It gets funnier and funnier over at VPForums. AJ is now claiming that the reason he never explained why I got banned was that I (or one of my "cohorts") "hacked" the Staff Members forum and printed it up on my website. Just for the record:

1. The Staff members forum was accessed by AlexM, nothing to do with me and I knew nothing about it. I couldn't "hack" my way out of a wet paper bag.

2. It was not "hacked" at all - it became accidentally accessible to the public while VPForums were messing around with stuff. Alex happened across it purely by accident while browsing, took a look out of curiosity, didn't like what he saw, so took copies of the pages and passed them on to me to show me what was being said about me behind my back and what the moderators were planning. (Basically, looking for ways to get around the agreement I'd made with AJ so they could ban me again. You don't have to take my word for it, the files are still available on my site.)

3. I then put a copy of the files on my site with an intro explaining what was going on.

Nothing was "hacked", and even what WAS done wasn't done by me or with my knowledge. AlexM doesn't even live in the same country as me. AJ's claims that he could have had me sued for hacking his site are the funniest lies he's posted yet.

(And even so, they're a crap excuse. He could still have emailed and said "I'm banning you for hacking my site". But then he'd have had to face up to the fact that I could PROVE that I hadn't, and if there's one thing egomaniac control freaks can't stand it's having to face up to the truth.)

At first I thought all this was incredibly sad, but to be honest I'm starting to quite enjoy watching them screeching around in panic trying to put out the fire with bullshit.

Kinsey stated in Kristian's goodbye thread:

"Since people are now resorting to personal flames, this thread is closed."

What people are "now" resorting to personal flames in that thread? Shiva? Apocalypse? I don't think so. I mean they call calm, rational discussion "personal flames." TRANSLATE: This thread is making the staff look bad so the discussion is going to be stopped before we look even worse. Never mind that they also banned the orignal poster (Kristian). Odd how they could continue discussing a topic that was so AWFUL that someone was banned over it in the first place.... Just more nonsense, I'm afraid.

AJ stated some more nonsense:
=========
"PD has been banned because he is constantly challenging us admins/mods with the way we administer the forum and trying to draw a firefight when we tell him the rules aren't going away."

"PD is in the mindset that Kinsey is a bad choice for an admin. I and many others believe she is the perfect choice because she doesn't have a problem speaking her mind and telling someone they're an asshole when they are acting like one... and this is what pisses PD off so much because Kinsey tells it like it is!"
=========

This is FREAKING HILARIOUS. I'm banned because I keep stating my opinions without fear of reprisal on VPForums and then Kinsey gets praised in the very next bit for doing the same damn thing (well that plus the FLAMING aspect of calling someone an asshole that I don't do). If that isn't hypocrisy in the SAME PARAGRAPH I don't know what is. He's essentially saying that the ONLY difference between Kinsey and myself is that she's an appointed moderator and I am not, but yet he hates those same "qualities" in me (misplaced as they are, IMO), but LOVES them in Kinsey!! LOL. That's how distorted his view is.

Nevermind that Kinsey is AT LEAST as opinionated as me on almost EVERY topic out there. The only real difference is that if I were in her position, I wouldn't close threads, edit them and/or ban someone over their opinion differing from my own and I sure as heck wouldn't flame them as she's done several times in the past in both the public eye and in private.

But as for this absurd idea that I think Kinsey is the ONLY one responsible is just that, absurd. I blame ALL the staff for my ban because they all agreed to it. I told AJ in an e-mail that his 2-hour talk with Kinsey is probably the #1 reason he's seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses (One can't expect her to be unbiased on the issue when she and the rest of the staff are the ones that implemented the ban), but I sure as heck didn't say or imply she was the only reason we're having this problem. They're all to blame.


=====
"I'm not sure offhand why Kristian was banned."
=====

Well no DUH. AJ doesn't seem to know what's REALLY going on period despite a dozen people practically shouting it to him. It's really odd how he and the staff and a few that always agree with them view me as nothing but a troublemaker when the rest of the viewing public can plainly see at worst I'm a strongly opinioned (sometimes loud about it) person that still goes out of his way to help people with their tables, questions, etc. and has himself contributed 14 near commercial quality table releases! Even while I was banned, I was figuring out for Parallax why Scapino's Flash Gordon table wasn't working for him (it says so in the release thread by Scapino himself). The idea that all I ever did on VPForums was cause trouble is patently ABSURD.

As for posting polls, etc., I posted one whole poll about such things and it was on a way to *improve* the mod rules (a way to reduce red tape), which was instantly locked by Plumb (and reopened by AJ; that alone should trigger something in AJ's mind; he saw then that Plumb's action wasn't really reasonable as all I was doing was discussing the rules and looking for ways to IMPROVE THEM).

The other polls were posted by other people (I specifically recall the one posted by The Loafer that worded it so that all mods were implied to be "stealing", permission or not). I talked about this in another forum and BJ started posting false information (say yes it really was stealing) and I called him on it and challenged him to point that out to me in the mod rules and I ended up getting a posting ban for my troubles (that was the 1st time I got banned and it was for 2 weeks). Was I starting trouble? No I was REPLYING to NONSENSE posted by other people. Why should I let them categorize all modders as thieves? Don't I have a right to challenge posturing views? I guess not.....

> Don't I have a right to challenge posturing views? I guess
> not.....

The fact that AJ is only happy to take part in discussions where he has the sole right to allow/delete/edit replies should tell you all you need to know. He's scared to debate here because he can't delete anyone who disagrees with him or proves him wrong with demonstrable FACTS, so sticks to VPF where he can lie as much as he wants and anyone who would post the truth in response is simply not allowed to. The "absolute power" of VPF has corrupted him beyond saving.

Just to confirm that Nicky is 100% accurate in what he's saying there.

My VPF "AlexM" account had been banned and I'd been given the full IP address ban treatment so couldn't even read the forums (spiteful or what huh?). Same old story, I'd never engaged in personal abuse, flames or other destructive behaviour - just had the terrible affrontery to dare to express an opinion and, even worse, suggest Nicky Special might actually be right in his assertions.

Anyway, I'd registered a new account using a different dial-up (can't even remember what I called it now) but it was still on the approval list so was sort of a "pending member" account - but it let me read the forums.

I logged in one night to see what was going on and noticed that I could the Staff Area, no hacking, no subterfuge, there it was, in plain view. Ho hum I thought, I'll have a poke about in there, at this point I thought it must have been intentional to make it public view but as I started to read the threads in there it became very clear that these were things not intended for public consumption.

I e-mailed Nicky to tell him I could see the staff forum, could he see it too? He mailed back to say he couldn't, so I don't know what was going on, maybe the pending status of my account allowed me to see the forum, maybe a glitch, I really don't know, but what I *do* know is that I did not hack those forums in any way shape or form (and like Nicky, I wouldn't have a clue as to how to do so).

The stuff the admins/mods were talking about, the slurs they were casting far and wide, and the nature of their plainly psychotic clique had to find a wider audience than just myself, so I hoovered up every thread in there as .mht files, zipped them all up and sent them to Nicky, who presented them to the world.

Whilst I was in the process of hoovering one of the mods noticed my account in the "browsing this forum" list (a post appeared in the staff area asking "who's this guy?" - I think that's included in the zip actually), as I'd finished saving everything out I taunted them with a PM which effectively said "Ha ha you're all busted" - it also contained the line "P.S. Your secret forum is very easily hacked". The meaning of this was (I thought) pretty clear, it was easily hacked as in no hacking required, it was in full view to me and I walked straight in.

They were convinced that I had actually hacked the forum, a few PMs bounced back and forth - they were threatening to contact my ISP and the like, to which my reply was "Go on then" ("ISP user uses internet shocker!"). Not long after that the forum disappeared from view (which leads me to believe it was obviously something they'd screwed up at their end, if I was a hacker I'd have been back in in no time), and my account and new IP was banned.

Ever since then they have trotted out the *absolute lie* that I hacked their forum (without one single shred of proof, which is not surprising as such proof doesn't exist), which I absolutely *did not do*. They screwed up their settings somewhere and I walked in, and anyone who's seen the utter bilge they were coming out with to each other knows that I did the right thing in presenting their petty paranoia to the world.

One last thing - Nicky, could you post a link to your site where you're hosting the file? I'd like to remind myself of the astonishing crap they were peddling to each other.

> One last thing - Nicky, could you post a link to your site where you're hosting
> the file? I'd like to remind myself of the astonishing crap they were peddling
> to each other.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/thumbs.aloft/sm.zip

AJ posted:
> =====
> "I'm not sure offhand why Kristian was banned."
> =====

Well I'm not sure either. :) Could it have something to do with the fact that I posted my opinion about the current state of affairs?

Could it have something to do with the fact that I really wanted to save this community from destruction?

Did I break any rules? Of course not. They just wanted me out because I have brains and I refuse to kiss anyone's butt in order to maintain my membership. I also have a strong feeling of right and wrong.

What those guys have been doing is totally wrong. And I don't tolerate dishonest and cowardly people.

> Kinsey stated in Kristian's goodbye thread:
>
> "Since people are now resorting to personal flames, this > thread is closed."
>
> What people are "now" resorting to personal flames in
> that thread? Shiva? Apocalypse? I don't think so. I
> mean they call calm, rational discussion
> "personal flames." TRANSLATE: This thread is making the > staff look bad so the discussion is going to be stopped
> before we look even worse. Never mind that
> they also banned the orignal poster (Kristian). Odd how > they could continue discussing a topic that was so AWFUL > that someone was banned over it in the first place....

I find it pretty hilarious that first they banned me without reason and they made sure that I had no chance to reply to the thread. The account deletion happened immediately. Now they don't even have balls to come to this forum and reply to my posts.

Now they have also deleted Roland's response to me. The original thread got locked because they didn't receive ONE supportive post from anyone. They (BJ, Cowboy and Kinsey) have already destroyed all positive spirit in the community and they know it.

It's amazing how few people have balls to say publicly what they think. They tell me in email that they support me 100% but in public they post "politically correct" replies to the moderators, or totally ignore the existing threads.

I can understand them and I'm not blaming them. I just couldn't close my eyes from crap like that. That's why I'm able to look myself at the mirror right now. At least I _tried_ my best to save this community from tearing apart.