Author: Don Dailey
Date: 11:42:07 09/24/98
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On September 24, 1998 at 02:03:52, Danniel Corbit wrote: >I love Thorsten Czub. I love his tournaments and his remarks. I did not read >the posts that led to his expulsion. I only read titles that interest me. I do >not know what he said, but I apologize in his behalf for myself. As an >alternative, can someone be given a read only account? That seems a good idea. >That way, threads could be carried on in r.g.c.c. in a meaningful way. > >I appeal to the offended parties to offer forgiveness. > >At any rate, I would like to see his posts here again. > >Just a single person's opinion. > >I don't know what he said, but he has always been a gentleman to me via NG posts >& private correspondence. > >OTOH, I will abide by the decisions of the moderators and I am not complaining. >I would understand even if I had been given a yellow card for some of my posts. To the whole group: There are a number of posts based on this subject and I would like to clear up some things concerning this. Removing Thorsten was incredibly painful for us. We had to consider a lot of things when we did it. First of all, Thorsten did indeed attack many people and those people have complained loud and clear to us. We did not remove him because of these complaints, but we do feel an obligation to listen to what people have to say. Do you expect any less of us? Another point we considered is that Thorsten did contribute a lot to the group. A lot of people will fault us for considering things like this but we are not advocates of robotically following rules and regulations. I think this is a valid consideration myself and this prevented us from removing Thorsten much earlier. But another consideration was that we were starting to get very uncomfortable with the amount of consideration we were giving Thorsten. At some point it becomes VERY unfair to others, namely the ones who are the victims of his attacks and the other one we might be required to remove. For instance Sean was removed for much less than Thorsten got away with, but almost everyone thought Sean was way overdue but not Thorsten. But for some reason everyone now feels that we were hasty with Thorsten which to us, sound ridiculous having spend an enormous amount of time together involving scores of emails and several weeks of negotiating with Thorsten. You should all know that each of us suggested NOT removing Thorsten each time it was considered. The conversation always went, "let's try one more thing" and so on. At one point it got private, Amir spent time communicating with Thorsten for a few days without us knowing the contents of his communication with Thorsten. The idea was to try anything we possibly could to make Thorsten stop his attacks and make peace with his victims. Of course at the same time his victims were pressuring us, expressing their "disappointment" at how badly we were doing our jobs and trying to intimidate us during the whole process to remove Thorsten from the group and wanted US to issue a statement that Thorsten was doing them wrong. Why did they do this? Because they were deeply hurt by Thorsten. Even though we did not allow ourselves to be intimidated and did not remove Thorsten, you have to ask yourself why their viewpoint should not be considered? So there are a bunch of you out their who do not like to see Thorsten gone and some of you are critical of this decision. But you either are not aware, or you do not care about the feelings of the ones he has hurt and would have continued to hurt. Why do you not think they deserve a voice? It eventually got to the point where it became such a problem that we either had to remove Thorsten, or admit that we were going to let him say and do anything he wanted, in which cases we are no longer being moderators. I have shared this with you in the hopes that it builds some understanding. If you remember, the group expected us to be quiet moderators, the phrase "we should not even know they are there" was spoken during the election process. This we have tried to do, but because of it you are not always aware of all the stuff going on in the background. All you see is suddenly Thorsten is removed too hastily for your taste for what you consider an arbitrary reason. We have removed 3 members now and have asked one to come back. We have been criticised for bringing one back and also for not bringing him back earlier. With Thorsten we have been criticised for not acting earlier and for acting at all. We were criticised for removing posts when an argument broke out. It seems that we should have only removed one set of posts and not the other, thus getting one side of an argument instead of NEITHER side. But we did the right thing. I do not like removing members. Neither does Bruce or Amir. All three of us hate this more than you will know. I am interested in considering other alternatives and I really like the suggestion that we have a mode where we can screen the posts we want. My preference would be no screening at all but a "probabation mode" where we can selectively screen an individual. But all of this depends on ICD setting this up and it would involve a lot of work on their part. I don't consider this a pleasing alternative, just the lesser of many evils and more workable than what we are doing now. I think a huge majority of the group LIKES the fact that this group is moderated. There are a few who think this stifles creativity. My opinion is that unmoderated groups are the ones that are not conducive to freedom of expression and creativity. I am not going to express an idea if I know the response is that I am a nazi scum or whatever it is they say now. And yet we are still considering how we will get Thorsten back. If you think we don't care, then you missed the point. If and when he comes back, I am sure we will face another barrage of criticism from those few who prefer to be critical. Having said that, I wish to comment that the vast majority of the group is indeed supportive and sensitive. Really the vast majority seems to be interested in computer chess which is how it should be, this group is not supposed to be a forum on self-rule is it? - Don
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