a specific complaint

Things turned ugly around the end of July/beginning of August. A long-term ILX poster - Mark Craig, aka Bimble - committed suicide, while under a Suggest Ban. I was in contact with him via email through the whole period leading up to, and after his banning, up to a few days before his death. I was well aware of the other issues he was facing in his life, both emotional and physical, during the lead-up to this devastating decision, and despite the allegations of a former ILX0r with an obvious axe to grind, AT THE TIME, I honestly believed that the Suggest Ban had little or nothing to do with his death. If anything, he seemed happier, more engaged with life, without the constant drag of negativity that others' reactions to his particularly ebullient posting style and sexuality.

Now I've actually been dealt a suggest ban myself, and am dealing with the emotional fallout of it, I'm not so sure.

Oh FFS. This is really really not on, as much so as Momus's post on that issue. I'd say more but I'd frankly be too damn rude.

yah i gotta say accusing the mods of assisting in bimble's suicide is a bit much

J3sus C.

― max, Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:43 PM (1 hour ago)

looool i texted j this exact thing, did not see u beat me to it

suffering from severe mental health issues is a horrible thing for anyone to have to go through, but there is an aspect of responsibility that ppl need to address if they're in this situation: MB talks about how she's been part of the ilx community for 9yrs, but from what i can gather it's been a pretty tumultuous 9yrs, and it has always been her choice to keep participating. it's not like 2 days ago she got the shock of her life that ppl here aren't all sunshine and roses.

if participating on a msg board can impact your life to the extent that you feel suicidal, then i really think you need to stop participating. several thousand ppl posting to a msg board just cannot be expected to be responsible for the mental well-being of one particular poster.

the real issue - imo - is not suggestban or ppl being mean or personality issues, it's just doing what's best for your own mental health, and if that means not posting here, then don't. this is not THE WHOLE INTERNET - there are plenty of other ways to communicate with the friends you make here, ilx isn't the be-all-and-end-all (as my mum would say).

100% OTM

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l171/sicklesdawg/33cqarojpg.gif

xp Justin3 and darraghmac: the thing for me is just being a party to something where the person might not make the best choices for their mental health. I mean, it's not like we're responsible - the choice rests with the person with the issues - and I'm talking in general, not specifically about Kate - but it's hard not to feel somewhat complicit.

"if participating on a msg board can impact your life to the extent that you feel suicidal, then i really think you need to stop participating."

i think her point in that paragraph was that although it doesn't seem like an sb should be such a heavy trip, when it's you, it hurts way more than you would have guessed. if you read that as "ILM MODS ASSIST IN BOARDER SUICIDE" i think that is "a bit much."

that said, i usually enjoyed reading her pov, hope she comes back.

also, i see i conflated two different posts there. sorry to misrepresent your positions, deej and just1n3.

to clarify then:

deej, i dont read her comment quite the same way you did.

just1n3, i think her point was that people, mentally ill included, might not foresee how severely an sb could affect them.

honestly i'm just sorta shocked to hear about bimble, that's really terrible news

but part of my point is that she's been here long enough to know what effect this board, and its ppl, have on her. she has accused ilx and it many of its members of being malicious etc many times before. it's not like any of this has come out of the blue. she's also left for extended periods before.

youre a hard woman beth, whatever her issues she clearly found real solace and comfort in ilx and for someone to lose that for no good reason is fucking shitty.

"no good reason" = the whole problem with these clusterfucks. i get that for x number of posters, these people are banned for "no good reason". the problem is that for a whole bunch (uh 51 to be specific) of other posters, there is plenty of good reason for them to be banned. its fine to say that you disagree with them, but reducing it to no good reason just means that you think that their opinions/feelings/etc dont matter.

very noble John I just have a slightly less optimistic view of human nature/group dynamics!

exactly! how many of these 51 posters are just hitting the button for the lols? as a typical dick move? 100%? prob not. 0%? prob not.

i can't imagine clicking it with anything less than complete seriousness

is that sarcasm or...

If the guiding policy of ilx is "don't be a dick", how do you control for dicks dickishly hitting the SB button?

you get 1 sb for every sb you give.

ouroboros.jpg

totally agree with just1n3, i have major issues with the abdication of responsibility thing personally but to get into that would just be a needless mess.

initially with SB i didn't know if it was really gonna start affecting people i thought would be vulnerable to it but in time pretty much all of them have racked up 51 (the idea is that over a long enough period most regular posters would, but over a long enough period of time a single month is fuck all so for me it was never a problem). tbh this was re-assuring to me that i've generally not been unreasonable wrt the people i think go too far (not in 'being a dick' but by 'being annoying') on the board in different ways. seems its as difficult for some of us to understand the outrage and hurt over most s-bans as it is for others to understand how they could've occurred.

over a long enough period most regular posters would, but over a long enough period of time a single month is fuck all

never considered it like that but fair point.

(although from the other perspective probably doesn't seem like that tbf)

yes, also it would be silly if s-bans given 3 years ago or whatever were to still count against someone (obv s-ban hasn't been in place that long).

I thought someone did say that they expired after a certain period of time.

not sure that has ever been addressed, tbh- can't remember seeing a specific time mentioned.

don't think the expiration is automatic but I'm sure I've read a mod mention about spending some time manually erasing old sbs.

Could be wrong tho.

Six months.

The six-month expiration of SBs hasn't come into force yet, for the simple reason that we couldn't actually timestamp SBs until five months ago, so it would introduce as many inaccuracies at is solved. A couple of months down the line it should be easier to tell.

I've got an email from Kate saying she's uncomfortable with this discussion going on here without her being able to contribute to it, which is fair enough, so I'm going to lock this thread now. If people want to continue talking about SBs in the abstract then fine* but any further Kate-centric threads will be either locked or deleted. I think we've covered all we can here without things drifting into either unfounded speculation or bitching.

*Although it's still very tiresome.