Sorry about the confusion. At the risk of getting banned from posting to the group and just for the record, I found your name on Facebook and so I posted a friend's request, but I never received a reply. Is it alright if we call you "Curtis"? Thanks.
http://tinyurl.com/pdtuus3 http://tinyurl.com/pdtuus3 ---In [email protected], <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : "You are a malevolent person to me. I don't want you to ever refer to me by any name here. You and I have nothing to discuss ever." ---In [email protected], <richard@...> wrote : Is it alright with you if I call you "curtisdeltablues", since that seems to be your real professional name AND your alias for social media? Thanks. Richard, It is not my professional name. It is a name I use nowhere else but on this site to avoid people linking my work with this site. If you use either my birth name or my actual professional name on this site I will do everything I can to get you banned forever. I am confident it will be an easy sell. When you used my full real name last time I asked you to do the decent thing and stop. Instead you doubled down and began posting every instance where my name came up including when I first posted on Alt TM many many years ago before I realized the implications of using my real name on such a site. Because you reposted it here I had waste my time and Rick's to delete the mess you caused Reposting my name as a recent post was causing the search engines to link my job to this site. You are a malevolent person to me. I don't want you to ever refer to me by any name here. You and I have nothing to discuss ever. Quoting "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected] mailto:[email protected]>: Doug, thanks for taking the time to fully explain your new role here. I am certainly more comfortable interacting with an actual person rather than an act so this change is welcome. I will intersperse my comments below. ---In [email protected], <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : CDB, I am glad you are back and I hope I can lend you as well as some others who would return some protection of trust and safety here to write more freely. The railroading of you by invasion of privacy was one of the more infamous times of abuse on FFL. That personalized invasion of your privacy was a low point on FFL that was way against Rick's original intentions for the site and clearly against what are now the yahoo-groups guidelines. Yours was proly not the moment of decline but the list had evidently jumped a shark before with an influx of personal antagonisms which have since developed into some literary forms of perfection in a hyper personalization of the ad hominem meme here to hurt people. Me:I appreciate your saying that now Doug. I only cared when it became a campaign to publish my name with old posts because at that time I was being evaluated by two national arts organizations and I know they were searching on my real name to learn about my online presence. Although the views I express here are just a secular view point on spiritual claims and I am proud of this work, the craziness that it often invokes might lead someone to declare guilt by association. I also do not want schools to be confused between my adult communications here and what I might teach in schools. D: Folks are now making a lot of assumptions about my feelings about content. I had long interviews with Rick about this in coming in to the job of FFL CEO. However, my coming in to the FFL CEO [Chief Enforcement Officer] of yahoo's groups-guidelines is not about content but is about the personalization of unkindness that has become cultural on FFL, like the unkindness you experienced. Me: I am not sure I can go along with conflating purposeful personal identity outing to hurt someone in the real world with "unkindness." It minimizes the intent to actually harm. I couldn't care less about people writing unkind things about me. I just don't want my full legal name published in an attempt to link my writing on this site with the rest of my work with the public. Personally I felt as though the instigators of this behavior all went to their own group so as far as I am concerned the problem is solved with them being gone. Their drive-bys have only reinforced this view. I will cop to making assumptions about your feelings about content. I have been confused by your actual views verses your Buck persona for a few years now. D: Generally going forward now, folks should expect that their posts will be summarily deleted where unkindness crosses in to violation of the yahoo-groups guidelines. The guidelines are really quite simple and the many sophist-icated and several of our professional writers here can take the time for self-restraint before they may push their send button to FFL. Writing more generally, soon I am going to start following Rick's lead on this and start to delete posts or more made to the list without warning where the invective in writing is personalized. Yes it is fine to comment, deal with and thoughtfully consider content but if folks are having arguments that are personal they should just take themselves offline and spare FFL. Going forward, personalized name-calling that is degrading, disrespectful or humiliating will quickly be seen to become abuse on FFL. Read through the yahoo-groups guidelines and reflect. Where it is at all evident just expect to be moderated one way or another by any of the moderators without explanation. Me: Here we may disagree about the clarity of the Yahoo guidelines. They were probably written by lawyers to keep them out of lawsuits and they have not defined terms well enough to even be called guidelines for writing behavior. They basically are saying "Peace out, you decide what is unkind." And now that person who will be interpreting is you. It is what you have wanted for a long time so I hope it lives up to your expectations. D: Generally, I do not expect to spend much time editing at all on this or discussing this, particularly with trolls at all. Take the time to read over the yahoo-groups guidelines and write accordingly. Error well on the side of kindness and you will be well within the yahoo-groups guidelines and fine. Me: I don't expect to have any trouble with the guidelines since personal attack is not my reason to post here. You are in a position to assert your personal value system to interpret the vague "kindness" concept. I guess we will never really see these personal standards in action because of the Stasi system where messages will just be "dissapeared." Since there is no one on Yahoo policing sites (they react to complaints) and we have gone through eras of intense personal attacks here with zero interference from Yahoo, the Yahoo guidelines angle is a contrivance IMO. It has given you a tool to asset your POV over other posters in secret but does not really protect the group from Yahoo who obviously doesn't give a shit what is posted here as long as their ass is covered. D: I appreciate and understand that some lot of folks here spend a lot of their life energy and time composing things to post on FFL. Going forward now, self-regulate yourselves according to the yahoo guidelines error-ing well on the side of kindness and save yourself your time invested in writing. Having to delete posts is a terrible waste of your time and my time as well to have to do it. Me: As I said, the guidelines are purposely too vague to follow. What is going to happen is that we are going to have our post judged by a hidden standard of your own design. You have made it clear that this is not something that will be discussed, it will just happen behind the scenes as you see fit. Although I don't anticipate problems with my posting style, I object to this kind of hidden subjective standards applied in secret to anyone's writing on a public board. It is all very TM-y and lacks the kind of transparency that keeps people honest about their biases. I am not sure that the writing I have done over the years here would have happened under this lens. When people's beliefs are challenged they often go though an emotional process that is part of how we all deal with changing identity bound beliefs. For the most part with only a few exceptions, this had worked well here for years. You may achieve the politeness you seek through deletion, but I do not believe FFL's intellectual life will flourish under cocktail party rules. Philosophical discussions that matter invoke deeper feelings than that. And sometimes it makes people go ad hominem. I get that and accept it as part of the process in actual discussions with real people being real about what they care about.. Since you have mostly posted through a false persona I am not sure you can relate to that. D: CDB, I am glad you are back. -JaiGuruYou Me: I appreciate your friendly tone Doug. Good luck with your new powers. Hopefully you will post more in your actual POV and we can share some discussions about our opinions about reality. That is FFL at its best as far as I am concerned. P.S., The Yahoo-groups Guidelines: https://policies.yahoo.com/us/en/yahoo/guidelines/groups/index.htm https://policies.yahoo.com/us/en/yahoo/guidelines/groups/index.htm # Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show ..and is seen by viewers to be the point at which the show strayed irreparably from its original premise. ..The usage of "jump the shark" has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment when a brand, design, franchise or creative effort's evolution declines. # ---In [email protected], <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : Thanks Judy, I had not seen that and it does answer some of my concerns about Rick's intentions as well as supports your view that it is OK to use Doug's real name officially. Much appreciated. ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote : ---In [email protected], <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote : I think this excess of caution from you and others, frankly, is just another way to express resistance to the new moderation regime, by making it seem far more onerous than it has any likelihood of turning out to be. Me: I don't see the connection. You don't? Huh. I should think it would be obvious. The worse it's projected to be, the greater the justification for opposing it. You are welcome to any interpretation you want to believe but my reasons were as stated. J: Doug will get bounced as moderator by Rick if he overdoes things, and he knows it. Me: When he let Richard back on I realized that I am on my own here and I have no trust in the system to protect my interests here. What is considered as overdoing is highly subjective. See the quotes from Rick's posts below. I don't think there's much reason to expect him to go along with oppressive moderation given his past history, both with FFL and with the movement. J: What Rick wants is for the horrific personal abuse to stop. Me: I don't know what evidence you have to support this statement either in its main point or your personal added spin. My guess is that Rick got sick of his bugging him about it and just wanted it to stop which I suspect is the same way Richard got back on within a month of being banned. Again, see the quotes below. It wasn't just Doug. (And I wasn't one of those who contacted him, just for the record.) J: Doug has various tools at his disposal short of banishment, including warnings and setting an individual's posts to come to him for approval before posting. Let's all relax and see what happens rather than expecting the worst and protesting it in advance. Me: I find the idea that he is the judge of any of my posts repugnant but I accept your last sentence as a bit of wisdom that applies. Quotes from Rick's posts here: Almost daily, various people urge me to moderate FFL or get someone to do it. With BatGap and my other responsibilities, I don’t have the time. I believe in very minimal moderation, at least for FFL. I think the “anything goes” nature of it has contributed to its success and longevity. But I think we are obligated to at least abide by Yahoo’s guidelines. Theoretically, frequent violation of those guidelines could get the group shut down. Doug Hamilton has volunteered to moderate and to limit his moderation to ensuring adherence to Yahoo’s guidelines and no more. He will not moderate with his puritanical Buck alter-ego. I know some will bristle at what they perceive as a restriction of their freedom of speech, but different types of speech are appropriate in different contexts, and again, in the context of a Yahoo group, we are obligated to abide by Yahoo’s guidelines. So I’m going to try this and see how it goes. If Doug abuses his authority and/or fails to moderate fairly and objectively, I will revoke his moderator status. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/416427 I give little attention to FFL because I’m so busy with other things. But I’ve gotten so many complaints recently that I may appoint a moderator soon, and will announce it when I do. I don’t believe in censorship, but I also don’t believe in enabling abusive behavior. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/416362 J: As to Doug's last name in the header of his posts, to see it, do this: Click Reply to any of his posts, then click the downward arrows to the left of the Subject line, then click the downward arrow to the right of the TO: line. Click any of the email addresses shown to send your message to that address. E.g., the one that says "dhamilton2K5@..." will put that address in the TO: field and thus send him a personal email. Me: I accept your point for you but still don't trust it for me. ---In [email protected], <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I didn't snip it as a statement about your posting it Judy. I am just exercising and abundance of caution in these changing times where I don't expect the benefit of any doubt. I looked back at a few of Buck's posts and didn't see his name so until he directly says it is OK to me I am trying to avoid it in any thread I am posting on. I agree with your point but I don't believe you would ever be a target of the new regime while I might be. It is a bit sensitive for me because a poster here began a campaign to post my full name by quoting any post where it occurred. I believe that you are expressing the spirit of the law, but sometimes it is the spirit that is weak while the flesh is enthusiastically willing! ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote : Regarding your snippage below, Rick's policy has always been that the use of real names is prohibited only if the person wishes to remain anonymous. Doug uses his real first name to sign his posts, and his last name is in the header of his posts, so there was no need to snip it. Mine isn't in the header (it used to be pre-Neo and was on alt.m.t), and I don't sign my posts, but I've never objected to my real name being used; I prefer it to my authfriend handle, in fact.
