hELLrAISER) had responded by advocating blocks as a solution. This was what the mods had originally advocated, but after it became part of UNBAN’s platform, they couldn’t be seen agreeing with the enemy. So they posted a second Annoncement/Reminder/Warning, to the effect that it was not a user’s job to enforce the rules, or advise others to follow the rules, and that the Report To Mods button existed for this purpose. ARW #2 ended with a final (sub)-reminder that this is precisely what OMB (described merely as “the user in question”) had been banned for, a sort of vigilantism.
Some theorized that hELLrAISER was silenced as part of this latest power-grab by the mods. Others suspected that she had been turned even earlier, and that the “blocks, not bans” thing had really been her pushing the mods’ message, since the mods were smart enough to know that no one would listen if it was tainted by Authority.
And the more conspiracy-minded wondered if she hadn’t been an undercover mod since the very beginning, strategically diverting attention away from the real rift that threatened to divide the boards (TB/TX) by getting people to rally around one false martyr and then another. Her post history confirmed this, to people who already believed it: she was neither TX nor TB, just like the infamously *~Neutral*~ mods.
Underlying all this was a faint glimmer of a dream, never spoken aloud because everyone hoped someone else would say it first, that maybe hELLrAISER (or DERRiDA [or both]) was actual Xander Cross in disguise, coming to unite them, to purify the boards, to unmask the hypocritical mods, to teach them all a lesson about the Real Meaning of OBM, etc etc etc.
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how long is temporary?
xanthangum1245
soooo sry 4 all the q’s lately, but i just noticed… all the msgs from us say that users get a temporary ban? but how long is a temporary ban?
user6582921737
temporary bans last as long as we say they last, just as long as they don’t last forever :)
kerriewordFarewell
Oddly, I find myself agreeing with Xan on this one. I’ve long argued that “temporary ban” is too vague and only leads to inconsistency on our part, which makes users feel like they can break the rules with impunity. We ought to take this opportunity to establish a specific timeline for bans depending on the nature of the offense so that we don't face this problem again in the future.
user6582921737
doesnt it kinda depend on what they did tho?? like should omb be banned longer than d?
kerriewordFarewell
Well, as I said, the length of the ban should depend upon the offense. In my view, D. violated the rule of Separation, which is a pillar of these boards, without which it cannot function properly. OMB’s transgression was one of medium, not of content; he or she should have made use of the Report to Mods function rather than issue a suggestion to the mods within a post. I suggest a ban of 3 days for violating Separation, and 1 day for misusing the Report function, to be applied from here on out with consistency.
xanthangum1245
i thought omb was banned for doing free speech?
kerriewordFarewell
As I said (please read my posts carefully), the problem was not the nature of OMB’s speech but the medium in which it occurred. In a public space, a report to the mods takes on the secondary meaning of admonishing the mods for not having already done their job, as well as setting a precedent for other users to take the law into their own hands, so to speak.
user6582921737
technically you could say omb violated separation too though, didn’t she? because that means putting things in the right place and she didn’t put her report in the right place?
kerriewordFarewell
Separation in this context refers to TB/TX theorizing and Authorship.
user6582921737
ok but then didn’t D also violate free speech? bc she was trying to force ppl to be tx who didn’t want to be tx. isn’t that the whole point behind separation. aren’t they really the same thing? kinda feel like everything's all connected
xanthangum1245
ok what about hellraiser? how long is she banned for???
kerriewordFarewell
hELLrAISER has not been banned. She stopped posting entirely of her own volition, most likely because she realized that her posts were violating the rules and would soon result in a ban.
user6582921737
kind of the same thing, isn’t it?
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where’d you get ur sn (fun post)?!
xanthangum1245
ok so i figured we could all use a break from all the drama l8ly… so i wanted to do something FUN, where we all just tell where we got our sn’s from. mods only (obvi!) i’ll go first… SOOOOOoo me nd my friend (who also loves OBM) were looking at the back of a bottle of salad dressing.. lmao lame i kno but thats how weird we are.. and we saw XANthan gum in there, and obvi we thought of XANder cross, so now instead of xander we say xanthan and ya. the 1245 i added l8r but thats an even longer and weirder story lol. again was me and my friend being weird but ya i wont tell you the whole thing. what about u guys? user w a million numbers? kfw? whered UR sns come from?
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Mods Only (L2), 05/24/07, 9:12 PM EDT:
oh my freakin god
user6582921737
you all know exactly what i’m talking about