Thanks for outing this mess. It would seem that corruption is corruption, regardless of the philosophical leanings of the corrupted.

Cent13

"I was further heartened when people who supported me (and the vast number who supported ELGS) called for Michael's resignation, and saddened when the Board and the administration ignored those people."

it has since been revealed that the adminstration of the time (specifically myself, Octavia and Dean) resigned precisely because we asked ToM to step down, and precisely because the BoD ignored us, and ultimately RBH left for the same reasons. I can say for myself, and most likely for the others, that we disagreed with ST's removal from the adminsistrative staff, but as is clear, we were never in a position to do anything about it. As administrators, we were rendered impotent by the decisions of the BoD.

"My opinion on the admin turnover is that it takes a certain kind of people to work effectively with the BoD"

Well then I am afraid to say that your take on the admin turnover is fundamentally flawed. In the run up to our resignation, there was little to no interaction directly with the BoD. As the people who had been put in place to ensure that things ran smoothly at IIDB the majority of the administrators, all of whom had significant experience and tens of thousands of posts and spent many hours dealing with the users of the IIDB board, decades of cumulative experience, we realised that one of the major sticking points that was contributing to the unsettlement was the continued presence of "The Other Michael" in a dual admin/BoD role. As a result, we collectively and privatedly asked him to resign from his position as adminstrator and we were completely ignored by the BoD.

if by homogeneous, then perhaps yes, you now have a homogeneous group of people who will pander to whatever is said, regardless of its effect on the community. Since the breakdown we have seen wave after wave of utter disaster. E/C is now a shadow of its former self, and other fora have suffered.

Quite frankly I am insulted by many of the insinuations you have made in your posts, particularly the first, and I feel that it demeans the strong efforts that people have put in, which were ultimately brushed aside and ignored by the IIDB BoD, and effectively making them look blameless in this whole affair.

The reader is left to draw their own conclusion, concerning the greatness of falls.

When I was asked to join the Administration, I was happy because I thought I could curb some of the disturbing trends that I saw taking hold at IIDB. When Maverick and ToM decided to unilaterally ban ELGS I had a serious problem with their conduct. I haven't tried to hide that me and ToM had previous conflict, but I was shocked when I was removed from my position without warning or a chance to defend myself. My primary objection with Michael's actions is that he let the heat of the moment overwhelm his common sense and then refused to admit that he'd made any mistake.

I was further heartened when people who supported me (and the vast number who supported ELGS) called for Michael's resignation, and saddened when the Board and the administration ignored those people.

Still, during this exchange, my primary motivation was to do the right thing. Even though I got removed from my position I stand behind my actions.

I would be very interested to see the results of the 2008 fundraiser.

Gotta love the free market of heathen message boards!

RBH, I appreciate you posting that for my benefit, but I must say it's only what I had already surmised on my own regarding your resignation. The only difference being that I also factored in a heaping dollop of burnout, since you were busting your butt in superhuman fashion for several weeks straight. My opinion on the admin turnover is that it takes a certain kind of people to work effectively with the BoD, and those kind of people have been, until very recently, in the minority in the ACR and MCR. The current makeup in the MCR/ACR is substantially more homogeneous after all the resignations, and while that's good for getting things done a bit quicker, it has also led us into making moderation mistakes that we wouldn't have three months ago.

Re: The creation of "Lead Admin", etc... I don't like how that was handled. After the announcement of the new/rearranged positions, I thought, as did many people, that the BoD would distance itself from daily admin duties, and Michael would be relieved of his daily admin duties. From the view in the MCR, it did seem as though you (RBH) were "above" Michael, but I suppose things could have appeared differently in the ACR. In any case, Michael remained an admin - something that I did not expect. I can see advantages and disadvantages to distancing the BoD from daily operations, and I think there would be a small net advantage to letting regular admins/mods run the daily show, but the denial of that advantage isn't something I'm terribly upset about. I'm actually more annoyed with being misled (purposely or not) by the creation/rearrangement of positions.

Laurie - Re: The $12,000 from 2006 fundraiser and $10,000 from the 2007 fundraiser... $10,000 per year goes to the web host, Rackspace. The remaining $2000 was an unexpected bonus, and will be used for hosting in the event that future fundraisers fall short of needs. The MCR/ACR, unfortunately, are BYOB, as you no doubt noticed while you had access to MCR. Adam is correct, AFAIK, regarding refunds.

Adam - I don't think you should have to make any concessions. If you like using IIDB and are willing to follow the rules as set by the BoD, you're welcome to use it. If not, then don't use IIDB, but find some other home that's more to your liking instead. Gotta love the free market of heathen message boards.

We actually did implement several things that people had been clamoring for. The Town Hall was opened, in part because many people complained of having their policy discussions sent the the ~E~ "garbage forum". Unfortunately, without the manpower to keep order in TH, things got out of hand, and now TH is shuttered for awhile. Another concession we made, admittedly token as it was, was the changing of the custom titles under screennames from "Veteran User" to "Veteran", and so on. Lots of people found "user" insulting, so we changed it. Many further concessions by the BoD happened in the MCR. One of those drafts was leaked before we had the opportunity to obtain our concessions. You probably know the one I'm talking about - the harsh draft that Michael posted, which was completely rewritten by the mods and admins. That rewrite was a concession. Unfortunately, the rewritten statement didn't have the desired results, so it got tossed in the bin. One thing I misunderstood going in - as did many people, I suspect - was that I thought the statements by the BoD somehow bound the BoD to a set course, when, in fact, they only reflected the thinking at the time. The statements are descriptive, rather than prescriptive, contrary to what I had assumed. The BoD can change its collective mind and write some other statement at any time, as they did around the time RBH resigned. The BoD is bound by the articles of II's incorporation and U.S. and Colorado law, but not anything else.

In my experience, the BoD is quite amenable to hearing new ideas and constructive suggestions, but they very much dislike demands and beatings of dead horses. They don't respond with acquiescence to people's pet causes after they've already said something is off the discussion table. They place quite a bit more value on mod/admin input than they do on regular poster input. They don't respond to petitions - even ones with oodles of names - since IIDB is purposely not run by popular vote, in order to prevent its takeover by hostile groups.

Well, I had some more to talk about, but I see I've already written a small novel, so this post will end now.

Stacey Melissa
still an IIDB moderator, giving only his own take on events

He censors out anything which sugggests Flew is entitled to his opinion.

While the rest of your description sounds quite obnoxious, I can honestly say that if I ran a community I would discourage (but not censor except in blatant cases) comments to the effect that anyone "is entitled to their opinion," and this is not because such statements are offensive but because they are pointless. Interpreted literally, "x is entitled to their opinion" is trivially true, and in a discussion between reasonable adults literally goes without saying. If, as it usually seems to be, the phrase "x is entitled to their opinion" is really meant to say "x's opinion should not be criticized, nor should the fact that they hold it be held to reflect on their judgement or character," then it is wrong and actively detrimental to any kind of reasonable discussion. Either way, such statements take up bandwidth to transmit, time to read, and disk space to store, while adding even less to the discussion than pointing out the of-course that people have the legal entitlement to run their private communities the way they want to.*

*(Pointing this out does have the minor utility of preemptively countering the sort of arguments petty tyrants invariably engage in when taken to task for their reprehensible policies, which typically consist, in my experience, of trying to discredit the opposing position by pretending that it is motivated by confusion on this point.)

You are all a bunch of whining children, here, in my opinion.

Unlike, say, people who refuse to tolerate any criticism of their actions in the space they do control, and who apparently feel they've been wronged for having their unconscionable decisions publicly decried. Give me a break.

The mods at IIDB seem to have no diplomatic or people skills.

Please. *I* have almost no diplomatic or people skills, at least without the time to think the internet provides, and even I can see the problem here.

Given all this, the only thing that would make me reconsider at this point would be the resignation of the Board of Directors. Since that seems unlikely, I'm making it my goal to spread the truth about this fiasco and encouraging freethinkers to avoid IIDB and seek alternate forums for expressing themselves where their presence is valued.

I see. Cry pardon, sai. I see words like "fascism" and "totalitarian" (though not, I'm glad to see, in your own posts), and I immediately think "What's this guy's angle?" I came of age during the Bush Administration, and was trained in marketing; please understand.