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In Reply to: Re: Joshua now banned permanently posted by freesider on October 11, 2008 at 09:51:12:
What I can figure is Joshua read my post to him first (where I both commended him on his mature response to Youthish's outbreak, as well as told him that Outsider did have a point about clutter and that his "yawn" response to Outsider was no good). He responded with outrage that went beyond the scope of the issue, into what he really thought of exFamily, the coordinators and all ex-members in general.
Then he read my post to Outsider, in which I cautioned that we ought to give Joshua a chance, leave the past in the past, and again pointed to Joshua's mature handling of the conflict with Youthish. But by then Joshua may have realized he'd overreacted but knew it was too late. The cat was out of the bag. So he said that my "help" came "too little too late," that my trying to give him a "chance" was unnecessary, and that the first post reflected his true colors and to deal with it.
Well, it was a relief he finally laid his cards on the table. He basically banned himself. But yes, he blames me anyway. I can live with that. Am I bothered by the way this happened? Yes. But I am more bothered by what happened and the fact that it did.
The thing is, we did try to give the guy a chance. Many chances. We bent over backwards despite his breaking the rules (posing as someone else to hawk his own site, not replying in context to the posts, referring to arguments that took place on other sites, jumping on a poster due to history that took place on another site, etc). And his posts were getting cryptic, less and less understandable (not due just to spelling errors), and it was clear he was bothering less and less to formulate his ideas properly or go over what he'd written before posting. Based on his previous interaction, I'd written Joshua an email with 4 simple pointers, but it was as though he'd never read it.
Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with Joshua's wanting to have conversation either, but I was troubled by his discussion abilities. I found Outsider's comments to him on Soapbox very stinging and unfriendly, but nevertheless accurate. Unfortunately, we don't moderate that board. And Outsider did have a point that our boards were never meant to be a "scrap book for the bored an idle." What I felt like asking Outsider was, "what about the bored and lonely?" But I refrained from doing that as it would have been patronizing and inappropriate. While I do sympathize with Joshua's well-meaning but clumsy nature, when it comes to what we want for this site (with the exception of Soapbox), we prefer to have a decent "signal-to-noise ratio," meaningful discussions and well-thought-out posts, less of a "scrap book for the bored and idle." I'm sure that opens us up for criticism about being snobby or elitish, but all sites and forums are run differently, and here, our idea from the onset is that we prefer to focus on quality and not quantity, on matters pertinent to our experiences with The Family. Yes, we do take ourselves seriously.
I leave Outsider to defend his/her intentions with Joshua and "exemplary contributions to this forum."
