VEGANGELICA

Right-Track (David),

Thank you for taking back what you said about The Unfan being an idiot and a moron, although I disagree with your reasoning for doing so. I brought up my concerns about The Unfan’s permabanning not because of the one time he tried to make a personal attack, but because of the helpful feedback The Unfan gave me, such as these very un-trollish comments in my songwriter thread: “Your use of the metaphor is pretty overbearing. The intended meaning somehow gets lost for me,” and, “If people love animals that is fine. I have no issue with those sentiments. I have 3 cats which I love, although I don't view them as my children. I do know that they have emotional needs, like humans, but at the same time I value my life over theirs. So yes, I agree someone can love other animals for the most part I value human lives more.”

My second reason for concern about The Unfan’s permabanning is that I care about fairness and hypocrisy. During my 5 months at MusicBanter, I have seen only 7 comments aimed at me that I felt were trolling, by which I mean the writer is intending to belittle me as a *person* or “act out” in a clever and somewhat funny, but intentionally nasty, hurtful way. Six of these trollish comments occurred during my first month here, and only one was from The Unfan, who was temporarily banned shortly after. What struck me was that four of the remaining “trollish” comments during my first month were made by people who were, or became, moderators.

This showed me early on that a quality MusicBanter has (since we are discussing this in a MusicBanter Quality thread) is that some hazing and trolling are allowed and accepted by moderators, despite the rules. I felt it would be unfair if The Unfan and the moderators were not being held to the same standard.

Which brings *me* neatly to my next point. I feel only 2 of the “trollish” comments aimed at me (so far) on MB were intended as personal attacks (which are distinct from criticisms of my song lyrics, since it is perfectly acceptable to say that one does not like someone else’s art). One personal attack came from The Unfan. The second personal attack came from...you:

Right-Track, I wish you would not imply that I am an idiot and a moron. I wish you would apologize to me for your implication. If a moderator can imply that a member is an idiot and a moron without any of the other moderators in this thread asking him to stop, then this shows that MusicBanter accepts angry people belittling others. Your actions also result in moderators losing any moral high ground they have when asking others not to make insulting, purposeless inflammatory posts, personal attacks, or trolling remarks.

David, I do not accept your sarcastic thanks because you are under no obligation to read my posts, which are made with good intentions because I care about MB and people I’ve met here. If you felt reading my post was a waste of your time, then the thanks for wasting your time goes to you alone, since it was your choice to read it. I cannot force you to read my posts.

You were the first person with whom I had contact at MusicBanter, when you politely and kindly replied to an initial inquiry I made, and I still thank you for that. In fact, I have kept that first PM from you all this time because it reminded me how nice it is to interact so respectfully with a stranger on a forum about something I love...music. I feel MB has a very high quality when it comes to the breadth of musical information available here, and I also feel the quality of the community is quite good, by which I mean cohesive and friendly. Yet if it is acceptable for moderators to put others down, then I feel that is sad and it does reduce MB's quality, since I doubt the originators intended the site to be a place where strangers go to be hurtful to others. I also doubt you want people on MB to feel that hurting others through personal attacks is acceptable.

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