My new account was banned! LOL *updated again :-)*

Interesting that the use of “temporarily” was quite incorrect. They wiped that account off the face of the earth.


I had responded to a truly obnoxious post insulting half the forum made by Greg Photo Sydney. And I'm thinking that this joke in my initial reply might have tipped the scales to the ban:

Q: How do we know when Greg Photo Sydney is insulting someone?
A: He’s typing.

(Update: GPS was permanently banned later on for persistent extremely bad behavior. I feel vindicated :-)

Note, this ban is DPReview-wide … that account cannot log in.


*Update: Duh … I had forgotten to check that email account (kdletkeman) and of course the notification of the permanent ban was sitting right there :-)



Update: Obviously it is bad form to create an account to get around a permanent ban, although people do it all the time. But in this case I felt justified as my ban was not.

So, to recount the history here:

• I took a 3 month break, largely because I was tired of seeing the same stupid comments from the same *experienced* posters and then getting into the same arguments
  
• I came back to test the waters
  
• I responded to a particularly obnoxious post by GPS
  
• Dave the weasel ostentatiously announced that he had pressed the complaint button (no reason given)
  
• One presumes that his cronies did the same
  
• I was permanently banned only from the FTF with no explanation at all. None.
  
• After a few days, I created a second account.
  
• History repeated itself
  
• I was told by DPReview in an email that I must resolve the first ban through the feedback mechanism.
  

So … what will I gain if I speak with the moderators? Well, they will repeat what they told me last year when they permanently banned me unjustly and then reversed it after checking out the facts.



That came directly from one of their moderators in a statement telling me that they were reversing a lifetime ban.

Basically, they are saying here that some people press the complaint button a lot and that makes too much work for them so I need to stop being a lightning rod. They suggested in a later email that I should put them in my ignore list.



What that says is that I am allowed to post so long as I put D, G, P and a few others on my ignore list and never respond to them. That way, they have no reason to push the button (although they have proven they do it anyway.)

Obviously, I did not do that and I was banned within 48 hours of returning after my sabbatical. That tells you how easily the undue use of the complaint button can be used these days to change the face of the forums.

**Update**
Read this obnoxious and rather neurotic response from Dave to Velvet Anty, and of course to this article. You will laugh your ass off if you try to hear it in a hysterical, shrieking voice … 

A few points of explanation from points in Dave’s diatribe:

1. Dave did have a comment removed from this blog under threat of legal action. (Update: When he annoys me, I think of him as "threatens-a-lawsuit.") The comment was not defamatory, and certainly not actionable in my opinion. But I removed it as a favor to the fellow who left it. He said he didn’t need that shit in his life, and who can argue? And by the way Dave … it is *not* illegal to write the truth. One need only look at your gallery and one would have no issue with the wording of the comment that was removed. To repeat … it did not defame …. it simply commented on an observable fact based on *dozens* of images on your own gallery. An observed fact that is trivially verifiable is *not* actionable.
   
2. If there was a part of the removed comment that slammed some new FTF poster, it had nothing to do with them not posting any more. That kind of thinking is moronic. How would that person even see a comment buried inside a blog that Dave says is not even read by the majority on FTF :-)
   
3. Dave is quite correct that my accounts are both banned from the FTF at this time. Dave even alludes to some other account that he alleges is also banned, although one wonders how he would know that. Interesting that Dave is essentially admitting to hammering on anyone who even writes like me.
   
4. Dave comments “In reality, that blog contains some of the most slanderous, and libelous, comments about individuals, which I have ever read.” This is, of course, utter bull shit. I would never write something that I thought could be actionable. And by the way Dave, slander is defamation by oral utterance. Not the sharpest tool in the shed I’m thinking.
   
5. An interesting and truly disingenuous comment Dave made is “Crikey ! I have not responded to them for months. Again, fully documented. I don't care if they are here, or not.” He somehow thinks using “them” distances him from his own comments. Silly boy. Anyway, he had not responded to me for months because I was abesnt from the forum for *3* months. And if he did not care if I was on DPReview, he would not be able to name every ban and some that have not even happened. He would not be intimately familiar with the content of this blog and with the comments on that content. He would not be accusing random people of being me. He’s simply obsessed. Nice to have fans though :-)

Dave’s diatribe indicates that he has extremely intimate knowledge of this blog and its content. And the comments about its content. I wonder how he came by that … :-)