Hello. My name is WebSlave and I am a Kingsnake.com abuser.

I never get a straight answer.

Anyways I like the idea about going back to the old forums there where you have to report abuse. Sure a lot of crap happens but it was FREE. You could write freely and speak freely and that was kingsnakes best times.

bmm

Sean,
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a reply, but I would be persistent in getting a response (though not annoying so as not to hurt your cause). PHScales is from my area. She is a full-time school teacher (saw a spot on the local news on her) and runs VA Reptile Rescue (http://www.vareptilerescue.org), so I imagine her email inbox is often full. And no, do not take that as me standing up for her, I am not in any way shape or form. I just thought you should know. In my personal opinion, if these people are going to be moderators, they should return emails in a timely manner and treat the whole situation professionally. Unfortunately, we've already seen that this is not the case in a great many circumstances. Best of luck getting your account back.

Dianne

Boy, the ink didn't even dry on this message I posted in the Feedback forum over there before it got yanked!

Name: WebSlave
Subject: What happened to our discussion, PHChristy?
Body of Message:

Why bother to keep a forum open when the messages are filtered so heavily that it cannot possibly be a fair, open, and honest discussion?

Why not just lay the cards on the table and say "there they are, take it or leave it"? I think everyone would understand and respect a position like that. But to try to sweep REAL discussion under the rug reflects poorly on the staff at kingsnake.com, IMHO.


Added on Date: 02/12/03

So tell me, if JeffB is making all of the decisions to delete the flood of unacceptable messages over there (this is my opinion, of course), and so many people being banned right and left, how can this sit so well with all of the moderators on that site? Do they all actually believe that JeffB is RIGHT about his actions? Man, that is a REALLY scary thought.

It seems like the moderators were especially chosen for their willingness to blindly follow the directives of the site owner. I am having trouble picturing what kind of people these are, but it seems like the only reason a person would be willing to be a moderator under these circumstances is because they expect it to benefit themselves somehow. Maybe this is the most power they have ever had and they enjoy being looked up to by all the people that are new to reptiles. Those in positions of authority (even if it's psuedo) are thought to be knowledgeable about what they are doing unless proved otherwise. In this case it looks like they all have tipped their hand for the most part in one way or another and we have all generally learned that the last place you would want reptile information from is a moderator on Kingsnake. So what you have is a bunch of not very good reptile people giving not very good advice and not doing a very good job of moderating. It's no wonder that they don't want a public debate. They would be laughed off the internet. The only asset that the whole site has is the authenticity that Jeff B. once provided it. That authenticity bought him a lot of good will from the hobbyist in general but it is being squandered now. How someone expects to "corner" a discussion regarding ANY subject on the internet is beyond me and shows very glaringly an overwhelming ignorance of the whole concept of the internet. But I'm not surprised as some of the conversation about the technicalities of running a site with forums and such has shown great ignorance as well. It's almost like they think they are the only people that REALLY understand programming and they think it's ok to feed everyone BS because we are all too stupid to really know better anyway. In this day and age there are way too many knowledgeable people out there to pull stunts like that. So they have lost credibility regarding any discussion about the technicalities of their site also. And to ban someone for using something that THEY PUT ON A MENU is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard of in the tech world. The programmer should be banned not the user. So there you have it. Aside from Jeff they don't really know reptiles that well and including Jeff they appear to be pretty inept regarding running a website. I am SOOOOO tempted to go over there with about 20 or 30 new accounts and have a conversation with them but it's really not worth the trouble to engage them. They are just not up to a battle of wits and it's no fun when you know you will win everytime.

Well, I've been banned on KS six or seven times now. I have to confess that I'm getting tired of the exercise, but it HAS been fun showing KS that they cannot keep me from posting if I want to do so.

The moderators are deleting every post that has "Hillbilly" in their screen names without even examining what is in the contents of the post. LOL I switched it up a bit, but someone knew who I was and the mods were on this last name after an hour of posting, or so.

I have no real proof, but I think there are a few users (not mods) that are tipping off the mods when they see me post. That's fine. They have every right to do that. But I hope they feel really good about themselves for helping to spread censorship and control freak mentailites, and I hope they don't find themselves ever disagreeing with KS practices one day. If they do, someone may be ratting them out to the mods one day!



censorship

It could be some flunkies they places as regs, after all the mods can not be everywhere at one time. Its like putting plain clothed security guards in walmart to pretend to shop but are really watching.

Well, now they've gone through the corn forums and deleted all of my posts under my various psuedonyms! The funny thing is that they deleted one post in the middle of a thread, but left the post below mine, which was posted in response to mine.

I didn't think they were able to do that?!?!? Haven't they been saying that anytime a post is deleted, those below that post had to go as well? Wasn't that how they were excusing their complete erasure of entire threads? If that is not true about their limitations (and it obviously isn't), then KS has been lying to us all for some time in order to keep their forums as cleaned up as possible.

This would all make a great made for T.V. movie some day. We could call it "Silence of the Users." It would be about this maniacal website owner that went around killing off his user's accounts, eating their posts with some fava beans and a nice Ciante!!!!

Darin,

That has been a lie from the start. The original message board I set up on my SerpenCo.com site was the same one that Jeff's forums are still based on. It was an old first generation public domain message board system written by Matt Wright. It generates plain vanilla HTML files which can be easily edited in any text editor. Each forum is just a single HTML file, each of the threads are an HTML file, and each subthread is an HTML file. If you will notice in the Feedback forum, often when you look at the start of the thread, there will be a whole list of subthreads listed when you read the file, but are not there when you go back to the main forum. You also get a 'file not found' error if you click on them from the leading post of the thread.

What happened is that someone deleted the HTML file that was that subthread and edited the main forum HTML file, but FORGOT to edit the file created with the lead message starting the thread.

This gives you a very easy way to spot all of the posts that have been deleted there. I looked, and there are a BUNCH gone!

But I am washing my hands of posting on that site about these issues.

BTW, I am going to have to rethink this entire section here about kingsnake.com. It started out as being a joke, but it no longer is all that funny. I feel like I was laughing at the antics of some kid across the street in the way he was acting, only to discover he is actually afflicted with palsy. I am now embarrassed by what is going on over there. But I also don't feel like helping whatever it is that Jeff is doing by sweeping it under the rug here as well.

In a lot of respects, I feel like I am watching a favorite uncle losing his mind.

I was banned a bunch of times too. They now immediately ban any user that has "ban" imbedded in the name. I have been banned as "banned", "bannedagain" and "banndito". But interestingly enough, some of the message I left as those users are still posted. They are in forums that only the most niche visitors would bother visiting so I guess they don't get a lot of scrutiny.
It truly looks like Jeff is ready to let the whole Kingsnake thing go down the toilet rather than admit he made an error in judgement. I am truly astounded at the arrogance.

I agree with the WebSlave about how this is becoming less and less funny the further down the drain KS goes. I'll leave it all alone for a while, I suppose. I proved my point about their inability to actually ban someone that would really WANT to post and rubbed the mods' noses in it a little to boot. I have my satisfaction.

You know, though, watching that favorite uncle loosing his mind turns from pity to disgust really quickly when you realize it was his own doing rather than a simple result of natural processes. A favorite uncle has alzheimers, that's one thing. A favorite uncle huffs paint for a few months. . .that's another issue all together! My sympathy well has just about gone dry for the guy.