Today in Blogs and Forums (June 16, 2011)

✷  Courtney Linden and Amanda Linden leaves Linden Lab seen announced on Daniel Voyager's blog.

✷  Pep accused (yet again or of more, I'm not sure how to qualify it) nefarious manipulations in a post and thread entitled "Who's Playing Who" made by his ether-nemesis, Scylla Rhiadra, in the General Discussion Forum of Second Life's official Community Forums using a Pep-post lifted from the much less formal Forum Confidential blog.  Rhiadra described Forum Confidential as "one of the external attack blogs"* and Pep's post there as "interesting."

Scylla Rhiadra said: 

 "What seems to be going on here is that someone -- the OP -- believes that he is wreaking havoc and manipulating the moderators here in order to deliberately sabotage the SL forum and embarrass the moderators."

This is the offending post:

Pep said...

I haven't posted to the official forums for some time now. Instead I have been firing off a torrent of private messages (not ARs) to the various moderators, using several different personae with different "bigotries" but all of them entirely legitimate within the scope of the official Terms and Conditions. If you want to blame anyone for the tedious, bland desert of unimaginative and ungrammatical crap to which the forums have descended, don't blame ME though - blame LL who wrote the T&C, blame Amanda for encouraging her Mod Team to interpret them so stultifyingly, and blame the Mod Team for not having a sense of humour or proportion. Hell, if they aren't going to let me have the Forum ***I*** want, then no-one else is going to enjoy themselves either! I will continue to piss in their water supply until the Mods realise that they are getting played, and see through my multiply-proxied "Annoyed of Tonbridge", although by then I shall have a dossier of their idiocy that will embarrass and humiliate Amanda. It started off being funny (them not understanding that Richard Parkes anti-furry post was a joke) but their stupidity has become ridiculous now.

Sorry Storm; I started off trying to make the Forum a better place, but LL didn't want what I wanted, so I am enjoying myself selfishly.

Pep (is using and abusing the system.)

Thu Jun 16, 07:39:00 AM PDT

Reactions ranged from, "Yawn," "Hunh, what?" and "I don't care, I just posted here to up my post count," to "I think he's making it up," and "He can try if he likes, but it won't work, look how well things are going here now," and "Imagine someone wanting to spend that kind of time and energy on such a pointless battle," to attacks on Rhiadra like, "Get over your delusions of self-importance or relevance" and "PSA my ass, you're just stirring shit and tattletaling."

Best post responses in that thread in my opinion?  These:

Dillon Levenque said:

"But I really liked reading his OP if for no other reason than it contained what at this point has to be the Laugh of the Day: 'I started off trying to make the Forum a better place..'. Of course, it's early yet."

Dillon Levenque said:

"Maybe you posted just as much on the old GD and your wheat was hidden by the clouds of flame-war chaff."

Deltango Vale said:

"Ditch the existential petulance, leave the Church of Victimization and join the team."

Deltango Vale said:

"Storm, I have always considered you one of the main sources of creativity and humor in the fora - especially when you flavor your posts with brandy, cigars and irony. I think the problem we all face is transcending the easy culture of sardonicism. I look back with embarrassment at my early posts in which I too was seduced by the popular dithyramb. For awhile it was fast, easy, fun, but ultimately unproductive. Needless to say, I feel I have become a crashing bore recently and itch for a night of forum Dolce Vita. What we lack now, as Pussycat pointed out, is the lighthearted flirtation and Glass Bead Games that wove themselves into topical threads. You yourself started many such threads, which were a joy to read. Perhaps now that the GD Forum has stabilized, a new culture will arise that embodies Marbella at sunset instead of Vancouver after a hockey game."

Persephone Emerald said:

"When people want change, some have to push the boundaries & risk being punished. Would you say that every movement for social change was childish? Whether it's a serious movement such as the Jasmine Revolution or just some folks on an internet forum, we all have the right to protest for change when we don't like the way things are being done.

Whether the forms of protest used are "childish" or "mature" is often a matter of perspective too. Social and political commentary is often done with humor, sometimes even of an apparently immature sort. Watch "The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart" or any late-night talk show monologue, as an example."

Storm Clarence said:

"/me wonders if Ishtara can make him a bouncing 'C'? Hey Ceka, do you want to ask me what the 'C' stands for?"

Ishtara Rothschild said:

I think there may be something sig or banner worthy in there.


*If someone could and would provide me with an exhaustive list (preferably with links) of the virtual world-themed "external attack" blogs, I'd be much obliged.  I'd also like to get a list of links to publicly-owned forums in which post protests are considered an acceptable form of civil disobedience.