cwald

[Anonymous]

I’d favor giving him a cooling off period. I don’t mind him being reinstated, and I do like him for the most part. I’m not so sure he’s ready to come back and play by the rules right now though. And he’s sending mixed messages – he says he doesn’t want to be reinstated, yet he clearly does. Maybe give him a little period of “disfellowshipment” and see if he becomes a bit more contrite?

[Anonymous]

Part of the issue of possible reinstatement is complicated by my actions.

I thought banning could be undone, since I saw that option in a drop down menu. I think that might not be possible, after checking more.

I like the cooling off period. I also believe jwald should be able to read and post, since none of her identifying info matches his.

If he still wants to participate in a month or so, we can figure it out at that point.

[Anonymous]

If the IP thing can be cleared up, is it not possible for cwald to simply apply for a new account whenever he wants?

[Anonymous]

Could/should we be honest with him, though? (Even though he wasn’t with us.) Don’t let him dangle, but say that no one is flat-out opposed to him returning, there are technical problems that haven’t been figured out, and that a cooling off period would be helpful for everyone. I think it goes without saying – but maybe not – that he can’t pull a stunt like that again and be welcomed back.

[Anonymous]

Ann wrote:

Could/should we be honest with him, though? (Even though he wasn’t with us.) Don’t let him dangle, but say that no one is flat-out opposed to him returning, there are technical problems that haven’t been figured out, and that a cooling off period would be helpful for everyone. I think it goes without saying – but maybe not – that he can’t pull a stunt like that again and be welcomed back.

Ann…I agree.

Let me share the exchange between him and myself so you can all see what was told to him so we don’t fear he is left to dangle out there…or we don’t let him play one of us against the other…just full disclosure…because frankly, the purpose is to focus on the mission of the site.

My next post will be cwald to me in a PM at NOM, and my response (copy/paste).

[Anonymous]

Ann wrote:

Could/should we be honest with him, though? (Even though he wasn’t with us.) Don’t let him dangle, but say that no one is flat-out opposed to him returning, there are technical problems that haven’t been figured out, and that a cooling off period would be helpful for everyone. I think it goes without saying – but maybe not – that he can’t pull a stunt like that again and be welcomed back.

That sounds reasonable to me Ann.

[Anonymous]

cwald to Heber13 wrote:

OMG. I cant believe your post on NOM today. I think Ray really screwed me over. I have no problem be being moded on the temple thread. Fine. Got it. But it was Bear’s thread that started this…the banning. He deleted my post and link to NOM calling it an anti mormon site with unvetted criticism of the church…which he has now retracted. … AND then he deleted about 20 other my posts… all of them legit posts saying the mods were discussing banning me.

I never “quit”. after ray followed me around staylds.com deleting every post I made for the day, even a link to lds.net on the Bear Post. ..i said i got the message and would LEAVE quietly.

Both you and hawk said you would go to bat for me and had nothing to do with this. Fine. Put up or shut up. I want my account reactivated…with my alien avatar and 3800ish posts and beer quotes. ..prove to me that staylds is better than the church that kicked me out because i supported staylds to begin with.

OMG.

I promise you i will leave the site alone. …stay away and not cause trouble. ..but to be excommunication from the community that “caused” me to get “excommunicated” in the first place is a shitty shitty thing to do. ..especially if it is just coming from one guy who has a personal grudge against me… and not from the mod team like Ray indicated or was.

My response:

cwald wrote:

Put up or shut up. I want my account reactivated…with my alien avatar and 3800ish posts and beer quotes. ..prove to me that staylds is better than the church …

I’ve tried to tell you that I’m fine with telling the other mods you should not be banned…but I’m not doing it to prove anything. Obviously you and Ray are at odds, but Ray is letting others on the moderator panel voice their opinions on the matter too…as the discussion is simply how does the site try to stay on course with it’s mission, and will you disrupt that?

You may totally disagree with how you’re being treated…but watching it happen I can tell you the other mods are voicing their opinions to Ray and he is listening (I don’t sense anyone is afraid to stand up to Ray…why would they??…it’s a stupid internet group of posters), and there are lots of opinions based on the things being read on NOM how you feel about the site and those that post at StayLDS.

Dude, you’ve had it hard. I don’t envy you. I can’t even really fully empathize…I haven’t had the church and family do to me what you’ve had to deal with over the years. These boards are nothing like the real life you are still going through dealing with. But if I were you…this kind of thing would strike a nerve, a sensitive nerve, and it feel like it is happening again. Had you not had so much pain in real life with church leaders, this little tiff with you and Ray would likely blow over…but it strikes a painful chord with you. A little too close to home, from what I see. And that is where my concern goes out to you…I don’t like to see it, and I don’t know that it is necessary, and I think you should be supported.

But…we shouldn’t complicate matters or conflate issues.

I don’t agree with the ways you are emotionally portraying what happened, I did see some of it happen and read some of the posts that were deleted…and the others got deleted and the quitting and the banning all happened in a series of events that I feel I understand the context. I do understand why Ray did it, and I understand why you’re pissed. My view in it all is you crossed the line (you even admitted understanding the moderation in the temple thread), and Ray acknowledged and retracted what he said about the NOM website. So…there was enough to go around on the emotional responses.

Actually, you and I don’t know each other that well…I don’t feel I owe you anything…I’m just reaching out and advocating for you because I want your input at the site and many others on the site benefit from some of your comments. I frankly don’t give a S*t about how the church does disciplinary councils and I’m not using my moderating at an Internet board to set the record straight with anyone or to prove anything to anyone about church leadership. Those are separate issues.

The church is what it is. The site is a support site by volunteers independent of the church. Any injustice at church will not be resolved or corrected in any way by the website, nor will we try to crusade to do so, because that simply won’t happen. JD didn’t use the site to try to change the church or prove something to the church, and when he got ex’d we didn’t use the site to validate the church. They are simply separate issues and separate worlds, and overlap only in the space where people bring feelings to talk about (and to keep it productive, we have rules on how to talk about it).

I’m not going to go through your statements and address them line by line. I’m just gonna leave it as I don’t agree with how you are exaggerating things, and I don’t agree you should be banned, and I sincerely want to have you post there according to rules and guidelines which you’ve done for years.

I’ve already posted to the mods that I’m proposing you be reinstated. It is being discussed. It will probably take some time as the feeling by most is that we should let some emotions settle, especially because we don’t want it to become a NOM vs StayLDS thing.

Any PM you send here to me comes to my email, so I can respond and keep the communication lines open with you as much as possible…not because I’m your mole or patsy or anything…I guess my motive is to just support those that need support. If I fail, I fail…but I try.

I painfully learned through my divorce process that although I may be idealistic to want to resolve things lovingly…some things just can’t be. Some things broken are not fixable. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try, and then I will accept what will be, and life can move on.

You’re a good guy. Feel free to ask me anything…I have no reason to be dishonest with you or to be two faced to you or Ray.

Peace.

[Anonymous]

Cwald seems to cycle quickly. I think a month cooling off period is probably too long for him because he’s impatient. (I identify with that part of his personality.) If and only if others are inclined, I lean towards a week or so.

[Anonymous]

Two things:

1) I agree completely with Ann (and, I’m sure, everyone else) that we should always be honest with everyone – but we don’t have to give full disclosure of everything. Not sharing something is not being dishonest.

2) Thanks for reaching out to him, Heber. It is obvious that he really believes I called NOM anti-Mormon (which I have never done) and then moderated my own statement saying it (which I didn’t do), and it appears he thinks all of his comments were deleted – which I explicitly and intentionally didn’t do. I chose the option that would keep everything he has written in place, untouched – and they still are in the archives. I even didn’t moderate in any way the reasonable one-liners he wrote about other threads while I was dealing with moderating and deleting the ones that crossed the lines. They never got touched and still are in our archives. If he responds to you, please let him know that about his comments.

I say we let Heber talk with him until we are sure he is willing to comment according to our site rules. If he swears he will, and if I can figure out a way to reverse the ban, I will do so. If not, we will have to ask him to register from a different IP address, using a moniker like c_wald and a different email address, if it means that much to him.

What does everyone think of that?

[Anonymous]

I have no objection.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the clarification, Ray. I know it is hard to be accused of saying and doing things when you’re purposefully trying to NOT do those things, and yet…you get called out publicly in inaccurate ways. Believe me…with my bipolar ex…I know how awful that stings when that happens. But I think you know we can all see his behavior and yours, and are smart enough to tell what’s going on, even if I don’t know all the details. I hope I didn’t sound too much like you were “equally” in this with him…I threw him a bone, but think he is the one causing this…and it is coming from an anger place and he is projecting his church leader experience on to you and this site.

But…yes…I agree with your plan, and with Ann that 1 week is still a good time to see how he is feeling after a cooling period.

He woke up this morning and PM’d me again at NOM. His response:

cwald wrote:

Thanks.

I was a little emotional last night. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.

Ummm…I’m still suggesting alcohol can be a factor in his behavior (not an excuse, of course), as he wakes up and head clears a bit…he realized he was emotional. Even if not alcohol, waking up and apologizing doesn’t delete the comments still up on the NOM board.

I’ll wait for the other mods to respond and this is not a urgent priority…time is good but not too much time to leave him dangling.

[Anonymous]

It occurs to me that he might be an asshole.

I’m fine with a week cooling off. Let me put it this way, though. He needs to not be our full time job. How about a “no-drunk-posting” rule? Could we attach a breatholizer to his internet access?

[Anonymous]

Another thing. cwald does appear to have flare-ups and cool downs. I’m guessing that his flare-ups usually coincide with general conference. If that’s the case maybe we could help him recognize that conference is a trigger for him and help him self govern to avoid staylds for a month or so, until the hot button things that were said begin to fade from memory.

[Anonymous]

I will try to say this very carefully, I have met him in person, at the time he was sober (sorry to imply otherwise but we were at a part LDS home and all beverages were alcohol free) – it didn’t take much to get his goat. And that turn can be instantaneous. Whether it’s bi-polar, or short fuse I couldn’t say. But his wife runs interference. I imagine when the beer flows those emotional swings run faster and wider.

I agree with Hawkgrrl. We can’t make him our babysit project. We also have no idea on this end what kind of a day he has had when he gets here.

I think the time off, even if it’s just a few days would be good for us to take a step back and consider how we would like to approach this.

I don’t want to delete a person, I don’t want to feed his belief that anyone is out to get him, I also don’t want to alienate those who are just beginning a long journey. Half of the moderating board doesn’t know his story – and he judges the world by that story.

Just looking at the facts from this last series of interactions is important. He hadn’t been on in a while. He had left grumpily the last time. This wasn’t GC weekend, and no big church thing had happened – i.e. press conference or event – so why lurk and jump on in the middle of a conversation that is older than the hills. It was new to the person posting, but cwald has had years to have the same conversation, come to the same conclusions, and hear the same answers – So why now was it so important? For me, I think he is miserable – in a deep dark way – and it’s come to a point where he maybe his only recourse.

So I vote that we as a team, who care about him and the site, come to a plan we can agree on for watching out with love, and keeping Ray out of the picture. Ray is a trigger by no fault of his own.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

So I vote that we as a team, who care about him and the site, come to a plan we can agree on for watching out with love, and keeping Ray out of the picture. Ray is a trigger by no fault of his own.

I like the first point and agree totally with the second one.

I also agree with the description of someone with a hair trigger – who might or might not have psycho-physical-neurological causes of that trigger.

I really do want to help him, deep down and strongly, but he just has to take responsibility for self-moderation when he comes here.

I think it might show how serious he is if we tell him he has to re-register, using an identifiable but different username from a different IP address. (“We” meaning “not Ray”. )

He is talking with Heber at the moment. Do we have Heber tell him we should be ready with a decision by the end of the weekend – and then have Heber communicate an official decision on Monday?

[Author]

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