This will be a long one.
There are many things which seem like a good idea at the time. The
problem, however, with practical jokes, is that while some people find
them to be hilarious, others take offense of various kinds for various
reasons. The responses we've gotten to this one are about 2% offended, 2%
laughing their ass off, and 96% no response. Probably a large chunk of
those in the latter category aren't even aware anything happened because
they're off enjoying Winter Break and haven't read their mail in days.
Various circumstances have prevented a proper response; namely I spent
Jan. 1 with friends and didn't read email until 2 AM today (the second),
and Alan's email has been KOed by thekeep.org's email services going
blort (Could be Y2K, could be something else...we've had no luck getting
ahold of thekeep.org's admin, who I guess is busy fixing it.)
I still haven't been able to get hold of Alan, but since I have no idea
when he'll have proper access again, I'm going ahead with this response
before this drags on forever.
I am sorry we've taken so long to deal with this. I will not be issuing
any bans on anyone who's been discussing this; despite various other
people's statements to the contrary, we do not ban people simply for
having opinions hostile to us. I can appreciate why some people are very
irritated with this whole affair, and I'd rather not throw gasoline on the
flames.
As to its origins, this originated out of an on-line discussion about Y2K
problems, and the idea came up of a 'political' bug. In the way of such
things, the resulting prank was organized as a joke to celebrate the new
milenium (I know some of you didn't find it funny, but I'm speaking here
of intent, not results.) Unfortunately, many people did not laugh, and
the whole PFML address thing bugged out itself, causing some email to be
lost, and various other problems.
As to the issue of culpability, I was not involved in carrying this out,
but I was aware that the idea of doing this had been floated by the list
owner and various friends. I did contribute to Andrew Huang's list of
'Sayings of the Chairman', though. (If not very well.)
Ultimately, this was carried out by the list owner who is beyond my power
to punish. This is not a public forum paid for by tax money and subject
to public control, this is a service provided at
considerable expense in time, money, and labor by White Wolf, who gets
nothing in return he couldn't get for free elsewhere. You may choose to
hate him for this, but please keep in mind that he shells out hundreds of
dollars a year and a lot of work every year in order to keep this list in
existence for free, when all he gets in return is complaints. Having been
a Muck wizard for four years, I can tell you that administering anything
for free online is a good way to go completely insane. Sometimes you need
to do something mildly lunatic in order to keep your sanity.
Some of you will not find this an adequate explanation. To you, I can
only offer my own apologies for whatever they are worth. I am sorry this
dragged on, sorry for any offense given by communism jokes, and sorry for
the mountain of spam it has provoked. My job is to reduce spam and deal
with truly offensive people, not to contribute to it, even tangentially.
As my own personal atonement, I will refrain from posting anything not
related to my administrative duties for the next two weeks. I can't
temp-ban myself because I use the same addy for stories and administrative
work, but I will refrain from posting as if I had been.
Some will not find this adequate punishment, but if you've ever
administered a mailing list or a muck, you'd know that resigning would be
a reward for me, not a punishment. I do this work for free because I'm
one of those stupidly responsible people, and I'd like the list to be as
spam-free as possible. Also, at the present time, the other admin is
incommunicando, and I wouldn't want to leave until he is able to return,
if I was going to leave.
In conclusion, I'm sorry for all of this, I regret it coming to pass, and
I offer my two week ban on non-admin posting on myself as the only
punishment I can actually carry out given the circumstances. If this is
not enough for some of you, I will be sorry to see you go.
Hopefully, we can now turn to the more pleasant matter of fanfics.
John Biles
FFML Administration Team