I have written a lot about the Cyber-bully and his involvement in the problems plaguing Susan Boyle fan forums. But not everything can be laid at his door. He could not have accomplished what he did without the aid of others.
Staff and admins at susan-boyle.com chose to believe someone who sent messages in secret. They chose to believe someone who had been banned many times from their own site. They chose to believe someone who said things contradictory to what they knew.
Both Pickled Tink and Kalua held a discussion with Citroenlady about the future of the forum. They knew she wasn’t doing this in secret. If she had been involved in some kind of takeover plot, why would she bother to discuss it with them?
Staff wanted to believe the things the Cyber-bully told them, so they did. They felt persecuted by the other forums and so believed the worst of them. They fell for it, but it wasn’t true.
Why did staff feel that way about the other forum? Because there was quite a bit of frustration, resentment and anger there. Why would members of another forum feel this way? It was a direct result of the way the forum at susan-boyle.com was moderated in the early days.
The first major upheaval I recall was the closing of a thread because a few had asked for it. Other members were actively posting on that thread at the time and the closure became an issue. A thread was started about the closed thread, with some members asking a lot of questions and making their views known. That thread resulted in the banning of at least two members.
That was my first inkling that something was wrong and I began to pay more attention. In the summer and fall of 2009, mods did not seem accountable for their actions. I noticed threads and posts deleted, often without explanation. Some people would get warned repeatedly and others seemed to get away with almost anything. People were banned for things that would be allowed today. I have already discussed my experiences in being punished for violating unwritten rules.
DJG-Scotland became the focus of staff actions. He was not always persona non grata as he is today. He began like any other member and was more helpful than most because he shared his knowledge and helped people with videos. He also has a sense of humor and began posting visual jokes. They were harmless and some were silly, but there were complaints from a few who did not appreciate his humor.
A humor section was created and he was told to post his jokes there. There was not any such rule for verbal jokes. Members could and did post funny lines in threads outside the humor section. It would have been a far duller place to be if that did not occur.
For the most part, DJG complied. But sometimes a joke needed the context of the thread to be understood properly. So sometimes he posted them in the relevant thread.
That earned him a banning. He did not see it coming and was taken by surprise. The staff had sent him a PM, but since he was banned, he couldn’t access it for a week. But he did hear from others about the explanation posted on the forum. It galled him that the mod claimed DJG “understood” because he definitely did not. When the week was over, he read the message and it contained a different reason than the one posted on the forum. This lead to even greater resentment because it seemed staff were making up excuses for their actions.
This was the impetus to creation of his “humor forum”. It gave him a voice and way to keep in contact with those he had met on the forum. It also became a place to say those things which were suppressed on the main forum. Besides humor and some admittedly juvenile joking, there was an area for letting off steam, the built up frustration that had accumulated as a result of the arbitrary moderation elsewhere.
For a while, the moderation of the forum seemed to have improved. The rules were clearer. There were better guidelines for moderation. (Had there been any before?) The system was far from perfect, but it was better. However, recently the staff, following Board instructions, has begun to label controversial posts as contentious, accompanied by deletions and arbitrary punishments.
And the fact that the rules are not applied in an even-handed manner to all members is demonstrated on a regular basis. One member was banned immediately for “piracy”, yet others received the benefit of the doubt and a chance to remove the problem post. The hypocrisy was especially blatant when a moderator posted suggesting that members go directly to YouTube to perform their own illegal downloads. KateOhio post #106
Inequities in moderation are also in evidence in the enforcement of the rule prohibiting the posting of “allegations, rude or derogatory comments, innuendo or gossip about another member”. Some members have been allowed to do this, including moderators.
We saw recently how frustration at perceived inequities and censorship can lead previously civil members to act in ways out of character for them, much in the same way staff did last July. To my knowledge, there have been no repercussions for the staff.
The combination of arbitrary decisions and the inability to question those decisions is a toxic one. You feel what has been done is unfair, but also that you are not allowed to express those feelings without repercussions. Heavy-handed moderation inevitably leads to resentment. Unequal heavy-handed moderation leads to even greater resentment.
From the beginning of the humor forum, staff members joined DJG’s to keep tabs on what was happening there, often under different names. They were not there for any positive reason. People who listen at keyholes rarely hear good of themselves, so they became aware of the frustration and resentment which had no expression elsewhere. And because they were aware of this, staff were eager to believe the Cyber-stalker when he spun his stories about a takeover.
We still have the lingering effects from those days of anything-goes moderation, compounded by the recent crack down on expression. The antagonism goes both ways and led to a situation that was ripe for the bully to manipulate.
