Be Excellent To Each Other

We've made the decision to ban CUS for a week. We will happily answer any questions you have.

The BETEO Mod Team

/holds onto something

What's the state capitol of north Dakota?

What's her phone number?

I suppose 'why?' would be a good start - I thought things were getting sorted out towards the end of his thread.

Why is TEV often used a a cleavage site when 3C is evidently better?

Before this thread degenerates into the ugly mess I fear it will, can I just say:

1) the mods are elected remember. This is a democracy and if you don't like their decisions you will be able to remove them from mod status down the road.

2) They are making difficult decisions and doing the best they can. Even if you don't agree with their decisions you should respect the fact they are genuinely trying hard.

3) They have a duty to the community here that is much bigger than their duty to any member of the community.

I support their action.

...

Simply put, it's because every time over the last few weeks that a mod has been called in to an angry argument, or PMs, or a reported post, it's been CUS at the centre of it.

We thought that the 24 hours of moderating his posts a few weeks ago had calmed things down, but this week has shown that not to be the case.

One week away from the place won't do any harm, and with a bit of luck we can do without all the shouty arguments and bickering at the end of it.

...

I don't know the ins and outs of it, but CUS has been acting wierd recently (and also earlier on in the year too) I don't know what the "straw" was that "broke the camels back" but maybe a "rest" will do him good.

Malc

Indeed. He's now keen on comparing himself to Jesus a lot.



Also, our Modz are rubbish at keeping someone banned!

All I mean is that if this place is causing you grief, then an (enforced) spell away from it might help.

Malc

I dunno what's wrong with him. I agree he needs time to cool off. There's nothing wrong with being abit off-centre, but he's decended into barking mad over the last few days to the point of being distruptive. It's been building up for a few weeks now and I can't identify why.

CUS, just go and cool off, have a think and see if you want to come back in a week. Keep in mind that on other forums you would have been curtailed long before now and probably with no hope of return. From my point of view I see the ban as something good so that we can have you back on your normal form instead of this decending into farce as it has over the past couple of days. I certainly wish you no ill*.

Go away, have a break and come back refreshed and on your usual form. I don't want you to be like you have over the past few days. It's not good for you and not good for this forum.



* Apart from a slightly itchy right foot.

gay

CUS Is one of the more interesting people on here.

With him and (seemingly) Dimrill gone, its a shadow of its former self.

I don't see how banning him for a week is going to do anything other than exasperate the situation. I'd be pretty pissed off if I were CUS.

Whaaaaaaa? Has Dimmers left?!

It's certainly crossed my mind. But what are the alternatives? I know you lot don't know, and he will no doubt swear blind we haven't, but we (as mods) have done the best we can to avoid this.

No, we shall fight! and he shall return

Yeah. I don't want to put words into his mouth or break a trust, but he's having to deal with a few things at the moment and something CUS said yesterday upset him.
Hopefully he won't be gone for long.

Just like any person who's been told off would be, but eventually (after they have cooled off) they realise why they were punished and (if they want to reconcile) will change their ways. And if they don't they get punished again

Malc

Let him back in, let him argue, allow it to calm down on its own. Waving the ban hammer about isn't helping anything. It certainly isn't inspiring me with confidence in regards to arguing on here any more. The ban hammer should be for people who sign up deliberately to cause trouble. See: That cunt who runs the World of Stuart blog.

CUS helped set this place up and although he shouldn't be immune to punishment, banning him isn't right in this instance. We should at least let him have his say. Instead we've just throttled him, which is only going to piss him off further.

But CUS has been pissing people off left and right for weeks, on and off. How long do you wait for things to calm down on their own? Again, I say, the mods have a duty to the whole community here that has to come before the duty to any person in it.

And how many users do you want to lose while that happens?

He was seemingly punished for pointing out the lack of requirement for x number of threads on a limited interest forum game that not everyone could get involved in, and illustrating his fact by replicating what had happened with Eastenders threads.

which could have all just been deleted and debated, rather than him getting banned.

Face it, CUS was always a good read. Moreso than much of the other inane drivel*



*possibly mine. but then again, whatever, dick(s).

That's not the reason - this has been going on for quite a while.
If you saw some of the PMs he sent us mods, I think you'd all feel a little differently.

I'm not sure I like it or have seen anything specific to justify it, but then he's not at any stage pissed off ME so it's tricky to comment properly.

If these users are seriously considering leaving a forum because a bad man upset them, then they can leave for me. Honestly, are they fucking children? Just ignore him.

This is silly IMHO and I'm not convinced it isn't due to (or at least provoked by) personal dislike on certain peoples parts, who also happen to be mods.

No. It runs a lot deeper than this.

Show us what he's been saying then. How are we supposed to comment on the CUS thing if we're uninformed? You're asking for our opinions, but we're never going to come to a conclusion because we haven't seen the full picture.

That's a catch22, as then CUS would have the (fairly valid) complaint that his PMs were being aired in public. I'm not sure that's a good precedent. We voted these mods in -- we are supposed to trust their judgement.

Care to explain then?
Cos from what I see some guy who has never upset me, and generally posts interesting irreverent chat has been banned and caused some rifts in an otherwise cool place to read / hang out.

Either he is a complete cunt, and ive never seen it really, or its all just BS that can be sorted out.

I think we'd probably want to understand the context though, which has included chippy remarks continually aimed at him from people who are supposed to be the level-headed maintainers of the place, and then having his PMs suspended. I mean really, you couldn't have come up with a better way to wind the poor sod up if you'd tried.

From the small part of this I've seen then CUS talking about (hopefully fictional) PM's is part of what a) made people leave and b) got him banned.

More talking about PM's isn't going to help.

I don't know though...

And honestly, who is threatening to leave because of what CUS has said to them? I'd really love to know. Are they five years old?

That's a fair comment. I think it's safe to say that the relationship between CUS and myself has been 'strained' for a while, for want of a better word. I like him as a person - we met once and had a nice time. He's seems to have had issues with me since we came to this forum, though.
Also, remember though that there are five moderators, and four of them voted in this decision (one was absent).

Indeed, if he'd want his comments public he wouldn't have PMed.

I personally would love Sticklebrick/CUS to return to his old form. Hopefully he will.

A decision had to be made about recent events on here and it's encouraging to hear support from people, and I understand the frustration of only getting half the story for others.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not going to let an issue with one individual mess up what is otherwise a totally awesome forum with, as far as I can see, very few flaws. Lets keep all the 'CUS stuff' in a nice tidy thread and keep everything else going as usual. I'll agree with CUS that one topic overtaking the whole forum is a very bad thing, and it holds true here.

OK, I should probably have my say, as I seem to have been one of the directions for CUS's bile this week.

I don't know what exactly he's been saying as I've had him on my foes list since yesterday, but I've heard rumours that I've been fiddling with his login account - this simply isn't true. All I've done is foe him, inquire as to if I can have PMs blocked. I also removed him from my LIVE friends list.

I have my reasons for doing this, but I'm not sure the public forum is the best place to air those.

As for the way this forum is run, I still believe we're doing a sterling job, but if you don't agree then you get the opportunity to put some fresh blood in around October-time. If I felt I was doing a bad job I wouldn't want to carry on, as I always try to do the best job in everything I can.

Well, for starters, Dimrill is taking a break from the forum partly down to something CUS has said to him:

I think we can all agree that Dimrill is one of the most outstandingly excellent people here and him taking a break from the forum, even short term, is a bad loss.

I thought there were 6, did I mis remember, or has one been purged?

Malc

I'll discuss that with the other mods.


When I am in a moderating role, I like to think I'm pretty level headed. Like now, for instance.
When I'm not, I don't see why I shouldn't act on my emotions.


Haven't we covered this?


Oh, I could.

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No, always five, so we can't have a split decision. There's also someone who isn't a mod but who can see the mod forum to make sure we're being impartial and all that.

On a personal note -- I was considering running for mod in October, but the lack of community support for mod actions is putting me off the idea. Sometimes the mods have to take unpopular decisions based on information they can't share. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't need mods at all. Under those circumstances I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt; I'm not saying their actions shouldn't be scrutinised, but such investigations should start from the basis that they are doing they best job they can and that needless second-guessing will only weaken the entire forum. I'm not terribly happy about how critical some of the posts in this thread have been.

It was myoptika with the comments Grim..., as I'm sure you realise.

But given I don't and won't know the whole story (and not sure I particularly want to) I'll trust in the judgement of Zardoz (and, grudgingly, you ) that things are being done for the best, and say no more.

I'd like to add that I don't think the mods are doing a bad job at all. They're fine and I'd vote for them all again. Just, as I said in the other thread, I think this forum has a bit of a "silly" predisposition. Also, I don't think banning CUS was a good idea, because banning people who are integral to an online community is never a good thing, but other than that, no problems with the mods.

I've now banned him five times - I am getting my practise in

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