Quote from Baron:
Since there has been some recent "tension" among a few members and our moderators, it's probably a good time to revisit a few basic rules of participating here.
ALL MEMBERS SHOULD KEEP THE FOLLOWING IN MIND:
When you signed up to become a member of the site, you agreed to a very simple set of rules regarding the content of your posts. If your posts violate the terms of our member agreement, your posts will be edited or possibly deleted. If you continually post content that violates our rules, you will be banned.
It's really very simple. There is a code of conduct here, and if anyone does not want to be accountable to that code, they should not register and participate. And for those who are already members and for whatever reason no longer want to abide by our simple and reasonable rules, they should move to a different online community.
If a member wants to totally waste their time by posting a bunch of garbage, that's up to them, because I (and the moderators) will not hesitate to hit the delete button. It makes no difference to me whether a person has put countless hours into their posts. I can delete one hundred posts just as fast as I can delete one.
In terms of warning a user, I can't guarantee that there will be any warnings at all because I don't have time to treat adults like children. Our rules are very simple: No Advertising (unless you are a site sponsor) and No Crude Posts. A crude post includes those posts that contain excessive profanity, personal attacks, vulgarity, sexually explicit content, etc.
I think we all have a basic sense of when a person has crossed the line. But for those few who are so out of control, or just plain stupid, that they don't know where the line is, the moderators step in and show them where the line is. And again, if any user does not like where we set the line, they are free to either not join this community or they can simply post on other sites where there is more "freedom" to post whatever they want.
And finally, the most important point of all:
Elite Trader is not a democracy. It's a Monarchy.... and I'm the KING. If you don't like my rules, too bad!
Why don't you try telling the truth Baron? Your ban of Johnny Rotten had absolutely nothing whatsoever with the rules and good behaviour. Yes, he used bad language from time to time. But he also used good language a lot of the time. And one thing's for sure, he posted a hell of a lot of informative and helpful information to a lot of people, which is why they are now so mad with you. This whole situation isn't about the rules, it is about the selective application of them. There are way more offsenive posters than Johnny on this site, repeat offenders, who never get censored ....let along banned.
But the most despicable part of this situation is the manipulation and lies that you have perpetuated on the ET community. After freezing his account, your moderators had the audacity to go online and declare that Johnny was NOT banned and that he was free to continue posting. Out and out LIES. Ball-faced lies and manipulation. You personally took care of his ban.
And why did you do this?
Not because of your "rules" about behaviour (that's just your cover story), but because Johnny's thread had become the most popular and insightful thread ever seen on ET. He was anti-establishment and had a mind of his own. But he committed a terrible crime when he made reference to specific brokers, software and vendors that he uses. He wasn't 'advertising' anything - he just briefly mentioned who he uses and then he moved on to trading talk. Expressing an opinion is not a crime. But given the thread's huge growing popularity, one or two paying advertisers started to get upset. So you decided to make a commercial decision to kill him.
You are just a shameless profiteering lowlife, hiding behind a veneer of respectability. You probably even duped your own moderators into believing that Johnny wasn't banned, while you took care of it personally. No wonder you feel the need to put out this announcement. I'll bet that not only are members complaing, but even some of your own moderators feel like they've been taken for fools by you.
By the way, feel free to shut down this username and pull this post because I've already sent out all the PMs I wanted to, so everybody already knows you to be a lying manipulator of the truth. This site isn't about "integrity". It's about dumbing down your audience to keep the user count ticking ever higher so you can attract more advertisers to line your own pockets.
Let's see how fast this post gets pulled and this account frozen as well ....THE TRUTH WILL ALWAYS GET BANNED IN THE END.