Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 09:56:57 09/21/98
This weekend we voted to suspend Thorsten's CCC account privilege. The reason we did this is that he has been posting a lot of nasty little attacks on people, in some cases completely superfluous attacks that have nothing to do with any possible disagreement about a computer chess issue, and our warning to him did not convince him to stop doing this. He was warned about a post that was an assault on Dirk that was based upon his perception of Dirk's religious convictions. He felt free to make a blanket statement about religious people, and to apply this to Dirk, as a means of arguing with something that Dirk had said. He could have commented on what Dirk had said, but instead he felt the need to comment on Dirk. When he was warned via email that he should not do this again, he was not at all apologetic -- he replied instead that he couldn't see anything wrong with what he had done. Since this warning he has done some similar personal stuff including (but absolutely not limited to) calling one poster "stupid" a few times, questioning another poster's ability to read, and making an oblique reference to the sex life of a third. This must stop, and suspending the account seems to be the only way to stop it. We have had several people express frustration at the amount of things that Thorsten has "gotten away with" recently and not so recently. To these people I would like to apologize, since the delay in doing something about Thorsten has been my fault. I did not want to do this lightly. I think it is the most serious thing that this current group of moderators, at least, has had to do, and I wanted to make absolutely sure that it was not done too soon, and it seemed to me that the best way to make sure that it wasn't done too soon was to do it a little too late. If one thing has become certain to me, it is that I achieved this goal. This group may not realize it yet, but it will miss Thorsten's political viewpoint. And everyone should know that they will miss his on-topic contributions. I would like to try to figure out a way that we can get Thorsten back here, and still be assured that he doesn't repeat the kind of attacks that he has posted lately. I was hoping that this would become possible before we had to suspend his account, but things didn't work out this way. I have some ideas about this that I am discussing with Steve in the hopes that things can still work out. This has been an unpleasant decision, and several people have been angered and frustrated by what has happened, and perhaps some have been angered by this announcement. I would like to encourage anyone who has anything to say to please reply to this post. bruce Copyright (C) 1998, Bruce Moreland. All rights reserved. It is permitted to reproduce this post outside of CCC as long as it is quoted accurately, and in its entirety, and with this notice included.
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