Author Topic: Telesphorus (Read 8834 times)

Matthew · « **on:** September 14, 2013, 02:07:59 PM »

I'm part Irish (and half-Irish as far as my upbringing goes), which means I don't play games; I tell it like it is.

The Irish don't ignore the elephant in the room.

I know I haven't made a big, public post about Telesphorus' banning, but I need to. The man was a member here for 4 years and made over 13,000 posts. Am I just going to pretend he never existed? That would be ridiculous.

And obviously he "fit in here" until recently. He's not one of those "misfits" that gets banned within a week of joining.

Banning him wasn't my first choice, or my second, or my third. It wasn't something I did with any amount of glee. It gave me no pleasure, and I only resorted to that action when he started attacking me in a scattershot manner.

He seems to have a bunch of "text files" where he keeps quotes from various members, various grudges or offenses, etc. Maybe some of it is memorized. But when he started digging into his "everything Matthew has ever done wrong" text file and drawing from it willy-nilly, that was the last straw. Note that it wasn't the first time. Or the second.

I don't like to make enemies, especially ones with 16 hours of free time every day. Again, I'm not stupid! But sometimes one doesn't have a choice. How much can you let a member ruin a forum before the damage he's doing outweighs the downsides of making an enemy? Tele used to be a good poster on a great many topics, but lately his other posts (obsessiveness, harassing members, harassing the moderator, grudges, axe-grinding, etc.) were outnumbering the good ones.

He's actually not the only member that I've seen this happen to. We used to have another prolific member who wrote excellent prose and whose posts were crystal-clear to understand. Like Tele, he is very intelligent. But because of personal issues, he started coming here only for "meltdowns" and eventually stopped posting for unknown reasons. It's very sad to see such talented men be "damaged" by whatever personal issues or problems -- the modern world, injustices done to them, choices they've made, things outside their control, etc.

I tried to be friends with him, and for a while I thought I was succeeding. I even let him spend the night here once. But he is just so obsessed with what happened to him in the past, and increasingly he can't let go of anything. In my opinion, he is letting his (righteous?) anger seethe and turn into hatred. It's making him bitter.

I'm only mentioning this because it's public knowledge. You can see it in his posts.

While I'm speaking frankly about Telesphorus, I'll not neglect to include his good points. Besides being intelligent, he is very honest. On a few occasions, I saw him correcting others (both here and elsewhere) when they went too far (off the path of truth) in their criticism of my forum. He also has a good handle on what's wrong in the modern world, and is very knowledgeable about cultural issues: feminism, the American way of life, etc. He's a fellow philosopher, in a world where few people think deeply about anything.

One thing is for sure: there are some things "above the pay grade" of a forum moderator. I can't fix everything with my "edit" and "delete" buttons.

Matto · « **Reply #1 on:** September 14, 2013, 02:22:41 PM »

Is Telesphorus banned for good now? I thought he was only banned for three days.

Thorn · « **Reply #2 on:** September 14, 2013, 02:30:08 PM »

Matto, yes, he was only banned for three days, but he said on another unnameable forum that he will never come back. I believe him.

Matthew · « **Reply #3 on:** September 14, 2013, 02:34:09 PM »

While we're clearing the air about this, I have one more thing to add:

I apologize for publicly complaining about Telesphorus (in the thread: "Telesphorus and Pax Romanum have a problem"). I was wrong to complain about him in that manner. As the moderator, I should have either let it be, or banned him if I thought it was that serious.

Not that it justifies it, but my excuse is that I became angry when I saw how 2 members were critical of my wife and me, head and shoulders above anyone else's criticism. The way I saw it, even if someone wanted to be that critical of me, why were they so hard on her? Again, the whole body of CathInfo can't be wrong. Not EVERYONE is going to be a coward, afraid to critique the moderator.
Anyhow, that's what I was thinking as I made that post.

But not only was that post a mistake fundamentally, it also had a very bad outcome. No, not the 5 rep points I lost. I think I'll survive somehow :)

The real problem was this: Telesphorus, who keeps track of everything, was keen to note for weeks afterward that he "beat me" 16-14. For him, every downthumb was a vote of confidence in him over me. Not exactly logical, but it could be taken that way due to the nature of the thread. It might as well have been a poll "Him or me" with an upvote being "Matthew" and a downvote being "Telesphorus".

But I know for a fact, because I spoke with some of the down-voters in successive weeks (and my wife wanted to downthumb the post, but didn't), that not all the down-thumbers were casting a "vote" for Tele. They merely didn't want to see more threads like that one. They didn't like the thread. They thought it was a mistake, etc.

But what was the outcome of the thread? A massive ego infusion for Tele. His boldness increased about 5-fold, and never really went back down.

That's why, in the recent spat with ggreg, Tele decided he didn't have to drop it. He decided to mention ggreg in every post, like "Carthago Delenda est".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

During the Punic Wars, Roman senators (most notably Cato) would repeat this phrase in every speech, to the point of absurdity:
"I think we should vote for the increase in the garbage tax. And Carthage must be destroyed."
"I move that we call for a vote. And Carthage must be destroyed."
"I have to go to the bathroom. And Carthage must be destroyed."
"Carthage must be destroyed. And Carthage...*ahem* nevermind."

That's pretty much what Tele was doing, only replace "Carthage" with "ggreg" and "destroyed" with "banned".

Matthew · « **Reply #4 on:** September 14, 2013, 02:39:03 PM »

Quote from: Thorn

Matto, yes, he was only banned for three days, but he said on another unnameable forum that he will never come back. I believe him.

As do I.

Since I only intended for it to be a temp-ban, now that it's become permanent I need to update everyone.