yea, give it to GM!

I doubt you'll find anyone on Tribe who's permanently 'impartial' and un-opinionated.

'People' didn't speak out against me, one James did, I believe. James has somewhat of a history of fighting with people on Tribe who at all question his information, and since he's often speaking authoritatively about things he seems to have no actual real-life experience with (he reads a lot, but blurs the line between what he's read and what he's actually done when giving technical advice, from what I've seen), it seems like he's a bit of a flame magnet. He also tends to get pissy when called on it rather than taking the correction.

For instance, there was a long thread similar to this one about electing a moderator, on the NonTraditional Housing tribe, which involved a giant fight between James and another candidate who'd been critical of James prior to the 'election. the above post by James reminds me of the same kind of issues, though as I"m showing restraint it hasn't devolved like the NTH one did. The NTH one was deleted after they finished their election so only the folks on that tribe will remember what I"m talking about probably )


Anyway, my personal opinion is that James was just upset because I

a. declined a very personalized friend invitation from him a few months back

b. ONE time, of all the gazillion posts of his I've seen, I responded (here) that he was giving really bad technical advice that makes it obvious he had no experience with the beekeeping (luckily since my post he's been appending his posts with the disclaimer that he's not a beekeeper, so obviously some good came out of my post). In my defense, I've ignored many similarly inaccurate posts from James (moslty about biofuels)

There is a tradition in technical discussions on the Internet, that people generally 'call people on" acting authoritative when they're obviously not experienced enough to make pronouncements that mislead newbies (and his comment was so drastically wrong, and he was speaking with such authority, that it was really necessary to point out that this was 'armchair' advice.) This tradition makes the internet more accurate and makes it easier to filter bad info from good. It's a bad thing for forums when that devolves into flames, though.

The way that James makes his authoritative technical pronouncements seems to be the root of why several different tribes have experienced flames involving James- he doesnt necessarily start them but he frequently speaks incorrectly from such a pompous position without revealing his lack of actual experience with the technical subjects, and doesn't take criticism well.

I"d be happy to provide a few links if you'd like, though I don't think this is actually a thread about James. I'll also make the 'view recent posts' section of my profile visible for a few days so if anyone's really interested they can go through my posts and see that I really dont get into fights here on Tribe (other than exposing the "alt" Ricky last week). You can also check out my moderation style in the Food Traditions and Food Rituals tribe and the kefir tribe (link in my profile) . No, I"m not a moderation nazi. I also doubt there's a problem with spam, fighting, or other issues here, so I doubt anyone really needs to get freaked uot about any moderator overdoing their job on the Bees tribe.



Mark