CSB Reboot

[@meric@nwom@n]

The new site is boring as frack all, difficult to navigate, looks childish and amaturish and thus I doubt I will ever be posting there. Maybe it will improve with age.

[Lord Jim]

It's kind of funny in a way....

Thinking back on it, if Gar had shown up even just a couple of months earlier than he did and immediately sacked Gwen, there might never have even been a Plan B.....

[oldr_n_wsr]

I would ask that whatever decision you (and this applies to everyone) make, you do so on the basis of what you see or read over there, rather than on what you read here, so as not to give rise to any accusations that Plan B-ites are out to sabotage whatever it is they are trying to create over there.

Sooner or later I will register over there. But my first impression when I visited was that I did not like the graphics and the look of the site.

[Guinevere]

I'm not enamoured of the place, but am willing to see how it develops.

[Gob]

It's kind of funny in a way....

Thinking back on it, if Gar had shown up even just a couple of months earlier than he did and immediately sacked Gwen, there might never have even been a Plan B.....

That's a possible. However, he would have had to address Steve' spamming and attacking, and Edi's outright lying too, for it to have returned to "normal".

Excuse my egoism for a moment, but at some point I got fucked off with Edi complaining about me starting so many topics. So I stopped starting any at all.

From that day forth, (look for the last thread I started there for the date,) I noticed a decline, slow at first, then accelerating, as the place became mono-thematic around Steve and Edi's obsessions. Coupled with Steve relentless personal attacking, Edi's outright lying, and Gwen perverse encouraging of both, and perverting of reality, the place soon went beyond salvation.

I take no joy in that, maybe I should have stayed and continued to start new topics, but I stayed and gave Edi what he wanted. Mea culpa.

[oldr_n_wsr]

So everything is Gob's fault. At least we got that straightened out.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Well Oldr, I do hold him accountable for not having the balls to deal with the problems the site has, and for abandoning it to Gwen's destructive hands. He's bound to pay a price for that on the new site.

[Gob]

Gob, not Gar @-W!

[@meric@nwom@n]

Oppsie. Wrong wanker. Sorry.

[kristina]

I don't like the look of the new CSB, but it doesn't seem important enough to complain about. If the tone of the place is civil, and there's good conversation, I'll keep checking in.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Well Oldr, I do hold him accountable for not having the balls to deal with the problems the site has, and for abandoning it to Gwen's destructive hands. He's bound to pay a price for that on the new site.

I think people take these things too seriously. It's a forum, you can post whatever you want whenever you want with no fear of being banned or censored. AFAIK no banning nor censoring happened at the CSB regardless of who was in charge. Gwen didn't give out eh financial picture of the CSB but who cares? She didn't ask for us to contribute and we didn't so we had no financial stake in the place. Fine with me.
Gwen changed the editiing time, and although it would have been nice of her to inform us of the change when she made it, again, who cares? Make a post, edit that post right away or make a follow up post correcting whatever it is you wanted to correct. Again, no big deal.

I guess I just don't understand how worked up people get with these forums.

[@meric@nwom@n]

I guess I just don't understand how worked up people get with these forums.

Yep, I guess you don't get it. Not that it matters that you don't get it.

[Lord Jim]

Oldr, I think there are probably a couple of contributing factors that explain why a number of us have a different perspective on this than you do....

For one thing, a lot of us posted at the CSB for quite a number of years; 10 plus in many cases....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while you've certainly been around for a while, my recollection is that you've been posting there something less than half that long.

Second, most of us came to the CSB as refugees from two other boards, (Darwin and the Cafe Darte) where we left because the management had become intolerably arbitrary, biased, and imperious, so we have a particular sensitivity to those issues....

And third, (again, correct me if I'm wrong) but I believe that you arrived at the CSB after Gwen took over, so you really don't have a frame of reference for comparison.

Gwen was not an admin in the traditional sense of the word. She did not own the board; she took over as a steward for a community that had been founded on the principle that Gar articulated that I still use as my sig line at the CSB:

"I have always said that this is "your" board, I am merely the benign caretaker...

Garaelb, April 30, 2010"

At the beginning she understood this. But somewhere along the line, she gradually lost sight of it.

Gwen changed the editiing time, and although it would have been nice of her to inform us of the change when she made it,

I'm sorry , but that's absolutely incorrect. She didn't have an obligation to "inform" us....

She had an absolute affirmative obligation to abide by the overwhelming sentiment of the membership on the issue, regardless of her personal views on the subject.

After she dictatorially cast those clearly expressed views aside, she arrogantly and dismissively asserted that "being admin sometimes mean doing what's unpopular"....

That really showed just how badly she had gotten the wrong end of the stick....

An "admin" in her unique position of limited authority, had a mandate that obligated her to go along with the views of the overwhelming majority, regardless of her personal feelings.

She failed to understand this.

And to top it off, she blatantly lied about her motives.

But this was merely the culmination in a whole series of high handed actions. She refused to respond to people she didn't like. She issued warnings to people who crossed her friends, while failing to issue similar warnings to her friends when they engaged in similar behavior. She fought tooth and nail against every effort to bring new blood into the place.

Finally, she made a very obvious threat to shut the place down without notice, which was the direct cause for the creation of Plan B, which resulted in a mass exodus of regular posters from the CSB. When the number of regular posters had been reduced last spring to a grand total of eight, (dominated overwhelmingly by Steve and editec) she thought the situation was just splendid.

After she was finally shit canned, she went into over drive with dishonesty and stunning arrogance. She was so delusional, that she actually said that she thought the CSB had turned out "really well" under her tutelage. (Yeah...eight posters, only two of whom posted with frequency; that was her legacy, and it turned out "really well" )

The flagrant, outrageous lies she has told are too numerous for me to enumerate now, but the most brazen one was the claim that Gar was going to retire his handle because of me, (she repeated this one twice) when he had publicly made very clear what his reasons for doing that would be, and they had nothing to do with me or any other poster.

Gwen started out with good intentions, but somewhere along the line, (no doubt encouraged by Steve and editec) she came to take a proprietary view towards the CSB to which she was not entitled.

[Gob]

Nailed it Jim.

Oh, lets not forget her banning people she thought spammers, yet allowing Steve as many socks as he wanted.

[Scooter]

Oh, lets not forget her banning people she thought spammers friends of Hen's, yet allowing Steve as many socks as he wanted.

And libelling people like Angela Harrison in the process, accusing her of posting from an email address blacklisted as a spam source in order to cover up for deleting her account.

[Gob]

Not forgetting her point blank refusal to let those who had contributed cash to the upkeep of the CSB know how much of it was remaining.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I can see where you guys (and gals) are coming from. I just view these boards as a nice "diversion" and don't really get too serious about them. To each his own though.

[tyro]

I’m with oldr on this one and for a number of reasons (and I joined the CSB when it was a few months old, I think oldr got there before you Jim).

1) It’s a message board, not the freaking constitution. It just isn’t that important.
2) There is a positive correlation between how hotheaded posters were the most upset. So maybe there is another factor involved.
3) Blaming the admin for reestablishing the 30 minute time limit to edit a post is nothing more than additional fuel to heat up some already over heated heads. Garaelb had set it at 30 minutes eons ago and we all accepted it at that time. Gwen was to maintain the board, not go against the wishes of its owner.
4) As was someone’s sig line: “It takes two minds to never mind”. For every asshat on the left, there was an equal and opposite asshat on the right (cue the mirror).


I am not being an apologist for Gwen, she made mistakes and managed to alienate the majority of us, but then again, do any of you remember the last thing the lawyer said to his clients in the movie “The Caine Mutiny”?

[@meric@nwom@n]

The peculiar part about this conversation is the chiming in of those who think it's not that important. I mean that seriously. If it really isn't that important to you why bother to chime in? I am guessing it is because it holds more import to you than you are willing to realize. You are probably right btw, it really isn't that important in the grand scheme, but give those of us our due who indeed take it too seriously: Personalities vary, thus results vary.

[Lord Jim]

Blaming the admin for reestablishing the 30 minute time limit to edit a post is nothing more than additional fuel to heat up some already over heated heads. Garaelb had set it at 30 minutes eons ago and we all accepted it at that time. Gwen was to maintain the board, not go against the wishes of its owner.

I'm not going to re-argue this with you, (as I found you to be exasperatingly obtuse on this issue the last time we went through it...you know as well as I do that the unlimited feature was in place for at least five years with no complaints, Gwen never did a damn thing about it, and she sure as hell never gave a damn about "the wishes of the owner". You also know that the underlying point went far beyond the editing time limit itself; a fact which for some reason in our previous exchange about this, you kept missing or ignoring. Another round of that would be pointless.)

There is a positive correlation between how hotheaded posters were the most upset.

There is a positive correlation between how hotheaded posters posters who gave a damn about the board's founding principles were the most upset.

Fixed it for you....

The bottom line is, that when a non-Gwen run alternative was created, the membership participation at the CSB went into free fall. And it wasn't just your so-called "hot heads" that left.

I'm sorry but your "everybody is equally to blame" stuff just doesn't wash.