You're right. You have some pride and that's great. But have some pride in the way in which you conduct yourself. Reach out to somebody you don't like and bury the hatchet. Get to know them. Build a relationship. It's a whole lot more fulfilling than baiting them into dropping racial slurs on you.

It's horrible. I'm just about through with it. I hate all this. I don't have a magic wand. But I haven't heard a single word about "inner circle" lately so at least that myth has been put to bed.

At the same time you let "lazy darky" stalk your friend pushing him to the breaking point. There didn't seem to be any post your friend could make that "lazy darky" wouldn't inject into in a negative way.

Exactly. I got into it with a few people on this board early on and now, because of that, I consider them very good friends. Native has shown zero interest in that and just baits and baits and baits.

Holy ****. Dr. Phil?

Understood. Like I said, that was just my perception from the outside looking in. You mods might have had some conversation about Native behind closed doors and the end result was exactly what you just posted. He's a problem, but for the most part he's within the rules. It just didn't get acknowledged much publicly(at least that I remember), and that made it appear as though he was being favored.

I also agree that he's a smart, talented troll...but still, just a troll.

I've certainly not been here as long as many people, never been to a Planet function at Joes or anywhere else either... but it sure seems like many of the people who have are no longer wanted, by that I mean that their complaints are no longer heard and if they are they're discounted in a big way.

"hey you guys chose to leave, oh well see ya" doesn't seem like a very friendly or loyal proposition to people who've been so good for this site... me, I'm something of an outsider anyway so its not a personal matter, but the fact is that it seems like many solid vets are leaving and no one gives a damn, maybe because "we have the traffic, your loss means little".

FTR... Flop has never been anything but cool to me, honest answers to private questions, many pos rep messages etc... that's why I think he should stay on, he might let emotion get the better of him but so do I and I'm 43... I'd like to think I'm above that at 43, but all too often I find that I'm not and get drawn into things. We're all human.

Phil... there is all too often a cool arrogance in his dealings with others... "hey take it or leave it, not gonna cuss ya or whatever, just gonna jack you up and/or ignore you in any other number of ways, been here a long time? show up to the functions? don't care we got plenty of traffic without ya"

Dudes never done anything to me, but I do notice that beefs with longtime members don't seem to mean much to him.. all of the time, money and memories ought to count for more than they do, with certain people, than they do with Phil... IMO.

Maybe I'm white knighting a bit, but it sure seems like personal feelings and pride play a larger role than they should sometimes... "I'm not gonna beg" sounds like another way of saying "I don't care" sometimes.

At some point, grownups have to be grownups and people who come here mostly for recreation should not be expected to babysit them for months and years.

I think we all are still waiting to hear from Kyle about his algorithm to determine what is racist language and what is not.

No one was willing to have the conversation on it. I thought it was something that we could talk our way through and get at least "some" form of consensus.. it's funny that the problem ended up not being one of people disagreeing... it was one of people simply not wanting to have a thought out discussion on the matter. I kept trying to push the conversation forward and ended up mostly talking to myself.

I was and still am but I thought you were making it overly complicated when it really isn't.

There's no doubt you've seen this, especially with people in the past year. I've had people accusing me of favorable treatment my entire tenure. So when I treat people like bugeater and frazod (who have both been to my house) the same as I treat everybody else when they abuse rep and then we're no longer friends because of it, I'm going to have an attitude about it. I don't have time to coddle assholes and it's not in my job description whatsoever. I was a whole lot kinder a decade ago, no doubt. But I'm not bending over for people like bugeater and frazod when they show me zero respect as a friend first and foremost and as a leader on this site. Their behavior hurt me at first but now I'm a little cavalier about it. That's probably a defense mechanism.

If I'm arrogant about anybody else, I don't know why. I don't have the desire to change people's minds once they've made them up. I'm tired of the lies and the accusations. Those people still insist I read their private messages. I've never once read anybody's private messages. But try to convince them of that.

Not trying to sidetrack this thread too much... but most people think that "well it's OBVIOUS" what is racist and what isn't... yeah, that's easily said but not at all easily enforced. There is a metric ton of grey area and I always tend to err on the side of free speech.

You can't just make a "list".. it's not the simple if you want to avoid the constant bitching that comes from "judgement calls."

I think we were on a decent track before everyone got lazy and stopped discussing it.

oh and just to be clear... the only people who have access to read everyone's PMS are the people with root level access to the db... which is basically ME. It would be a complete pain in the ass to do it... and I'm far too lazy to do so.

So when people accuse mods of reading PMs... they don't know what they are talking about. Don't believe me? Ask DaFace, he knows.