Exciting ahab board drama

[MiserereNobis]

It’s infecting every thread! Is there someway we can package it and sell it to some cable channel in the 600 number range? Or some clickbait website? BuzzFeed news? Here’s a working title: “Ahab gets banned again. See what he does next…”

C’mon @Nemesis, you could use the royalties to help pay the bills 😁

Edited June 10, 2021 by MiserereNobis

[AtlanticMike]

43 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

It’s infecting every thread! Is there someway we can package it and sell it to some cable channel in the 600 number range? Or some clickbait website? BuzzFeed news? Here’s a working title: “Ahab gets banned again. See what he does next…”

C’mon @Nemesis, you could use the royalties to help pay the bills 😁

I like Ahab, he makes me laugh. I understand what calm is saying about the rules though. Apparently he's been on here for years.  I've always wondered, do some of you guys, especially in Utah know each other? Is that how this board was formed?

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, MiserereNobis said:

It’s infecting every thread! Is there someway we can package it and sell it to some cable channel in the 600 number range? Or some clickbait website? BuzzFeed news? Here’s a working title: “Ahab gets banned again. See what he does next…”

C’mon @Nemesis, you could use the royalties to help pay the bills 😁

I might sign up for Twitter even if it gets a #Ahabbanned tag.

[Chum]

2 hours ago, MiserereNobis said:

It’s infecting every thread! Is there someway we can package it and sell it to some cable channel in the 600 number range? Or some clickbait website? BuzzFeed news? Here’s a working title: “Ahab gets banned again. See what he does next…”

C’mon @Nemesis, you could use the royalties to help pay the bills 😁

I figure this board got bought out by The Onion and he was a staff writer.  Maybe every staff writer.

[Calm]

23 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

I like Ahab, he makes me laugh. I understand what calm is saying about the rules though. Apparently he's been on here for years.  I've always wondered, do some of you guys, especially in Utah know each other? Is that how this board was formed?

 

A few of us know each other in ‘real’ life, a number have met including at FAIR conferences and I assume Sunstone and others.

The board was formed by FAIR, but people got to thinking it was FAIR and that FAIR was okay with anything posted or assumed that any defender on the board represented FAIR.  Iirc it was about the same time we were actively working to remove most of the snark from the FAIR website.  So the board became independent. 
 

The deep origins could be said to be first the UTLM message board which had the habit of deleting remarks by defenders, which led to the ZLMB or Zion’s Lighthouse Message Board...owned by a member, but moderators included nonmembers and decisions for suspension or banning were to be done by all.  It was to be a level playing field...which we found out didn’t work (I became a mod in its second year, iirc) as Saints became targets for some who posted just to attack rather than share ideas.  Moderating became a full time job for me trying to treat everyone equally while maintaining a civil environment (I was the most active mod...and poster).  We lost a lot of substantive posters no matter what we tried.  The moderators here learned from our experience and never tried to be level, just civil...and it is still around while ZLMB doesn’t exist anywhere except in screenshots I am guessing.

The other root of origin would be the AOL religion lists, which I was never part of as not available where I lived.  Those lists were moderated for AOL by mostly evangelicals who would delete posts they didn’t like.  Saints joined with other nonEvangelical religious posters to defend their faiths.  Members started collecting resources for recycled arguments rather than having to start from scratch every time something got deleted, decided to get more organized, dragged in friends who weren’t involved in the debates but were interested in sharing ideas and info and helping others with resources and FAIR was born.

Juliann has more info on that time as I wasn’t around till a couple of years later.

Edited June 11, 2021 by Calm

[AtlanticMike]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

A few of us know each other in ‘real’ life, a number have met including at FAIR conferences and I assume Sunstone and others.

The board was formed by FAIR, but people got to thinking it was FAIR and that FAIR was okay with anything posted or assumed that any defender on the board represented FAIR.  Iirc it was about the same time we were actively working to remove most of the snark from the website.  So the board became independent. 
 

The deep origins could be said to be first the UTLM message board which had the habit of deleting remarks by defenders, which led to the ZLMB or Zion’s Lighthouse Message Board...owned by a member, but moderators included nonmembers and decisions for suspension or banning were to be done by all.  It was to be a level playing field...which we found out didn’t work (I became a mod in its second year, iirc) as Saints became targets for some who posted just to attack rather than share ideas.  Moderating became a full time job for me trying to treat everyone equally while maintaining a civil environment (I was the most active mod...and poster).  We lost a lot of substantive posters no matter what we tried.  The moderators here learned from our experience and never tried to be level, just civil...and it is still around while ZLMB doesn’t exist anywhere except in screenshots I am guessing.

The other root of origin would be the AOL religion lists, which I was never part of as not available where I lived.  Those lists were moderated for AOL by mostly evangelicals who would delete posts they didn’t like.  Saints joined with other nonEvangelical religious posters to defend their faiths.  Members started collecting resources for recycled arguments rather than having to start from scratch, decided to get more organized, dragged in friends who weren’t involved in the debates but were interested in sharing ideas and info and helping others with resources and FAIR was born.

Juliann has more info on that time as I wasn’t around till a couple of years later.

I gotta say, I think the moderators do a good job. 

[halconero]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

I might sign up for Twitter even if it gets a #Ahabbanned tag.

If ya'llz want sick takes on immigration policy and pictures of the Canadian Rockies, there's a really cool account under @RRFalconer there.

[Megalodon]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

I might sign up for Twitter even if it gets a #Ahabbanned tag.

Twitter is a madhouse. Makes this place look like the height of rationality.

[Megalodon]

9 hours ago, halconero said:

If ya'llz want sick takes on immigration policy and pictures of the Canadian Rockies, there's a really cool account under @RRFalconer there.

I've talked @Stargazer into following you there.

[halconero]

9 hours ago, Megalodon said:

Twitter is a madhouse. Makes this place look like the height of rationality.

One of my mentors published an article recently comparing Twitter and Facebook to the Hobbesian State of Nature - nasty and brutish.

On the other hand, journalists and policy makers seem to hang out there and more, and are oddly more accessible than other places, like LinkedIn, email, etc. The reach of my work is definitely correlated with putting my work out there.

[Megalodon]

On 6/11/2021 at 11:09 PM, halconero said:

One of my mentors published an article recently comparing Twitter and Facebook to the Hobbesian State of Nature - nasty and brutish.

But unfortunately, not very short.

[MiserereNobis]

I’m away from the board for a bit and when I check back in Ahab has returned as b00b00

 Do I get the honor of first IDing him? 😁

[Raingirl]

1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said:

I’m away from the board for a bit and when I check back in Ahab has returned as b00b00

 Do I get the honor of first IDing him? 😁

Someone (I don’t remember who) beat you to it.  But I think you get some sort of honorable mention for the speed in which you recognized him. 🥈 

[3DOP]

On 6/10/2021 at 5:38 PM, Calm said:

A few of us know each other in ‘real’ life, a number have met including at FAIR conferences and I assume Sunstone and others.

The board was formed by FAIR, but people got to thinking it was FAIR and that FAIR was okay with anything posted or assumed that any defender on the board represented FAIR.  Iirc it was about the same time we were actively working to remove most of the snark from the FAIR website.  So the board became independent. 
 

The deep origins could be said to be first the UTLM message board which had the habit of deleting remarks by defenders, which led to the ZLMB or Zion’s Lighthouse Message Board...owned by a member, but moderators included nonmembers and decisions for suspension or banning were to be done by all.  It was to be a level playing field...which we found out didn’t work (I became a mod in its second year, iirc) as Saints became targets for some who posted just to attack rather than share ideas.  Moderating became a full time job for me trying to treat everyone equally while maintaining a civil environment (I was the most active mod...and poster).  We lost a lot of substantive posters no matter what we tried.  The moderators here learned from our experience and never tried to be level, just civil...and it is still around while ZLMB doesn’t exist anywhere except in screenshots I am guessing.

The other root of origin would be the AOL religion lists, which I was never part of as not available where I lived.  Those lists were moderated for AOL by mostly evangelicals who would delete posts they didn’t like.  Saints joined with other nonEvangelical religious posters to defend their faiths.  Members started collecting resources for recycled arguments rather than having to start from scratch every time something got deleted, decided to get more organized, dragged in friends who weren’t involved in the debates but were interested in sharing ideas and info and helping others with resources and FAIR was born.

Juliann has more info on that time as I wasn’t around till a couple of years later.

My recollection is that pacumeni9, the founder of Zion's Lighthouse, who I met in real life at Dave Waltz's house, allowed too much anti-LDS, anti-religion, anti-God, in the interest of a freewheeling, no censorship ever speech, which is not morally necessary, at a private forum, ZLMB. I am afraid pacumeni9 has left religion and God. I talk to Dave every few weeks. I'll ask if he knows. We all lived within a 30 mile radius of each other in those years. I won't use his real name, but pacumeni9 was a sharp guy, and an amiable fellow. I would be really happy to see him show up here some day showing that my fears for him are unfounded. How could he disappear for these nearly 20 years now? Oh goodness, how time flies.  

[Calm]

The 20 years is throwing me every time I think of it. It is hard to remember what life was like before, when I felt lonely because I had no one to talk to about the stuff that interested me. It has been such a blessing for me…but also hard seeing struggles friends have gone through. 

[Calm]

So fred joins shortly after the last posting by bOObOO…

Haven’t read enough to be sure, but one post had that circular phrasing common to notAhab’s style..

My apologies to fred if I am wrong.

The desire to play Where’s NotAhab? is strong today.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Calm

[Tacenda]

On 7/28/2021 at 11:31 PM, Calm said:

The 20 years is throwing me every time I think of it. It is hard to remember what life was like before, when I felt lonely because I had no one to talk to about the stuff that interested me. It has been such a blessing for me…but also hard seeing struggles friends have gone through. 

Same!

[Tacenda]

Could it be possible that when a few years ago Ahab took a break he's been there all along. For a while he quit posting. Ahab? I mean bOObOO? I mean...oh, I give up.