Train Wreck

[Phil]

A train derailed and caught on fire in Brooks, Kentucky. I got sent with a crew to help straighten that mess out.

We cleared the main disaster but there's going to be a repair crew on that job for a couple months because that's what its going to take to straighten the rest of it out.

[Vanilla Ice]

. . . and?

[tractakid]

You can stop being a pain, and being rude.

[Jersey]

Took care of it Shed. That was a little unnecessary Serival.


Anyway, Phil did it take a long time to clean up? What kind of damage did it cause to the surrounding area? I hope nobody was hurt in the accident.

[Classicblast]

I watched that report on the news. I think that because of the chemicals that were on board the majority of the fires would have to burn themselves out.

From what I understand about the report is that many miles of area is affected. But the national guard is also on the job as well as railroad workers. (Phil for exapmle)

One witness believes flames were at least 500 feet in the air.

I would also ask Phil the same questions Jersey asked.

[Phil]

To the best of my knowledge nobody was killed. But hundreds of homes were evacuated and still are. A school was evacuated right away and some people were treated for breething in the fires. They are chemical fires but between the workers, fire departments and National Guradsmen things will slowly find control. Crains will be needed to finish picking up the cars that derailed. Derailments are fairly common but not wrecks like this. Most derailments are just a single wheel causing sparks and destroying lower trucks but not a flip and fire.

I'm probably going to be sent back over the weekend. Crews are rotating and I would think my number will come up again before it's finished. The final clean up and repair efforts will take a few months to finish.

[Jersey]

Im glad nobody was hurt in this accident. It amazes me how easily someone could have been. Do you know what kind of chemicals they were that were set on fire?

[Vanilla Ice]

tmtd said:

[MODERATED AGAIN]

Go ahead and place your rude post back here and disregard my authority again. Just try it.

My post wasn't rude at all, I was inquiring about the situation. If you look closely, you'll see the first post has very little information about this event at all, there's not even a reference.

There was no comment on injuries and fatalities, or what the train was even carrying.

All you really know from the first post is that a train derailed in Kentucky at some point. That doesn't sound like news.

I think you need to be a little less jumpy, a post that would have been better suited for moderation and is actually rude is reply #2 which could have been sent in a PM or not stated on the public forums at all.

[skier1]

Having looked through the moderation records, it looks like Serival said nothing offensive. He was just asking for more details. While it was a short post and probably didn't state the direct meaning implicitly, it sent the message pretty clearly that Serival just wanted some more information. Which isn't offensive at all.

[Peon]

tmtd said:

[MODERATED AGAIN]

Go ahead and place your rude post back here and disregard my authority again. Just try it.

Authority, hmm, Jersey Life? Just why is it that you have authority here, again? You've been here for, what, a total of 6 months now? Looking through your post history, a good two or three of those months you didn't even visit the site regularly.

It seems to me that the current global moderators and board moderators are not chosen based upon loyalty to the site, their knowledge of whatever subject the board is based upon, or how long they've been at the board/how active they've been. Looking at the staff list and board moderators, actually, it seems that the current mods are chosen based upon how much they suck up to our friendly neighborhood tyrant, Classicblast.

Take a look at the boards that I currently am a moderator of. New Members and Sports. Rarely do I have reason to post in New Members due to the topics therein mostly consisting of greetings, and I don't share sports interests with anyone from this board. Why am I the moderator of those boards, you ask? Well, when power was shifted from Sizzlepop to Classicblast earlier in 2006, I inadvertently was revoked moderator privileges of two boards I am much better suited to moderate -- Constructor Forum and Soda Programs. The only reason I'm a moderator at all today is because I sent a personal message to Sizzlepop, asking why my moderator privileges were revoked, and he told me he would take care of the issue. I was then made moderator of two boards that, coincidentally, are both some of the least popular boards on this forum and ones that, at the time I was made moderator, I had a total of 11 posts in. Yeah, that's fair.

So who replaced me as moderators of these boards? Who is more suited to the sodaconstructor boards than I? Matermine, im_an_alien, and Jersey Life. Matermine's last post was Oct 23, 2005.. over a year ago, and, as far as I know, Jersey Life knows absolutely nothing of sodaconstructor. They're obviously more suited to moderate those boards, though.

I wouldn't go flaunting your authority, Jersey Life -- being appointed global moderator unjustly is definitely not something to be proud of. It should be quite clear to everyone that Classicblast has bias when appointing moderators.

[Classicblast]

All right. "Friendly neighborhood tyrant?" Ok you're entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. Therefore as the TYRANT I will choose who moderates what and why. The why I might or might not explain as I see fit. The facts are the boards had trouble a few times and much uneasyness followed. So, from therefore this is a internet forum so we don't always easilly trust eachother once that happend, trust could become more scarce.

Being a baseball player I will use this analogy:

How long you have been on the team, or how much you know about the sport is not a factor in the reality of things. If you want to bat in the first portion of the order you have to hit the ball oftan and hit well. If you want to be in the starting roation on the field you have to catch the ball making a full effort and then complete your throw on target and on time. Also there has to be reason for the manager to believe there are numerous fans that pay their money to come to the ball park mostly to see YOU and pull for your team at the same time.

In the case of a discussion board the logistics are strikingly parallel. Jersey is a "free agent" we signed when we saw his efforts on another discussion board and we felt he could be a starter on this team and he proved it to me (the manager) so the merit system prevails as it should.

Next up, if you're not into baseball my brothers run my father's owned contracting business. They operate over 70 trucks and employee 130 men. The ones who have had the longest time on the job are not necessarily the ones who have keys to the headquarters. They are not guarenteed to be incharge of a mini staff or a truck or a contracting job. The title is whatever it is.

If my brother hires Sizzlepop to be a manager at the company, he is now incharge. Bob might have been hired by my father in 1977 however once Sizzle punches in for day one he has been on the job for thirty seconds and Bob with thirty years on the job must take Sizzlepop's orders because BigBrotherBlast said so. And that's that!

Another merit system.

If you bad mouth your team or their leading players and especially the management you will lose merit and likely traded or given your outright release.

If you do the same thing at a contracting business you get shown the door.

Being a discussion board where wages are not paid to members, you have to be more belligerent to get your walking papers but then again sometimes accumulative behavior brings such things to a head, as well.

Serival, you and Phil have not always been seeing eye to eye. Does that matter in the long run? Not really.

But in Phil's post about reading aol news and New York city you replied with "amazing" I thought that seemed somewhat sarcastic but not really offensive enough for me to respond too much to that.

Here we have ....and?
You present it as if you are more interested in the story and that although a possiblity, give your track record could easily bring the same conclusion Jersey, This Is Not My Shed came to-and I'm not sure they're wrong in believing that.

I have placed various people in moderating positions because I am sure they will at least not upset the boards. When other people are more active and convince me they deserve a chance I would look into that. Anybody who fails to conform with the moderators and insults them even in a partially disguised way is counter productive to a discussion forum. And since I am the site leader TYRANT or whatever other word you have for me and I know some of you do not think much of me at all. And that's ok but that obviously does not change the fact that I am the site's leader.

[Vanilla Ice]

I don't think adminning here EVER meant, "Oh I'm the boss."

Sizzle ALWAYS respected the board's opinions.

[Classicblast]

I do too, it's how you express it that might vary my opinion.

[Peon]

Classicblast, your post is nothing but a weak attempt to justify your actions. The analogy you tried to feed me doesn't work. What you're saying is like saying, as an administrator of a large video game website, that you would appoint a man who had no knowledge of video games, few posts, and didn't visit the website often, to be a moderator simply because he was a "free agent". As much as you would like to make us believe your side of the story with your misguided analogies, it simply isn't true.

You interpreted my choice of words as an insult, when it truly was a method to increase emphasis.

"Anybody who fails to conform with the moderators and insults them even in a partially disguised way is counter productive to a discussion forum."

The funny part about this is that, in past months, it has not been your group of scapegoats, i.e. TMTD and co., that have been slinging the insults. It has been your friends and moderators, who are just looking for an easy shot. Simple enough considering you're biased to begin with.

[Classicblast]

tc23 said:

Classicblast, your post is nothing but a weak attempt to justify your actions. The analogy you tried to feed me doesn't work. What you're saying is like saying, as an administrator of a large video game website, that you would appoint a man who had no knowledge of video games, few posts, and didn't visit the website often, to be a moderator simply because he was a "free agent".

I'm sorry I meant to quote your original and I modified it by mistake. You may readjust it for that I apologize

And no I am not saying that at all.

But suppose you were on a game site and someone who knew games but perhaps not as well as someone else who was on the site longer. But the longer member had backhandedly and sometimes blatently insulted members who had not anatgonized him at all. Would you choose him anyway because he had been there longer, or would you consider the new person.

Now walk a mile in my size elevens.

Suppose you had just been made the administator of this site or any other one for the same matter, and members who disliked you had earlier formed a coalition to slowly wipe the site to obscurity and eventually have it die?

Now one of them gets hold of an admin account and eraces two and a half years of the site's posts. Then he puts in the news fadder that it was you giving the site a fresh start because there was a change of admin,

Wouldn't that make you a little biased too? If not I would only hope you would outgrow the niavity. If so then maybe you see more of a different outlook.

[Peon]

classicblast said:

Suppose you had just been made the administator of this site or any other one for the same matter, and members who disliked you had earlier formed a coalition to slowly wipe the site to obscurity and eventually have it die?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying right now is basically "Well, they did something wrong before, so it's perfectly okay to do something wrong now." We're back to what I said before; you're trying to justify your actions. Do you at least agree with me that it is wrong for Jersey Life and Matermine to be moderators of the soda boards, and equally wrong that I am moderator of the Sports & New Members boards? I would rather not be moderator at all than be moderator of the wrong boards.

classicblast said:

Now one of them gets hold of an admin account and eraces two and a half years of the site's posts. Then he puts in the news fadder that it was you giving the site a fresh start because there was a change of admin,

I think you're blowing things out of proportion, both in this paragraph and in the previous one, concerning æ-n. What our group did was admittedly wrong, but I also believe that everyone's attitude concerning lewasite has changed over the course of last year.

classicblast said:

Wouldn't that make you a little biased too? If not I would only hope you would outgrow the niavity. If so then maybe you see more of a different outlook.

Everyone is a little biased, Classicblast, but let's try not to make this a case of "Do as I say and not as I do". I'm sure you believe my view on the situation is not unreasonable.

[Classicblast]

Well, no I don't think I said anything about it's ok to do wrong again. I don't know how you got that out of it but to answer your question. No I never said that. In fact I said if someone had done wrong you probably would pick someone else. Naturally everyone makes mistakes but the wrong doing might not have been a mistake.

I think if someone did something--stop I'll be more specific.

If I took your car keys and robbed a store with your car and made sure they got a good look at the car it was in bright surveillance and then I parked it back in your drive way (would you think that you were blowing it out of proportion? Probably not.

A fifteen year old was abducted at the age eleven. Now fifteen they miraculously find him alive and well. Should his parents forgive his kidnapper because they have their son back? Should they make him a moderator on a site they administrate?
Probably no.

I don't see how you get "do as I say not as I do" in that last paragraph. If I implied that I'm sorry.

Oh, I missed one. Yeah you probably should have different moderator status. You could have mentioned that nearly a year ago. Remember when Sizzlepop was finishing the job he had taken away all moderator rights for a while until he could sort things out so all moderators, you included were appointed by me.

I should be able to make some changes more to your liking. You had not been that active for a while so I had no idea how you felt about the boards you have been placed to moderate. Some changes are made I hope you like this better.

[Peon]

All I've been trying to say during the entire course of this topic is to give credit where credit is due. To be an admin of a forum is difficult. Sometimes you've got to keep personal politics separate when choosing who should moderate would be an accurate summary of my general message. This applies not only to individual board moderators, but global moderators and administrators as well.