Comments about those returning members set off a panic about “banned” members being let in. The mods were prepared for this because they had been told that the “DJGers” were planning to bring back banned members. But it wasn’t true.
So what did happen? Dyebat had started the Transparency thread on July 16. During the thread a couple things occurred that revived the interest of some former members when they heard about it. Pickled Tink admitted that she was also an admin on the official forum. And Dyebat and lchris began to be attacked by mods and others at the forum.
Luz wanted to post in support of Dyebat. She had resigned, but decided to return. Her account was activated at 3:48 pm EST on July 18.
Lovin’ Every Minute (LEM) heard about Tink being staff on both the official site and susan-boyle.com. She wanted to post some comments about conflict of interest. LEM’s account was activated at 8:18 pm EST.
At the time these events took place, members activated their account by replying to a welcome email they received upon signing up. At this point, the member could read, but could not post. A moderator still had to approve their membership and move them into the “registered users” group before they got posting privileges. The time these actions happened was recorded.
Lovin’ Every Minute had been a moderator in the early days of the forum. She resigned as a moderator and a few weeks later resigned from the forum. DocRobbie posted in a staff thread that day the following:
He then proceeded to do that. This is the admin log showing that LEM was banned.In a related note, LEM (Lynne) and Singing Soul have asked to resign from the Forum. I will delete their accounts at the end of the day, and also ban their IPs.
adminlogid | userid | dateline | script | action | extrainfo | ipaddress |
8104 | 14 (DocRobbie) | 1255673686 (10/16/09@ 1:14:46am) | banning.php | dobanuser | username = lovin' every minute | 9x.xx.xx.x8 |
Banning people who resigned was not done universally. It was done selectively and contrary to the rules of the fansite. Some people resigned multiple times and were allowed to rescind the decision, while others were not allowed to return.
LEM’s original account was later deleted from the site. LEM was no longer a member. She was not there as a banned member. She was not there at all.
When LEM decided to rejoin the forum, she did not try her original user name with her old password. She registered again as a new member. Because her account had been deleted, she was able to rejoin using the same name.
The same was true for Luz. Luz had resigned and, though she had not been banned, her account was no longer there. Neither a search by user ID number nor by user name produced any results. Luz, too, had been deleted. As a result, she was able to rejoin using the same name.
Neither LEM nor Luz was "unbanned". Because their accounts had been deleted, they were both were able to register as new members, using their old names, but with new user numbers. Luz’s account was approved by Pickled Tink on July 21. LEM’s new account was never approved, so she re-registered on July 23. That account was approved by Pickled Tink on July 24.
Neither LEM nor Luz had their new accounts approved on July 18, meaning that nobody “let them in” that day.
Tomorrow: What about Clix Pix?
