Since illinoisdigitalham group is now gone, there has been quite a lot of discussion about it.
It seems that Mark's rise to power as a group owner and especially, as a moderator, was rather sudden. Many of the successful group owners and moderators have developed their groups over many years, working up to it slowly and gaining their experience. In Mark's quest for an instantly huge membership for his group, it seems that he may have lost sight of an essential part of how this is done... through Netiquette. Netiquette is not just about being polite in public. It is an essential part of co-existing with others on the internet peacefully. Spamming, one of the "deadly sins of Netiquette", will get one into deep doo-doo trouble, even if it is for a good cause :) Cross-posting is another delicate Netiquette issue. But, harvesting the email addresses of ham operators from groups, to spam those hams, is one of the things that will bring down the wrath of many internet-savvy individuals upon the perpetrator. Most group members have higher expectations for the behavior of moderators than they do for the average person on a group. Moderators are expected to be angels and saints, even in the face of the slings and arrows of insult and indignation. They are looked to, for guidance in solving disputes, while simultaneously serving as sergeant-at-arms to police the group when a bad boy can't be talked down through gentle persuasion. In all of these situations, it seems that Mark might have had high aspirations to do the right thing. But perhaps, did a quest for power eclipse an otherwise very beneficial endeavor? Perhaps we won't get to know the answer to that. Before I go on, I want to personally say that I've never harbored any ill will toward Mark. I was very supportive of him and his initial efforts to build a group about digital ham radio. I had nothing to do with Yahoo's action leading to his account being terminated for violation of Yahoo's Terms of Use. Now that the illinoisdigitalham group has been deleted by Yahoo, there are a huge number of hams out there who are coming forward about their experiences with spam from Mark, and their attempts to get him to stop. I will add my own interesting experience with Mark that happened on illinoisdigitalham group. It is a typical example of moderator Netiquette failure: I posted a message on illinoisdigitalham group, as part of an ongoing discussion about FCC digital rules. In this particular case, Mark intercepted my message with his moderator control panel. Before my message was posted to the group, Mark secretly changed the text of my message, to have the exact opposite meaning from what I had written. Then he let it go to the group, as if what he wrote had been written by me. It looked just like a message from me, but it was from Mark. He wrote some erroneous things. Everyone thought it was a posting from me. Mark never gave any explanation, he never even gave a hint to others about what he had done :) I wrote another message to the group that explained what had happened, and Mark blocked it. In an exchange of private email with Mark, he refused to provide any explanation on what he had done, and refused to retract it on the group. At that point, there was nothing I could do but accept the fact that anything sent on his group could be twisted by him into a falsehood at his whim. So, I curtailed my participation in his group from then on. In private correspondence with other hams, I discovered that I wasn't alone in my experience... several other hams had exactly the same or similar things happen with Mark and his group. Even after my personal bad experience with Mark, I continued to allow Mark to post and participate in all of the groups that I moderate, with the proviso that he always follow the group guidelines like the rest of the membership. For the most part he did so. But recently, I found out that he had been harvesting email addresses from postings on my groups, and adding them to his mass email address list for spammings. Those hams were not too happy about it. Some of them complained to Yahoo. As they say.... "What Goes Around Comes Around". Does the saga of illinoisdigitalham end here? illinoisdigitalham is gone... for now. Will it re-appear in another incarnation? Perhaps this experience will serve as an example for groups, on what to avoid in the future. Running a large group for hams, or any other circle of interest, is not an easy thing to do. Yahoo isn't easy to deal with, they can really cause problems for owners of groups. The membership takes constant time and energy. There is pressure from all sides. Moderators and group owners are human. They are prone to the same human frailties that every other mortal on this planet endures. I wish Mark all the best of good fortune in whatever endeavors in ham radio he pursues in the future. Best Warm Regards, Bonnie Crystal KQ6XA .
