Scoopster's Story - A Level Headed Explanation of What Happened To Him/Her at Daily Kos
My Storyby: ScoopsterSun Feb 08, 2009 at 23:12:29 PM EST | |
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I'm not sure when or where the insanity and collusion started on DailyKos, but as a person who had been there since 2004 I do know that it had been going on for a very long time. I'd been a productive member for a very long time, writing diaries and comments and using the abilities of a long-time trusted user.
The indirect source of the problem is the site's rules. There are items that are not written as rules, and of course there's some personal interpretation in certain cases. Because of this, certain users like to bend the rules to meet their own ends, and fill in the blanks by making up rules where there aren't any. Their names are well known. These users are hypocritical, they lie, and they twist others' comments. And worst of all, these users are organized into a gang that hunts down their targets with the ruthlessness of a pack of lions. They never rest until they get a user banned by any means, and then they move on to the next user (Bingo, they are trolls there to destroy Daily Kos. They will target people, get them and then immediately move on. At some point, some very innocent users there who think they have nothing to do with this are going to be next.)
Now I won't say that every user they hunt is innocent. (Correct, some are not. However the community can handle them without the ugog trolls) I do know quite a few who were & are though, and I'm one of them. My thing is a bit different though, as far as I know. From what I can tell, right near the end I was involved in a pretty intense 3-day long meta battle with a couple reasonable folks and a bunch of idiot TU trolls over another user. As far as I could tell, this guy I was defending had made a few edgy comments that rubbed the wrong people (namely the ones in the goon squad) and also had responded to defend himself in certain diaries that were in the words of one certain person "our turf". Last time I looked, any user could post anywhere they wanted.. but I digress.
I woke up one morning to find the user I was defending had gotten banned for too many hidden comments, and that they had decided to start on me with one TU-diot named musing85 downrating my comments. Thankfully a couple people came along to uprate them, including some strange new user. I wasn't the only one to think this was odd, so I reported it to the admins along with the guy who gave me all the downrates. (The administrators are in on this. They support the Kos Kops. The mere fact you did the right thing and complained made you a threat. That is why they banned you. You had a conscience, you had a sense of fair play.)
Next thing I knew, my account was locked. I received no response from the admins. I received no warning notice or explanation from the website. I just plain couldn't post or rate anymore. At that point I really lost it and sent a nice profanity-laced email directly to kos himself. I think the part about taking a look at the TU abuse problem on his website got lost behind the more colorful words.
I personally believe that one of these idiots made a sockpuppet (Yes UGOGers have been creating sockpuppets at Daily Kos. We see them uprate them from time to time. account and uprated my comments, making it look like I was doing exactly that. I've been in email contact with a couple people who witnessed the incident and they got the idea that it was the guy I was defending. I don't think it was. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell who it was. Though the fact that the 'gang" was celebrating in several comments afterwards is a pretty good place to start.
Markos, stop with the PR parade for a while and get a handle on your users. (Won't happen, Markos enjoys the shit. Make your stance known at Netroots Nation 09) They are making you look like a giant fucking hypocrite.
Cheers for the cross-post assist DFQ. I was planning to do so over at MLW and a few other places once I figured out what would grant the most exposure to this issue.
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You did absolutely nothing wrong at Daily Kos. The thing is what happened to you has happened to thousands of others. If this ever gets out to the mainstream, Kos is totally done in politics. For now, he's almost done.
The key is understanding that you are the majority, not the minority. In fact, there have been more people wrongly banned from Daily Kos merely for ending up in the crossfire of the Kos Kops than there are weekly active users at the site.
We are the majority collectively. Keep in mind that of the thousands of people wrongly banned by the Kos Kops, we are hundreds of different groups. While they'll try to lump you as PFF or FSZ or even a DFQ sockpuppet, you speak for you.
What I think needs to happen is to make our presence known at any public event Kos ever goes to. DailyKos is about 3% of Netroots Nation so going to NN and posting a list of other actual liberal websites that outrank him, having clever T shirts for the cameras, etc... could make NN09 Kos' Waterloo.
Another thing that has to be done is to confront the few remaining politicians who post there. I plan to pick my spot and nail Paterson with the cameras rolling and put him on record as either supporting the filth or giving him the chance to publicly disavow it. (I'll operate on the assumption he doesn't know what is going on but if he did, he'd be appalled.)
The same must hold true for Brad Miller, Jeff Merkley, and any politician who posts there.
One of the most effective allies we have in exposing Ann coulter is a man named Dan Borchers. Dan's a conservative which is why his attacks on Coulter are effective. Us being former users AND views more in line with Obama than Kos gives us instant credibility.
Kos let the Kops get way out of control. He's basically designated the task to BarbinMd at this point and she is happy with the Kos kops because she's getting paid while they do her dirty work.
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The fact that they enjoy the game they play, is very telling of their psychological makeup. They are intolerant to say the least. They shoot first and ask questions never. They play a foolish king of the hill game. They play it at the drop of a hat. If they were in my class, their report cards would say, Does not play well with others.
They play the game of personal destruction. They live to play that game. They get off on telling people that they suck.
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Completely correct analysis. In class these were the kids who played with nobody. As adults it's the same way. They are bitter, simply transferring the abuse they suffered growing up onto others as opposed to most similar situated people who learn to outgrow it.
As liberals or progressives, it is our general makeup to be tolerant. We try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes we are too tolerant, as I was with DailyKos. All attempts to reason were to no avail because they aren't interested in reason or fairness. On this subject, about two months ago I emailed MajorFlaw (1 time, 1 time only) and said I would take down all real life info about Kos Kops so long as he took down everyone else's RL info. Moreover, I emailed BarbinMd, the main conduit of the Kos Kops and said that if she removed 3 items from Daily Kos (all revealing real life info and posted at DailyKos) that I would take down all real life info about any Kos administrators.
A perfectly reasonable request you say? They never did it so tough on them from now on.
On the subject of reasonable requests, they took away by ratings privileges when I gave Major Flaw 4 Troll ratings for comments I felt violated the rules. Now a Draconian action you say but it goes to show their unreasonable. Prior to taking away my rating ability, in fact the day before, I emailed them and told them (I think barb, brownsox and 2 others) that if I ever give a troll rating and you think it is inappropriate, just email me and I'll remove it, no questions asked, even if I disagree.
Now that is so reasonable on my part that it shows me to be a fair, trustworthy, and cooperative person. Instead they spit in my face.
See I'm a rubber band. I'm very flexible, very accommodating in life, try to find consensus, often choosing the path of least resistance. But a rubber band, when unfairly stretched does only one thing, it snaps back and snaps back hard. It's flexibility ends at a certain point.
The Kos Kops and Kos live for this Dungeons and Dragons, Cyber Lord of The flies manure. One of the things I've tried pointing out is that they will always be going after people. Now getting rid of legitimate trolls is fine but that's not what these Kos Kops do. They pick on people just for the perverse pleasure of picking on people. Here's where the destruction comes into play. As website viewership collapses, there are fewer and fewer users left so it leaves the Kos Kops no choice but to go after rock solid Democrats. I was far from the first. People initially fell for the Kos company line of just one guy who "lost it." Truth is I've been sane the entire time but it's Kos and the Kos Kops who "lost it" a long time ago. Now many who thought that it couldn't happen to them are seeing it happen to them and it dawned on the, "That guy DFQ was right the entire time."
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As a bunch of us discussed here months ago, MajorFlaw was going to continue gathering real life information on people whom he had disputes with at Daily Kos, both past and present, and that nothing was going to change that. We're not naive here and we know how you must fight bullies in life.
You could type, "Davefromqueens has the cooties" 100 times and it didn't matter. They were still going to out you and harass you no matter how much you like me or dislike me.
So cometman can feign his outrage at me and blame me for things I have not done and just continue to obsess over me with the hope that UGOG will leave him alone. This only works if you are dealing with non psychos. Trust me cometman, when they realize a whole bunch of us won't be intimidated, they'll be back looking at you boy because you will be the weakest link. (oh and if they do, I'd back you up if asked.)
Apparently Flaw gave personal info to Bouldin who now, to prove he knows someone's real name, starts sending threatening emails to their school accounts. (If you ever get an email on that account, don't respond on that account.)
One correction though. He's no professional and he's not well established. He's a joke.
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MLW didn't welcome criticism of kos when I went there after being banned. She may have jumped on this bandwagon though now that it is beginning to roll. This is the place to expose them. They are afraid and running now and Dave needs allthe support he can get. Even FSZ was afraid when Dave was doing it there but it has gotten so big that they also are joining the bandwagon.
We are going to bring kos down for this and now he is tarred and feathered with CIA implications.
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Kos is going down because of all he has done.
Next, MLW isn't interested anymore in the meta. I'll show people how it's done.
As for the CIA connection, I understand he was with the CIA for 6 months but I have no evidence that the site is controlled by the CIA. Therefore I don't go down that road.
You definitely see the "concern" in "barbara morrill aka barbinmd" I wondered what precipitated the name change?
The next line of argument will be, Oh Dave he's so sloppy he said Morris for a couple of weeks instead of MOrrill.
If these people would actually read, they would have learned that I checked out the email she used to correspond with me and the name "barbara morris" came up as the registered name. I further stated that it is possible that either this site is wrong or she was wrong. Watch how often they'll repeat this and the fact that I had the wrong name of Fingerit for a couple of hours. The bottom line is when I get something wrong I fix it.
So it turned out to be Barbara Morrill of Severn, Maryland. What is she going to do next - go on some bonnie and clyde adventure to 31 different states to tell everyone?
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Once again we saw the tilted playing field.
About 10 people were banned who broke no rules within the last week b/c they didn't like what the Kos Kops were doing. These individuals were breaking no rules while the Kos Kops were breaking the printed DK rules. So you had 10 people on one side banned and 0 people on the other side banned.
Now they'll go after drache, ek, and before long neuvo liberal will be in their crosshairs. Eventually they'll get back to Wattle and Opol
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