Chat fight!

I've only been to that channel a few times, but weren't there some troublemakers there? I'm not surprised chrish finally got tired of their shit.

Aw, they're our slashnet neighbors now. I just can't stay mad at those guys. *ruffles #mefi's hair*

I tried to post the following comment in the MeTa thread, but keep getting (surprise, surprise) error messages saying that "The routine "balanceTags" has been declared twice in different templates."

#mefi jumped the shark a long time ago anyway. Once, it was a great place to hang out and nobody took things personally no matter how bizarre the comments seemed, which is essential for the "anything goes" atmosphere that existed then. When people started to think that #mefi had to be a certain way, it started to lose its appeal for me and, I suspect, many others. I met some cool people there and had some great times, but it ceased to be anything to do with MetaFilter itself a long time ago and, as with everything, the time to die must come sooner or later. For what it's worth (which I realise is so close to zero as to not be worth mentioning), I would be glad to see the assocation with MetaFilter ended, because the channel no longer represents the community in any way. Unfortunately, I suspect that it gave us a glimpse into the future of MetaFilter if it continues to develop the way it has over the past six months or so.

RIP, #mefi.

Ah, now I see - the thread is closed. So, instead of a little message saying "sorry, this thread is now closed" or something equally sane, I get that.

Of course, mosch and Steve_at_Linnwood just sealed the fate of #mefi once and for all, I suspect, with their infantile mewlings. Perhaps it's for the best that it be put out of it's misery.

Chat fight!

*moahahaha* Well, when you're right, you're right carter. ;)
I just spotted that the thread was clsoed as well dg - probably for the best, looked like it was already becoming a hissyfitting-ring.

Matt's comment before closing the thread made me laugh out loud. Given all the shit he takes, it was perfect to see such a clear example of the kind of thing he has every right to roll his eyes about.

MetaFilter: allllrighty then!

i stopped going there when all the people i liked kept getting banned for nothing.

Unfortunately, I suspect that it gave us a glimpse into the future of MetaFilter if it continues to develop the way it has over the past six months or so.

When you get a small group of people who hang out someplace all the time, they eventually become very propietary about it, not to mention getting sick of each other and developing grudges. #mecha isn't immune to this.

Before I snuck in on the April membership opening, I hung out at #mefi quite a bit for, um, about a year. Not as often, mind you, as the core that are there hours and hours every day. But, anyway, for the most part people were quite friendly and I got along with everyone there pretty well, excepting beth but definitely including ryvar and quonsar. Q, in fact, was always nicer than most there, something that many #mefi newbies would comment upon given his mefi persona. There never was, while I was there at least, a hostile atmosphere in the channel. However, there was a "cooler than thou" vibe that any place like that will inevitably have and there was a somewhat hostile relationship to much of metafilter (when the targets weren't visiting #mefi!). Comments were constantly being reposted with a "haha! what a dork!" aside. A number of hardcore #mefi folks had become almost completely absent from metafilter, too, and (not unrelatedly) quite critical of it.

Taken all together, in my opinion this created something that really didn't have any business being apparently officially associated with metafilter. It was its own thing, and often hostile to metafilter.

It's very interesting to me that there's some overlap between people who dislike mofi and mecha for being too chatty and inane and the hardcore irc people. That's extremely strange and counterintuitive to me, as I find any sort of dynamic chatting to be incredibly inane. It's all small talk of the smallest sort.

I stopped going there when all the people I liked kept being treated like shit.

mediareport, I agree - the comments that started coming out were the final proof (as if more was needed) that it is time for #mefi to die.

Seriously.

I'm bummed for the #mefi folks. It sucks to lose a network/community. Even with a new one in place, you always lose stragglers. As I mentioned to mudpuppie in-channel on #metachat, I don't feel at all that even a majority of #mefi is "bad apples" or whatever. I really do feel for them.

On the other hand, I place a small part of the blame on them not self-policing and not ejecting their few bad apples. I'd been there quite a few times a long time ago before I really even had an idea of what S@L is usually like online, and was quite entertained by the folks there.

Even with #metachat I don't have all that much time to hang out and gab, anyway, but the signal to noise ratio there has just been much more attractive and socially useful, so, I dunno. YMMV.

I got along with everyone there pretty well, excepting beth

Don't worry about that, nobody gets along with Beth. The rest of them never bothered me, I've been flamed by the best, and I keep coming back up.

who was/were the moderator/s there?

Don't worry about that, nobody gets along with Beth. The rest of them never bothered me, I've been flamed by the best, and I keep coming back up.
posted by jonmc 29 August | 20:31

Jon, I can't speak to anyone's behavior in #mefi, but beth has been somewhat regular on #mecha and has been nothing but pleasant.

Maybe it was the room?

who was/were the moderator/s there?

I know S@L was a mod. Not sure who else.

Mudpuppie: Seconded.

Don't worry about that, nobody gets along with Beth.

I do. : P

I get along just fine with beth. Lots of people don't, though.

#mefi was cool, except for the mean-spirited pranks (and some vendettas), which, I guess, were born of boredom, but which may have seiously worked against them in that fewer people felt brave enough to try it out, and it became more and more disassociated from the site. If the users had been a little more broadbased, it would have probably saved them - if not on chris' channel (which he might have closed down, whatever the circumstances), then at least keeping it associated with mefi proper.

It's sad, because you want to root for the kids - they had their badboy schtick going on, and that was kind of funny, and they really were ready and able to help people out who needed some technical chops, but in a lot of thoughtless windmilling-arms sorts of ways, they did sort of fuck themselves over by eventually alienating so many people. They could have found a good neighbors-groove kind of thing here, for example, in a separated-but-associated way that wouldn't embarrass them, which is kind of what I was hoping for, but for some reason, they decided they would rather attack us. Again, I really put it down to boredom antics, but it's a shame.

I don't know anything about attacks made by #mefi residents on #metachat... Please don't think that all #mefi visitors knew/planned/approved of any ruining of your fun.

Of course, mosch and Steve_at_Linnwood just sealed the fate of #mefi once and for all, I suspect, with their infantile mewlings.

My problem with Steve_at_Linnwood was just that he liked to ban/kick me (and several others) on a whim. As far as I can tell the problem is now solved.

If you want to blame it on us, I'll happily take credit... but I don't think that's accurate. As much as Steve v Mosch was public, the only time chris was involved were the two times that steve kickbanned me. And I didn't say anything to chris the second time, somebody else did.

My understanding is that chris was receiving several emails a day complaining about offensive language... in response to this he tried to push rules regarding language and racial slurs... this obviously didn't go over well in a channel where 'JEWS DID WTC' and what not... and it just made for a bad scene. I think a change of ownership is for the best.

I don't think that mosch/steve sealed the fate of #mefi, though it might have sealed the fate of the MeTa thread about #mefi. ;)

Regarding whether all #mefi people "knew/planned/approved of any ruining of your fun", I didn't really think so, but it's all been very opaque to me. I couldn't really make out who was doing what, or why. Especially "why". I personally have some good friends who have been quite active at #mefi... and, as a site, we have lots of members who also hung out there frequently, so I never thought it was everybody.

I know we had a few people from #mefi here in the beginning who basically started out just wanting to make mischief, but who were really also okay, and ended up participating in a more fun and interesting way - but then came round two (or maybe three) of #mefi assaults (though I honestly believe that some of them weren't really that into it)... which just kind of cancelled any more hopeful possibilities. And it's too bad - I kind of miss them.

Of course, it is not all black and white by any means and I an sad that #mefi seems to have come to an end with a whimper - I enjoyed some really good times there and a couple of people there helped me when things were very very low for me and when nobody in the real world wanted to know, so I wil always have time for #mefi.

My comment about what was said on the MeTa thread was simply saying that those two comments (and there would have been a whole lot more shit if the thread had not been closed when it was - be honest, now) pretty much summed up the public side of the issues around #mefi and you both broke rule #1 - what goes on on #mefi stays there. As much as I have a soft sport in my heart for #mefi, I would have done the same thing if I was chris and I would have taken away the irc.metafilter.com pointer a long time ago, because the channel started to reflect really badly on the community. Considering the kind of shitstorms that come up at MeFi, that is really saying something.

Mosch, I wasn't really blaming to downfall of #mefi on you and Steve_at, but I suspect that, if mathowie was wavering, those two comments sealed the fate of #mefi being associated with MeFi any longer - I would have done the same thing. Sometimes, things just grow into something that no longer fits. The comments that I have seen about the rules chris tried to enforce don't sound like the chris I know and I am sure there is more to that story than has been made public. #mefi was always an "anything goes" place and I don't recall chris ever having a problem with that. I would be curious to know the real deal, but I doubt that it will ever all come to light.

I miss the #mefites too - when they play nice, they are a great bunch.

I don't at all feel/think that it was all #mefi that did the channel attack. I've had fun there, and there's good folks there.

In retrospect it was Steve@Linwood and Ryvar. Ryvar was put up to it by S@L, and he pretty quickly got bored of it and has openly owned up to it and even apologized, going so far as to help us secure the channel afterwards and teach people about IRC, myself included.

S@L consistently denies he had anything to do with it - which speaks volumes about his character. Before he blows in here blathering and blustering "Lies! All lies!" he was the first to seize the channel, and I've still got the logs. I knew it was coming, I tried to hold the channel and then my connection burped and he got ops, and the rest is history. (And it's not like I set them aside all special-like or anything, my IRC/IM client automatically logs and archives all messages and spits copies out to a server for backups, 'cause I use my logs for references for projects and links and whatnot.)

I don't like S@L, and it has little to do with his politics or even his abrasiveness. Hell, I can be abrasive, and I even like abrasive. He's decidedly an asshole, his ethics extend about as far as his own amusement - which is pretty shallow, and I don't trust him as he's violated that trust repeatedly. One of the things he's stated that bother him the most is the "posting of logs", which he's done repeatedly for his own amusement. He also bitches incessantly about whiners, but that's just about all that I see him ever do on MetaFilter.

He may not behave like this in real life, but online he behaves like a sociopath, with identifiable symptoms of schizophrenia.

I'm pretty sure that this isn't just a clash of egos or personalities. Others have expressed the same opinions and feelings about S@L both publically and privately. Perhaps I'm simply seeing him from "the outside" of his clique - but even if this is so, that there would be a difference between "inside" and "outside" behavior would be indicative of all of the above arguments. I'm pretty confident this isn't just a case of misunderstanding, and I can smell a Sadist and a bully miles away. And I don't like nor do I tolerate bullies.

That being said, in my view he's not welcome on #metachat - unless explicitly told otherwise by MeCha admins. I would go so far as to say that he could be banished entirely from MetaFilter, MetaChat, Monkeyfilter and any related circles and nothing worthwhile would be lost. (There would certainly still be plenty of entertaining or constructive tension on MeFi without him.) The only person with anything to lose in such a scenario would be Steve@Linwood himself.

My public stating of all of these opinions might not be cool, or hip, or even peaceable - but frankly I don't give a fuck about hip or cool, and I tried peaceable and peaceful already. I'm not here for a popularity or hipster irony contest, I'm here primarily for three things: community, discussion/debate and shared information. In my opinion, S@L is simply noise and destructive interference opposed to those goals.

Cue: Peak Oil and/or S@L, stage center, improving something lackwit.

Well, now we have a problem, because Steve can't respond here.

For anyone who wants to talk to/with/at/about steve@, I say maybe try the ieattapes blog, and then you can link here to any conversation there, if pertinent.

I thought he had an account here? Or did he get locked out?

locked out, sadly. It's not an option that we ever wanted to use, but there were #mefi schemes for fucking up the site, and who's going to be here 24/7 to make sure something drastic doesn't happen?

Ah, figures. I don't/didn't really want to get so unhinged about someone that can't reply in defense of themselves. My feelings and opinions about the matter are undoubtably ugly, but genuine and protective.

Well look - a tiny bit off-topic, but - think about the recent hurricane disaster, or the tsunami before that... Would you help Steve and his family if you could? Do you think he would help you if he could? Does all this silly internet tribal warring stuff fade into total, fucking, ridiculous obscurity when thinking about stuff like that?

My guess is that the answer to all the above is "yes". Well, that's pretty much how I feel about this stuff all the time.

It's not that offtopic, and that's an excellent point and a perspective I need.

Would I? Probably. Would he? I honestly don't know, and wouldn't be too willing to trust that it would happen - partly because of his uncaring behavior, and honestly partly because of certain political statements he's made.

If we were just random next door neighbors in a disaster rather than remote users on the internet? Probably, most likely "yes" in both situations. People often come together in surprising ways when confronted with adversity. We are inherently social and tribal, despite all indications otherwise.

But that's neither here nor there, and the importance of one facet doesn't preclude the importance of another.

It's not really the "internet tribal warring" I'm worried about at all, and it's not why I personally don't enjoy his company. I don't view him as the bullying leader of some aggressive tribe. I view him as an individual devisively opposed to community in general, in particular, our community and MetaFilter. That opinion may be wrong, but I've got nothing else but prior behavior to base that opinion on.

I worry about this stuff because it stifles and scares off genuinism, openess, and sincerity. Softness. Socialness. Friendliness. Even love. Whether it happens online or not, I place deep value on these things.

I could put it this way:

Would you be willing to bare your soul, your deepest, most true troubles and burdens with S@L in the channel? Your faults? Your weaknesses? Your dreams? I wouldn't be comfortable with that with S@L, but I'm more than comfortable doing that with others in #metachat that are more-or-less perfect strangers, and perhaps my unwillingness to do that with someone like S@L is a fault or weakness of my own.

I feel that he's burned through way too much trust equity for my comfort level. And I strongly suspect from his reactions to honest pleas that he doesn't even care at all. Hence my opinion that he's a sociopath (at least by all online indications), and I don't bandy that term about lightly.

So, it's totally not a matter of tribe vs. tribe in my stance or opinions. It's a matter of taking social networks and online communities at least just seriously enough to actually give a damn that there's real human beings involved. It's a matter of hardened hearts vs. softened ones.

And: Mea culpa. I'm often guilty of being abrasive, confrontational, reactional, or just plain haphazard in expressing this. Even antagonistic. But goddamnit, I give a shit. I'm passionate about this stuff. And if those that disagree with me (not you, taz) about the importance of genuinism - especially in online communities - feel the need to call me a hopeless idealist in response, it wouldn't be the first time, and it wont be the last.

And to commit the unforgiveable sin of quoting myself, here's one reason why I give a shit:

Something just crystallized for me. The thing that fascinates me most about all this online, geography-less archipelago-ness is that eventually, someone(s), somewhere(s) is going to formulate an entirely *new* form of self-government, rule, and social order based on these 'toys' we've been playing with - because toys are tools, tools to play with to learn to use real tools - and run with it. One that doesn't require friction and a reduction in one's "me-ness" to work at any level. And it's going to work, by fuck. And we're gonna dance in the streets and gleefully, delightfully tear down all the old, broken, non-working *things* and recycle them right there - wherever we are right then - into what really works for right now. And just maybe then, we'll all realize that law, morals, justice, and order are mutable, ductile. As flexible as we want them to be. And we'll grow like kudzu towards the stars. Why did it take X years for me to be able to put that into words? It's always been there!

So... See... here we are again, talking shit about one particular person, when that person can't talk back. I know that I'm probably at fault for asking "would he help you", but I didn't mean it as an invitation to conjecture about all sorts of possible behavior on the part of steve@.

So, just to be clear, any further discussion about steve needs to happen elsewhere.

Yeah I think we need to leave steve out of the thread here because it's really, really unfair to discuss him in a public forum where he has no right of reply.

I don't like banning people from this site and I'd prefer if we saw it almost like a contract: in return for him not annoying people here we have to respect the fact that we can't really talk about him.

The alternative is that we have grudges expressed across multiple forums and we really don't want that no matter how passionate we may feel about these issues.

Thanks.

Any time you quasi-arbitrarily put one user in control of another user, you get trouble. Ask Jessamyn. #mefi died a long time ago. What's been left has been a staggering, gizmo-zombie. Good riddance.

loquacious: I hope you're compiling all your comments in this thread into a book, because I'd hate to see all that useless text go to waste.

Posted on behalf of Steve@ who cant defend himself here. And I may add who has helped me out on many occasions. I am proud to call him friend. Loquacious maybe you should stop making judgements and false assumptions about people you barely know.

--------------------------------

I guess I am flattered that loquacious is still obsessing over me.

I really don't have much to say, save that the whole me & mosch thing did not have anything to do with the shut down of #mefi.

Chris said he was getting emails complaining about dirty jokes and off color humor. Chris then set up bot to log the channel, so he could better find out what was going on when people emailed him. Several people basically dared him to ban them by letting lose with a onslaught of swear words and racial epithets. Chris implemented the now infamous Rule #4 banning sexually or racially offensive comments. Some people, uncomfortable about being told what they could and could not say left. The next day Chris pulled the plug.

In retrospect it was Steve@Linwood and Ryvar. Ryvar was put up to it by S@L

Well, you can believe what ever you want to believe. Did I come to #metachat to see what was going on? Yes. Did I take over the channel? No. Did I put Ryvar up to it? No. Did Ryvar tell you that I did? Yes.

I would go so far as to say that he could be banished entirely from MetaFilter, MetaChat, Monkeyfilter and any related circles and nothing worthwhile would be lost.

Well, I really don't see how it is your place to "banish" anyone. You participated in some pretty repugnant behavior yourself.

The channel will be moving to a new server soon, and everyone, as always is welcome there.

This will be my last post on the subject. In the future, I promise to try as hard as I can to never refer to S@L or bitch about him here on metachat.org ever again.

First and foremost, I want to retract my statement that S@L was the original channel hijacker. It was indeed Nerudan(Ryvar):

Session Start (slashnet:#metachat): Thu Jul 14 15:18:44 2005
[15:18] *** Initial topic: OWNED BY THE CABAL, BITCHES
[15:18] *** #metachat: loquacious agropyron Linnwood @NerudanAFK
[15:18] * NerudanAFK high-fives Linnwood
[15:18] *** #metachat was created on Thu Jul 14 15:14:36 2005.
[15:18] NerudanAFK: Fuck yeah
[15:19] loquacious: cute
[15:19] Linnwood: lol
[15:19] *** Mode change "+o Linnwood" for channel #metachat by NerudanAFK.
[15:19] loquacious: Enjoy.
[15:19] *** Mode change "+b *!*loqzilla@*.ph.ph.cox.net" for channel #metachat by Linnwood.
Session Close (#metachat): Thu Jul 14 15:19:29 2005

But S@L is right there. For the non-IRC metachatters here, that +b in the last line is Steve kickbanning me from #metachat. Make of that what you will.

Loquacious maybe you should stop making judgements and false assumptions about people you barely know.

I tried very, very hard in my last post to frame and keep my comments specifically to my opinions and feelings based on my direct interactions with him. I don't have anything else to go by. I tried to be clear that I was not stating facts, I was stating observations and opinions and feelings. If he's such a nice guy, why is he so mean to so many others, and why do so many bitch about it? Anyway. The post before that one was over the top and probably uncalled for.

In my last post, it's possible to extract all the comments specifically about Steve@Linnwood himself and still have a strong argument against bullies and for online communities in general.

Unfortunately I've clouded and confused that argument with anger. I'm sorry. Try to read between the lines and not focus on S@L. It's not just about him.

And finally, from just a few minutes ago on #metachat:

[15:11] dreamghost: well i can say one thing
[15:11] dreamghost: you were not one of the ones who gloated about us losing our channel
[15:12] loquacious: Losing shit for stupid reasons sucks. I can't support that.

And I stand by that. My condolences to the #mefi crew are as sincere as they can possibly be. Having a working, living, breathing network yanked out from under your feet really sucks. I hope you can rebuild and regroup.