Note to the returning Buffistas that this is Delurking month so please update us on your lives in that thread!

I was oblivious to issues both in person and in thread with P-C. I don't think I will be more suspicious with people in the future because I am a trusting soul, but I do promise to pay more attention when others speak up.

I will say I don't recall ever hearing the "following women" stories before, so I either missed them or purged them from my memory. Those are unequivocally creepy.

A lot of people here (myself included) are saying "I wish I had known" or, for those directly harmed "I wish I spoke up" and those are natural responses but I don't know if there are any easy answers. This community has always been welcoming and supportive and it's very difficult to be that and also continually second-guessing the motives of the people who are a part of that community.

In some ways, I'm having flashbacks to when Gus was outed as a sock puppet: the same sense of betrayal, the same sense of "all the pieces were there, why didn't we put them together?"

Ultimately, I think it's because we all try to think the best of the members here, even when we disagree with them, even when they rub us the wrong way, because they're all part of the Buffista community.

At the risk of sounding Secret Police-y, can the Stompies see how many people are Blocking a specific member? I'm just wondering, after hearing about all the people who had P-C blocked, if there's a way for them to go "This person has a whole lot of blocks against him. I should look into what's causing that." But part of me worries that's too Big Brother and potentially puts the Stompies in a very uncomfortable situation.

But part of me worries that's too Big Brother and potentially puts the Stompies in a very uncomfortable situation.

Yeah, I would not be comfortable with that at all.

I don't recall the following women stories either. I have been so remote from the actual n.rg that in my head he was still one of the new kids that people were very enthusiastic about. Another sign of my age, I guess.

I know I skipped and skimmed a lot of his stories and watched his success without realizing how much he was trampling all over people and causing such pain.

I am so happy to see old friends returning and I wish that there was some mechanism by which when you are feeling turned off by a thread you've always enjoyed to figure out if is the. Onversatiln ir the. O berserk who is turning you off.

Don't want to lose old friends for new whippersnappers.

OMG, Vortex, I remember that but for some reason I'd compartmented it as not P-C. Yeah, that was weird.

P-C, if you are reading all this, I sincerely suggest that rather than trying to deal with the reaction to your behavior here and across the wider internets on your own, you find a therapist to help you.

(edited because I left out an important part)

At the risk of sounding Secret Police-y, can the Stompies see how many people are Blocking a specific member? I'm just wondering, after hearing about all the people who had P-C blocked, if there's a way for them to go "This person has a whole lot of blocks against him. I should look into what's causing that." But part of me worries that's too Big Brother and potentially puts the Stompies in a very uncomfortable situation.

I know there has to be a table in the database that lists which user ids are blocking what user ids, but AFAIK there is no function for that. Someone with actual access to the database would have to develop a query. That said, I would be very uncomfortable doing this. It's being creepy to stop creepiness from happening, and I don't think that would ever end well. You could just look at how many times a user id is blocked without including the ids of those who did it, but what would you do next? It could just mean that person is merely annoying.

Right. Just my brain casting about for "solutions" to a situation in which there are no easy ones.

P-C, if you are reading all this, I sincerely suggest that rather than trying to deal with the reaction to your behavior here and across the wider internets, you find a therapist to help you.

Agreed. If you are reading: you are a bright, engaging, creative person. Please find someone to help you get to the bottom of what compels you to treat people this way and how to fix it. It won't repair the hurt you've caused, but it will make a difference going forward.

I had an interesting conversation with my 10 year old son this week that came to mind when I was reminded of the watching/following stories (I had forgotten, but now I remember hearing about the one on the cruise ship). Dillo was telling me that there's a girl in his class who likes his best friend S. Which, fine, but at recess she sits on an elevated place in the playground and just watches S. every day. And Dillo, at 10, is able to see clearly that this is creepy (although not entirely age-inappropriate, obviously, because hello, elementary school.)

So my memory failed me a bit upthread. P-C first showed up when Tim announced the cancelation of Wonderfalls, not Firefly, as I thought. Another reason to hate Fox.

I think the idea of block filter monitoring sounds pretty creepy too. I'm all for stompies taking quick action as necessary when people bring specific problems to their attention or they happen across problematic behavior themselves, and resolutions to be more conscious of other posters' discomfort is of the good. But I think people can be abrasive or annoying to some without actually being harmful to the community—that's just the natural clash of different personalities in a group. That kind of nannying situation would do more harm than good.