Author: Amir Ban
Date: 04:47:21 09/22/98
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On September 21, 1998 at 23:58:51, Peter W. Gillgasch wrote: >A bad mistake. While witch hunt seems currently to be en vogue in your >part of the world you need to learn how to deal with unpleasant >situations without making someone look to bad. > There's indeed a sense of failure on our part in the result, but while I would like to learn how to deal more effectively with such situations your superficial approach doesn't really show that you have anything to teach here. The decision to remove Thorsten was taken unanimously by all 3 moderators. The "Thorsten" crisis started in early August, and had several waves of increasing intensity. The moderators initially did not even want to consider the possibility of removing Thorsten, and as Bruce said, the decision to do so was taken a bit late because we were trying to find more peaceful solutions, or just hoping the problem would somehow go away. The final decision was not taken casually. It was taken because Thorsten became in the final week a major disturbance, attacking not only his usual targets (which with some hair-raising allegations are bad enough) but some innocent bystanders as well, sometimes using some of the lowest language ever used on this message board. It had to be done, because for two weeks in a row he was actually baiting a person here (two different people, one each week), hounding him wherever that person posted and flooding him with insults and foul language. The only alternative to doing what we did would be to tell the person he's baiting is that since Thorsten doesn't like him any more he had better take his business elsewhere. Do you suggest doing that ? It was done also because we have more or less exhausted the alternatives. We tried ignoring, mediating, hinting, pleading, threatening. I personally have about 20 email messages to/from mclane in this period. >Possible solution would be to remove offensive posts without completely >booting the guy. > Was already tried on a large scale in August. >In the case of Thorsten the loss is way to big. He may be acting like >a madman sometimes, but he was one the most interesting posters around >here and I never felt that he was a notoric trouble maker and when you >talk with him via private email you quickly realize that he is a >sensible person. I am sure that you will be surprised how much you >will miss him. > Both Bruce and I know Thorsten in person, and would agree to your description. I am glad to say that I am still on good relations with him (one of the last few on CCC with this status, it seems). Much of the leeway that the moderators have given him was because we thought that basically his matter is under control. In the past two weeks, though, I found him to be completely unresponsive (something that came through on the message board too, I think), and indeed in my last email to him I was frustrated enough to tell him he was behave like an autistic person. >This server is quickly falling into oblivion. > It's a serious event indeed. I'm sure that the founders of CCC only intended to keep out the unimportant riff-raff, and never intended that they themselves would find themselves outside. That this is now happening is a good measure of the collective mental health of our field, which is not so good ever since the SSDF list of February. Amir
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