I’ve never been a fan of airing dirty laundry in public…but the time has come.
I take a very hands off approach to this site…always have. I step in when I need to, add my comments when appropriate, and get rid of wrongdoers as needed. I also pay the bills…no big deal. It’s you guys, as members, who are the stars of the show around here. I’m content in knowing that this site has become what it has literally from “the ground up” – from one guy’s personal webspace on AOL and other guy’s small TPiR message board on Bravenet. But its you all that drive the content of this site…I’m generally happy to sit back and read / learn with all of you and with enjoyment.
There have also been a number of you that have helped me along the way. From Gene Platt, who successfully merged the two sites described above…to Joe Capitano, who reliably and accurately records in writing each day’s events…to John Sly, who started with me during a drive to Best Buy and who continues to be one of my best friends today…to all the moderators who have kept the site in tip-top shape…to Robert Searcy, who took the backbone of this site from a failing platform to the stable site software that we are using today. To all of you that have played a role, and you know who you are, I thank you.
But with all that good comes some of the BS that I simply will not handle anymore. People like John Chartier and “TunaHead” that threaten me because I will not give them more than what I am already giving them. People like Tom Boggs, who for some reason decided work eBay into canceling a recent charity auction we were running for UAAR while I was working on obtaining a letter from the charity. And now, people like former site admin Robert Searcy, who decided to write this earlier today:
http://gameshow.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14446 (registration required)
Long story short, and somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, some in our daily chat room were complaining that member / moderator FPGWillyT was abusing his administrative powers. Fair enough, I asked Searcy (who had every administrative password to this site) to pull me some transcripts of this abuse & “trash talking”. He does, via about 12 screenshots…and I see no wrongdoing from Tynan…with the possible exception of his use of the word “assbag”, something that I am not going to terminate a membership & friendship over. So, I let the issue die and told Willy to behave as anyone else…no harm, no foul.
Fast forward a couple of days, to November 18th. Some friends and I are tailgating outside after the Cowboys – Redskins game (so I’m 5 hours away from home) when John calls me and tells me that Searcy went off the deep end. Apparently, Searcy had enough of this “abuse” from Tynan, so he decided to email a large number of members to tell them to boycott the chat, boycott the site, and all sorts of other crap that I can’t recall right now. Stupid designer accessories. I’m sure one of you has a copy of the email if you wish to post it for all to read. So what do I do? I get back to Tulsa, change all my passwords to the site, and removed all of Searcy’s administrative access…I SIMPLY COULD NOT TRUST HIM ANYMORE…a reasonable response to what Robert did as far as I’m concerned. I later got a hold of Robert via AIM, politely explained to him why I did what I did, and ended the conversation. I told him that he did an awesome job for the site and for all of us (I did so publicly on the Forums, too), but I could not allow him to hold my passwords if I was unable to trust him.
Now today while I’m eating lunch, somebody calls to my attention the thread at the above link. The thread where I participated in the “the lowest, dirtiest thing anyone's ever done to” him. The thread where he tells me I’ll be sorry. Screw that. I didn’t do anything to anybody. The only thing that I did was to try to protect the integrity of this site…something that I’ve tried to do since day one. In fact, it was Robert that apologized to a whole bunch of us for his “evil deed”, and it was Robert who publicly resigned from the site before I even had a chance to talk to him (
http://www.golden-road.net/index.php?topic=4713.msg67072#msg67072). I was not “low”, I was not “dirty”, but I was “appropriate”.
I’m sorry to go on and on and on. All I have left to say is that I’ve always tried to do the right thing – be it for this site or for the good people at TPiR, some of whom have become good friends with. There’s a ton of “great” that comes along with running a website, and a little bit of “terrible” that comes along just the same. But as little and rare as that “terrible” is, I just have too much going on in my life to devote energy to dealing with it anymore.
Effective immediately, I am turning over full control of the site to John and stepping down as administrator. I will be giving him all of my passwords just as soon as I have a chance to type them up. I’ll continue to pay for hosting for as long as he needs me to, and the domain name is paid for through the end of 2008. I don’t want to see this site go anywhere anytime soon.
My love for TPiR will always be there, my love for this site will always be there…and I thank each and every one of you for nearly ten years of great fun and memories.
Marc