Kyotext.

Kyo in qoutes

“There's a lot of context that goes into the bans, so this PM is going to be a bit longer.
So basically what happened was that Ironscarf made a comic about the staff, criticizing/satirizing some forum policies. That in itself is not that unusual (killersteak made some as well around the same time, e.g.), but what he did do is actually go and look for pictures of each of the staff members to base the characters on. Neither I nor MatthewJA are very “open” with our pictures, so it's not just a matter of him happening to have seen them on the last page of pictures of you.”

That exactly where I got them, to make fun portraits of my friends (I’ll include these). At least, I thought they were friends

“I haven't posted a picture in over a year, and afaik matt has never directly posted one. Don't quote me on that, though.”

Probably true. MathewJA was in a picture I used for the portrait I’ll include below. I didn’t realise it was him until later.

“That alone made us quite uncomfortable already (two out of 3 mods have been stalked by someone on the forum previously, to the point where matt's parents found out and seriously locked down his internet usage), but Arden/Ironscarf had raised some red flags in the past as well, which made us actually decide to give him a permaban.”

Can’t comment as I don’t know what these “red flags” are. Nothing was ever mentioned to me. He described me as a good user and we’ve had countless friendly PM discussions.

“Arden has harassed Mary in the past.”

This is news to me. I’ve spoken to her by PM in the past and had every reason to believe it was on a friendly basis (see below). If it was harassment, why didn’t she, or anybody else point this out? Why am I hearing about it for the first time?

“Let me find the PM she got:
In 5 years I'll still be here - if you still are I make this promise: if cisgender has entered the common vernacular. I'll give you ten quid (English Pounds)- fair deal?
A similar one was sent to pineapple as well:
I'll give you ten quid (English Pounds) if that term has entered the common vernacular in five years time. It's a promise - you lose nothing if it doesn't.
Now - you claim to be a proffesional writer: can you prove it?

he sent that PM unwarranted”

There’s a PM warrant? How did I not know this?

“ - there was no prior communication via PM.”

Forgotten that previous PM harassment already?

“ If I remember correctly there was an argument a few days before about the phrase - nothing anyone got infracted over.”
You didn’t remember – the argument was happening when I posted the PMs. I sent PMs instead of using the  thread because people were complaining it was being derailed.

“ But arden did know fishy to the point where he knew this would upset her. It doesn't really matter where you stand on this issue (I also don't believe it'll enter common vernacular, FWIW), but arden sent that PM with one purpose only, which is to upset fishy. In the thread this would have been okay, because fishy chose to participate by it.”

This is actually the most hurtful part: I have never sent a PM that was intended to cause upset. What he doesn’t mention is that Fishy replied to my post, took my bet and left me on what I thought was a friendly note – again. Turns out I didn’t know Fishy at all.

“ (Though the thing about being a professional writer is still just flame baiting, no matter how you look at it)”

The user in question was running a writers thread in which she stated she’d been a professional writer since since age 10. I wanted to ask how, but asking in the thread seemed kind of rude, so I put it by PM.

“In any case, fishy posted this and I concluded that this was not banworthy. Arden was sent a friendly PM telling him not to harass people.”

This is when I first found out there was a problem. I wish I could quote that “friendly PM” – there may be cultural differences at play here – it didn’t sound friendly to me.

“ He challenged it saying he was doing no such thing. Then he sent a pretty “out there” rant about how pineapple is part of some sort of PC conspiracy infiltrating CF.
Apologies for that post Matthew - I was shocked by your message and wasn't sure what was going on, but now I know. Turns out I'm the latest in a very long line of victims of the one who calls herself Pineapple.
I've been doing a little digging: apparently she's a well known internet crazy person and all the claims she's made here about being a writer and having a poor, deprived and even abusive family background etc etc, are all false. It makes very interesting reading! When I asked her to substantiate her claim of being a pro writer (the “insult” you're referring to) she went ballistic and it's easy to see why: I was a little too close to home, without realising it.
From what I've read, it's quite likely that she will now devote herself to getting me banned from the forum so I'm going to mention this to Kyo also. As for Fishy, I've always been very fond of her as last years valentine demonstrates:

As far as I was concerned we were having a good humoured exchange about a particular term and I only PMd it because people were complaining about thread derailing. But if she's accusing me of harrasment, she's off my valentine list and my offer of ten English pounds is hereby withdrawn!
Matt responds:
For starters, there were two different reports, so this is not just about Pineapple, but anyway.
That's quite the claim you make there. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so you might want to cite some sources.
If you're actually concerned about people trying to get rid of you, I'm reasonably sure all of the moderators attempt to be as unbiased as possible, so I doubt any campaign to get rid of you would succeed without your help.
The problem in your exchange with Fishy is that she feels you have harassed her in the past by PM, so context is important - what may seem good humoured to you might not be to someone else, that's all.
Arden comes back with more stuff that I can only politely refer to as “pretty far fetched”
For evidence this is a good starting place. Obviously this is a person with an axe to grind, but the links would set you off in the right direction - I don't expect you to bother with this of course, especially since she's deleted large sections of her internet history, but waybackmachine is quite useful. I've yet to meet a poor person who drinks $20 tea - I'm British and I never heard of $20 tea.
Every claim she makes is contradicted elsewhere by another of her own posts anyway, so whatever she is, she can't be all of those things. I checked with another long standing member who seemed to be under the impression she's black and from Brazil or Puerto Rico. I did not prompt that, but was also previously under the same impression. A middle class white person pretending to be a poor black person is pretty disgusting to me.
I'm surprised by what else you've told me. We've known each other for years and we've exchanged several PMs, but by your tone you must feel the same way. I'm saddened by that and so I've decided to remove myself from the forum: it seems the best thing to do since the pair of you now seem to be the chief mods and I don't want to hang around where I'm not welcome. Best of luck to you.
Sorry, I forgot the link. As I said, an axe to grind, but everything leads from here - not really worth wasting your time with but it's all out there.
So first of all, he says it was all in good fun. I personally don't believe that, you are free to make your own call about this, you have all the information. Keep in mind though that it was arden contacting pineapple, not the other way around.”
There’s a missing PM here. It’s the one where MathewJA undertakes to look into it and get back to me. I then say I’ll stay off the forum until he comes back to me. He never comes back to me!

“But let's not get hung up on something that this was not about.”

It wasn’t about that? Didn’t we just go through all this because it was the “context that went into the ban?


“His comic - well yeah the comic itself was pretty harmless, and you can see that killersteak has multiple comics about the moderation still up , so obviously it's not just that we said “how dare someone criticize us” and swung the banhammer.”

That exactly what happened! He said the comic “crossed the line” and was the reason for the ban. He never mentioned any of this other stuff when he literally told me he was going to “swing the banhammer”

“What earned arden his ban is that for each and every one of us, he went out of his way to actually find a picture we posted somewhere (according to him, he had all of them on his harddrive for years) and use that as a reference. That makes me highly uncomfortable, because it's giving me stalky vibes, and while killersteaks comics annoy me, ardens comics frighten me a bit. Especially knowing he's already done extensive “research” on another person on the forum whom he did not like.”

You shouldn’t be using quotation marks there since I didn’t mention doing any “research”, extensive or not. I simply read the “research” done by others, which is there for all to see.

Okay, so the pictures were the real reason for the ban? Kyo posted a pick of himself on the forum ages ago and I used it to make this.
http://i49.tinypic.com/flapoz.jpg

He didn’t seem to mind that – I think he said it was cool. I started another portrait when he posted another pic and while I was working on it he asked me to paint this alligator
http://i50.tinypic.com/27xnlft.jpg
for the forum banner, which I worked on for about a week but he never used it (a week seems long but as it was going on top of the forum, I wanted to make sure it looked good at the required size).

Anyway, I found out he didn’t use it because he took offence to something else I said, so I put my portrait on hold. I eventually finished it in much simplified form here and that’s the one that’s so close it creates a “stalky vibe”.
http://i59.tinypic.com/28rkxf9.jpg

I really don’t know what to say about that.
As for Fishy, she sent me a valentine in a themed thread we had, so I used her pic from the photo thread to return the favour with this.
http://i50.tinypic.com/24v6xzn.jpg

Again, if she thought that was harassment, nobody said so and neither did the four other people I made portraits for in the same thread. That photo turned out to have MathewJA in it too, so there wasn’t a whole lot of going out of my way involved. The valentine thread was just a friendly thing where you gave a shout out to users you liked, so you can see why I thought we were on good terms. When or why that ended I cannot say, since nobody ever mentioned anything of the sort to me.
Confused,
London.