[Original Copy on Yahoogroups] Message 565 of 624 From: "brian buckman"Date: Fri Sep 21, 2001 5:36 pm Subject: RE:how to unsubscribe and influence people Because the evidence does seem pretty solid that Mr. Buckman is not really the list owner, as much as he likes to pretend he is. Observe the fact that he is unable to change group settings, that he doesn't know who the current moderators are, and that when he tries to "ban" somebody, that somebody is still posting here days later. --Your deduction skills are prodigious Joe. Yes, in fact we are having difficulties effecting the membership status of some people. I was asked by the Burning Man organization people about 5 months ago to be the regional contact for Chicago (as some of you who were on the list at that time might remember me making very clear when I started helping). Part of the responsibility of being the regional contact is making sure the public discussion pages run smoothly and are not being abused. Over the past week we have had several problems with a few people (two of which - the most incindiary - are not even burners by anyone's account... Joe/John was a virgin this year and my hopes are that he continues to return in the future and continues to add to the community). Myself, Molly (who has since unsubscribed), Andie, Maid Marian, and in fact no one on the regionals discussion list can find the person who has the moderator info so we can remove Mark Hendricks, Paul Lewis, and Joe Dunphy. However, we have our own branch of the FBI out sniffing for our friend and it seems Sgt. Papa Wu may have some substantial leads. In the meantime I have made a formal complaint to the people at Yahoo!Groups and they are investigating. So yes indeed my hands are presently tied. Yes, I will remove these people once I have the ability. Yes, you can abuse this in several ways to your own egos enhancement or you can be cool and try and keep the community growing in the positive direction it is. As always, the choice is yours. I spoke to Andie last night and we decided that if things get too weird on this list we'll just migrate to one we have control over. I don't want to do that because I'm afraid we'll lose just as many people in that move as we would by letting the abuse continue. However, I will make that step if totally necessary. In the mean time I would encourage anyone interested in keeping this discussion list moving forward to simply put a filter on your email clients that will automaticaly delete any messages from Paul Lewis or Mark Hendricks. Do what you want about Joe/John, he's been some help to the community and has also been somewhat of a hindrance by turning most interactions (present example in case) into rhetorical battles and vast conspiracies that are really quite unimpressive in their scope of insignifigance to anyone outside of Joe/John. So utilize your filter commands and keep the positive goo mooing. What beauty is rustling in the kneecaps of this city after tuesday night can not be stopped by a few lambs. More soup. Brian