Why not?

We're apparently at the point where people are blacklisted for having contrary politics. What's a deleted blog entry among "friends"?

Communication is a two way street and as far as I can tell this site is pretty inbred as it stands without trying to silence what little non-wingnut opinion that can manage to tolerate the prevailing intolerance. 

You guys can talk among yourselves and argue about the pros and cons of being a limbaugh republican versus a coulter republican.

Oh bullshit!  Having contrary politics isn't what gets you blacklisted.  Personal attacks get you ousted.  If you want to claim that's unfair, go somewhere else.  There are plenty of great bloggers here that aren't Republican.  Some are political at all.

If you'd known LW long enough you'd know her "feelings" were all over the place.  What she payed the price for was assuming that she could just keep sticking it to Brad and he'd oust her and let her back like times before.  You get to a point when enough is enough though. 

I stick to what I said, she's self destructive.  Everything she's talked about in her life supports that statement.  Her actions here go right along with the way she lives.

I'm not speaking about being ousted in any official sense. I was speaking about individuals blacklisting other individuals from commenting on their "blog entries" for their own personal subjective reasons which certainly may include simply not agreeing with them. Nor was I claiming any unfairness. My response was essentially addressed to Leauki who complained about a deleted blog entry. I was merely linking the cause and effect.

With you only on other people's blogs, I assume?

 

Inbred, really? How many blog sites do you know where Mormons, Evangelicals, and Jews discuss religion? And how do I fit into this "inbred" theme of yours? I have never even been in the US. I like JU because it gives me access to people I would never meet in the offline world. You think of it as "inbred", I see a cultural diversity that I cannot get anywhere else.

 

I am neither. But Little-Whip was very fond of quoting Anne Coulter and and quoting entire articles of her. I appreciated the pointers. I like SOME of Coulter's writings.

In fact I am not a Republican at all. If Joe Lieberman had run for the Democrats I would have supported the Democrats. And I was always fond of Hillary and Bill Clinton as well. What put me into the Republican camp at all was Al Gore's transformation from a useful politician into an attention-seeking device, and the Democratic party's decision to promote John Kerry, the only possibly candidate at the time who was certified as being dumber than Bush.

Politically I am much closer to roughly the region covered by New Labour, British and Canadian Tories, the German Green party under Joschka Fischer, the German Christian Democrats under Angela Merkel, Israeli Kadima unter Ariel Sharon, and now Likud under Bibi (because I was disappointed with the Arab reaction to getting what they demanded). The area overlaps with the Republicans, but it also overlaps a lot more with what Democrats used to be.

 

I think most of my most popular articles were about religion and history rather than politics.

 

 

Really? You deleted dozens of comments of other people's because somebody was blacklisted somewhere?

 

For the record.

I blacklisted two people on my blog.

One is Mumblefratz because he suggested nuking all Jews and Arabs in the region and then apparently thought that "Don't get your panties in a bunch, it leads to uncomfortable chafing." was some sort of useful point that needed to be made.

The other is someone I disagree with politically but the reason I blacklisted him is because he always managed to screw up formatting for the rest of the page after his posting and I have no idea how he does it and don't want to wait for some JU official to fix it every time it happens. He'll be back once that bug/feature/whatever is resolved.

 

Leauki,

This is actually not the place to discuss our disagreement. I responded here only because you complained here. None of which has anything to do with the destroy account function or the reasons why people should or should not be banned from the site.

I can see this place hasn't changed a bit. What I am surprised at is seeing that none of your have taken a year off to self-evaluate and realize you don't need the posting fix, and it doesn't do anything to improve your lives. Why not start your own blog, on a wiki and network yourself with the posters here if free speech is so important to you?

Happy to tell you because you are lazy and settle for status quo. It was nice to read though, that someone finally did something about the worst offender here, LW.

You can delete my posts too Brad and wipe my account. I'd rather let it fall to the wayside along with all the other pointless crap which on the internet exists. Seriously though, I do hope that Demigod goes well and sells awesome. I'm hoping for that mutiplayer expansion of Dread Lords, the one you researched and decided not to make cause it wasn't affordable or whatever. I know if you won't make it nobody else will. Maybe in your old age, you'll make one for the fun of it rather than the money.

Here's hoping you'll see past the profit one day.

 

 

Brad is absolutely correct in everything he said and did regarding this incident.

I, and others have differed with Brad during the election period (long before I knew his other noms-de-plume) but I did it respectfully...if I didn't, then I apologize.

There is no place for personal attacks in adult discussions. They add nothing to one's arguments and cause tempers to flare and are a form of violence. That is intolerable, and that to everyone involved.

I'm neither a "Conservative" nor a "Liberal". I'm a mix of the two....but I believe that everyone's view is worth hearing, examining but most of all, all are worth respect even if they violate your most basic tenets.

The concept of "Free Speech" does not include hate speech nor hateful speech. Mr. Wardell deserves our respect, not as "The Owner of The Sandbox", but as a fellow human being.

That's the requisite he demands....for himself and others. He's absolutely right.

I kno what you mean, some people like to follow in their instints and sometimes that leads to getting the boot.

I have crossed Brad myself before, but my comments were never meant to be offensive or insulting. I may have been outspoken but that's about it. I have respect for the man; he runs a great log site, creates (with his crew) masterpiece skinning software and skins, runs a successful business even during hard times and even has connects to some of the greatest and biggest companies out there such as Microsoft and nVidia.

I agree, insults and hatred should not drive ones commenst on this site. Respect should be awarded to everyone, after all we all have the right to believe in what we want to believe and a debate is meant to prove your point against someone elses and to allow some space for consideration of other people.

Over the years, Little-Whip, had me at a silent protector because the number of times people at work wanted her gone because she was toxic had to be well over a dozen but the point of JoeUser is that it's my blog site and I found her blogs interesting and insightful. And as a quasi-narcisist, I tend to do what I want.

I don't care if people agree with me or not. I even have a high degree of tolerance for being insulted. I get insulted all the time.  Where I draw the line is when people make personal attacks. That is, they exploit what they know about me in "real life" (which isn't secret) and insult me.  Anyone who thinks I should tolerate that on my own site is welcome to start their own site.

I'd no more put up with someone insulting me personally on JoeUser than I would tolerate someone who's at a party I'm hosting telling me what an SOB I am.

People who hang out here long enough already know my hot buttons. Taxes being way up there because I don't appreciate paying so much in taxes and yet have someone who's paying no net taxes telling me I should pay even more simply because I make a lot of money and can "afford" it.

So to put the above in context, I'll happily debate taxes. Where I get pissed off is when someone says "You, Brad Wardell, because you make a lot of money you should pay more. You Brad Wardell have too much stuff."  Because my response is likely to be "fuck off and get off my site".  

LW got exiled because she pissed me off. She could have PM'd me and apologized for the things she said and I probably would have let her off the hook.  Instead, she name-called me, and demanded her articles be removed which I complied with.

And more recently, she's been messaging my wife a bunch of hateful, nasty, messages claiming everything from me "cheating on my wife" to veiled legal threats to veiled outright threads "you don't want to make an enemy of me".  Now, as someone who gets explicit death threats a couple times a year (threatening phone calls, letter to the house with a Yahoo map to our house with a bullseye on it, and of course plenty of email and PM threats), I am used to getting hate mail. But my wife isn't. 

Before I started JU, neither my wife or I even owned a gun.  But you get enough threats and you find yourself having to take precautions. What if some nut case came to our house? So anyone who thinks that having a blog site that they let others freely use is all peaches and roses think again.  One of the reasons I'm so intolerant of people who start to pull shit with me is it's better to eliminate them early than let it build up. Just get rid of them before it boils up too far. 

Each time something like the above happens, I'm tempted to just close the site for everyone but trusted friends because it's not worth the hassle.  I think the site generates about $14 a month in ad revenue so it's not like it's a "business" per se.  It's just my blog site that I let others use. And it's extremely rare that anyone shows any appreciation for the free site. It's mostly just abuse.

So yea, I don't feel guilty about zapping anyone who pisses me off. 

/me makes a note not to show up at Brad's place late at night in a drunk.

 

(if your boss shoots you,  does that fall under workman's comp?)

Draginol,

And I'm one who is overdue in thanking you for creating JU and allowing total strangers like me to use it. I greatly appreciate your sharing your time, talent and work in making it possible for I am a total no nothing when it comes to computer technology, but I do appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to read other people's views and participate in discussion.

 

One of the main reasons for the drama here is that even old-timers like LW can forget how good the "free ice cream" really is.

I can't beleive how much real life drama creeps into JU sometimes. Even years later posters with old grievances just won't let go.

 

Taking a ban to the point of harassment goes beyond the pale. Draginol shows more restraint in the face of this than many would. LW shoudl be grateful that he hasn't pursued legal redress for the harassment. Not cool.

 

Besides that, nice to see you all again (even just in passing).