The Saga Continues at the JREF

I want to thank the several people who have kept me abreast of the discussions over at the JREF regarding being banned. Allow me to clarify a few things.

There seems to be some confusion regarding whether I requested that my account be deleted, unregistered or whatever. Here is the exact message in its entirety that I sent to Darat and Lisa a few months ago:

"Please inactivate/unregister (or whatever you call it) my account so that I have a status of Guest without posting privileges. "

Within hours of this request I found that I did, in fact, have a status of Guest under my name and did not have posting privileges. I was still able to log in and use a limited subset of the forum features. Nobody ever told me that I would no longer be allowed to log in. It is quite clear that I was operating under the assumption that I would still be allowed to, and for two months that was the case.

The issue here is that Darat changed my password without telling me. I reset it and logged in. Darat changed it again without telling and also changed my e-mail address so I could not reset my password (again, without telling me). Jeff Wagg is 100% wrong that there is no Guest status. If he were right, then why would they even need to alter my account? Use your brain, Jeff.

Need more proof? Log out of the forums. Read any post. Do you see the icon to report posts? No, you don't. So, how was I able to report posts if I were not logged in? Remember, Darat told me the reason he altered my account was because he didn't want to see reports from non-members. Clearly, I had a status that is higher than being logged out and lower than being a full member, which is exactly what I requested.

As for my "conspiracy theory" take a look at what happened. Lisa Simpson said flat out that the admins did not make any changes to my account. She was either mistaken or lying. I did not suggest that anyone at the JREF was up to shenanigans until after Lisa made her denial and Darat led me to believe that he had reset my account to the proper e-mail address. I don't think Darat was being deliberately misleading - he's just a terrible communicator. But the fact is he did not come right out and say that he was the responsible for all of the changes to my account and that he was doing so because he did not want me to log in anymore.

It was at this point that I involved Jeff Wagg. He said that nobody at the JREF was playing games with my account. Either he was mistaken, lying, or being misleading because Darat on two occasions altered my account settings without telling me. How is that not playing games?

Jeff, the Outreach and Communications Director, then threw a temper tantrum instead of trying to clear up the misunderstanding. Rather than take a deep breath and read what I wrote, he reponsed with insults ("no whining") and laid down an ultimatum after I had just requested that my account be reinstated.

So, Jeff, why did you want to force me to repeat something I had already told you? You get paid money to establish good relations on behalf of the JREF, but it seems you'd rather push people into pissing matches. I had answered your question already, but no, you felt the need to force me to repeat my request so that you could be the "winner" in this little skirmish. And because I wouldn't kiss your ass and repeat myself in the manner you desired, you lashed out by permanently banning me from the forums.

I was already locked out of the system, so why the permanent ban? Why not just let things settle down for a while? Do you really think you, Darat and Lisa handled this situation perfectly? If so, then you've a lot to learn about communication.