
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
If I felt that desertrunner was doing this maliciously, he'd have been permabanned a long time ago.
Or if I felt that he really believed he was in charge of PFA, and that he's going to force his will upon the site whether I like it or not, he'd also have been permabanned a long time ago.
But here's the truth, and I know this from having known the guy personally for over 15 years.
desertrunner feels that he's actually helping. He thinks that he's bringing great content to the site, and that it would otherwise be dead without his contributions. He believes my objection to his posting habits are simply my capitulations to a vocal minority of posters here who don't like him, so he isn't feeling very motivated to stop. He basically feels that, for my site's own good, he needs to keep posting what he believes is good content.
There are a lot of positives I've seen in desertrunner in real life. He's a loyal friend, he's always very happy to help if I ever need anything from him, and he's very trustworthy. I could use more friends like him, and in fact so could everyone. Note that he's never asked anything from me, other than occasional advice.
However, his stubbornness is not one of his strengths. When he becomes convinced of something, it's difficult to get him off of it -- even in the face of obvious evidence. You've all seen examples of that from him on PFA.
So it's basically just a stubborn refusal to believe that his posting frequency and style isn't being received well here by the majority. Sloppy likes to troll by claiming it's a lack of respect issue, but it's not that at all. desertrunner has been extremely respectful to and unselfish with me during our friendship. In fact, he's only here because of his respect for me. He doesn't gamble or play poker. The only issue we've ever had involves PFA. He just won't let it register that he might be the one in the wrong here, and believes that "liberals" and "trolls" here are brainwashing me into believing he's the problem instead of them.
I've had this same discussion over and over for the past 4-5 years regarding desertrunner. I'm aware of the opinions of him, and I'm aware of the reasons people are complaining. In fact, I agree with some of those reasons myself, as I've stated many times.
Rather than dealing with the unpalatable choice of banning him (which I really don't want to do) or just leaving him to continue disrupting the place (which I also don't want), I've decided to just write this mod into the software so he literally won't be able to dominate the forum anymore. As I said, this will also prevent future incidents of forum abuse by others.
If this doesn't work, I will then consider an actual ban.
I'm going to start working on it tonight. I'll post further updates later.