Like a lot of folks I know I didn't get heavy into political discussion groups until after Bush's reelection, for myself, having been surrounded by conservatives at work to the point of having water poured into my gas tank for my political beliefs, I was very frustrated and needed to be around left thinking people in order to get my moral and political compass righted.
I had joined, the now defunct, Kerry forum during the campaign, but was too busy doing other things to really get involved. After the campaign I was contacted by someone from that old forum and invited to join this new forum that was trying to bridge the right-left gap to come to some 'Common Ground', and be more successful in our next election effort.
I was all for that, so I joined. I had had a bad experience with a veteran's forum prior to joining the political one so I was on my guard. It didn't take long to figure out the pecking order so I just slipped into someplace and tried to be productive.
My main objective when I joined the forum was to get information. I had been pounded by conservatives, and feeling beaten down after the election, I needed ammo to fight back. There were your usual trolls and disrupters, mostly freepers that had gotten in after the election. They were soon ferreted out and gotten rid of.
I contributed my 2 cents, I'm very out spoken, and I guess the powers that be liked what I said because I was asked to help moderate the forum. I had done some moderating for yahoo so this wasn't a big thing for me, but I liked that my ideas were well thought of.
The heavy moderation started to wear on me. I could tell how some people were using it to their advantage and after having a disagreement with management I decided to try and start a forum of my own. With tech help from the man who built the Kerry forum, we started Political Switchboard. I was joined by one of the members who had been wrongfully persecuted, or so he thought. We set out to build our forum. My first mistake was taking my eye off him.
It wasn't until later that I realized I had been used. As a moderator I could see how people were manipulating others and getting threads deleted not because of content but because of personality and I couldn't go along with that. The persecuted member, we'll call him Scout for identification purposes, came to me and suggested I start my own forum for people like him, he wasn't interested in any control thing, he just wanted a place he could post without moderation. So I arranged for the site through a good friend of mine, and former tech guru at the Kerry Forum.
Well Scout, behind my back, weaseled his way into an administrators role, having sucked up to my tech friend, and then preceded to try and muscle me out. I find out later that they had been lying and playing me all along, my tech friend was as in the dark as I was.
I will admit to mistakes of emotion, believe me communicating on the Internet has a way of stretching your emotional boundaries for sure. I have since tried to reconcile them by getting rid of the offending members and arraigning the forum for a friendlier, freer debate, but that is not the problem, it's a good forum full of great subjects to debate and structure a plan for a better world, and there are people there that can make things happen if they will just do it. It's a good forum for that activity.
The problem was and still is the troublemakers. After trashing my name and forum on one site, till that site closed, they moved to another more popular site and are playing their same old song and dance under different disguises. I have complained to the site management, to no avail, so my only recourse is to tell my story here.
They have made untrue allegations; have tried to disparage mine and others character and reputation. This could be prevented. Good political forums don't have to put up with it. When an administrator of a forum has a problem they should be able to communicate information among themselves and alert each other to potential problems such as these.
Let me put it like this. If my original premise is right then lets not do a thing and let the idiots take over the political forums. If I'm wrong and Political blogs and forums have a place in the political spectrum then contact me. Lets make a plan.
I'm here to make a difference, not friends!...
Acebass: PoliticalSwitchboard.com/forums