FAREWELL TO ALL MEMBERS FROM US

[paintballdecoy]

wow, this really sucks. its too bad to see you all leaving, but I can understand it, while I might not agree. I am however worried about Paul. I am not sure if anyone on the forum is an actually friend with him ( i mean like speak on a regular base, on a non-forum level.) becuase we really don't know what happened to him.

oh well.

bye, and best wishes

[Broccoli]

It's sad to see you all go! Have fun on the new forum!

For the rest of us - let's hope we'll still manage to increase activity here at BaO. I'm sure Paul will have good reasons for absence and in the meantime we have moderators who can do a lot of work managing the forum, helping new members, etc.

[Nightcrawler]

Wow. I leave the board for a couple of days and this happens.


I'm pretty sad that I didn't get the chance to meet most of the guys who left, you seemed like great people. I'll definetly be PMing or emailing one of you after this post to see whats going on.

As for me, I have no idea what has been going on, so I don't have any bitter feelings towards anyone. I think I'll stick it out, and see what happens from here. Sure will be quiet though, with so many people leaving.

[WON]

Thanks guys!
I hope you can make this forum work again, that'd be great. It used to be the best place, maybe you can manage to bring it back. For me, being here after my banning was just too strange, having to hide behind a new name and all. And there's just something missing now, the old charme and friendliness has gone. I wish you all good luck, maybe you'll drop by at our new forum as well, now and then - doesn't mean you have to leave here, right?

MEGA HUGGLES to all of you

[gecko]

*huggle* for those of you who made this a great place! ^_^


bye,
have a good day!
jurgen

ps. I've added my email- and msnaddress to my profile, should anyone want to talk to me..

[Scellanis]

I disagree with the idea that they were needlessly banned....WON, I don't trust you at all since you sent me that nasty email that was rude and insulting and also contained 2 attachments which I'm not remotely dumb enough to open.

This forum does not need people who resort to harrassment by pm and email when things fail to go their way.

Those of you who are leaving now I'm sorry to see you go.

[Scellanis]

oh and to all of you leaving....I'm not sure its a good idea to leave your email address veiwable on the profile....spam bots take them....there is already a thread about one that sends emails that pretend to be from other members that contain viruses....you'd be better off enabling the thing to receive an email when you get a private message so that you can come back and pm people contact details when they ask to know them.

[TDM]

Please, Sonkem. We're leaving. No need for any more blames. Won knows exactly what she did, and I believe she meant it. Why do I call you Sonkem? Because when I first met you, you were so frickin' awesome! I really don't know what happened, but now I have no respect for you. When you change back to the Sonkem I knew, please e-mail and be that nice again. Sorry it had to end this way. Have fun here at what's left of the forum, and good luck to you all.

Also, Sonkem, my inbox is already full of SPAM. I'm not worried about it. Thanks for the warning however.

[fred]

First off i'd like to say its a shame to see u all leave.I've talked to many of u as u were my friend and i shared personal problems w/ u. u are a great bunch of people and its a shame ppl have to be rude.

please i'd like to stay in contact with all of you, its been nice having u here and knowing u.

Second Scellanis shut up. These people are/were valuable pepple in this forum and here they have are kindly saying their good-byes. And then u come along and make it a hate tread. im sry that i hade to post that here guys and im sry he screwed up this thread.


you will be greatly missed. Kepp in touch with us

Best of Luck
-Fred

[Meg Boyd]

I have my own opinion on the entire matter and I know I am not actually a moderator in this exact forum, but I would like to remind everyone to respect each other at BaO, and that goes for both sides of this tizzy. Instead of making this a war-like parting, why not make this a pleasant farewell?

I know all of us haven't gotten along in the past, and we probably won't get along in the future, but all we can do is have mutual respect. Hard feelings got BaO into this mess, so EVERYBODY please do not end other's/your stay at BaO this way.

Thanks, and good luck in the future to everyone!

Megsie

[choki]

Woah...calm down
Everything in the past is over and should not be brought up again. Otherwise it can never end.

Peace

[Scellanis]

They already made it a hate thread when they blamed paul and me for all of this. Telling people they were needlessly banned puts us right back to the original argument and also assumes that Paul is not doing his job as an admin correctly which is just being downright ungrateful. Do any of you pay for this website, the server that runs it? Nope, only Paul does that so what gives you all the right to say that he bans people needlessly. Its his descision whether something is needed or not.

It is Won that I have the issues with particularly as I'm sure she was banned for harrassing me and yet I see her here again with a new second account that is against the rules and digging up all the old wounds and reopening them.

If I have changed its because I have had to to stop myself from being driven out by this argument that should have been finished many many months ago.

[Gwared]

RIGHT

This has gone quite far enough.

...improper administration of the forum after all the controversy that arose out of the fights in the mod forum and the constant siding of the admin, with a certain member, and the subsequent decrease in activity of the forum. All we have to say is that, you cant be biased if u r an admin, you have to judge everything fairly to suit all members.

Improper? Have you ever administered a forum? 1) This is Paul's work, he has the right to do whatever he likes to it as he pays for it. 2)If he feels uncomfortable with certain members he can take whatever action he wants as it's his forum. 3)He was forced to choose a side based on what was going on. Based on how childish some of the actions have been from those members since the incident it would appear he chose right! 4) He does not have to do everything to suit all members, he can't. You can never please everybody.

I totally agree with groo on this: the admin should be neutral and objective and not taking sides.

From what little I know of this incident he couldn't. Members actions were in direct violation of this forums rules. Scellanis never resorted to verbal tirades of insults; Sonkem (as she was then known) and I had a huge falling out when I first joined this board, yet she was always polite and never resorted to name-calling, slander, or swearing. That is why she was never at fault in the incident; she didn't break the rules!

There is a urge need to be fair and imparcial. It's something we ought to do as humans who want to see the world survive for a long time... But I'm getting a little off-topic.

But good times come and go, and this one is definitely gone: as sad as it might be (and it is sad to state it), banning people all the way, making them leave for good or just making them become tired of being here are not the proper ways to run a forum, especially such a wonderful one.

Why wasn't Paul fair and impartial? If I had to choose a side which had one side withdrawn, being sent abusive PM's, having slander written about them in posts, and the other doing or forcing all those things...I can't see how you could choose another side? Initially no-one was banned, those that were were banned for breaking forum rules, what did you expect? No one is made to leave, it is your choice...

I thought the forum could recover from the problems in the mod board, but unfortunately(and not helped by Paul's absence) it obviously hasn't. During the year or so I've been here I've had to see many great forum members leave or get banned, and all for the same reason. I'm sure most people know what that reason is

I've already covered a lot of this but have any of you thought that Paul's absence may be due to a serious illness? An accident? A bereavemnet in the family? As I am sure you can understand there are somethings that are bigger priorities in life and you shouldn't jump to conclusions about what is happening...especially if you don't know.

Ron's point's I've already covered.

...Then it came to the de-modding of three very active members, again, I was one of them, for plainly stating their own opinions! I was pretty shocked about this, as I did not expect our admin to resort to such methods. And when we tried to defend ourselves it got even worse. One of the loveliest peoplke on this whole forum was banned, I am of course talking about Barry Trotter, who most of you might remember as an intelligent, considerate and polite person, contributing a lot to the friendliness of the forum. All of you who knew him know that he would have been the last person to insult or harrass someone else, or in any other way behave inappropriately on this forum.

I agree that Barry was all of those things, yet once he was de-modded he turned petulant and started to slander Scellanis...what do you expect Paul to do? He aske Barry to provide proof, and of course there was none...Paul was left with no other options because Barry had acted on his predjudice against Scellanis and, as with all predjudice, had no facts with which to back them up. He was left with no further options.

I decided to register with a new name, so as to avoid confrontation with Paul and the other member I mentioned before. Also, I sent a pretty nasty (but funny) email to the aforesaid member, to let her know what I think of her and got banned for good.

See that one word there? That is breaking the forums rules which when you signed up to you agreed to abide by, you broke them and Paul is therefore at his liberty to take whatever actions he deems necessary. NO ONE should have to put up with demeaning, rude, offensive PM's at BaO's. Your words can have effects you don't realise! Would you have taken responsibility if your PM had affected Scellanis so much that she attempted suicide? I doubt it.

Now it has come to this, i want to tell you that I am very sorry about what happened....To Paul...your absence in the past months you have made it even worse and now you see what comes of it.

As am I, we are losing a lot of great people...but sometimes, these things happen. As I have said before, Paul's absence may be significant and you'd do well not to trivialise it. Again, be careful regarding your use of words, especially on a forum, without the non-verbals that go with it you can easily get the wrong impression.

To the member who everyone is referring to, please do us a favor and shut up. I really liked you when I first came here, and you were very funny. But you started whining. You have to realize that not everyone will love you (online or off). As soon as you learn that, I will be waiting

This is where I get serious:

This is a forum where, providing you stick to the rules, everyone has a freedom of expression. If TDM you post any more comments regarding restrictions on members rights here then your posts will be deleted/edited, if it continues then this topic will be locked and/or burnt. Rude posts regarding any memebers will not be tolerated by me, and I hope by any other mods.

Marcus, I believe I've responded to your points.

Please, Sonkem. We're leaving. No need for any more blames

Please, oh please, do not go down this path! There is no blame in either of Scellanis's posts. Merely a goodbye, a personal opinion, and a warning. This was exactly was Barry did...

Second Scellanis shut up. These people are/were valuable pepple in this forum and here they have are kindly saying their good-byes. And then u come along and make it a hate tread. im sry that i hade to post that here guys and im sry he screwed up this thread.

fred, please see the above warning. Scellanis has in no way tried to make this a hate thread, and anyway a rude comment was made about her first.

Thanks to Meg and Choki for trying to stem this arguement.

Goodbye to all of you, you've all made fantastic contributions to BaO's and you were a great laugh. It's sad it had to end like this but...

Best Wishes to the future

NB For those who couldn't bear with reading all this, I add;

Anymore slander will result in appropriate action regarding this thread

That may mean:

Editing of Posts
Deletion of Posts
Locking of Topic
Burning of Topic

Please try to keep this forum sociable.

~ Gwared

[Gower]

I've already covered a lot of this but have any of you thought that Paul's absence may be due to a serious illness? An accident? A bereavemnet in the family? As I am sure you can understand there are somethings that are bigger priorities in life and you shouldn't jump to conclusions about what is happening...especially if you don't know.

I could make lots of points but I don't want to. I will just point out this: During a time of major disagreement in the mod board Barry had a friend in hospital suffering from a disease of the brain. None of the people arguing against him cared about this at all.

[Scellanis]

Paul does have a reason why he can't be here and I won't be telling what it is but it is more important that dealing with this.

And Gower, I didn't even know about that but it doesn't count as an excuse to let him do things that would get everyone else banned.