hurricane Helene didn't get me

[Buster's Uncle]

Message received in that thread.

Since trying to talk it out got me an act of defiance, the bottom line is, I WILL act if there are any more messages there.  I spoke English, and this ain't okay.

[bvanevery]

BU, you are tone policing, not welcoming.  You're doing it in "my" thread too.  Offering it to be my thread, and then boldly asserting that it's your thread, and your site, and that that's the most important thing around here, is cognitively dissonant.  You haven't much considered how much offense you may be giving me, quite apart from anything I may have innocently said about volcanoes.  I don't owe you or anyone else an apology or groveling about volcanoes.

In fact you seem very much inclined to precipitate a drama, when nothing may really have needed looking into.  I know that even when I am trying to resolve conflicts in one of my own forums, I don't point fingers and single people out.  There have to be clear wrongs for that.  Not just intonations that something "could be" wrong.

When you are afraid of something, you can very much manifest what you are afraid of, by your actions.  It's important to be mindful of one's fears; for instance, "Someone may take offense in my forum."  You lay down the law with people, you're gonna find people leave and don't look back.

[Buster's Uncle]

I spoke English.

Talking it out never works with you, you piss everyone off with your self-centered behavior in my house, and none of it's about me; it's just that it IS my problem as host, and everyone else together is WAY more important than just you.  I'm out of options, sir.

Clean up your act.

[bvanevery]

The reality is, I'm not here to obey you.  I don't believe anyone is supposed to just obey site owners.  That's the entire thing wrong with Reddit.  Everyone gets their little fiefdoms and then moderators power trip.  They don't have checks and balances on how they act themselves, how they rub people the wrong way.  It's the reason I came up with ideas about democratic forum software, that I've enumerated elsewhere.  It's the reason I had a co-moderator system on my old gamedesign-l, where we couldn't approve our own posts.  You need a moderator, sir.  We took turns doing it to each other.

I'm here to contribute to a community.  If you're very particular about how people in your community have to act, fundamentally how they have to be, we're going to part ways.  I believe in diversity and space for persons who function differently.  I don't think you do.

My Mom's advice is if we were to have a beer together in real life, it should certainly be in a public place, in the afternoon.  No houses, no late night mood changes.

[Buster's Uncle]

I spoke English.

You loose points every time you try to share your stubborn delusion that you don't have to do what I say.  Sir; you do. 

You are in my house, and I have a responsibility to my other guests, and you will listen to me or leave.

You have driven off two other members over the years w/ your rudeness and self-absorption - and that's just the two I KNOW for sure about, not the guy who mentioned you on reddit last month, saying he's taking a hard pass on AC2 because of  "that blowhard who sucks all the air out".

We are going to part ways, obviously - you made that decision a couple hours ago, and you're just quibbling about the details and deciding how to make your grand exit.  I can wait.

[bvanevery]

You speak power.  I speak truth to power.  I don't know how many people you have in your life, who are willing to say "no" to you.

At the beginning of my thread you said:

I've been sincerely worried about you for months, especially the last one.

And something somewhere else about me being valued.  Might have been in your thread.  Stuff about unloading our mutual psychological burdens and knowing the other.

I'm not sure you see the beauty in the forum rematerializing.  What a potentially beautiful thing!  All this time that has passed, all this psychological distance that has been gained from whatever was going on before.

I was quite surprised when you started intoning a desire to re-legislate old grievances.  It certainly wasn't something I was planning on, it's something you brought up.  I've been through hell and a handbasket since 2 years ago.  I've got bigger fish to fry than long ago disputes.  Yet you've continued to intone a deep need to Go There.  To make darned sure I get put back in some kind of a box, and that I know for sure you're the one who gets to do it.

Being protective of your community, also seems premature.  Your big threat isn't me, it's the technical possibility of the server imploding again.  You know you can't grow anything without stable communication to the rest of the internet.  It's almost as though you dwell on what you think you can control - me - rather than the technical things you can't.

Worrying and caring about me, BU, why?  It's hard to believe you were going through those emotions about me, in a way that's actually about me.  Like who I am, respect for me as a person, and what we've shared as human beings over a number of years.  You have the opportunity to open a new chapter, something that starts with an expression of caring... and within 48 hours, you're flipping the script.  Over a volcano.

You don't see any kind of problem with that?

I only read your "bad mood" thread for the 1st time just the other day.  It's given me insights as to what's going on with you.  It explained a number of things.  You were at times very forthright, about what you are going through.

Are you going to see this now though?

[Buster's Uncle]

You keep your bad behavior in this thread, and I will take a lot.  We have no Lèse-majesté rule here, and I don't care for places that do.

I need to get Solver up to speed on something tech for advice, and I'll try to get to a proper response on this this afternoon, soon, soon.

[Buster's Uncle]

You misunderstand me pretty badly above.  Despite everything, I sorta like you and want you to win at life.  I really do.  I hate to see a nerd brother w/ good intentions suffer.

SO many things would be SO much easier for SO many years if I didn't see that you're AC2's second or third biggest fan - Trenacker is willing to put his money where his mouth is, and I take second place to NO MAN if it was a freakin' contest.

You've put your time passion and effort into effective promotion of this thing I live making it work, and man, do I LOVE that.  I just do not care that you do it for selfish reasons - I care that you do it, and I do care about you.

But all the stuff -personal and professional- I've been sincere about offering as attempts to help you win?  That's fer realz, but also me stealth moderating; something I do constantly, and try not to get caught doing.  A soft word usually turns away wrath and trolling, and I've always said that I can work with anyone well-intentioned.

Well.  Except, it seems, with you.  It's always SOMEthing with you, who seems to never forget that hammer I have tucked in back out of sight - and --- as soon as I post this I'll go set my Admin status to show so you can see the difference.  If you'd stop taking it as a challenge when I ask you to do ANYthing, we'd get along a lot better - I DO tend to always try to ask, first, having the same authority problems you do and not liking Being The Man.  That deeply informs how I roll here.

More soon.

[Buster's Uncle]

Eww, I hate showing red in Who's Online.  Feels all shouty and Teh Man.  Let me know you've seen, please.

[Buster's Uncle]

So, I ain't been re-litigatin' nuthin' just couldn't not talk about the elephant in the room.

Protip: When brevity is impossible, we ain't got no policy against multi-posting.  Breaking it up into closer to bite-size chunks can help mitigate the Wall-Of-Text problem, one that you DO have.  Some people just won't read something long - doesn't matter that it could be said to be their problem; if you make a lot of really long post all the time that you'd like to have read, it's your problem, too.

-That I'm also breaking it up into multi-posts because I'm multi-tasking is irrelevant, a coincidence - and walls of text is no part of the problems I'm trying to thrash out here, just a point of personal style that I believe harms you.

[bvanevery]

"Selfish reasons" lol.  As though that's why people put work under Creative Commons license, or do such heroics for $0 for years, while homeless.  I've only ever been guilty of taking SMAC very seriously, and that's rubbed people the wrong way at times.  Since I'm the artist who got done what I did, and few have filled shoes similarly, I'm not going to apologize for having that rough edge.

I'm done with having negative features of my persona debated in public now.  I know how much you dislike doing anything in private, and that's generally a non-starter anyways.  This shall be locked, and posterity can judge it.

As email notification doesn't presently work, it will be trivial for this site to fade into the obscurity of my life, as it already did 2 years ago.  I thought this revisitation could be a source of joy.  I am disappointed that you chose pain.  I know it's your choice, because I've been away far too long, to be cast as some kind of thorn in your side.

I must be destined to be some kind of footnote in your experiences running this place, including having had the last posts in the last outage.  It is possible this will revisit someday when your email notifications are working again.

[Buster's Uncle]

[He locked the thread, not me]

Okay, I wasn't done and all, but okay.

Try this:  maybe you ought to do what I ask because I asked - that's just civil, and right.  Maybe that will sink in before you return.

I'm juggling and dancing as fast as I can, and I'm not going to let a management failure -which this is, as the only useful way for me to look at it and grow as a person, me being the only one whose behavior I control- stop me.

-Now to go get that &^%$#@! Admin status back not showing...

[Buster's Uncle]

I thought this revisitation could be a source of joy.  I am disappointed that you chose pain.  I know it's your choice, because I've been away far too long, to be cast as some kind of thorn in your side.

This, I cannot let pass unchallenged as I do a great deal above.

No, understand that I should have permabanned you five years ago, when you loudly and repeatedly savaged me over a disagreement about promotion.  You would have been gone forever, zero doubt, -I wouldn't allow you to flame anyone else that way, period- if I'd had any staff backup on hand.  You were only spared by I don't act while angry, and that, paradoxically, has been your biggest single shield, making me derelict, constantly, in my duty to my other guests to not let a well-meaning member with a rough edge annoy them, which you have over and over and over for A Very Long Time.

The entire time I was worried about you, I never forgot for a second that I HAD To Do Something About bvanevery.  I've just had time to firm my resolve and Man Up.  This is not new; it's old.  I CHOSE to try being as gentle and tactful as I can manage, not something I'll ever be a master of, but this thread is me trying as hard as I can, astonished that it ever seemed to get ANY traction, actually.  Helping Brandon struck me as a promising tact towards Solving The Brandon Problem.

And you chose to escalate over a passing remark that I wouldn't mind if you cooled it there.  No, you chose to square off at me, and I refuse to play those games, winning automatically all measuring contests initiated in my yard as I do.  That was a troll.  Trolling the owner.  Not. Smart.

So until you can admit to yourself that you made a bad call, still think it's all on me, you're not going to grow, and you have no place here.  I think it's a [complaint or disagreeable woman] move to demand an apology, and I do not - but if you get your head straight about who chose what, and see that banning you would be an easy, if not my style, way out --- I'm willing to try again, someday.