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_estDuring 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".