Quoted from pinballsmith:I had the pleasure of reading some of the messages that pinside mods sent them directly causing them to make that video.
OK, here goes nothing. I am speaking only for myself. Not the moderators, not Robin, not Pinside, just me.
I am the focus of 90% of the hate messages spewed out in that video, and I literally posted one time in one thread. I never sent any messages to anyone in the thread and I had no idea that my posting one time was going to blow up into a huge situation causing people to get banned and me to have a few sleepless nights.
I barely knew who they were before the thread in question (http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-info-on-buying-from-grc-gameroom-collectibles-wide-area-repair) and to my knowledge had never posted anything on their threads before or had any interaction with them. I only looked at the thread because it was blowing up at the top of the page that day, and remembered one of the mods asking us to go easy on gameroomguru (GRG) because he was going through some personal stuff, and saw that he was the OP. Once in the thread, I saw that GRG was basically bragging about being rude to people. Direct quote: "We are admittedly & deliberately jerky towards jerky people." I gave an opinion about that
, gave a ban warning for personal attacks as per the Pinside community rules, and asked that he continue to interact in a constructive manner. There was no ill-will or spite coming from me. I was at work and checking Pinside on a break, and was attempting to stop a thread from going downhill. Boy did that work out well. I didn't get back to the thread until later that day. And what did I find?
(Here's the thread, I can't use the quote feature on a closed thread so I'm pasting here.)
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-info-on-buying-from-grc-gameroom-collectibles-wide-area-repair#postbox
GRG: "Here's a cookie for your years of experience. Kudos to you for having the guts to identify yourself as the "ban warning sent" sender. Thanks for that. Reported you back to whatever authorities are running this circus. All of this should do well for your political career. Not as a personal attack but rather just as personal opinion, I'd rather be called a "troll" than a "politician." Bye for now. Friday night! Better things to do than this."
By this time another mod had given him a ban vote, so he was "on vacation." If you have a temp ban, you are not allowed to create another screen name, as per the rules that is grounds for a permaban. The only other post you'll see of mine that says "quoted for posterity" shows where he created a new account called YouCantSeeMe with one of their models as the avatar pic. I quoted it to show Robin. I'm a stickler for rules, he broke a big one, and I didn't know what to do so I turned it over to Robin and left the thread.
Funny thing... because GRG created the second obvious account, we did an IP search to prove it was the exact same IP to spam close it. That is the absolute only reason that we discovered NoWhining had the same IP address. It pulled up on the same IP list. Since it was a new account that posted only in the GRG threads and had no other activity, it was ban voted to freeze the account so that Robin could investigate. Had GRG not obviously violated the rules, we never would have looked at her or been suspicious of that account in any way. NoWhining explained to Robin that she is Jim's girlfriend and her account is reopened.
The next week, I woke up to a few PMs alerting me to their weekly video and a link to this thread:
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/as-the-pinside-turns
Specifically this posting from NoWhining: "Here's a funny video that's related to the topic... then there's a bunch of boring stuff about pinball at the end. "
If you don't want to watch the 45 minute video, the highlights are Mike and Jim telling me and my husband to "Go F*** Yourself!!" and flipping me off no less than 4 times and wishing a never-ending yeast infection upon me. They also spread the "Go F*** Yourself" request to Absocountry and Dantebean, and in general said how evil Pinside moderators are. Future videos also take shots at moderators. Comments on this particular video have Jim (jim gee) and ColtonSmith (pinballsmith here on Pinside) giving me the title of "the biggest bigot moderator I've seen to date." Which I guess is some kind of accomplishment since I had no interaction with them previously, asked GRG to play nice once in one thread, caught GRG in the middle of a second illegal account, pended a very suspicious possible third account that was overturned once explained and made total sense, and haven't said a word to any of them on threads, PMs, YouTube comments, etc since.
I basically stayed off Pinside for 2 weeks because it bothered me so much. I didn't see how doing what I thought was the proper chain of command around here could get me so much directed hate and vile. It still bothers me, and honestly pisses me off that they took that much time and effort to try to trash my name across multiple sources while always claiming that they are the victim of evil moderators, particularly myself. I sincerely apologize to NoWhining because if I had honestly known it was her account and not a third account used by them, it wouldn't have been locked. But I don't see how cautionary steps to ensure multiple accounts and asking someone who self proclaims to be "admittedly & deliberately jerky" to follow the rules of the forum deserves all the hatred directed towards me and my husband by herself, her boyfriend, his friend/business partner, and their friends.