Boy, Wednesday came quick.

I want to start this out by making one thing perfectly clear. Everything I do that has anything to do with The Chip Board is done to make it a place that people enjoy. I put great emphasis on what the users want. I have no hidden agenda other than to have The Chip Board be an enjoyable and functional place.

Also, this message is not to be replied to. I am not posting it to start a discussion, or argument, and I insist that it not become one. Any replies to this post will be deleted. I won't even read them first.

Identification of helpers

When the board first started I was the only one who did any monitoring and the monitoring I did was nothing more than not doing anything. Pretty much anything was left on the board, I never deleted anything. Do any of you remember our first troll? It was Kelly Crawford. Not only did she post all sorts of crap on the board, but she sent out naked pictures to people on the board. One day she posted the following:

Kelly is real. I work at WQFS FM in N.C. and she has gone on the air with me
talking about casino chips and stuff for sale. Most of the girl on the internet
just cant take it there is a real woman out there whos a x dancer who dose casino chips most woman who are into casino chips are so fat and old! from
the talk show i have learn that when a nice looking woman like her walks out on
the floor at a chip show it burns the fat & old girls up. i do know if kelly
ran for the Chif operating officer of the CC & GTCC just her look alone would
place her in it! who wants a fat old woman like Janice when you can have a
killer looking trim young chip collecting woman like her! also if she is a male, ill dame do her/it any day!
Scott Read - Talk show d.j. wqfs 90.9 Fm
Where the Music never stops

It was one of her many attempts to validate herself by creating a post from a fake person. This was the first time I believe that I ever reprimanded someone for a post. Nothing real nasty there, but a terrible insult to a very good friend of mine. But, the post is still there in the archives for anyone to see.

I don't think we ever deleted any posts on the board until we had a huge troll problem a couple years ago. Someone was coming on the board and posting nasty, insulting messages anonymously. I have no toleration for anonymous messages, especially ones that are controversial or insulting. So, to Mark Lighterman who mentioned he had an anonymous post deleted, that is why. I don't have time to try and decide if an anonymous post is legitimate or not, so, the policy is, that anonymous posts get deleted. Not picking on you Mark. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.

That was the first time that I ever allowed any monitors to actually delete a post without my prior approval. It was a tough decision, but one that was necessary. I took drastic action and made it so that no post would show up until it was approved. It was a huge pain for everyone and I recruited several more helpers in an attempt to make the messages show up quicker.

I took care to choose helpers that I felt were honest, reliable, fair and who used the board often enough to be effective in combating the troll posts. Everyone was tickled to death at the time to get their posts approved faster.

I believe the main reason to keep the identity of my helpers a secret was to keep them from being bothered by hordes of emails asking this and that and generally making life so hard for the helpers that they wouldn't want to be helpers anymore. There certainly was not a conspiracy then and there is none now.

I posted the message I did hoping that I would get some responses from you users. I got a lot of emails offering advice and support and I appreciate each one. Here are the comments I received:

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Of course this is your choice but I just thought I would mention one reason not to list the names. The constant accusations about a clique would only get worse if the names were published. I for one would hate to see any of these people have to put up with more bull just because they are helping you out.
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The fact that more than one person would have the stones to request or demand that you reveal your admins is to me, the height of arrogance! It IS your BB!
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Hi Greg!! for what its worth I have no itching need to know who the Admins are, wouldnt change the board and club that I love.
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My nickels worh, (unsolicited) is that you do what you have to. Do not get drawn into playing by their rules. If they find out who has the deleting power, then they will clamor for the info as to WHO deleted a certain post, and then to a WHY. Just because they CAN know something, does not mean that they SHOULD know. (or, just because one can publish something, does not mean that one should.)
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I don't see what has changed. It's not Rich or anyone else's business who is helping you. Rich wants to know, just because HE wants to know. If for no other reason, you should not tell him just because he is trying to pressure you into it. You already told him you were not going to say who they were a couple of weeks ago! And now he is asking again?
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I am still not sure why Rich is making such a big deal about it, but with him and Glenn both making trouble, it may be a way to pacify them. I tend to believe though as soon as the names are revealed, there will be more questions and more problems. You cant make ALL the people happy ALL the time, so I usually shoot for Most of the people, Most of the time.
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So, what to do. I do not want to inconvenience my helpers in any way. I don't feel right about naming any helpers that don't want to be named. At this time I have decided not to reveal who they are. If they want to tell you who they are, that is fine with me. I just don't feel right about doing it without their permission.

Now, for a few specifics.

Rich,
I truly don't believe that anyone has deleted one of your posts. All my helpers have told me that they have not deleted a post from you. I can't remember deleting one. You have made that assumption at least twice before, only to learn later that the posts were not deleted. I believe that you probably made a post, clicked the review button, then failed to click the post button. Poof, the message is gone. There are however two other scenarios that I would entertain as possibilities. One, it was deleted by accident by a helper while deleting spam posts. I could see where a normal post MIGHT get mixed in with them. Two, that it was a reply to a troll post. I always delete replies to troll posts.

Stu,
I know that some of your posts have been deleted. I don't however believe that any were deleted only because they expressed a differing opinion. I have some pretty strict rules about what posts are to be deleted and a differing opinion is NOT one of them. I don't believe that any of my helpers would do that. Of course, people are just people and if that did happen, I apologize.

You made me so mad one night that I typed something along the line of myself being done with you. That is pretty rare for me. No matter what I said it seemed you would pretty much ignore, then move off on a tangent about something else. To top it off, although you didn't call me a name personally that I can remember, you made numerous insulting generalizations about the people on the slabfree list. I felt insulted by that as I am on the slabfree list, but only because I believe in it.

I believe that the once you got mad and burned so many bridges around here, your only purpose since has been to "pay back" those that made you mad. I believe that you have even stated that on several occasions. Please stop. It is my board and I don't like it when that type of atmosphere prevails.

Glenn,
You weren't even subtle about it. Whenever someone disagreed with you, you started calling people names, insulting them and then posting scores of silly little messages just to annoy people. You keep tossing up Gene's statement where he said he would delete any messages of yours that he didn't like. Well, don't believe it. Gene knows very well what my guidelines are and he won't cross them. So, just because he said it doesn't mean he will do it, so just drop it until he does.

You also promptly deleted all your rude posts once I called you on it, then insisted that everyone immediately forget the childish way you acted and go on like nothing had ever happened. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. If you want to be a respected member of this community, you will have to work for it now.

I read every post that night you misbehaved so badly. Not once did I find a post that was uncivil to you. There were a lot that disagreed, but none were uncivil. You were clearly in the wrong and admitted it later. You are starting to do it again with these cracks to Bob Orme, spelling it as Orne and talking about him being drunk, etc. Quit it. You are also making cracks at Gene. Quit those also.

I insist that you behave. I didn't say submit, or conform, I said behave. If you can't say something nice about somebody, then say NOTHING at all.

To those of you that don't like Stu or Glenn:
Please don't instigate anything. Right or wrong, let's drop the horses a s s picture and anything similar, including the GG-1 picture. If everyone will stop at the same time then maybe we can get back to chip collecting.

To all:

I think I want to change my position on the deletion of posts. When rude and insulting posts were allowed to stay, all the users got to see for themselves how some people acted. Now it seems that we delete those posts so quickly, most people don't get to see how badly some have behaved and the misbehavors get treated like they are the ones being oppressed.

So, as of right now, my helpers are only allowed to delete posts that:

1)Show dirty pictures

2)Do some sort of work around so that a naughty word on the list is used in a post. Something similar to what I did above with the word a s s. But, don't delete this post.

3)Are anonymous, no real name and no real email address, troll posts. I'm not saying everyone has to use their real name. For example, "Mr Splashbar" is one that comes to mind. Everyone knows who he is and he has a valid email address in his message, so he isn't anonymous.

4)Imposter postings. These are ones where one person attempts to be perceived as another.

5)Posts where a user has libeled another user and the injured party requests that the post be removed.

6)Obvious spam posts

That's all I can think of right now. I might have missed a reason and if I did I will add it later. Although I don't think any posts have been deleted by my helpers that shouldn't have been, I guess I am open to the possibility that it could happen. If you believe it happens to you in the future, please email me.

Please treat this board as you would the street where you live. If you had a disagreement with a neighbor, you wouldn't run up and down the street yelling and screaming about him for all the other neighbors to have to listen to. You would probably phone them or pay them a visit and try to work out the problem. Please use the same type of restraint on this board.

Again, I don't want any replies to this post. If you want to comment, please send me an email. Don't be insulted if it takes me a week or two to reply as I have other obligations.

Greg