Where did J.J's last comment go? Creepy.

James Yen has been banned since December 14th by another moderator. The DhO software only allows for a week-long ban, though, so I have re-inforced the ban as there was no discussion among moderators to un-ban him. The content of his post had nothing to do with my decision to delete it. I saved the post though so if you'd like to contest my decision feel free to contact the other moderators. I'm not sure what the best way to do that is but you can flag this post of mine and it'll go out to all the mods who will then see it.

EDIT: Hah, if anyone is curious how many accounts James Yen has made to avoid our previous ban attempts:

Beoman,

       I believe what you are saying, and though the message was critical of AF and many on this site, it did seem relevant. I will not flag the message, but I also think there should be more discretion than just one person deleting a message. What does the concensus have to be on banning someone? 

Bill

I didn't get to read the message but if it was critical of AF, a moderator who is practicing actualism shouldn't be the one to remove it especially one who has made the Yahoo group open to only certain select yay sayers.

On another note, this thread is under the category "practices inspired by Actualism" but this thread is more about actual Actualism so this should not be here in the first place. There is a Yahoo group for that, actually there are two of them now that the main Yahoo group has been blocked for open discussion.

Anyone who is genuinely interested in Actualism should not be here lest their practice becomes corrupted by Buddhism.

I too find it creepy,  

if there wasn't a discussion among moderators to un-ban him - knowing the DhO software only allows for a week long ban - then why is BCDEF taking it upon himself to delete his posts and re-ban him?

Re the Yahoo AF group. I recall years ago a total group member discussion as to whether disagreeable, non constructive contributors should be banned long before you appeared, and the concensus was at that time (and Richard agreed - having chosen not to moderate his own Topica group -- and you were reminded of this) that it should stay unmoderated as such people are expressing the very nature of the human psyche that you're all aspiring to be Actually Free of. If you can't handle them there, as Richard did very well and even thought they were fun, how the heck are you handling them in your actual life?  

P.S. i did read this forums rules and do find them reasonable and intend to abide by them to the best of my ability. But you did not get full agreement to ban people from the AF list, in fact some even saw the sense in making it public.  the only reason youve gotten away with your little power trip plus altered it's home page description, is because the other 3 moderators stopped posting there years ago.   

Alin,

      It seems we are finally in agreement. It must be all the metta;) If someone were to continuously spam the message board with shopping adverts I could understand the hesitation, but if someobdy is trolling through offering criticism I think we should be adult enough to respond to that as we choose. 
      For those who didn't read the post it contained criticism of both AF and the brand of Buddhism favored here. Though it may have been used to further incite disagreement, it was very pertinent to this discussion and the factual information that was included was correct as far as I know. How much power do we really want to give the moderators to govern what we can and can't read, and how much of their deletion of comments come from their own personal feelings about a poster or the material they are posting? I would ask that Beoman repost what was deleted, but I think a larger discussion on censorship is needed amongst moderators.

Bill

You may not understand the background here - James Yen has been a well-known troll here for years. His posts are banned because of the poster, not because of the content of the post. I would ask that he be permanently banned and all his posts deleted to whatever extent possible by any and all moderators, regardless of the post contents.

JC,

      You are correct in that there is context here that I am unaware of. I haven't been posting here for years so there may be some information I am missing that would in some way influence my words in a different manner.
      At the same time, we are all adults. Yes, I have heard of James Yen. I am fairly certain he has trolled me directly at least two times, but if some of his information is pertinent, and some of it is just trolling, why can't we choose if we want to respond to that or not? Again, there may be other information I am unaware of and if so I am open to revision, but if it's just that he's messing with people, isn't that another avenue for practice? 

I actually mis-spoke, it's not just that one moderator recently banned James Yen. Looking back in my email history, we had discussions of banning him as early as December 29th, 2011. Finally on December 3rd, 2012, almost one year later, we decided to ban him. On December 10th, 2012, he made another account and kept spamming the site, so we banned that account too. On February 19th, 2013, a mod banned him again as he had started trolling again. The mod said that he had banned him again and he just wanted to let us know as we had come to the decision to ban him anytime he shows up regardless of what he does. Daniel Ingram agreed with the decision. On October 31st, 2014, I asked whether we should still be banning him, because he had begun being more disruptive once more. I however didn't want to ban him right then because it may have seemed random - he had already racked up over 100 posts that weren't so disruptive as to warrant banning. We all agreed to keep a watch on him. On December 14th, 2014, another mod finally banned him as he had admitted to trolling in one of the threads. That is the context in which, as soon as I saw him posting on this thread, I removed his posts and banned him.

So you see, James has an incredibly long, rich, and diverse history of trolling this place. He wasn't banned because he criticizes people here, he was banned because of his attention-seeking behavior and outright lies. For example:
And:
Also:

---

As to:
Well yes, that's the core discussion around whether moderation should be stricter or lighter. We had a lot of discussion about this in late September of this year. My take-away was we opted for slightly stricter moderation to create a better atmosphere for posting here. Dan Ingram in particular was getting very fed up with the trolling, and from what I remember there were indications that people did not feel as comfortable posting here because of the lack of moderation. So we changed the mod policy, were a bit stricter about moderating, the trolling died down, and my evaluation was that the DhO ended up being better off because of it.

Incidentally that's part of what influenced me to start moderating the actual freedom yahoo group more, after seeing the apparently positive effect that approach had on this forum.

Cheers,
- Claudiu

Yes, I remember that thread from December 14. He basically stated absolute belief in the Buddha and then later, after much disagreement among other posters, said he didn't believe any of what he had said before. However, his trolling there led to some good discussion. And what he said here that was deleted was not at all inpertinent. I guess my perspective is different, and I am not a moderator, so it's just what it is for now. I won't wage a war over it, but I also don't recall any large difference in the posting here pre and post september, aside from the absence of sawfoot and triple think, who I think in their own way gave something of value, no matter what their intentions and the reactions that caused.

To all:

Perhaps James Yen is somewhat Enlightened, and perhaps James Yen says things in a contradictory fashion, not so much as to test people as to their own Enlightenment, but so that they may investigate and test themselves and their own reactions and ego delusions.  Kind of like a Zen Master.  James got me pretty good one time, I fell for the bait , hook ,line and sinker, I had to laugh at his ingenuity.  But, even though he recanted his statements, he had truths, kind of paradoxical.  

Fart Fart.

I find it somwhat hilarious, in a compassionate way , of course.

Once the delusion of self is seen through, perhaps one can see James Yen for James Yen.

Though this may just sound like , Fart Fart.

Insight can be tough, and one shouldn't read into any of this , personally.

Just think of this reply as a Marvel Comics "What If"

Psi

Haha, indeed.

Hi Alin



There was discussion and consensus among the moderators about banning James.

This has nothing to do with the technical means of "banning" available to us, which is indeed realized as a temporary measure. Of course, this being Daniel's place, he as more far-reaching options available, such as locking accounts permanently.

Given the size and diversity and make-up of the forum, moderation is a necessity, but it's a means, not an end. All the mods I know totally prefer participating here as regular contributors to making mod posts and decisions.

Cheers,
Florian (mod role)

Psi: To all:

Perhaps James Yen is somewhat Enlightened, and perhaps James Yen says things in a contradictory fashion, not so much as to test people as to their own Enlightenment, but so that they may investigate and test themselves and their own reactions and ego delusions.  Kind of like a Zen Master.  James got me pretty good one time, I fell for the bait , hook ,line and sinker, I had to laugh at his ingenuity.  But, even though he recanted his statements, he had truths, kind of paradoxical.  

Fart Fart.

I find it somwhat hilarious, in a compassionate way , of course.

Once the delusion of self is seen through, perhaps one can see James Yen for James Yen.

Though this may just sound like , Fart Fart.

Insight can be tough, and one shouldn't read into any of this , personally.

Just think of this reply as a Marvel Comics "What If"

Psi


yes fascinating how well he knew his stuff, then would drop the unexpected "fooled ya".  at least, from what i saw, he didn't make personal attacks, just attacked beliefs and usually his own. there are cases of mild schizophrenia where the vineer most people maintain momentarily vanishes and all honesty breaks lose haha      

IME, all large boards and mailing lists need some moderation or they degenerate.  Sure, a few trolls don't do too much damage by themselves and sure, sometimes trolls do actually illicit some interesting conversation at times, but what happens is over time if unchecked, the venue accumulates more and more trolls and the signal to noise ratio weakens.  Once more and more posts become less and less interesting to the regular readers, you start to lose the interest of regular posters.   Moderators can try to monitor every conversation and keep it under control but trollers tend to be quite practiced and skilled at dancing back and forth on the edge of what might be allowed and then have to be watched constantly and moderators are also then constantly trying to do damage control and keep things on an even keel.  It's really not fair to the moderators to expect them to have to do that for a poster day after day and year after year if the main purpose of the poster seems to be disruption, even if some of the posts may sometimes be less disruptive or even normal.   Being a moderator is difficult because if all goes well, no one notices you but if things go even just a tad off the rails, no matter what decision you make, some people on some side, often not knowing hte whole story, will disagree with it. 
-Eva

Somebody like me, sorting out first path, I like quick and easy access to sincere, knowledgeable correspondents.  Browsing quality dharma conversation by others is a great filler to browse, much better than netflix, movies, amazon.com, digg, buzzfeed etc.

When the troll density is high, and I do mean levels that I've seen over my 11 months here, I become burned out, find a new home.

I personally 'get' the idea of finding good practice by consorting with slightly crazy people, but I end up spending more time at the more straightforward alternatives.

Thanks Florian,

This list has always been a great source of knowledge and inspiration to me even though i've only recently contributed here.

Even on it's worst days it never devolved into the arguments Richard could ignite with his politically correct way of flaming his correspondents. it's quieter over there now without him and his detractors, but the archives still read like ok corral which inhibits the way people correspond there and silences most of it's members. some can't post sensibly there anymore, it's just too infected for them.

For a study in feet of clay Richard's are the biggest i ever researched, make JJ look like a pussyfoot. one can learn a lot about one's latent reactivities from such characters but when the same lesson is repeated ad nauseum, yeah it turns into a yawn for everyone. in that regard Claudiu is doing a good job moderating that list  








 

done

Cheers,
Florian

That's actually configurable, would you in the moderation team like the value raised? It can be set to any number of days.

Simon

Oh that would be useful actually. Ideally we'd have two options, a perma-ban option and a temporary ban option. If that's not possible, can you make the ban value be forever (like 3650 days), and if we want to do a temporary ban we can unban the user manually when the ban period is over?

How about a ban that self suspends itself for (randomly) every ~10'th post?  The banned person won't know if the ban is in effect till they finish typing a post of of between 70 and 75 words.  The post must also pass spell check and syntax check.  Is there a plugin that does that?

For those of you above that are interested I am working on an app that would allow you to ban people from your life. As an advanced practitioner there's nothing that throws me off my game or threatens my self-image as an enlightened spiritual practitioner so much as a pesky coworker or relative always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I'm not sure exactly what the app would look like, but the basic idea is that by installing it deep in your neurons you can no longer hear or see those people that threaten your stability. The best part about it is there's no need to own your own feelings, you just get rid of what's troubling without having to decide how to respond. The slogan may be something like: Ban-a-life, we've done the thinking for you.

#blessed #america #selfie #vegan #post 4th path #actual freedom  #livinlavidaloca  #angerisbad #crossfit #scientology

Actually, the latest version of Reality already supports this feature. It's called freedom of association! The way it works is, you don't interact with people whom you don't want to interact with. Have that friend that always brings up politics and starts yelling at you if you disagree? Stop picking up the phone when they call. A person rings your doorbell to tell you the good news about Jesus Christ? Simply close the door and call the cops if they don't leave. A friend of a friend does nothing but complain all the time and get upset when they don't get their way in exactly the way they want it? Don't hang out with them anymore. You own a bar and a patron is overly drunk, disturbing everybody, causing a ruckus, yelling? Get your bouncer to kick them out!

Of course, only unenlightened, run-of-the-mill people would ever choose to use such a feature. A true saint would continue interacting with anybody, no matter how loud they yell, how much they smell, to what degree they try to test your patience, the true saint remains stoic in the face of it all, unperturbed, does not move, and just sits there as they continue to prod at his supple, ever-yielding body. A true saint would let anybody stay in their bar, no matter how much they may be disturbing all the other patrons. So what if other patrons choose to leave? That just shows they aren't fully enlightened yet, it's their choice. So what if all you are left with is a bar of loud drunks yelling over each other? The true saint remains unperturbed.

Beoman,

       After reading your post I realized my initial post was wrong. You are correct on all counts. Apologies.

Bill

Alrighty! I am glad it makes sense to you.

Be well,
- Claudiu

Bans are set to never expire now (I hope), though I suspect it only applies to new bans.

I agree that multiple ban options would be the ideal state of things, but sadly liferay doesn't have that as an option.

Simon

After turning it over in my head for most of the night last night (and losing not some small amount of sleep), I now recant previous post where I wrote: 

"Beoman,

       After reading your post I realized my initial post was wrong. You are correct on all counts. Apologies.

Bill"

I've now come to the conclusion that my post was correct, and Beoman's post was completely wrong on all counts. This is my "subject to change" opinion at this time.

yeah BCDEF has a great sense of humor and writes well but his analogies are often off base. annoying friends and pub goers aint there to examine the human condition let alone get free of it. the people he banned were. they just had a lower tolerance for their own and everyone elses BS *every now n then*. it was never their only contribution.

ironic that during the 'to moderate or not to moderate' discussions more than a few suggested if it came to be then Richard's own flaming aught to be moderated as well haha.

gotta love BCDEFs edit of the home page "This group is moderated to create a place where those in alignment to what and/or open to what is actual".... [..snip..] ....members "showing a disregard for and/or denying and/or refusing to acknowledge facts, etc.) will be asked to leave". 

sorted

PS Richard was 'The' master of dis-acknowledging facts. eg it didnt seem to matter how often someone corrected him on their actual gender he gave them the gender he 'imagined' they were (despite never having met them) and the name he 'imagined' was theirs no matter often they correct him. he conjurred up ridiculous reasons for why visitors - whose reports were not complimentry - had only done so to malign him. And in doing so not only maligned them but even exposed one visitors father's profession for any unsavory character to make uninvited contact having initially used their 'actual' name albeit used by thousands. 

People's safety was not on Richard's agenda. his own nonsense and flaming created many AF trolls that had previously been sincere inquirers. My guess is the real reason he no longer writes is because it finally dawned on him (probably with Vineeto's help) that HE is the greatest fouler of his own pet project; AF. Like many his eloquence isn't synonymous with 'actually being' the intelligence he can write about. 

As i said i don't call myself an actualist and don't plan to claim AF, i am simply a student of the human condition examining my own potential via it's many teachings. 

Alin,

      I am enjoying your recent comments. I apologize if I had a prejudicial view of you based on past encounters with evangelical AF folks, and in the process pigeon-holed you into something that you are not, as your recent postings seem to suggest you are not toally uncritical as regards AF and Richard.
       As an aside, at this juncture I would like to recant my most recent post. I am once again in faith that Beoman is the ultimate barometer of all that is true, factual, actual and certain, from now until the end of time. Everything that I said above, including my initial recanting, is untrue and incorrect. Please Beoman, forgive my arrogance for "denying and refusing facts", facts which are evident and inscrutable. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.

I'm really confused by all the recanting and meta-recanting and layers of irony and sarcasm. Huh??

Don't blame Claudiu here. He's by no means the only moderator who banned trolls.

It's not a black and white issue - there are times to allow things/people you don't like to practice acceptance, and times to create a space where you modify your environment to help you. Just like meditating with noise around - sometimes it's a good exercise to meditate in a distracting environment, and other times you want peace and quiet and stillness to help your concentration.

J.C,

      Thank you for clarifying. I have to acknowledge that my own view was partially obscured by my subjective opinion and perspective. You are right. I shouldn't blame Claudiu. You are correct on all counts and I acknowledge that my own presentation of the situation was incorrect.

Bill

haha and likewise thoroughly enjoying your tongue in check humor Bill  

till our next metta punchup (just kidding) have an awesome New Year

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp

Moderate that.

Metta punch up. I like the sound of that, ha. I assure you my comments to you were sincere. For any repercussions, real or imagined, I apologize. Happy New Year to you too.

Yes, the latest version of Reality already supports this feature but in countries such as North Korea and other countries ruled by dictators. The way it works is that if someone disagrees with you, put him in jail by making up accusations vaguely trying to be logical and practical. That will bring in the ultimate freedom in the end when everyone who disagrees has been put in place.

Free people of the world unite to create more freedom by banning many people from Yahoo group!

Alrighty, time for me to chip in here.

Firstly, I'd like to thank J C, Eva, and matthew sexton for voicing their support and sharing their experiences of the benefits of moderation. You guys - the sincere members that actually participate in line with the purpose of the forum - are the reason that we decided to moderate more strictly. Matthew summarized it quite well when he said: "I like quick and easy access to sincere, knowledgeable correspondents. [...] When the troll density is high, and I do mean levels that I've seen over my 11 months here, I become burned out, find a new home."

Secondly, before I continue, I'd like to point out that it's very likely Alin Mathews is one of the two people I banned on the yahoo group. They have a long history of sock-puppetting and this would be no exception. I do not suspect they are the same person simply because they are both anti-Richard, but rather, because of other indicators. Here is some evidence in support of this claim, emphases mine:
Alin's posting history also follows the same M-O: initially post as an apparently helpful member, in this case posing as an actualist (although one that wouldn't actually share any of their own experiences), then reverse the direction, start criticizing, and basically stir up trouble (see how Bill F. got sucked into it as well whereas at the start of this post he was far less combative).

===

Now, to address a few things.

Alin and synaptic.cleft (whether they be the same person or not) called my decision to moderate the group "your little power trip." Now I know it was not a power trip because I was there. What had happened is that for the period of a few months, there had not really been any trolling on the group. Humanbeingafellow/synaptic.cleft had left and hadn't started posting again. fredbrain, the other person I banned, still posted occasionally but he was unanimously ignored (more on this later). Then, synaptic.cleft started posting again, initially as a helpful member, but soon enough started causing trouble. This was before I realized (though others might) that this was the same person as humanbeingafellow, who had caused quite a bit of trouble while the group was still unmoderated. A quote from another participant around this time: "Synaptic can't really see any sense in your broad declarations, apart from passive-aggressive intentions and needless shit stirring."

The milieu of the group had been so much better, and it was clearly so much worse once synaptic.cleft started "shit stirring", that I decided to do something about it, especially after seeing how much better the DhO was after we the mods here took a similar course of action. I didn't one-sidedly do it, though, I posted my intentions to see what the group thought. About 50% who posted, were in support. Others said they didn't think it was necessary but wouldn't mind. Other regulars were around but didn't comment. There were a few that were against the decision but they were in the minority. So I went ahead and did it.

Alin purposefully removed some vital context when they posted the new description of the yahoo page as: "members "showing a disregard for and/or denying and/or refusing to acknowledge facts, etc.) will be asked to leave"." The full quote is this:
That is, the reason I would ask people to leave or eventually ban them is if a member demonstrates "a consistent track record of unproductive discussion". Showing a disregard for facts is a sure way, but not the only way, to have unproductive discussion.

What have the results been of removing members that cause unproductive discussion?
Besides the written feedback, the discussions have been far more interesting, more far-reaching, hitting deeper topics, and way more productive overall.

===

Now, what has the group lost out as a result of this? Alin said: "annoying friends and pub goers aint there to examine the human condition let alone get free of it. the people he banned were. they just had a lower tolerance for their own and everyone elses BS *every now n then*. it was never their only contribution."

Here are the last few posts of one of the people who was "there to examine the human condition" and "get free of it":


I am not joking, the vast majority of his posts were about shitting and farting. It's amazing we let him keep posting for as long as he did.

What about the other, synaptic.cleft? Here are some excerpts of how they chose to interact:
Given that this person has been self-admittedly doing this for 17 years (that's seventeen years) under various aliases across multiple mailing lists (and potentially again, now), is it that surprising that I chose to ban this person without giving them another chance?

The third person to be affected by this was one Johan, another poster with over 10 years of history, who was not a troll but he was a naysayer and he did not contribute to productive discussions. On multiple occasions, he would post something, another member would post a well-thought-out, detailed response, and Johan would simply not engage or completely ignore the vast majority of it, only to re-post similar thoughts again later. The net effect of this was a lot of wasted time and effort on the part of the other paticipants. I didn't ban him, but I asked him to leave. At first he didn't, but he eventually realized the group was no longer for him and left of his own accord.

===

The moral of the story is this: it's up to you to choose how to interact with people. If you choose to be abrasive, mean, post just to stir people's emotions up and have fun while doing it (the definition of being sadistic), or simply evasive or off-topic, then don't be surprised when people stop wanting to interact with you and ban you. And I would suggest the people on the sides not put up with it either. If you don't put up with it in your daily life, then why put up with it online? If you do put up with it in your daily life... why?

I hope this has been an entertaining expose of the world of moderation!

Cheers,
- Claudiu

Beoman: I have no idea if Alin is who you say he is, but I would like to take back my previous statements, and would ask that you ban Alin immediately in case he is that other guy. Better safe than sorry.Thank you for looking out for us. Your presence has always been one of protection and sincere guidance, and I'm sorry I doubted you. I also have other people I would like banned but maybe I should send you a private message with their names/reasons. I also don't know if that's allowed or appropriate. Let me know.Thanks.

Bill

There was no need to change the focus of the main Yahoo group when there was a convivium group set up already for sincere practitioners of Actualism. The main group was free for all already and so there was no need to start another group for that purpose. All the examples that you posted about what people would write on the main forum are all good examples of free for all nature of the main group. If you had provided such examples from the convivium group and had moderated those examples, that would be okay.

I would also probably ban Change A. He might be that other guy too.

I agree that Claudiu is not the only moderator who banned trolls but in this case, he is the moderator who is practicing Actualism and who decided to delete something that was critical of AF. So there could be bias involved in his decision to delete a post critical of AF.

Bill, I'm glad that you could point me out openly as one of the person you wan't to be banned from here.

Your mind has been oscillating wildly from one side to the other lately and seems like you need to make it bit more stable.

I hope this new year will bring in more clarity and stability for you.

Be well!

P.S.: You could try plow pose, link to which I posted in another thread, to see if that helps.

Moderation is a mostly thankless job...i wish to thank you and the other moderators for the work you do. I get very tired of trolling and sockpuppetry and appreciate any attempts to balance out the ratio of signal to noise. I appreciate the stricter constraints and do not feel I am missing anything by a deleted post now and then. The critique of moderating thus far on this thread does not seem to be productive.
Thanks,
~D

Thank you, Change. Happy New Year. 

BCDEF:

. . . Along with the dimly remembered fact that, like the the zen student seeking admittance in that old parable, I cut my arm off at the elbow and left it outside the locked temple gate as a token of my sincerity, along with my plea for a modicum of sanity on this forum. It is good to see at last that the sanity attending a bit of sanity suddenly has so many devotees here. My amputation not so all in vain, after all--what a wonderful world this is sometimes! 

Simon:

Thanks for setting that ban duration to INFINITY. Awesome! Odd that no one checked with you when this setting was discussed ad nauseum in September.

Jenny

PS: The new language could use an editor. For starters, "and/or" isn't a word. I should next be available in 2016 or thereabouts. 

DW:

Yes, very tiresome to wade through. On a brighter note, I now have these two new-to-me words that I've added to my lexicon to great rhetorical effect over the past three months: "creepy" and "sockpuppet." And, best of all, these two words yield the phrase, "creepy sockpuppets," which is somewhat redundant, but oh so fun to say!

James does occasionally post things of true merit. He also has a very high noise-to-signal ratio, as is abundandly evident, and our discussions of his trolling take have taken too much of my time over the years.

He is one of those who often walks on the far edge of what I am willing to allow here and sometimes walks right over it.

That he has been tolerated here at times truly demonstrates patience.

We are generally extremely restrained in moderating here. I personally feel that the tiny bit we do is just fine.

Perhaps banning him will send the message we truly wish to send to all: try to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high when possible and troll not, lest ye be eventually banned. He has been warned many, many times about this and banned a number of times already.

I hear you about BCDEFG's possible conflict of interest, and the concern is duly noted, but, in James Yen's case, I think that the overriding goal of the group of moderators to reduce the complexities that James has caused makes the general theme of enforcing moderation as best we flawed humans can top the issues related to BCDEFG's known fondness for defending actualism. Still, BCDEFG, as a thoughtful person, has surely considered if he showed bias and will surely be similarly thoughtful in the future to allow justice to come through as best it can.

Thank you for your response. I guess my confusion comes from misunderstanding the role of the moderators: Beoman often enters only to tell someone they are wrong about Actualism or Buddhism, or in this case, delete someone's post that was critical of AF and did contain seemingly factual information. That he is now doing play by play analysis of my post as well as his emotional reactions on AF yahoo forum suggests to me that he is invested in this thing as more than an objective, impersonal moderator. As an aside I sent him a message letting him know that I will not copy and paste certain messages he has written on other forums in an effort to make him look bad, and I stand by that. Including that here since when I sent him a message he would not respond, but responded on AF Yahoo forum to my previous post, perhaps as his resppnse.
I do not share your conviction that he will "surely" exam biases' ,and my perception is that all of the moderators seem to have their own that often go unchecked, and get played out in different ways in the rare circumstances they intervene, this being a more troubling one. That said, it's your forum, and your appointed moderators, so it is not my role to determine what should be done, or not done.

So Beoman you are not going to say anything about the above?

I will too,  to clear my name if i can ever work out why i can't copy and paste what i've spent more time than i am willing to repeat drafting a reply on my notepad which now refuses to paste to this format.

Alin

Okay i'll try editing this one

Firstly i'd like to assure the list that i am not synaptic.cleft or humanbeingafellow or Johan, nor am i (heaven forbid) fredbrain. the only thing we have in common (apart from fred whose posts were consistently brainless) is a wide eyed observation of the many controversies between Richard's claims of harmlessness and his online and reported actual behaviour. Apart from the controvercial reports of the first two list members he invited to his home (having deemed them remarkable human beings - from their writings) there was among many examples the correspondence between Devika/Irene (his second wife) and Vineeto on the AFT site describing her observasions of how Richard interacted and why it indictated he was not free of malice, as evidenced even by visitors who knew nothing of his claim. But I shall stop here as that list is huge and unlike Claudiu i would rather not bring his knock down drag out MO to the DhO. Anyone with eyes to see can read about it on the AF list and AFT site.

Secondly how you (Claudiu) can deduce from the ubiquitous terms you quoted that i am therefore a socket puppet on a nefarious mission defies sensibility. i too read synaptic.cleft's use of the idiom 'feet of clay' (read the book years ago) and thought it quite the pun given Richard's history and claim of being nothing but a flesh and blood body 'only'.  as for the phrase "student of the human condition" it is common in these circles and can even be found on the AFT site as in "to be an actualist is to literally become a student of the human condition" [unquote Vineeto].  My inclusion of Richards documented unsavory behaviour was 'on-topic' in my clarification of what actualism is and was not as you claim abrasive or mean or posted just to sadistically stir peoples emotions up and have fun while doing it. Everything i posted had the sole intention of clarifying what actualism and is and that included - as it should - how actual freedom is expressed by it's founder. if you can point out where i erred in my behaviour in doing so and any flaws in my clarifications of what actualism is, please do so.

Thirdly, can you imagine how fast this forum would degrade if everytime someone voiced their doubts about Daniel Ingram's Arahatship or queried the core teaching of his book he went into verbal combat mode (like Richard) and a group of over zealous MCTB followers then raced out yelling "troll!" and "sock puppet!"? Doesn't happen here right? because it's just plain silly. 

So i expect an apology for being falsely identified and publicly vilified by what you call "the entertaining world of moderation".

Alin 

Oh apparently the message notifications from the forum were sent to my spam folder, so I didn't see that you had sent me a message until you IM'd me. I wasn't ignoring the message, and actually think the one-to-one may be beneficial.

Thank you. I received your message. Will respond in time. 

Beoman is doing the same thing which Richard would do trying to be reasonable and logical when all they are doing is letting their imagination go wild and then looking for logic to give it some credence. If anyone were to employ the same method as them (of looking for similarities in writing of two different people and then concluding that they are one and same), then they will come to the conclusion that Richard is Bhante G.! (because of Richard plagiarizing Bhante G.'s writings).

Richard, by the way, claims to have no imagination.

Precisely and this tendency to imagine that only ill will would motivate a person to include the many discrepancies in Richard's claim to freedom from the human condition when clarifying what actualism is, just perpetuates a lot of unnecessary conflict and is not the practice of actualism.    

I think you will find that copy and pasting works if you first click the "Source" button in the message editor.

Simon

Thanks Simon. i've seen an image of that liferay source button on google but it doesn't appear on my DhO reply pages using a w8/chrome laptop.  whenever i try to copy or paste a small window appears saying

      "Because of your browser security settings the editor is not able to access your clipboard data. You are required to post it again in this Window. Please paste inside the following box using the keyboard (Ctrl/Cmd+V) and hit OK" (or Crtl/Cmd+C for copy)

i can paste into the box okay but does not appear on the replying post after hitting OK. it's either truncated then refuses to paste the rest, or nothing appears at all. will check my security settings and try different text editors. 

Alin

cool it worked! Thanks Pawel. it appeared after doing what you said then reopening my 1st reply to you to edit. awesome!