That today an example has been made out of the poster formerly known as Dan Locke. Let it not be said that I am a cruel and capricious God. Nay, that would be unfair. The truth of it, and it pains me to admit it, is that I am a blood-hungry cruelty-lusting demon lord of incalculable malice who revels in nothing less than the utter destruction and demoralization of the puny and sniveling race of man. From the loins of Adam was born a species so incapable of change and learning that Lucifer himself gave me divine charter to wreak what havoc I could upon their miserable crowns. Let it be known, from this day on, I shall not suffer upon myself your insolence, mongrels.

TLDR: Dan Locke was banned for being a jackass.

What happened?

...I third Taku, though I think I saw some of it. Also, the long paragraph = win. And it reminds me of this.

I’m gone for twelve hours and something happens? Why do I always miss these things?

Ah. Actually, I thought it had to do with the name change. That kind of pissed me off, and even though I severely disagreed with him on a lot of things early on, I didn’t outright dislike him until that. That was sort of distasteful.

I assume you warned him beforehand, right?

LS, you’re back!

Don’t worry about me, I’ll just pluck thoughts out of your puny minds.

Dan Locke has generally been a prick his entire time here, but crossed the line changing his name to Adolph Hyphen.

It’s hugely insulting, mainly because my great grandfather fought in it, and a good portion of my friends and family have relatives who have fought in that (and many other) wars, and also why I get really, really angry when people are blatantly disrespectful of military or religion, and even people’s sexuality. It’s a huge problem in the world, and I’m sick of it. Good riddance.

^ Has been re-written four times so it doesn’t come off as flameish.

If we’re going to ban people for being irritating and non-contribution, he better not be the only one to go, then.

^^Yeah, I’m agreeing with Spanman. Besides a raise of the eyebrow, I wasn’t particularly unnerved by his name change. Of course, I can see why people might be upset over it.

Well, just FYI, I wasn’t offended by his posts especially, though his name change raised an eyebrow. They were a bit irritating sometimes, but dealing with irritating people is part of life, and occasionally he posted amusing things.

I would like to comment on the idea of getting rid of some other irritating/non-contributing members. Firstly, annoying people are part of life. Deal with it. Also, what may be annoying to one member may be hilarious to another. i think unless a member crosses a line, ignores warnings, or spams deliberately (as opposed to innocent spamming, which new members can be prone to, but often grow out of pretty quickly) then they should be left alone. This may be a private forum, but not everyone has time to make thoughtful posts on a regular basis or participate in writing.

The symbol only has the power you give it. Laughing at something, telling jokes about it, not taking it seriously, that’s how you delegitimize it. Fearing it does nothing except give rednecks ways to intimidate you.

Feel free to disagree, but I bet Mel Brooks would’ve laughed.

Laughing at something, telling jokes about it, not taking it seriously, that’s how you delegitimize it.

Which is why I don’t call people out for calling themselves grammar Nazis, and why I think The Producers is one of the most hilarious musicals I’ve seen (outside of Men in Tights and The Music Man). Hey, I think Hogan’s Heroes is funny. I don’t think Hetalia: Axis Powers is bad because it laughs at the countries of Europe.

But while I don’t think Dan was being deliberately anti-Semitic, he wasn’t exactly being sensitive, either. And I thought the name was funny, but the icon was not, which is what I took issue with.

Also, it’s probably a good idea to let the bans die down now, because the last thing we want is a witch hunt. Or the Spanish Inquisition.

And NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I wasn’t offended by it. It seems to me to just be a joke gone wrong and carried a little too far. Those happen sometimes, and I personally want to kill myself whn I realise it’s just happened to me. So maybe he’s embarrassed right now. I don’t think he was doing it on purpose.

Has his enforced absence been explained to him? Was he warned at all?

Some people are just the way they are. Dan Locke wasn’t annoying the whole of II unanimously. He participated a lot on the Serious Discussion side, so I don’t think you can call him a mindless sh*tposter. He probably thought he was just joking around, and everybody accepted him for that, albeit with a lot of eyerolling and a few remarks. And then he’s banned.

And also, I’m going to say this because I don’t know if anybody else will: How do we know that we’re not going to get banned just for being us? Some case could be building up against us and we’d have no idea, and then one day we’d go a little too far with some joke or something or stop contributing to the writing side of things and then BAM! we’re gone.

Sorry, but I’ve got to say what I think.

Umm… if you can find any article that he commented on and click his name, it will open up annoying-ass Outlook (or at least it does for me when I click people, unless they have a website), and it should give it to you I would think. I don’t know for sure because Outlook is not set up on my computer, and I don’t intend to set it up, and I also can’t change the default e-mail to web-based mail, so…. And I logged out and got on as a guest. This thread is visible, since you were wondering, Sansa.

And I think I agree mostly with Steph, but I’m trying to stay out of this… it’s just that she said a bunch of stuff that I was thinking. Dan did help me out once, which was weird given how he acted toward me before that, but it was really nice. There are probably reasons that I’m not aware of, which is why I don’t want to get involved in the argument. Anyway, that’s all intend to say on the matter.

Greetings,

Dan Locke’s account has been reinstated, and his account name has been restored.

I’d also like to note something about participating in a community. To contribute to a community it’s not simply enough to just obey the rules and not do anything actively destructive. Even if your posts aren’t making the forum worse, they are still diluting the forum. So try to make your posts constructive or thought provoking.

Also, it’s summer now, so expect to see me around more. Maybe some articles, maybe some long overdue fixes for the site, maybe some organized mockery of Eclipse.