Burt is gone (?)
 

So, I held a vote with four of the other moderators on this board, asking if BurtReynoldsMoustache should be banned permanently. Including me, that made five participants. I am divided, but three mods wanted Burt gone forever (without hesitation), one didn't respond. It looks like that would be a majority in favor of a ban.

I am about to change Burt's banned status to permanent. But I thought I would go ahead and ask anyway - is there anyone on here who is willing to give Burt another chance? Let him off with a longer temporary ban (at least a month, maybe two) and then let him come back on?

Of course, I think I already know what most of you are going to say. But I admit that I have stood by for too long and tolerated his behavior, more than I would have tolerated it from other members. Since you're the ones whom he taunted and annoyed, and since I let it go on for as long as it did, I figure that I should give y'all some input in this decision.

Even though I did not agree with most of what Burt said, I believe he should be given one more chance after having at least a month to think about what he needs to change about his behavior.

If you decide to give him another chance, make it clear that it will be his last chance

Let's just ban him. I hated his guts since Day 1. I've been telling you that he's a Troll.

Burts a troll. Straight up. We just have to be on the lookout incase he re registers under a different name. a ban is a good idea.

I'm with S&W on this. Increase his temp ban to a month, and if after that he doesn't learn anything after that, perma-ban him.

im not for increasing the temp-ban
there's a reason everyone on here dislikes him.
that's the reason he should be perma-banned

Wait, so we had a vote meeting to ban someone and I wasn't told?...maybe I didn't check my messages.

He's allowed his own opinions, just as we're allowed to ignore his opinions. A guy making dumb comments doesn't hijack a thread, the people who feel they have to respond to it do. Let's face it, 90% of the people here pretty much agree on most things. A contrarian livens things up, as long as he isn't an ass about it.

For what it's worth, I'd go with another temp ban. How many temp-bans is that? There should be a set number of strikes before a permanent ban.

Keep the ban for a couple of months and warn him one more time.

Might I ask what everyone's problem with him is? I don't have a problem with the guy nor have I seen him behaving in an unacceptable way.

Same here. What has he done?

Trolled the hell out of us, that's what he's done:

http://arch.413chan.net/Trolling-(n1293333900814).gif

Burt wasn't giving dissenting opinions, he was trying to say crap to rile people up and cause controversy. Everyone is entitled to opinions, yes, but burt was just trying to get attention by pissing people off. Theres a difference.

Again, it's on us to get riled up, or not to.

While it may seem like it to us, from what I can tell, he wasn't a crackpot. There are MANY people out there who don't think Israel should exist and/or drugs should be legalized.

Look at his list of contributions to the main site. It's pretty clear to me that he was trying to contribute in good faith. What's more believable, that he's just a guy with different viewpoints who tends to bring them up at the wrong time, or he's a troll who's made otherwise meaningful contributions just to keep up his trolling?

This. I've known a handful of guys with a mind similar to Burt, and none of them were bad guys, just a bit different in thinking without a full understanding of how to talk/behave around other people. Hell we're all guilty of that from time to time.

The main problem was, just about anytime there was trouble on the forums, Burt was usually the cause.

that and k9870's point of he said things just to cause controversy. that's why i support his perma-ban

Did he say things just to cause controversy? For example, I've been looking over the Israel thing, and he only did so in response to another poster's criticism of Israel. He didn't come out of nowhere to say something controversial, they were all within context.

Hmmm, so far the response has been quite mixed. I'm surprised.

He may not have started the Israel debate, but he obviously said something he knew was going to be divisive and start a fight. And to pretend that he didn't anticipate that reaction is ridiculous. As Brian has pointed out, it isn't a coincidence that this stuff tends to happen whenever Burt's around.

You're only bringing up the most recent issue with him, look back at some of the older locked threads and see who was the culprit.


I'm surprised also, while not all say permanent ban, they do say ban.

The forum will be better without him. He was asked to cool it on many occasions and had caused a lot of locked threads. And locked threads are rare here.

there was never a problem before burt.
plus the fact that we made a thread about banning him has never been done.
i'd say that's a problem

Actually there was a guy named PersonOfInterest who was worse than Burt.

I was only aware of the Israel issue and the drug legalization issue. I don't frequent the Random thread, so I don't know what goes on there.

Again, the idea that someone would try to make meaningful edits and then purposely troll the forums is a bit farfetched. He's at least guilty of having poor social skills.

Actually he didn't make any edits on the wiki until he was banned on the forums the first time. Which I ended up banning him from there, for being a smart ass. (MT2008 banned him on the forums)

Wouldn't that just give him incentive to NOT make meaningful edits?

It was only a temporary ban. Making bad edits, would have made it permanent.

If he were just a troll, why would he care if he was permanently banned? I would think it'd be easier just to go troll another board rather than try to get back on everyone's good graces.

Does he insult people? Does he personally attack anyone? (Again, I haven't really follow the Randomness thread, so I don't know.) From what I can tell, he just zealously defends his own unpopular viewpoints in a somewhat rational way. (Viewpoints I don't agree with, mind you.)

I don't know the man. I've never interacted with him beyond this board, nor do I wish to. But he never struck me as being a bad egg, just someone who someone doesn't know when to shut up. I'm sure you all know people like that in your life, and you know not all of them are bad people.

I think it IS pretty significant that this thread exists. Neither PoI, Sillybunz, ReelViagra4Cheep or any other user looking at a ban ever got this sort of attention. They just got outright banned.

POI got a thread too, his was "POI is gone" with no ? mark, unlike Burt's. Sillybunz wasn't a frequent poster, just came in to bitch about certain firearms, then got a real bad attitude when we questioned him.

ReelViagra4Cheep? those are spambots, why would we make a thread about them.

I'm not saying Burt is an out-and-out "troll" - but I would say that some of what he does is pretty close to trolling. You are correct that he doesn't go out of his way just to insult people or attack people. But the fact is that he does seem to enjoy baiting people into arguing with him. In some cases, I think this reflects poorly on those people (i.e. Zulu, who got temp-banned again for being pugnacious and responding to Burt by trying to talk like a gangsta). But I think we can't just pretend that he doesn't know what he's doing. That makes him culpable, and the fact that he's been involved in so much shit means we still have to consider him a problem. He may not be malicious, necessarily, but he seems to give in to temptation way too easily.

You say Burt is guilty of "poor social skills" as if that's a reason we can't ban him. I disagree. In real life, having poor social skills means you have no right to complain about being ostracized if you offend enough people (not getting invited to parties or other group social events). While message boards aren't real life (obviously), a similar idea applies: If someone's annoying enough, they can be excluded from the group. That's why I started this topic - we're deciding, collectively, whether to exclude Burt from the group.

And yes, you're right that having poor social skills doesn't make someone a bad person. Nobody's saying Burt is bad, unless he tries to prove otherwise. That's why I'm not ready to just ban Burt the way that other problematic posters have been banned.

I do, too. This is not a decision I can make easily, and it's not one that I'm willing to make without consulting with everyone first. I'm not outright in favor of banning Burt - I'm mostly just divided about it right now.

As Predator20 pointed out, POI got a thread. He also had a temp ban before that. Also, for the record, Funkychinaman, didn't you also try to defend PoI in that same thread?

Have we talked to him recently and told him about this?

No, not yet. Let's decide first.

final vote: perma-ban

I agree with permanent. And even if it ends up being a temp ban and he came back, the next ban would need to be permanent.

I really don't remember. I guess I'm just willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I looked at my old posts, and I found that thread. I don't think I was trying to defend POI as much as get some clarification. I got all the clarification I needed a few posts later from POI himself.

I'd say permaban, if not because I'm fairly sure he's POI again then because his ratio of causing trouble to actually contributing is so completely skewed toward the former; in the whole time he's been here he's never uploaded a single image. I don't think anything of value will be lost.

Burt actually chime in on the POI banning thread mentioned above, as do several admitted POI sock puppets. That he'd sign in using several obvious sock puppets and one good disguise in one thread seems unlikely. (Or we've been severely underestimating him.) And if you recall, POI tried coming back as himself a few months afterwards.

Person-Of-Intrest
Burt-Reynolds-Moustache
same form of name. same type of person. im convinced they're the same.