[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, although really it only involves me insofar as I'm a long-standing member of the forum. I'll make no bones about the fact that I've met several of the senior mods personally and that I like to think I can count them as friends. I wouldn't feel like that if I believed that any of them were in the habit of kicking people off the forum arbitrarily or without due consideration. I was one of the first to comment on The Saucepan Man's initial explanation and I freely admit that my main motivation was to calm down any controversy, not because I necessarily agreed with the decision, but because I've been around long enough to know that heated public argument is the best way to ensure that a ban remains permanent.

I like davem. I've enjoyed his posts and I respect his opinion. I also share his distaste for hijacking Tolkien or any other literature as propaganda for a particular religious or political system. Although I felt very uncomfortable with the tone of some of his last posts here, I was no less uncomfortable about his ban, which came as some surprise despite his mild antagonism towards the moderating policy here. It's never easy to be told that one must be more polite when one is confronted with opinions that one considers foolish, but that's the way we do things around here. It's possible to be provocative and substantial without sarcasm or ridicule, and in fact I consider them to be fairly weak and inelegant rhetorical techniques that undermine one's own argument as much as anyone else's. Nonetheless I felt certain that davem and the mods would come to a satisfactory agreement and that he'd continue to post. For whatever reason, that didn't happen, and as always I'm very reluctant to start attributing motivations in a dispute in which I wasn't involved.

Since I'm well-disposed to all parties in this matter I don't want to take sides. What I will say is that my personal experience of conversations with those moderators most closely involved is that they are not petty-minded or vindictive people, and I have never known them to say or do anything in fits of pique or offended pride, male or otherwise. If this was a mistake, it was an honest one, and made with the best interests of the forum at heart. That's not to say that I wanted davem to go, or that I wouldn't welcome him back if he were reinstated; I don't think that he has been responsible for a lot of the invective that has been written on his behalf, and I'm sure that he has also acted in good faith. However, he is wrong about the reasons for his ban and there were several points at which he could have defused the situation by forgetting what other people were doing and looking to his own conduct; that is, after all, the only thing that any of us can control in any argument.

I should also like to address the issue of tone and regional speech. Yorkshire and the North of England are not the only parts of the English-speaking world in which forthrightness and acerbity are common features of speech. We have members, some of them very long-standing, who hail from other places where bluff, tough honesty is highly prized, and they have managed not to get themselves banned. The point is that it's possible to be forthright without being rude, and sarcasm is specifically mentioned in the section of the forum regulations mentioning tone. I sometimes use sarcasm myself in everyday speech, just as sometimes in everyday speech I swear and tell crude jokes. None of those are allowed here, so you won't see me doing them here. On one occasion when I was aggresively sarcastic towards another member I was publicly reprimanded and posted a public apology, not for my argument, but for my rudeness. What I did not do was to argue with the moderator who had issued the reprimand, make more sarcastic comments or question the policy of frowning on aggressive sarcasm. It might also be helpful to say that the moderator made no objection to my point.

The reason I joined this forum and more importantly the reason I stayed was because I could see that courteous and friendly debate was the encouraged norm. People disagreed with one another, but without the nasty fights that can break out elsewhere; but that comes at a price, and that price is that sometimes we have to take a deep breath before composing a rebuttal. We're allowed to crush arguments with ruthless logic and quote chapter and verse to prove someone wrong; we're just not allowed to belittle people, for example by using sarcasm on them. The more senior a member is, the higher their reputation, the more strictly should they avoid that sort of behaviour. I may not like it that davem is gone, and I certainly don't think that he meant any harm or offence in his posts, but the fact remains that he repeatedly set a poor example in a thread that was already dangerously emotive, which is how this whole situation began. The tu quoque approach that others were doing it too does not excuse it: I've been on the receiving end of sarcastic and belligerant posts myself without descending to the same level, and in the end I was not the loser thereby. It's rather sad that our members let themselves down so badly on that thread, and it's even sadder that it has caused members to question one another's integrity, but the thing to do now is to make sure it doesn't happen again. If we treat each other with the respect that courtesy implies then it won't. As for rectifying the ban, it will be some time before I can see the way clear to that: the dust must settle first.

Mithadan, whom incidentally it's good to see back again, has made a very good point, which bears repeating. In the recent atmosphere it's been highly unlikely that anyone would reverse the decision about davem. If I were responsible for maintaining forum discipline I too would be reluctant to reinstate someone in response to a campaign, particularly one involving off-site attacks on the moderating team. It's not impossible, though, that private persuasion would stand more of a chance than public pressure once all of this furore has calmed down. However unpleasant it may be to let things that upset us pass without public comment, undermining the authority of those responsible for running the forum is not the best way to right wrongs or iron out problems with the rules.

I don't like making statements like this, so anything else I say on this subject will be said in private. I'm aware that this won't be a popular line to take, but I'm not about to keep it to myself either. Davem isn't the only person who has feelings, nor is he the only member who has made a significant contribution. That's how one gets offered a moderating post in the first place.