Quittintime: TAVERN OUTCASTS CHECK IN:

Hi, Andy. I got your email, so that part works. Put your reading glasses on bec this is one of my trade-mark dissertations that will probably get me banned here, too.

The truth is, i don't think a boycott will work for a variety of reasons:

Many of the posters in the non-Tavern folders don't participate in the Tavern anyway or even resent it. Without their involvement, Taverners' absences wouldn't be noted. Put yourself in their shoes and ask if you'd stop posting to save an off-topic folder that you never post in anyway.

Conversely, many of the more prolific Tavern posters don't post much outside the Tavern, so their presence or absence is immaterial to Taunton.

Thirdly, Taunton uses the website as a vehicle to sell, and they aren't terribly concerned with the quality of information given out as long as potential customers continue to come. Ron's THE go-to guy for truss issues, but that obviously wasn't a consideration.

My particular baggage i bring to such an action is that i got involved in a group effort to make an alternative site to BT when Taunton switched to Prospero. We had a much larger groundswell of political and economic support then and a clear shot at creating something original instead of asking permission to play in someone else's sandbox. For our efforts, Ian and i got a knife in our backs thrown by some of the individuals who created this very site, a pale shadow of what might have been.

Which brings me to my final point about a boycott, that most of those still left inside the Tavern seem to have accepted submission, telling those of us on the outside to bide our time, be sweet, don't rock the boat, keep your fingers crossed, etc. There are others who would be commiting professional suicide to publicly declare support for a boycott even if they agreed with it. If a boycott were to work, it would have to be among all posters, and be a stealth boycott.

BTW, it does not escape my notice whose logo is on the top of the pile on the right side of this page. (Edit: these logos show up only on the post-creation page, but Taunton's logo is at the top.)

I had made a post this morning to the mods saying they were engaged in vandalism of our community, that even though they owned the forum, they had no moral right to kill what we created ourselves. The Tauntonistas have proved themselves to be "community disorganizers" extraordinaire; the whole thread was immediately deleted, not just my post. I think that's a pretty clear signal that those left on the inside are hopelessly optimistic about a rapprochement between management and labor, if you will.

So i wouldn't expect to reach Taunton either with a frontal assault or an appeal to their better natures.

My solution so far has been to defy the bannings by developing new emails and screen names, one after the other as necessary, eliminating all cookies in between them. (The last time i signed up a new name, Taunton placed 24 cookies on my computer before i even posted.)

When i decided what to do about this, i simply looked at the most useful vulnerability Taunton has: they need to register people in order to sell them stuff and that is the Trojan horse we can get in on, even if we get banned. I can't recall how many registrations i went through before i reached stalemate with the mods with the "Tenacious" handle i'm using now to post in threads outside the Tavern. Considering the David/Goliath lack of equivalency in our positions, stalemate is not bad.

With that in mind, recall why the Tavern was developed in the first place.

The only clout we may bring to bear is refusing to be kicked out, then bringing the Tavern to us if we can't go to the Tavern. Taunton will be forced to keep someone constantly vigilant to delete threads and posts by banned people, or they may decide corraling the non-construction stuff in the Tavern isn't such a bad idea after all. That requires only that one become familiar with a number of online free email providers. I'm presently using one called cheerful.com and "giggles" for a P/W, which gives me a perverse sense of Klingon glee vis-a-vis Taunton.

For the life of me, it escapes me why they are so schizophrenic about moderation, with apparently just two settings: OFF and BALLISTIC. Light moderation would be mutually beneficial, but actual adults with healthy egos would have to be hired first.

Sorry to throw water on the parade, Andy. I know how much you want to DO something about it, but what do you think of those caveats i brought up?

Where in the hell is the post button here? Is this it...?

Edited by splintergroupie (Sun Nov 09 2008 01:35 AM)

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