the Policy of Banning Members

[Chris Davidson]

6 minutes ago, Mark Knight said:

Thus, if Vinnie Barbarino is assessed a five-point penalty, for example, Arnold Horshack has no right to know that. 

Expected response from the Sweathogs:

"But,but,but, Mr.Kot′ter, Mr.Kot′ter, Mr. Kot′ter′′ only the way Horshack could convey it!!!!

[Chris Scally]

7 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

The problem is that you seem incapable of taking No for an answer. You repeatedly seem to intent on trying to push the envelope. If you don't like how the board is run, go post on other JFK-related boards.

Roger, 

I must agree with Michael Griffith's comment. You clearly dislike the Admins and the thankless work they do, you clearly dislike the Forum rules, and your own lengthy and verbose posts have become boring, to say the very least. I'm sure there is another board somewhere which will happily accomodate your views, however.

[Roger Odisio]

2 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

As an administrator, there is one point I would make. If a moderator/administrator does issue a disciplinary action to a forum member -- and we have instituted a point system, although we are still fine-tuning that system -- that disciplinary matter will remain between the mod/admin and the member being disciplined. Thus, if Vinnie Barbarino is assessed a five-point penalty, for example, Arnold Horshack has no right to know that.  This is adherence to the business management policy of "praise in public, reprimand in private." 

If you CHOOSE to make a reprimand public, that is your prerogative.

NOW...to correct a mistaken impression...forum member Robert Montenegro was NOT "banned" from posting on the forum. Another admin had placed him under a one-post-per-day limitation, but he was NOT "banned" from posting. Because of the value of the recent information that Robert sent via Paul Brancato, the administrators reviewed Robert's status, and removed the one-post-per-day restriction. With the new points-based system, we are attempting to work out a system under which points assessed to a member eventually expire, so that their reprimand doesn't fall through the cracks, as Robert's had. Bear with us, as we attempt to make this system as fair and equitable as possible.

I think your analogy fails.  This is not a business and we are not employees of yours whose sensibilities you may feel you need, or have a right, to protect (if you think such a principle really does that). This an open forum where each of us appears as individuals. You have no such responsibility to us, nor do I think it makes sense to act as if you do (see below).

 

Perhaps more important, you did much more than issue a reprimand.  You took away my right to post here for 2 days, falsely claiming in a PM to me that my statements were outrageous, and that I lied in saying, according to you, that you never offered a reason for the moving of threads. 

 

These are serious charges. Members need to know about them and your reason for making them and imposing the penalty you did.  For many, obvious reasons I shouldn't have to go into.  By keeping things secret you avoid accountability.

 

I notice you too are using the tried and true method of commenting only on what you want to talk about, while avoiding other, in some cases more important, points I have raised.

[John Cotter]

15 hours ago, Chris Scally said:

Roger, 

I must agree with Michael Griffith's comment. You clearly dislike the Admins and the thankless work they do, you clearly dislike the Forum rules, and your own lengthy and verbose posts have become boring, to say the very least. I'm sure there is another board somewhere which will happily accomodate your views, however.

Would it be fair to say that neither Michael Griffith nor Chris Scally would be favourably disposed to the idea of RFK Jr becoming US president?

While the moderation seems improved in some respects, Roger’s points about relevance, being wrongly accused of lying and the need for warnings before penalties are imposed seem valid to me.

I got a one-day ban last week without warning for allegedly belittling another member. I didn’t make a fuss about it because I’d more or less decided to stop posting in the forum for the time being at least, for reasons touched on in my last post.

But here I am again, possibly for reasons I adumbrate below.

I wasn’t told the name of the member whom I allegedly belittled and I can only assume who it was. I could have explained – cogently I believe – why the member I allegedly belittled should have been banned before I was, but I think I’ve reached the stage of not caring enough any more to go to the effort of explaining things that really shouldn’t need to be explained.

Unlike Yeats, I haven’t got the Sisyphean fortitude to be “content to live it all again/And yet again, if it be life to pitch/Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch/A blind man battering blind men”.

Or have I?

Much JFKA debating may have more to do with the psychological need to keep returning to the same old themes over and over again than with having anything new to say.

In this regard, James Hillman referred to “…Plato’s and Plotinus’ description of the course of the soul as circular” and says that “Psychological reasoning tends to be circular, thriving on the repetition compulsion and cycles of return to the same insoluble themes.” (Re-Visioning Psychology)

There is also the related “mysterious appeal of a labyrinth”, as in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story collection Labyrinths:

“Borges specialised in short stories that fold in on themselves, that spiral, misidentify, mislead, magnify, falsify. His games with meaning are located in fantasy worlds, imagined realms tied to the unconscious. In his preface to the Penguin edition of Borges stories, Labyrinths, the writer André Maurois talks about the “interplay of the mirrors and mazes… of thought”; “In all these stories we find roads that fork, corridors that lead nowhere… and so on as far as the eye can see.”

 The allure of mazes, mysteries and wildernesses of mirrors is paradoxically intertwined with the desire to seek solutions and clues:

 “Because the labyrinth is vast and few people find their way back out, Theseus’s lover, Ariadne, gives him a ball of red thread to mark his way by unwinding it behind him. The Middle English word ‘clew’, meaning a ball of thread, has given us our word ‘clue’.”

 https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201118-the-mysterious-appeal-of-a-labyrinth#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20story%20about%20an%20amnesiac%20man,patient%20with%20it%20you%20find%20that%20it%20isn%E2%80%99t.

Insofar as much of this circular JFKA “debating” seems to have more of a poetic/psychological than a forensic function, TS Eliot’s words come to mind:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

I trust the foregoing circumlocutory excursion clarifies everything.

Edited July 12, 2023 by John Cotter

[Matt Allison]

Leave the Mods politics out of this. To suggest they're biased is offensive.

The JFKA is a crime, not a political football. A person's politics have nothing to do with it.

There are no alternative facts, there is one set of facts, and then a mountain of theorizing and speculation, just as there is in any murder mystery.

Do you see me starting threads championing Joe Biden's many political accomplishments in the JFK forum? Of course not, as I respect the rule to keep the conversations in this forum about the JFKA.

Are there others abusing the forum to push the MAGA political agenda? Most certainly yes. It is their raison d'etre for being here.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

 

From someone whose had a lot of disagreements with the mods in the last 6 months. I agree with Matt that your charge of political bias is just plain wrong.

 

They're 2 sides to everything. My most recent problem with the mods was that the  JFKA forum was being spammed by Rfk Jr. for President enthusiasts. Then it  was brought to the spammers attention. Then they hid it in news events such as the JFKA files,then starting a thread quoting RFK Jr. saying that "RFK Jr.  fears for his life"  and then still Di Eugenio would come out with a thread announcing "RFK Jr's next speech", and I was wondering. "Is this going to be a permanent fixture in the JFKA forum."?

Is this now going to become an RFK Jr. fanboy forum?

My first suggestion to the mods was to make one dedicated RFK Jr. thread. It didn't happen.

 

 

Since the real purpose of all these threads was just to promote RFK Jr's Presidency many times under some JFKA distant relevancy. I thought I'd just come out and make a thread entitled "Nobody whose anybody wants to kill Rfk Jr. --RFK on the issues", where I produce a video of a "Breaking Points" interview with RFK and critique his responses to questions involving his stand on the issues. In it I issue a disclaimer saying that  " I''ve been a good boy and  tried not to bring politics out into the JFKA forum, and I understand posting with  such a title,  I'll probably get my thread pulled, but give me 2 days."

Fair enough, a couple of days later it was pulled by the mods and I was told I was "spamming" non JFKA topics by a mod who reacted to my title and hadn't read my disclaimer that I expected it to be pulled. But no big deal.

 

It was really done as a mild protest, but it was by far the most substantive, least fanboy thread on RFK Jr to date here. But unfortunately, among the RFK Jr. fans here, there  was only one intelligent response, and I should point out  that was Roger, standing out among the jeers.. 

 

I took no offense at having my thread pulled. I expected it. Even though a few very pro Rfk Jr.,  well labelled threads were allowed to continue.

 

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and realize you're taking up a lot of time from people who may not be perfect, but are offering their services to you and the rest of us. It's just  "grace."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Kirk Gallaway

[John Cotter]

Does any of currently active moderators or their apologists here favour an RFK Jr presidency?

Or do they all favour the continuation of the demented Punch and Judy show, the criminally murderous two-party dictatorship – criminally murderous because, inter alia, it is an accessory to the JFKA. It has persistently failed to pursue the perpetrators of the conspiracy as found by its own investigative body the HSCA and it has persistently withheld documents which might aid that pursuit.

There’s a whiff of “ask my brother if I’m lying” about all this cosy pro-moderator consensus in this situation.

[Chris Scally]

8 hours ago, John Cotter said:

Would it be fair to say that neither Michael Griffith nor Chris Scally would be favourably disposed to the idea of RFK Jr becoming US president?

 

John,

I cannot speak for Michael Griffith, but let me assure you that it would be fair to say that you have absolutely no idea whatsoever about my views on national or international politics, nor do I intend discussing them with you or anyone else on this or any other JFK Assassination forum. 

 

 

[John Cotter]

28 minutes ago, Chris Scally said:

John,

I cannot speak for Michael Griffith, but let me assure you that it would be fair to say that you have absolutely no idea whatsoever about my views on national or international politics, nor do I intend discussing them with you or anyone else on this or any other JFK Assassination forum. 

 

 

Chris,

I can assure you that, contrary to what you baselessly claim, I do have an idea, based on reasonable inference, of your views on the politics relevant to this discussion.

[Chris Scally]

54 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Chris,

I can assure you that, contrary to what you baselessly claim, I do have an idea, based on reasonable inference, of your views on the politics relevant to this discussion.

John,

Let me equally assure you that your baseless and unreasonable inference is incorrect. 

Good day!

 

[John Cotter]

6 minutes ago, Chris Scally said:

John,

Let me equally assure you that your baseless and unreasonable inference is incorrect. 

Good day!

 

Good man, Chris.

You arrogate to yourself the competence to infer what I think while imputing the lack of such competence to me.

How interesting!

[Chris Scally]

John,

I have no intention of continuing this discussion any further. For your information, I have about as much interest in whether or not RFK Jr becomes President as I have in your pathetic comments.

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

 

[Roger Odisio]

18 hours ago, Chris Scally said:

Roger, 

I must agree with Michael Griffith's comment. You clearly dislike the Admins and the thankless work they do, you clearly dislike the Forum rules, and your own lengthy and verbose posts have become boring, to say the very least. I'm sure there is another board somewhere which will happily accomodate your views, however.

You are mistaken, Chris.  Can you understand that I can disagree sharply with some of the things Sandy and Mark have been doing as mods without disliking them as individuals?

[John Cotter]

57 minutes ago, Chris Scally said:

John,

I have no intention of continuing this discussion any further. For your information, I have about as much interest in whether or not RFK Jr becomes President as I have in your pathetic comments.

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

 

Chris,

So you are interested then. Otherwise you wouldn't have repeatedly replied to my "pathetic comments".

And a nice day to you too!

[Mark Knight]

Does anyone besides me find it odd that a resident of Ireland [or any other nation NOT called the United States of America] is involved in debating who should become President of the US? I don't begrudge anyone from having an OPINION, but actual advocacy for a particular candidate on a forum not meant to be a debate on current politics?

It would be akin to someone from the US inserting their preference for a particular political candidate to become the Irish head of state...which, as a US citizen, I consider to be "not my concern."

As a moderator, I somewhat object to references to a temporary suspension of posting privileges as a "ban." A ban would be if your membership in the EF was revoked. 

And after more than one moderator has explained the thought process behind a suspension, to say that the moderators have never explained why they took the actions they did is a blatant untruth. You may disagree with the actions of a moderator; that is your prerogative. Just don't say that, because a moderator wasn't swayed by your reason for disagreement, that the moderator failed to explain why they took action.

When the mods finalize and fine-tune the penalty point system, I have suggested that the guidelines be posted in the pinned Forum rules. For now, I will advise you that 10 penalty points results in a 1-day suspension of posting privileges; 20 points results in a 2-day suspension; and so on. We're trying to fine-tune the system so that we can have a system with consistency and parity. HOWEVER, "frequent fliers" in the penalty box do tend to accumulate higher point values when they are penalized. But we also are setting up a mechanism under which points do expire. So if a member has a five-point penalty from 2014, for example, and none since, the 2014 penalty will go away if no other offenses occur.

The EF has never been a democracy. Moderators have always had authority to enforce forum rules. And that will continue into the foreseeable future.