First wank, please be gentle and only use high quality tissues.

It's Covers Week at the LJ community audiography. In keeping with the theme, lardencelover makes a post of songs that the band U2 have covered, each with a description/explanation and all under a LJ cut, in keeping with the community rules. However, this isn't good enough for community moderator glendaplatypus (who, incidentally, lists U2 as a 'dislike' in her LJ userinfo), who makes a snarky first comment and the following ensues.

glendaplatypus: Wow talk about ignoring the quality over quantity guideline.

lardencelover: I didn't post anything I don't enjoy on a regular basis.

glendaplatypus: Yeah. Great. Well, at least you wrote about the songs, some people heredon't even bother. We might as well close the community down and start a P2P network/torrent site. Ugh.

lardencelover: I'm sorry you have qualms about the community as a whole, but I don't really have any control over whether other people bother to describetheir songs or not.

You'll also notice I put every single song under this nifty little lj-cut here for people who don't like U2.

glendaplatypus Aces. You win a star.

lardencelover: Have a nice day. :)

This would have stopped there, if not for the fact that several commenters were not pleased with glendaplatypus's attitude, and decide to make it known.

anon says:
That was ridiculously bitchy of you.

And...

knowledgequeen says:
Nice attitude. You've lost me as a poster. I'll get my music from somewhere not run by an elitist snob.

To which she replied:

glendaplatypus says: Good riddance. I hope you had a great time with us here at audiography!

And... re: [info]knowledgequeen , [info]redrover1980
says:
Agreed. I couldn't hit the 'delete' ticky box fast enough.

OH, SNAP! This is too much for glendaplatypus, who promptly deletes said comments, and continues to antagonise lardencelover and newcomerpuma_concolour, who lays the smackdown.

puma_concolour: I think someone hasn't read the rules.

COMMUNITY RULES:

The rule that rules all rules is: Don't be an asshat. (What is an asshat?)

Youwere out of line and rude. If you don't like the music, you ought toskip the post -- that's what the little scroll bar on the right side ofyour screen is for, see? Just click the button and scroll right on past.

If you have complaints about other people, you should take it up with them, not with someone who hasn't done anything wrong.

Place large images, long text entries and offensive material under an LJ-cut.


And you ought to learn a few manners while you are at it. People seldom respect snarks.

If you don't like the way I think, then STFU!

glendaplatypus: There are reasons as to why I facilitate this community the way I do if you don't like the way I manage the community, you can leave.

lardencelover: Does one of those ways include altering the rules of the community to suit you? Because I don't recall breaking any of them; I even stayed in-theme rather than making an OT post.

I don't really have any urge to get wanky about this, but I mod several communities myself now and in the past, and never have I let my personal tastes cloud my judgement as a moderator. So long as the comm rules are followed, I let members do their thing, and I would certainly never be so rude to a contributor, complain to them about things other members of the comm do, nor would I delete comments from people calling me on my bad attitude (which I have saved in my email notifications anyway, by the way).

Instead of encouraging people to leave, it might be more in the interest of both you and your community if you give the people that actually need a verbal kicking (like those that don't describe their songs) their appropriate nudgings, leave the ones providing helpful and well-recieved music posts alone and start following your own rules of courtesy and politeness.


This goes back and forth, and deleted comments abound, until finally, glendaplatypus has enough of disagreement and promptly deletes the post and bans lardencelover, puma_concolour and nightgarden. Which is too bad, really, as I am a good little Fandom Wanker and remember to screencap/save pages.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=C8D36E2907D94648

I'll reupload to Megaupload in a second as YSI doesn't last very long. Here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CBQQNW3K

BREAKING NEWS! It wasn't glendaplatypus who necessarily did the actual banning after all! A comment to lardencelover before deletion:

From: lj_notify@livejournal.com (cio - LJ Comment)
To: (witheld)
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 02:35:14 UT
Subject: Reply to your comment...
ev (cio) replied to another comment somebody left in your LiveJournal post. The comment they replied to was:

Thank you.

Their reply was:

stepping on dicks qualifies you as an asshat.
no, thank you.
BANNED.

AND!

From: lj_notify@livejournal.com (cio - LJ Comment)
To: lardencelover
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 02:37:21 UT
Subject: Reply to your post...
ev (cio) replied to another comment somebody left in your LiveJournal post. The comment they replied to was:

I am not judging your overall performance as a mod, but rather your behavior in this instance. My suggestion that you find a replacement has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the fact that you seem unhappy with the community. Why give so much effort to something that's a disappointment to you?

Their reply was:

it's easier to find new members than new mods,
therefore, you are banned.
have a nice day.

Say what, now?

Edit the second: As noted in the comments below, look, someone wonders aloud where the post has gone! Let's see how long this lasts. (Don't worry, I'm saving.)

Edit the third:

When resqdog51 replies to the poster that lardencelover's post has been deleted, purple_snitch jumps in:

I don't think she was rude, [info]glendaplatypus made a point of reposting all the community rules before the theme started and asking everyone to be careful to abide by them. lardencelover post had, if I remember correctly, something like 20 U2 songs in it, which goes against the quality over quantity rule. Maybe [info]glendaplatypus
was a little short, but a lot of posts this week have been ignoring th rules, she has a right to be annoyed. And at the end of the day, she's the mod and this is her community. She can ban whoever she likes for whatever reason she likes.

jasminelily: But the rules don't say you can't post 10 songs -- if all ten were quality, then what's wrong with posting 10 of them? That post wasn't against the rules.

[Bad username: purple_snitch: <i>That's true, but all of the songs were by U2 and, as [info]glendaplatypus pointed out in the post, that's making the community nothing more than a P2P site. When you're posting that amount of songs by the same (very well known) artist the community becomes less about introducing each other to new artists and songs (which is what I've always thought it's about) and more about music piracy. [info]glendaplatypus told the user that she wasn't happy with the post and at the end of the day what she says goes. [info]lardencelover should have either cut back on the songs in the post or deleted the post entire indstead of ignoring [info]glendaplatypus</i> In response to this comment, the record is set straight: Anonymouse: <i>With the exception of one or two songs, everything she posted were live versions or were extremely rare. Going from memory here, but I believe there were only two songs that came from a readily available commercial release (Rattle and Hum). And the mod could have asked the original poster to alter the post. Instead, she chose to piss and moan, without requesting that any specific action be taken.</i> <lj user=], posting anonymouse: Whoa there. Music piracy my ass-- over half of those songs were taken from free U2 bootlegs traded between fans. There was no piracy involved there, and claiming piracy on anything in a comm like this is pretty ridiculous.

[info]lardencelover

To which purple_snitch had to say: OK, so you have a point, but I think posting 10 or so songs by u2 is a little different than posting either a variety of songs by different bands or a bunch of songs a lesser known band.

And I didn't realise that most of the songs were bootlegs. Still, I think she could have been a bit more selective in what she posted instead of posting so much.


Edit the fourth: cio owns up to the bannination!

cio: for the record, [info]glendaplatypus didn't ban anyone. i did.
Anonymouse/banned person: That makes it so much better. What a mature way to handle it. You've managed to piss off quite a few members by doing that.
cio: oh.. three former members? aw shucks, what a loss, go write fan fics and cry yourself to sleep.

This just gets better and better. Hey, and just as I edit the post, he deletes them! Sorry, cio. Your wank is showing. Another zip file with screencaps of deleted comments/the post in case it goes too: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SLH1K3NB

Edit the fifth: Because sidewaysdown is a mothereffin' rockstar for sending me copies of deleted comments.

In response to cio's admission that he did the banninating, here's some of the retaliation that occured, the deletion of which subsequently reduced the post from 53 comments down to around 30 (all these mice have different IPs. I assume that all the mice were around because of fear of being banninated themselves, which is totally understandable.):

cio: for the record, [info]glendaplatypus didn't ban anyone. i did.

anon 1: and that's something to be proud of. banning people who had the guts to tell your girlfriend that she was being a whiny bitch. Good for you
anon 2: wow, so glad I left this community months ago, I forgot how much of an asshat the mod and her lackey boyfriend are
anon 3: Sad -- people who share good posts get banned because one of the mods was a total bitch to that person. There are a lot of people who already are leaving this community because of such an attitude -- no doubt more will now too. What a shame. It could be a good community if it weren't for the bitchy power trips the mods go on.
anon 4: You're so brave, deleting comments. Afraid other people will see how fascist you are?
cio no i'm deleting spam.

OMG more anons denounce the facist regime!

another anon: I confess, I'm posting this comment anonymously because I'm afraid the mod, who is apparently not very confident in herself, will delete me for DARING to criticize the poor handling she gave this situation.

That fabulous post, which in my opinion did NOT violate the "quality over quantity" post simply because they were all damn good songs, and because lardencelover took the time to write comments about all the songs, was a wonderful contribution to my large collection of U2 songs. In case you didn't check, lardencelover has reposted that at her own journal, for which I am extremely grateful.

Another incident like that and I'll be sure to let everyone know this is a community run by fascists. It's a shame, too, as I had just recommended the community to a friend. I'm a little embarrassed at the moment.

THE BEST exchange and subsequent reply from cio, however, is this:
anon: And the mod could have asked the original poster to alter the post. Instead, she chose to piss and moan, without requesting that any specific action be taken.
anon 2: She always seems to do this. The mod of this community is a snarky bitch. Several people who offer GOOD music have either left or refused to post and ARE using it as a P2P site. She needs an attitude adjustment.
cio: uhm.. i'm not a girl.
anon: why does that matter?

or are you just that insecure?
cio: well you called me a girl, i was just stating the obvious, get your facts straight before you attack. btw. it's not your community, you joined, knowing there were rules, i'm assuming you read them, if you don't like the way they are being enforced, you should welcome your ban. that's it.