GSS Banned

Maybe Greg should just shut the forums down for a couple weeks, let everyone and the weather cool off some.

mondeo said:

Debate, yes. Conflict, no. Well, not all.

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I'm not so sure.....They seem pretty similar to me...at least in the context of an internet forum:

From Merriam Webster:
Debate: a contention by words or arguments: as a : the formal discussion of a motion before a deliberative body according to the rules of parliamentary procedure b : a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides

Conflict:
1 : fight, battle, war <an armed conflict>
2 a : competitive or opposing action of incompatibles : antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons) b : mental struggle resulting from incompatible or opposing needs, drives, wishes, or external or internal demands
3 : the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction

mondeo said:

Maybe Greg should just shut the forums down for a couple weeks, let everyone and the weather cool off some.

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Yeah, FULL BLOWN CENSORSHIP. Why not close the forum for good? That'll solve all the problems. Step up to the challenge, bite the lip and this too fades away. It always does.

mondeo said:

Posting PhilPug's PM, all over flame war with OSME, insulting Jerry for trying to be a better person, some other stuff that I won't bring up again...

He's been pushing the boundaries of trolling for a long time. I can take the political views, but his post today was a slap in the face to Dork, DHS, and Marc as a firefighter, along with others who haven't posted their personal connections to the attacks. And he did to watch what happened, for his own entertainment, without regard for how others would take it. I don't think it's necessarily the worst he's done, but I can see it being the final straw.

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Fine, people who push boundaries get banned. But people who regularly push the issue WAY beyond the line don't get banned. Yet that jackass HighwayStar still waits in the wings, slowly regaining old momentum to calling everyone else an idiot.

I personally read his post as being sarcastic. And I'll restate it..

Mr Bush: "We need to get those damned terrorists!"

*years later*

Everyone with rolled eyes: "Thank god we got all them damned iraqi terrorsts"

Dr Skimeister said:

My opinion, nothing more....

Banned for chronic immaturity and it's accompanying insensitivity.

As much as I have the right to think that the GSS persona is a jerk and to either read or not read what he posts on an internet forum, he has the right to comment on an *open* forum as he sees fit as long as no irreparable harm is done by his comments.

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+1

This whole debacle echos a report I heard on NPR this morning...about how kids will act out on the first day of school to get noticed and get attention...and the other kids will either be drawn to them or not. There's a clear group of people who are drawn to GSS and his antics and another group, mods included, who obviously are not. Sure he pushes the boundaries and crosses the line from time to time...but so do many others on here, and if no one is crossing the line or bumping into it, the rest of the flock doesn't know where the line really is. If a group of skiers weren't ducking the ropes at Jackson Hole they probably wouldn't have an open boundary policy now. Sure, he's a pain in the ass at times...but we've all got the ability to ignore...or we can react to provocations...its our choice. Some of us have probably ignored this whole thread. Was he crass and classless...yes, but Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, George Carlin, and Carlos Mencia are all pretty crass and have stepped over the line...but they make us laugh. GSS was the class clown on the AZ...we wasn't a downright mean spirited a-hole like Snowman...he's just the court jester. The court jester is always saying something inappropriate at the wrong time...its what they do. Some of us were friends with the class clown in high school, while some of us thought he was a jerk..and the rest fell somewhere in the middle...looks like not much has changed. Only difference is, in high school the class clown usually didn't get expelled...they tended to save that for the kids who were violent. This place will be less entertaining without him...and what are most of us on here for if it isn't a little entertainment in our daily grind and our shared passion for skiing.

Give him a cooling off period and then let him come back.

St. Bear said:

This affects my life in so few ways that I don't even need any fingers to count.

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:lol: Nice!

mondeo said:

How would you take this:

"My wife was murdered 8 years ago today."

"Well aren't you glad the idiot jerks convicted the wrong guy and put him to death?"

That's sorta how I read it. It was just a flat out inappropriate place to make the comment, the thread was pretty pure in purpose up to that point. Hawkshot making one of his comments in the thread I would've seen as equally inappropriate.

There are other members (myself included) that get much more political than GSS ever did, on both sides of the fence. If the mods were that quick to ban on political grounds for statements they in that vein, DMC wouldn't have gotten a chance for self-banishment, he would've been gone before I had even joined. Probably 10% of the people on the board would be gone for politics before GSS, even if you assume only half of the people posting that level of politics would actually be banished (i.e., assume only those Greg disagrees with get booted.)

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Have you never said something and then realized that it was insensitive or an inappropriate time to say it? I have and I'm glad most people are willing to forgive. At least he didn't just edit his post and pretend it didn't happen, instead he admitted he was an a-hole.

Moe Ghoul said:

Yeah, FULL BLOWN CENSORSHIP. Why not close the forum for good? That'll solve all the problems. Step up to the challenge, bite the lip and this too fades away. It always does.

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Agreed. Far less attention would be drawn from deleting a few posts and a PM warning that a line was crossed. In a day, nobody would even remember about the deleted posting.

AtomicSkier said:

As someone who has had the pleasure of banning GSS on more then one occasion as well as skiing over 200 days with him in the past 4 years, he is 99.9% harmless. I think you're doing this site a disservice by permanently removing him. His passion for skiing is undeniable, and he really likes posting on AZ. I can't tell you how many times he's said to me "make sure you post that on AZ as well". For those of you that have skied with him can attest (well, besides mondeo maybe, he's got something against GSS apparently) that is is genuinely a nice guy, and will make you laugh constantly. I haven't seen his 9/11 comments, but I can only imagine. When he says something stupid on PASR, we just delete it. Why ban people? Isn't it just easier to delete 1% of his posts and enjoy the other 99%? I hope the administrators here do consider letting him back once the season starts back up.

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I had the pleasure of skiing with GSS and you too Atomic Jeff, back on opening day 2007/2008 at Mount Snow. You were both stand up nice guys and excellent skiers too. To tell you the truth due to his posts on this forum, I didn't expect GSS to be so tame in person. He was reserved and actually extremely polite and just an overall fun person that I had the pleasure of spending 1/2 day skiing with.
He adds so much to this forum and makes me laugh almost every day. I really can't see myself visiting the forum without GSS.

Hey, let's vote on it. Who wants GSS back???

ERJ-145CA said:

Have you never said something and then realized that it was insensitive or an inappropriate time to say it? I have and I'm glad most people are willing to forgive. At least he didn't just edit his post and pretend it didn't happen, instead he admitted he was and a-hole.

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Difference is GSS did it all the time. This whole thing is a repeat of several past occurances. That's not a mistake, that's just an inconsiderate person. At least that's my take on the matter, I may be wrong.

I'm just honestly surprised at all the people calling censorship on this; there have been several times in the past where I wondered how he wasn't banned yet.

He did post something true yesterday, though: I do enjoy arguing for the sake of argument. I even had resolved to be at least a partial follower of iwontism, and try to let my grudge with him (and others) go. Unfortunately this incident has reeled me back in. So with that, I'll take up Moe's challenge and drop out of this debate.

Peace out! I'll see you over in the skiing forum, where HS has challenged me to a ski-off! :razz:

AtomicSkier said:

When he says something stupid on PASR, we just delete it.

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That would of been the easiest thing to do and move on, but within 2 hours you had 3 mods quote it instead.

Wow! busy day over here it seems!

To all that bitch and complain about GSS's previous annoying and contravarsial I say you could have put him on ignore. I mean really, I suspect almost noone here used that feature but instead just whined to the mods about his actions. I agree what he said was way out of place and incredibly immature as with all the other post in the past but a ban that seems kind of harsh. Let the induvidual posters decide whether they want to hear his narcissistic views. I swear even all the haters will silently miss him-if not why didn't you just ignore him before?

No doubt he spends too much time on the net-maybe this will free up some time.

This is like the Magic Threads on Snowjournal last year.

mlctvt said:

I had the pleasure of skiing with GSS and you too Atomic Jeff, back on opening day 2007/2008 at Mount Snow. You were both stand up nice guys and excellent skiers too. To tell you the truth due to his posts on this forum, I didn't expect GSS to be so tame in person. He was reserved and actually extremely polite and just an overall fun person that I had the pleasure of spending 1/2 day skiing with.
He adds so much to this forum and makes me laugh almost every day. I really can't see myself visiting the forum without GSS.

Hey, let's vote on it. Who wants GSS back???

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That's because he's perpetually baked out of his mind. Not that there's anything wrong with that................

Moe Ghoul said:

That's because he's perpetually baked out of his mind. Not that there's anything wrong with that................

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He wasn't stoned when I saw him. He didn't even remotely remind me of a stoner at all. That's just an act of his, probably to get you fired up.

He seemed more quiet and reserved than most guys his age.

mlctvt said:

He wasn't stoned when I saw him. He didn't even remotely remind me of a stoner at all. That's just an act of his, probably to get you fired up.

He seemed more quiet and reserved than most guys his age.

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Yea, and of course, they should be banned for callously labeling him a pothead with no regard for others feelings..

I gave up trying to profile people I never met when I read interwebz posts. How people express themselves in a face to face can be dramatically different from the person sitting alone, in relative security, typing thoughts generated from an inner voice online. Much like a daily journal, diary, poetry for some people, etc. That's a risk we all take communicating with this media, and there are plenty of times when I type out a post, think about it, and hit the delete button. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of different motivations for posting on boards like these

That being said, I've skied with GSS on a few occasions in PA, and he is harmless and imperfect but is passionate about skiing and revels in the camaraderie it inspires. And his weed is usually pretty decent.

Greg said:

I'm not opposed to temporary bans but when we proposed it, it was met with a fair amount of opposition. Less than 50% of the members supported it, and usually I won't make a policy change unless a clear majority supports it. We'll likely revisit the idea at some point.

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I have read a lot of this thread but my eyes are too tired to read the last 4 pages, but I'll say, from my moderating experience

• The community as a whole rarely knows the real offensive parts of a banned person's issues, because a good mod team deletes quietly and moderates behind the scenes dealing with the situation privately, therefore, we really have no idea what all the individual offensive (s) were in the pile by the time this happened.
  
• Time outs are rarely successful. Once you put someone on time out they've already crossed lines that get their dander up. The time out only escalates the attitude and banning tends to quickly follow.
  
• Infractions can work but even they tend to be fuel to the fire of a flame prone troll.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who take on the thankless task of moderating and trust that this decision was for the betterment of this community.

RootDKJ said:

Agreed. Far less attention would be drawn from deleting a few posts and a PM warning that a line was crossed. In a day, nobody would even remember about the deleted posting.

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This is something we've done countless number of times. How many times are we supposed to say "final warning". Again, folks want consistency yet many others claim we're overmoderating. The truth is we've basically been hands-off during the GSS era. The board is now being moderated at the same level it was pre-GSS.

mlctvt said:

Hey, let's vote on it. Who wants GSS back???

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We've never unbanned. The time-out approach wasn't met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Neither was reputation. Nevertheless, you never know. As much as a poll would be feeding into his desire to get attention, I'm not 100% opposed to it. It's not going to happen today or tomorrow though, believe that.