RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Stalemate between two sets of cowards

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Originally posted by I'm Not Mister Mxypltk:
That Greybird dude chick sure seems like he needs some LLancing!

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Originally posted by Greybird:
I have seen a lot of strife in nearly 20 years of personal traffic on the Net, from 300-baud modems to broadband, from CompuServe to personal Bulletin Board Systems to AOL to Webbed discussion forums large and small. People have sniped, libeled, and threatened. Spam wars (heretofore only text) have abounded. Bad manners and imbicility have raged unchecked. I was mistakenly proclaimed to be dead, to all my on- and off-line friends, twice.

This situation tops them all in absurdity. No question about it.

I come back tonight to see that two sets of Netizens, both of them acting like cowards, have fought each other to a stalemate. With the emphasis on "stale."

One set is comprised of Rob's Board regulars who have taken it upon themselves to "enforce" what they've proclaimed as an ultimate "rule," about never deleting posts. Which, in the only time I've witnessed it from Kamphausen himself, had the distinct caveat about not doing it "unless it cannot be avoided." With discussion-disrupting spam, visual or not, it cannot be avoided.

You, the graffiti smearers, are each no more true to supposed principles -- or to sound judgments -- than any asshole punk with a can of spray paint on the subway at 3:00 in the morning. Try really looking in the mirror and deluding yourself into thinking otherwise.

And the other set is comprised, apparently, of three of the Legion board moderators (EDE apparently being absent), who took it upon themselves to respond to this by simply locking all the board's threads and leaving. Including those for many thriving and substantive discussions, and some such as trivia that were perking along with fun and whimsy. Thus trashing the place in their own way, and not giving a damn about a hundred or so other people who were coming to genuinely appreciate this venue -- and thought that the moderators would actually do their job.

You, the moderators who finally refused to do what they were chosen to do, were no more consistent than the cybertaggers to any notion of creating a valuable meeting place. And you have betrayed the trust of many people, those who voted for you and those who did not. You clearly didn't bother to bring all this up to Rob himself, to try to find a solution, before you locked the inner doors to the virtual LHQ house and bolted.

I am disgusted with both of you.

For letting this happen, though, knowing as he must the personalities in the first group, and not cautioning the new moderators in the second, I am putting the ultimate blame -- quite reluctantly -- on our host, Rob Kamphausen.

I fear that Rob is terminally naive -- the terminal state applying, in this instance, to LHQ, which is now dead, and unlikely to be revivable. "No rules" does not work. Rob should have anticipated that a situation like this would be likely to come along. Especially with it appearing that the Legion-fan refugees from the old DC boards were getting some special consideration, with this new Legion-focused section. Many of us thought it to be a practical move, but obviously that also was the core irritant for many of the regulars around here.

Well, it's Rob's property, by server use and Internet contracts. He has a right to, it seems, not give a damn about it. We who are left, on the other hand, should know when it's time to move on.

I, for one, had warmed greatly to this place and its vigor, in the month since Warner Bros. shut down the old UBB-software-based DC boards. It was promising in its ferment and friendliness. It was a place to continue contacts and mutual support, and it had great fruit hanging from the virtual trees, with art initiatives such as the Legion smilies and other promising threads.

Even some creators of distinction -- Steve Lightle, Dave Cockrum, perhaps others who hadn't yet done more than lurk -- had come over here. So what kind of children, in mental age, are they going to think inhabit Legion fandom now?

This was sad and dismaying, to lose this venue at about the one-month mark after the mass exodus from the older, friendlier DC boards. The degree of absurdity, as I said, is unique. Yet forums have vanished from under me before, and I'll be moving on.

LegionPics, LegionFiction, LMBP (all of these at Yahoo! Groups), and even the new and highly cumbersome DC boards, they all still offer contacts and discussion, and I'll be around on those venues. I'm likely to have some harsh words about this elsewhere, but we'll all get past that eventually, if there's anything more enduring to be kept in such on-line relationships ... and it's almost always to be found somewhere.

I'll tie up two loose threads from this unraveled fabric before I go out the door, since I had something to do with one of them at the end.

The poll about the Legion Substitutes, whether they should be part of the Legion Academy (11 votes) or an independent organization (9 votes), ended about an hour and a half ago. (The moderators didn't even care to stay to see that such a task was completed.)

And the last question, which I posed, in the Legion Trivia thread was: "Which snack did Dawnstar decline to eat, and who made it?" It was a cookie made by Star Boy's mother on Xanthu, "LSH" v3 n28.

This last is appropriate, speaking of cookies. I will now go to delete the cookies for RobKamphausen.com from my browser, along with the bookmark -- and along with much of my respect for him.

I won't be back. Not with someone as an ultimate host who -- with whatever degree, or not, of oversight and caring -- lets his own venue self-destruct. I do, again, thank him for providing this forum in the first place. On a night like this, however, such a thought doesn't at all make up for what has happened.

With this, my 138th and final post, I say: Good night, LHQ.

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