Perhaps, as one of the people repeatedly speaking for a reasonable tone of moderation at GMS, my comments could have been interpreted as "baiting", but the honest truth was, they were never intended that way.

I kept asking, begging, even, for the owner and moderator to appropriately moderate the board so the signal-to-noise level is reasonable and a modicum of courtesy and respect could be found there. Or at least, to give some guidance as to what the moderation policy actually was. Finally, JP came out and said, in so many words, "I like drama and bickering threads, there's nothing wrong with them, I have no intention of discouraging them, so fuck off."

As he was the designated moderator of the board, I accepted his policy statement at face value and stopped complaining about moderation policy.

But then, a few days later, Mark posted a thread and asked if GMS should be "censored." Poor choice of words, as no one would vote for censorship, particularly in this industry. But nonetheless, three or four of us answered the thread, and pretty much everyone said "no censorship" and "better moderation". A couple of people said they felt they had to be careful posting for fear the "moderator" would rip them a new one. I pointed to a community that has a major problem with people going off the deep end, and a very sensible way that they've found to manage the community and minimize inappropriate behavior.

Magically, that thread disappeared, almost certainly because it was not flattering to JP, though there were no "flames" in it, just honest comments.

I posted another thread asking why the first one had been deleted, and pointing out that when the leaders of a community seek input and then remove the thread when it doesn't go their way, it damages the community's confidence in the transparency of the policy setting process, and, in fact, undermines the entire sense of community.

That thread, too, was deleted, along with Forbidden Red's thread in which he'd asked about other gay webmaster communities. I and maybe one or two others had answered Forbidden Red's thread and included information about three other boards (including this one), what I knew about them, and the differences between them.

After those threads were deleted, I posted one more thread, pointing out that the constant deleting of threads with no explanation, no discussion, and no communication to the community was not in the best interests of fostering a sense of trust in that community.

That thread got me banned from GMS, and yielded an appallingly tacky and unprofessional posting from JP (now also deleted) publicly speaking about my banning, accusing me of having started 5 threads (there were 2) about the censorship, and using words such as "blubbercunt."

As I said in an earlier thread a few weeks ago, I am just thankful that this (GWW) community has matured to the point where the posters here generally don't see any need to act out the way JP and a handful of the posters at GMS do, and the moderators have learned a low-key and "hands off" way of working with people who step over the line.

I just hope Mark would actually take action before JP completely ruins that community (if he hasn't already.) But so far (and it's been over 48 hours now), he will neither answer my emails or respond to my ICQs, even though he is actively posting at GMS, so it's clear it's intentional.

Very, very sad.