Message about Evil Tim

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Thoughts everyone?

My only thought is this: Giving any thought to Burt/POI is giving him more than he deserves.

Originally Posted by Vangelis

The second guy I'm still on the fence about; it's very coincidental that Burt should just happen to come back and claim this guy isn't him. Still, in spite of his conduct (and the vandalism certainly wasn't just your regular angry guy) I've given him a chance.

I'm not sure; I would trust your instincts on this. When Burt first appeared on the site and forum (and if I recall, he first appeared around the same time that POI was on a temp-ban), I remember thinking initially that he and POI were the same person. He shared POI's penchant for polemics and deliberately provoking users whom he knew would respond (like Zulu). But I doubted myself because unlike POI, Burt was actually respectful towards me and even sometimes apologized for letting debates get out of hand (whereas POI would always deny he had done anything wrong and blame me for having "control issues"). That's also why I denied that Burt and POI were the same person when we discussed Burt's ban in that one topic, even though you had good evidence at the time indicating the connection between the two.

In retrospect, now that we know Burt and POI really are the same person, I realize that Burt wasn't nice to me me because he had a change of heart, just a change of tactics: He realized that if he could stay on my good side, I wouldn't think he was POI and wouldn't ban him. In other words, I actually allowed Burt to manipulate me. As an Admin and moderator, I should never have allowed this to happen.

My point is, I wouldn't be surprised if he's doing the same thing to you. Just because he denies he's Burt/POI and kisses your ass does NOT mean it's not the same guy: It just means he's being crafty and deceptive. I would encourage you to investigate further.