Smear: to harm the reputation of; malign; slander; vilify

Members of SBFII know that the last six months have been strange and discomfiting.  The one thing I find most inexplicable in the whole fiasco is the smearing of three women; Dyebat, lchris and Citroenlady. 

Dyebat was everyone’s hero, the intrepid traveler who wouldn’t let anything stop her from attaining her goal, even if she had to sit outside in freezing weather knitting all night.  She brought that can-do spirit into play when the forum was up for sale.  When everyone else was worried, Dyebat said “Let’s do it ourselves!”  And we embraced her for that.  Many, many people offered money to purchase the forum, but the impetus came from Dyebat. 

After the purchase, she logged many miles and many hours in meetings and in efforts to develop the management and financial structure for the non-profit. Everything seemed to take three times more time and effort as it ought to, but Dyebat got it done in the end.  She should be our hero still.

Then there is lchris.  lchris did not have to offer to help Dyebat.  She could have sat back and watched.  But this was her area of expertise and she generously offered to help.  lchris has spent untold hours (over 1,000) working on the forum since the sale.  It was a complicated group of accounts and sites purchased by people with no prior experience in doing anything like that.

Transferring, recreating, and reconnecting all the pieces was just the beginning. It was also necessary to organize, document, and train on the technical as well as marketing and financial areas. It is mainly because of lchris’s many, many hours of labor that there is even a forum today for us to maintain.  She spent her entire summer working on the forum.  Without her, it wouldn’t be there.

Citroenlady was concerned about the divisions between people on the forum.  She knew a lot about the history of the forum because people were drawn to her and confided their problems.  She saw the members' purchase of the forum as a chance for a new beginning.  She had discussions with Dyebat, Chris, Tink and Kalua about changes she hoped to see. 

One such change was a way for members to appeal decisions they thought were unfair.  Another was a way to deal with members who had been banned for reasons that would not bring such a result now.  All of this was discussed with admin, it was not a secret conspiracy, it was not hidden.  I think she should be commended for her efforts towards fairness and reconciliation.

All three of these women wanted what was best for the forum.  Yet all three were vilified by cruel lies.  All three were accused of being untruthful and of being part of some imagined conspiracy to take over the forum.  It is not true.  It was never true.  Those who believed it were patsies for a vicious internet bully. 

Some of the staff believed the lies, in spite of their own experiences with Dyebat, lchris and Citroenlady.  But at some point, it was learned that the lies came from the cyber-bully.  The tech staff, who has been afraid that lchris really was involved in some kind of “takeover”, realized that they were mistaken.  And what did they do?  They apologized to her.  That was something that other staff members would try very hard to avoid doing. 

What did they rest of the staff and the Board do?  The staff and Board members let the lies and slander remain unrefuted for months, long after they knew from where the lies had come. They tried to prevent members from raising the issue on the forum. 

They blew off members who raised the issue in PMs or email.  I know that because I tried.  I sent messages to eight different staff and/or Board members.  Only after that proved fruitless, did I begin this blog.  And only after I began this blog, did the Board issue a report.  What took them so long?

Had the staff members who made the false accusations simply said that they were fooled by the cyber-bully, retracted the accusations and apologized, the forum would have limped along for a while, but recovered.  Instead, the Powers-that-be chose to stifle discussion, ignore questions and obfuscate.

I wonder if there are some staff and Board members who do not understand the significance of what has been done.  Staff allowed accusations they now knew to be from a cyber-bully to remain unrefuted.  They allowed the lies to continue to be passed around behind the scenes, without taking a stand.  They allowed the reputations of three women, who did not deserve it, to be dragged through the mud. 

Why was this the remit of the staff/Board?  Why not just fall back on the old standard that everyone is responsible for their own posts?  Because many of the people making those accusations were staff.  Because CanadianBill consulted staff before posting his slanderous thread.  They could have stopped it and they didn’t.

It is bad enough that the staff and Board delayed clearing the names of Dyebat, lchris and Citroenlady for many, many weeks.  But when the official report was published, it was not accurate.  The specific lies have yet to be retracted and new lies were told.  What could have possessed them to print something about Citroenlady they knew was untrue?  What could have possessed them to print things which they knew lchris would recognize as untrue?  How did they think they would get away with that?  Why did they think it would be a good idea?

What did they know and when did they know it?

I have been considering the events of last July and comparing them to the report of the SBFII Board.  I have re-read the entire Transparency thread and am not satisfied that the Board report is an accurate reflection of what happened.  In fact, I think it was a white wash.

I knew all along that the accusations of a “takeover” were completely false because I was one of the accused.  But to review that thread with the idea that those events were database errors is laughable.

I have gone back over the whole Transparency thread, and taken some time to think about it, but a lot of things just don’t add up. There seemed to be two storylines, developing simultaneously.  One was the transparency issue.  Kalua did not want to give any identifying information.  Were staff resignations a drama played out for public consumption, intended to override identification requirements by public acclaim?

How could that work?  The staff would resign en masse.  The first to go, Waldog and Stevieboy, had already made their information public, but resigned because Dyebat's request was "unreasonable".  The members with NPO experience, who said that identification requirements were reasonable, were ignored.

Much 'sturm und drang' followed the resignations so that the members would call for the entire staff to return and toss out those “unfair” transparency requirements. This is supported by Lonni’s email of July 18th 11:23 pm (EST), which encouraged members to post “against Chris and Dyebat”.  She also claimed "the entire staff is prepared to resign today".

But, at the same time, there was a parallel scenario; the forum was under attack by the DJGers, along with Dyebat, lchris and Citroenlady.  Early in the thread, members talked about “hidden agendas”, about the DJGers, and claimed that they wanted to eliminate the staff.  Some staff and members were blatant in their accusations; others were more subtle in their innuendo.

These lies came from the cyber-bully.  

He was in communication with both staff and members, telling them lies about a supposed takeover plot that did not, in fact, exist.  He lied about Citroenlady and lchris specifically, as well as falsely implicating members of other forums. Many of the most angry, bitter posts were made by people who were getting their information directly from him.

But these two stories do not make sense together.   Why would staff be leaving if they really believed that there was a takeover attempt?  Did they think the membership would rise up against the “coup”?

The Board report does not touch upon the first storyline and confuses the events of the takeover scenario.

In examining the accuracy of the report, the most glaring paradox is that the Board included a statement that Board members knew to be false.  The report implicated Citroenlady as the person who admitted a banned member.  But the Board knew that was not true.  They were told as much in the August 4th Preliminary Report submitted by lchris.  Any member could have deduced the same thing by a perusal of the Transparency thread.

Two Board members participated in a meeting on August 12 with the tech team. They discussed the time of both events; the return of the banned member and Citroenlady being given temporary mod powers. They knew CL was not a mod at the time in question.  So why did it show up in the report?  How could Board members sign off on something they knew was untrue?  Why wasn’t that blamed on “database errors”, too?

While reading the thread about the Board report, I was appalled at the attitude of one Board member when the issue of the unbanning was raised again (after it was pointed out that the Board report was incorrect).  He said that the topic had been “addressed” and reposted the incorrect section.  Did he actually think that “addressing” the issue had any bearing on the truth of the matter?  Just because a report is “official” does not mean it is factual.  Especially when the obvious inaccuracies are never corrected….

Another glaring discrepancy in the report is that it dismisses the “mischief”of July 18 as just a coincidence, an isolated series of errors that just happened to occur at the time some staff thought the site was under attack.  The “errors” are just too convenient to the storyline.  And it is strange that they happened in clusters that day, but have not occurred before or since.

I asked lchris about the likelihood that database errors caused the name changes, the deletion of Dyebat’s thread, the changes in Red Room membership and permissions. Could those have resulted from upgrading the database?  Lchris said no, she seriously doubts that…….

Lchris said she never actually upgraded from the original site at all. The admins and tech team were aware of that. She left that one untouched (it still is) and made a separate mirror site by installing/configuring the same version of forum software and then imported the database file into that. She upgraded on the mirror site.

If errors occurred, there would be records of that.  There were not.  Database error reporting was turned on, and each error was detailed and reported automatically to an email account that is used by several staff as it is the email used for the transfer and activation of most all of their accounts. There were no database errors reported for this time period at all.

The Board report did not accurately address the actions of lchris or of the tech team on July 18.  The report is written as if the staff resigned in response to lchris (temporarily) removing their powers.  But that was not the case.  Resignations began before lchris had any reason to remove staff powers.

As “mischief” increased on the forum, Lchris temporarily blocked staff, saying that someone “with access” must have been causing it. In fact, very unusual things were happening on the forum.  Members watched as new admin accounts were created and other things, such as staff names, were changed.

According to the Board report, new admin accounts were created by Judyokla and Danileo.  The statement in the Board report that the new accounts were created for the innocent purpose of "redundancy" is not reliable in light of this statement by a tech team member during the August 12 tech team meeting:

“I felt at this time we were  under a hostile take over and I was an Admin of this site - i created 2 accts myself trying to stay ahead of you and keep you from taking it over” 

The Board report stated that those new admin accounts were created with the knowledge of Pickled Tink and were “never secret”.  This is confusing.  The tech team member clearly believed that the “takeover” was real and tried to prevent it.  Did Pickled Tink also believe in the Takeover hoax?  Did the tech team take that action with the full knowledge and permission of Pickled Tink?

When Pickled Tink resigned, she did not say a word about the supposed takeover which had had Lonni nearly in hysterics.  That is curious.  Didn’t Tink get the memo?  You’d think Lonni would have told her. Why didn’t Tink either reassure Lonni and everyone else that it wasn’t true or deal with it if it was?                                            

Will anyone ever tell the truth about those events?

I am not satisfied that the Board report did that.  There are errors of fact and errors of omission.  The investigation, by a friend of one of the parties involved and at her house, did not fulfill the requirements of an independent investigation.  Blaming the events of July 18 on “database errors” is convenient, but inaccurate.

Because I was among those falsely accused in the takeover-plot-that-wasn’t, I have been paying close attention to the events recorded in the Transparency thread.  It has raised questions in my mind about staff involvement in the events of mid-July.  What did they know and when did they know it?  The Board report does little to answer those questions.  Will we ever know?

Note:  Because the report of the Board has proved inadequate in supplying members the complete picture of the events of July 18, lchis has taken the step of sharing information towards that end.