Barada said:
Borsk, I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate a bunch of long time members coming in, and calling you a 'parasite' (an actual term used to describe Wise in that thread), accusing you of playing political games to get a preferred result, or calling you a whore...
Hmm...
Are you comparing me to Phil Wise? I'm not sure how I feel about that.
It's true that I wouldn't appreciate being called those things if I were in PW's postion. However, PW is the one that put himself in that position. So, I guess I have trouble feeling sorry for him.
Plus, it seems like RS has a negative environment in their forums. It appears to be fairly commonplace for people to rip into each other over there. Why wouldn't they rip into PW too?
I suppose you could take these statements as anti-RS. The truth is that I couldn't care less about who the Star Wars Fan Club President is. It's not out of character for PW/RS to do whatever it takes to get what they want. This is why I'm not surprised by the results of the "election". As far as calling out Roberts -- That's fine and all, but he's not exactly the man behind the curtain. I was just pointing that out.
Barada said:
It took criticism down to juvenile insults and immaturity. Wise could have easily banned everyone that made comments like those, but closed the thread instead.
I disagree with this a little...
If you have a member in your forum that is causing problems by posting things that are against the rules, the correct response is a warning and then a ban. Depending on the severity of the issue, you can skip the warning and go straight for the ban. As you do this for the person (or people) breaking rules, you should make it clear that you're in the process of banning people for certain things and that if those things continue, more people will be banned. If you're unable to maintain control in this way, then you can consider closing threads. But, you should never need to close a thread.
The problem for PW and RS is that it appears that they're more upset about the topic of discussion rather than any rule breaking (cussing, etc). The appearance is that they're trying to squash out any reasonable discussion of the situation and would rather just sweep it under the carpet.
When you close a thread, you're telling people that the topic cannot be discussed further. When you warn/ban someone, you're telling that individual to change the manner in which he discusses something. There's a difference.