In the thread started by Stardust (http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73508) that got pretty much out of hand in a hurry, she (Rozann Bruyn) took it upon herself to post something that Wes Pollock sent to her that was an email that came from me sometime in the past. When I saw that Rozann had posted this "pass through message" from Wes, I immediately deleted it without bothering to read it. I felt it was not proper for Wes to further interface with this site after being banned, and that any such correspondence, without prior approval, should not be allowed to take place.
Later, in the HELL forum of all places, I heard that apparently that email that Wes took the liberty of making public, was being passed around the web and some said they felt it was damaging to me. With that in mind, I asked someone to please send it to me so I could see what I was up against. The following is what was sent to me:
To be honest, when I read it I actually laughed out loud, thinking "this is IT!?" That is all Wes Pollock could come up with to try to damage me from all of the correspondence we have had over the years? THIS is the best he can do? He was willing to sacrifice his reputation of being someone you can trust, rely on, and confide in, JUST to do THIS? Yeah, I laughed quite hard about that one.
And of course, please notice that Wes did NOT include the statements and questions he obviously had posted that I was responding to. In replies like this, I normally place my replies between the questions and statements posed to me, and they are glaringly absent in this public rendering. I probably have that email somewhere around here, but honestly haven't made a "do or die" effort to find it. But from what I can remember, at least part of it was a whine-o-gram about getting more warning points from unacceptable actions on this site, and most likely those warning points came from Dr. Jay Owens. But if I find it later on, and if anyone feels it is necessary, I may post it here as a "rest of the story", since Wes has apparently laid down the ground rules as to what he feels is acceptable behavior to do with private correspondence.
Now just recently I was discussing this with someone who pointed out that the one paragraph about Dr. Jay Owens could very well sound very unflattering concerning my opinion of Jay. Well to be honest, when I read it myself, I KNEW what context it was stated in, and it didn't sound bad at all to me. I knew what I meant by it when I said it. But yes, I can see where someone not seeing it from the perspective of what I intended it to mean, in reply to Wes Pollock's query, could possibly see it in a whole different light.
From what I can recall, Wes was complaining about Dr. Jay Owens involvement in this site outside of being a moderator. In other words, Jay was not participating at all in the discussion forums and putting in any effort to further support the site with his postings. Now I can't recall exactly when this email took place, but I suspect it was during one of my periods being kind of miffed about the discussion forums not really making any headway, no matter what I have tried with them. And I do recall seeing Jay being involved with doing admin work on another startup website and posting some messages there apparently trying to help get it off of the ground. So yeah, I guess I did have a bit of disappointment about Jay not helping out in the discussion forums here, and confided that fact to Wes in that email. But if you will read further in that paragraph, you will also note that I completely understood (although wishing it were otherwise) why that was the case. I knew I had no right whatsoever to demand anything from my moderators concerning their involvement here, so no, I never made such disappointment public at all, to anyone. And I never mentioned it to my moderaters at all, either. It is ONLY in a private email, made in confidence to someone pretending to be my friend that I admitted these feelings. And you can certainly see how that sort of trust and confidence was treated by Mr. Wes Pollock in how he entrusted such correspondence from me.
The rest of the message, in my opinion, is so harmless I can't imagine why Wes even bothered to include it. For your info, the "Dan" mentioned in the top paragraph is "Dan Wedeking". I was pretty disappointed with the way Dan had reacted when I went to paid memberships, and good old buddy boy Wes Pollock offered to be a go between and try to smooth things out between Dan and myself. With the benefit of hindsight I now have into Wes Pollock, lord only knows what he may have said to Dan, saying it came from my fingertips on the keyboard.
Certainly Wes's actions have been an eye opener. I always thought of Wes as a basically honest guy, someone you could count on to do the right thing, although maybe rough on the edges a bit. Well I guess my naivety is showing again.....
So anyway, I felt I needed to clear the air about this thing. I needed to point out the context of the message that was apparently left wanting when Wes decided to make it public and use it, in my opinion, to attempt to damage me and apparently drive a wedge between myself and one of my valued moderators.
Later, in the HELL forum of all places, I heard that apparently that email that Wes took the liberty of making public, was being passed around the web and some said they felt it was damaging to me. With that in mind, I asked someone to please send it to me so I could see what I was up against. The following is what was sent to me:
Heck, I'm just disappointed, that's all. I always treated Dan as a confidant and asked his opinions about things. I thought for certain his level headedness would see that I was painted into a corner and there really was no way out other then the path I took. I can't remember the exact details of what he suggested (there were a LOT of them), but I believe he was insisting that I could make this work by simply charging for the classifieds. I may be wrong about this, so bear with me. Quite frankly, I just did not agree with that. The classifieds just were not pulling the kind of traffic needed to get people willing to pay to use it. That was the flat out truth of the matter. I tested the waters with those $1 per hit highlighting options and I did not even make enough money off of it to pay for the programming time to have it implemented. It was cheap, very easy to do, and completely under-utilized. So charging people a fee just to use the classifieds would have been the kiss of death for the classifieds section completely. I'm sure some people will disagree with that, but I just had to go with my gut feelings. I'm the one who would catch the shit rolling downhill if I chose wrong on this. There was no malice on my part rejecting ANYONE's suggestions. Matter of fact, I had sincerely hoped someone would come up with something that I had not even thought of. I had been running this thing through my mind for YEARS simply as a solution for the garbage logons in the BOI. I knew that until I could bring that under control, the BOI was never really going to get over the hump as far as credibility goes. I was groping for some way to solve that problem, but just never really felt people would pay to do that, so I just kept it on the back burner. It wasn't until I hit bottom and realized that I just DIDN'T want to do this any longer without some suitable compensation that I figured I would kill two birds with this one stone. It solved both problems nicely, in my opinion.
Yes, I would have let the site fade into oblivion, if that is the way people chose it. And no, I would not have been happy at all at seeing all of my hard work go down the drain after all this time. That's why I was so tightly wrapped about it. I was having to make decisions that could make or break the site. That is not any easy thing for anyone to do. I took the criticism personally, because hell, it WAS personal. It was MY site, and MY decisions! Why wouldn't I feel they were personal attacks? I had people telling me that I OWED it to everyone to do this for free. Had people suggest getting cheaper servers and THAT would solve the problems. And they were getting PERSONALLY pissed at me because I told them, that their suggestions just would not work, or no, I disagree with their assessment. And then Dan jumps right in there with that same crowd using the same arguments.
Oh, about Jay Owens. Damn it, Wes, I don't know what to do. Yes, I agree that Jay is a problem. It really irks me that he really doesn't do anything to support the site and just seems to flit in now and again. But how do I demand of someone to put more time and effort into a free endeavor? Being a moderator is a real bucket of shit on that site. Those guys catch a lot of flak, get death threads, email bombed and all kinds of crap. For what? To help me with my site and I'm going to kick them in the teeth and tell them to give me even more? How the hell do I do that without sounding like a 24 carat prick? Ken Harbart is going through some personal turmoil, as is Dennis Thomas. Both of them aren't really putting in that much more time then Jay has lately. But am I supposed to fault them for having their personal lives get in the way? I know Jay has said he is really tied up with re-entering his practice and last I heard his father was suffering from some severe medical problems. I'm sorry, but I just can't beat up on these guys because someone may think they need to put in more effort then they are seeing.
As far as Robin vs Jay Owens goes, quite honestly she deserves it. She is purposely abrasive, loves to rub people the wrong way, and doesn't have a lick of common courtesy. I have wanted to boot her ass off of the site so many times I have lost count.. So how can I realistically say to Jay, "Hey, I think you are being to harsh on Robin." I really don't believe it for an instant. I look at those reported posts, and quite honestly, Jay merely assesses the points before I would have gotten to them and done the same exact thing. Robin just practically needs her own personal moderator.
Then there is Lucille. What the heck do people have against her, anyway? She is by far putting more effort into promoting my site then any 10 other people combined. And yet people are beating her up over it. Yeah, she does hit a wrong chord sometimes, but getting it right 9 times out of 10 shouldn't have people pissing all over her for that one time she goes a bit overboard. Robin apparently has a burr under her saddle about her. I've seriously considered making Lucille a moderator as an effective way to get Robin booted off of the site. Robin would obviously go ballistic, and after only a few warnings about antagonizing a moderator, I could give her the boot. I mean, look around. How many controversies does Robin wind up getting into the middle of? When you see a rash of problems, it helps to look for a common denominator.
Anyway, getting late and I have some work I need to do.
Sorry about the length of this. Obviously this stuff has me worked up over it. But I guess I painted myself into another corner. Now I can't just pull the plug and tell everyone to kiss my ass. Now I OWE them what they have paid for............
To be honest, when I read it I actually laughed out loud, thinking "this is IT!?" That is all Wes Pollock could come up with to try to damage me from all of the correspondence we have had over the years? THIS is the best he can do? He was willing to sacrifice his reputation of being someone you can trust, rely on, and confide in, JUST to do THIS? Yeah, I laughed quite hard about that one.
And of course, please notice that Wes did NOT include the statements and questions he obviously had posted that I was responding to. In replies like this, I normally place my replies between the questions and statements posed to me, and they are glaringly absent in this public rendering. I probably have that email somewhere around here, but honestly haven't made a "do or die" effort to find it. But from what I can remember, at least part of it was a whine-o-gram about getting more warning points from unacceptable actions on this site, and most likely those warning points came from Dr. Jay Owens. But if I find it later on, and if anyone feels it is necessary, I may post it here as a "rest of the story", since Wes has apparently laid down the ground rules as to what he feels is acceptable behavior to do with private correspondence.
Now just recently I was discussing this with someone who pointed out that the one paragraph about Dr. Jay Owens could very well sound very unflattering concerning my opinion of Jay. Well to be honest, when I read it myself, I KNEW what context it was stated in, and it didn't sound bad at all to me. I knew what I meant by it when I said it. But yes, I can see where someone not seeing it from the perspective of what I intended it to mean, in reply to Wes Pollock's query, could possibly see it in a whole different light.
From what I can recall, Wes was complaining about Dr. Jay Owens involvement in this site outside of being a moderator. In other words, Jay was not participating at all in the discussion forums and putting in any effort to further support the site with his postings. Now I can't recall exactly when this email took place, but I suspect it was during one of my periods being kind of miffed about the discussion forums not really making any headway, no matter what I have tried with them. And I do recall seeing Jay being involved with doing admin work on another startup website and posting some messages there apparently trying to help get it off of the ground. So yeah, I guess I did have a bit of disappointment about Jay not helping out in the discussion forums here, and confided that fact to Wes in that email. But if you will read further in that paragraph, you will also note that I completely understood (although wishing it were otherwise) why that was the case. I knew I had no right whatsoever to demand anything from my moderators concerning their involvement here, so no, I never made such disappointment public at all, to anyone. And I never mentioned it to my moderaters at all, either. It is ONLY in a private email, made in confidence to someone pretending to be my friend that I admitted these feelings. And you can certainly see how that sort of trust and confidence was treated by Mr. Wes Pollock in how he entrusted such correspondence from me.
The rest of the message, in my opinion, is so harmless I can't imagine why Wes even bothered to include it. For your info, the "Dan" mentioned in the top paragraph is "Dan Wedeking". I was pretty disappointed with the way Dan had reacted when I went to paid memberships, and good old buddy boy Wes Pollock offered to be a go between and try to smooth things out between Dan and myself. With the benefit of hindsight I now have into Wes Pollock, lord only knows what he may have said to Dan, saying it came from my fingertips on the keyboard.
Certainly Wes's actions have been an eye opener. I always thought of Wes as a basically honest guy, someone you could count on to do the right thing, although maybe rough on the edges a bit. Well I guess my naivety is showing again.....
So anyway, I felt I needed to clear the air about this thing. I needed to point out the context of the message that was apparently left wanting when Wes decided to make it public and use it, in my opinion, to attempt to damage me and apparently drive a wedge between myself and one of my valued moderators.
