Note Millie

I kept my PMs so here they be -

Millie said:

Hey there,

I"d just like to let you know that I"ve lifted your two-week suspension and reinstated your account effective immediately. While I do feel that you were a bit out of line in the Rep Thread, I think I acted harshly and emotionally and that my response to your flames was a disproportionate response to your flames themselves.

So basically, I apologize for acting harshly on that thread. I understand that you"re probably going to be upset, and that"s cool. But know that I"m honestly trying to make amends here and smooth things over. You and I have always gotten along in the past, and I don"t want to see our recent fight sour what I think have been decent historic relations.

Thanks,
Me

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Millie said:

Arbitrary said:

I"m not upset. Ok, I was pissy in the half hour or so after I got banned but that doesn"t count.

That whole day was just a noxious mixture of weird and stupid. I have no idea why other people jumped on board to get banned over something as retarded as an argument about doing my doing a dumb thing to lamely protest a system I thought was dumb.

Then there was that crazy ass goodbye thread by what"s-his-face.

I"m just going to pretend that whole mess didn"t happen and chalk it up to moon rays or too much mercury in the tuna or something.

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Likewise, I"m not sure what the hell happened after you were suspended. Two or three nutjobs threw themselves on the funeral pyre, after which Tikkus had a crybaby QQ moment and declared his intentions to leave (blaming me for his decision). Shortly thereafter, my attempt to talk to Screenshots in an open thread about how things were going revealed that at least a few people were actively trying to stir up rebellion on your behalf. Evidently you were quite the unwitting cause for martyrdom!

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That thread was an abortion too and I still don"t think the people who got banned right after me ever got it lifted. Not long after that I hatched a bright idea to claim that the reason we now had +internets was it was a way of tracking who had multiple accounts. Who could resist giving themselves multiple plusses and giving others multiple negatives? No one! I sent Millie a PM explaining what I was doing.

Millie said:

Arbitrary said:

I"m telling a huge lie on purpose in The Best of Comments thread in the Screenshots forum and just thought I"d give you a heads up.

Personally I think it"s hysterical.

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But why promote such a lie in the first place? Now people are just going to start hassling me again. :\

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Soon after

Millie said:

What is wrong with you? Is this whole thing some weird attempt at "revenge" or something for your ban? I was under the impression that we were cool, but if that"s not the case, let me know.

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First of all everything is not aboutyou.Second, like I would say we weren"t cool so I could be instantly removed from existence.

Millie said:

Arbitrary said:

Millie said:

What is wrong with you? Is this whole thing some weird attempt at "revenge" or something for your ban? I was under the impression that we were cool, but if that"s not the case, let me know.

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It was supposed to spook all those people who do have secondary accounts but keep them masked and every good lie needs a sprinkle of truth so I made up a story to go with it

I sent you a PM so it was clear it wasnota jab at you.

Which it wasn"t and isn"t.

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It"s certainly playing itself out to be a huge clusterfuck for me. So thank you for that.

At this point I"d like you to fess up to this and admit everything on the thread in question. It"s the least you could do.

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Millie said:

Arbitrary said:

In the now "Shaw"d thread?

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Yes.

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Well what the fuck happened? With more information I think it is pretty clear that Millie was already circumventing the child-proof locks that the +internets was supposed to have and suddenly had a whole bunch of unwanted attention.

At that point I typed up a joke apology, deleted it, tried a real one, deleted it, and eventually settled on something short but reasonable. I hit reply and right after my post was a big crazy tirade from Millie about how this was the last straw, no more Mr Nice Girl, and how things were going to be different. He didn"t think I was going to apologize but I did and just got my post in before hers. She immediately deleted it and I didn"t think to take a screenshot so like so many posts he didn"t like it"s gone forever.

After that I just never replied to anything he said, said her name, and stayed as far as fuck away as possible. Getting banned for not obeying a ridiculous double standard is not my idea of fun.

Also, I"d like to let you all know that we, or at least I, did know what went on with Millie. Not all of it obviously, but enough to know there was something foul happening. I"d hear about it, fairly often, and unban people all the time. And believe it or not, I lurk these forums like fucking crazy. But as many have mentioned, Millie did do a good job of keeping many things in line for a long time. I figured take the good with the bad. Starting this business and making sure that this site and others like it have a place to live has consumed so much of my time that I appreciated the good work that Millie did do until it all came to a head with the banning of Zehn. Millie doesn"t get to ban members of this guild over the whole gender thing. I obviously sided with Ravvenn on the issue and the two of them duked it out over the issue until Millie left, which was coming anyway due to RL issues from what I understand.

Somebody earlier said something to the effect of "Why fuck with Millie about it?" That"s pretty much the attitude I took, and that"s what I would tell people when I unbanned them. Sure the whole thing was crazy, but I never really understood the motivation to get yourself banned. When I saw it in black and white on the forums I always got a chuckle but I was also always the one that had Millie in one ear and the person that got banned in the other, neither of them happy with whatever decision I made. This made the whole thing less funny for me.

Hallelujah.

Requiem said:

Also, I"d like to let you all know that we, or at least I, did know what went on with Millie. I"d hear about it, fairly often, and unban people all the time. But as many have mentioned, Millie did do a good job of keeping many things in line for a long time. I figured take the good with the bad. Starting this business and making sure that this site and others like it have a place to live has consumed so much of my time that I appreciated the good work that Millie did do until it all came to a head with the banning of Zehn. Millie doesn"t get to ban members of this guild over the whole gender thing. I obviously sided with Ravvenn on the issue and the two of them duked it out over the issue until Millie left, which was coming anyway due to RL issues from what I understand.

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That answers one of the questions I had about all of this; if this was known to be going on, why didn"t it get dealt with sooner?

I didn"t ask because I didn"t really feel it was my place, but thanks for volunteering the info.

Erronius said:

So 50 of Millie"s 83 +internets were her own? Didn"t see that coming. Now I don"t really care about him giving himself the internets as I am about him grinding an axe with several people. Is there any way to roll back those internets at all? I may be alone in thinking that James and Etoille (to name 2) don"t deserve what they got, when it looks like Millie was abusing it (but not surprising, after hearing about everyone that got banned).

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Appreciate the sentiment but really its internets on a message board. I forgot I had em, dont really care what they are as long as personal shit isn"t posted there.

It was fun to fuck around with Millie back when it was still funny. It was like 2-3 years that topics would get brought up fairly regularly about Millie"s gender, most of which were light hearted and fun. Then the bannings started and it wasn"t quite so funny anymore .

My other account was also a victim of the banning spree I wonder how many people were banned because I was just an ant in the whole scheme of things.

Anyway, reading Brit"s posts on Hoofshots is sort of the story Millie told Eomer. Brit was wanting to blast Millie but then changed his mind all of a sudden.

Duppin said:

That answers one of the questions I had about all of this; if this was known to be going on, why didn"t it get dealt with sooner?

I didn"t ask because I didn"t really feel it was my place, but thanks for volunteering the info.

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Because even with all this, Millie did moderate the boards pretty effectively. He would keep most threads that were teetering on child-porn and other undesirable/illegal subject matter as clean as possible. Millie devoted an insane amount of time to this and so you take the good with the bad in some cases.

Millie just chose to take this obsession too far with an FoH proper member. Heck, I liked Millie for the most part, I just thought, in a way, he was ASKING to be trolled. People knew it bothered him, so they did it and got banned.

Personally, I always was surprised when people were outraged after being banned after the Subect was broached. Even though I knew the banning were horseshit, when you poke someone with power over you, don"t be surprised when they use it... for good or ill.

Honestly, I have to think this thread is more or less the internet version of the discussion that went on in the Forum after Caligula died. Sighs of relief and recollections of nutjob megalomaniacal fuckhead.

The whole thing started when he attacked Justin and Justin attacked back.. plain and simple. Ever since then mere breathing about his gender would bring a quick ban and the thread deleted. Matter of fact the reason I had to stop posting at hoofshots is because Millie sent me a messaging saying if he saw m,y name over there again I was going to get banned and he would delete my account this time so there would be no more unbanning me.

Furor was/is still Gary Gygax, though, right? :/

Etoille said:

Appreciate the sentiment but really its internets on a message board. I forgot I had em, dont really care what they are as long as personal shit isn"t posted there.

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speak for yourself. i take my positive nets very seriously.

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well at the time it had taken me 6 months to get my account back.. I was tired of losing it to the stupid bastard.

And there is a big difference between banned and deleted.

Braen said:

Because even with all this, Millie did moderate the boards pretty effectively. He would keep most threads that were teetering on child-porn and other undesirable/illegal subject matter as clean as possible. Millie devoted an insane amount of time to this and so you take the good with the bad in some cases.

Millie just chose to take this obsession too far with an FoH proper member.

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See, that"s fine with me. All I"ve been saying throughout this whole thing is that I thought that Millie did a pretty good job moderating overall, and that I really couldn"t summon much sympathy for people who posted something they knew would get them banned.

Heck, the site that I help run is a lot smaller than this (albeit a lot more strictly moderated) and it takes up a lot less of my time than Millie probably spent here (particularly during baseball season, since it"s a baseball site). And yet, there are still times where I think "is this really how I want to spend my time?" Especially when I see things in my mod email that would make my -internets here look tame by comparison.

Regardless, I"m willing to retreat somewhat from my earlier position in this thread; I still think that Millie overall was probably an asset to these forums, since the gaming of the internets system only matters to me in the context of what other mod abuse there might have been that was going on. But it"s definitely all pretty damn weird.