An Open Letter/apology

[Lady Midnight]

I'm starting a new thread because several things came up on the last thread that I feel I should've responded to but was unable to as I wasn't online last night and the thread was closed in my abscence. .Mods please do not close this thread as I am trying to apologise here. I know it may look as though I'm just stirring things up again but that really isn't my intention.

Some of you are not going to like what I'm about to say but I ask that you bear with me on this and read the whole post because there is a point to what I'm saying and it's not all bad, honestly.

Before I begin let me point something out to you that explains to a great extent where I'm comming from. I have certain rather unorthodox religious and moral principles regarding honesty and plain speaking. To put it in a nutshell I am beholden to the Truth which essentially means that I cannot lie not in thought, word, nor action. The bottom line is that I call it as I see it. I am bound by the principles I hold to be upfront with people and to speak my mind no matter what the consequences. I consider anything else to be somewhat akin to lying.

I believe that it is more disrespectful NOT to say what you feel than anything insulting you could possibly say. There are better ways of saying things, true, I'm not always polite about it, no. But then I'm human.

The crux of the matter here is that "truth" is a subjective term because there are two kinds of truth: absolute truth and truth according to a particular point of view When I complained about the thread being locked I was acting on the truth according to my POV in that I honestly believed the thread should not have been locked and that the locking of my thread could've been handled better.

When the mods responded they were acting on the truth according to their POV. We disagreed because our "truths" contradicted each other.

But the absolute truth that comes out of all of this is that no-one has been entirely above reproach here. Yes it is true to say that the mods could've handled things better......but then again so could I.

Was I out of line? Strictly speaking yes but only up to a point. I cannot be blamed for not knowing about the no advertising rule or indeed the existence of the other thread. I haven't actually posted here long enough to be aware of every little deatail of this board. I'm human for crying out loud!!! I don't posess some kind of superhuman power! Sorry.

As far as re-posting my thread goes, yes I was out of line and I did indeed know I was. But I was very angry, insulted, in severe pain from a spinal injury at the time and I overeacted. I felt that morally speaking I had the right to re-post it even if the Board Policy did not give me such a right. It was the principle of the thing you see. I'm sorry.

Ok so now I shall address each of the comments from the other thread in turn:

Sister Golden Hair I'm sorry but that's just not the way I'm used to doing things. On the Slipstream if I did that I'd have the cyber equivalent of being hung, drawn and quartered. There we're supposed to deal direct with the mod concerned. I've pointed out that it's not always practical to do that and there have even been some unusually sensitive issues, way too unpleasant to go into, where it just wasn't possible but sadly no-one took any notice. Please excuse me for assuming that it would be the case here, it's just that it's not always easy when you're used to a particular way of doing things to suddenly do them differently.

Darth Tater I'm sorry but whilst the rules regarding spamming are certainly very clear, evidently the rule about advertising is NOT or this situation would never have arisen. About the rest of your post I have no comment except to ask if you think you're helping matters by flaming me? BTW I also tend to show respect to people who .treat me with respect as my comments to bmidler later on in this thread clearly indicate. Oh and I have respect for the rules when they make sense and the way in which they are applied is fair.

CBG the bottom line here is that no I didn't know I broke the rules when I started that thread. I really DID NOT know about the existence of the other thread! How could I have known? I've not been here for some considerable time and therefore hadn't seen it!!!!! In any case I wasn't to know that my thread would be considered as similar to the other thread. As I told you it deals with a completely different form of writing, not to mention a great deal of other stuff that wasn't even remotely connected with writing in any way at all.

As for the advertising question well since bmidler had to point out to me on my last thread how my post could be considered advertising, I think it's pretty obvious that I didn't realise that it was advertising when I posted it.

The other boards are relevant for the very reason you suggest that they are not. I mention them to illustrate how I am used to doing things differently and following different rules.

Now when I PMed you the first time I was polite. All I did was ask you nicely why you had locked my thread. The very least you could've done was to PM me back saying something along the lines of:

"No sorry but the thread stays locked. Whether or not it's similar to the other thread it's still advertising and we don't allow that here. If you want to put that kind of notice on the Board it would be better if you used your sig."

It wouldn't have killed you and could've saved a lot of aggravation. As it was you couldn't even be bothered to respond to a simple, polite request. It was insulting and I was considerably angered by it. You behaved churlishly and I repaid in kind. I should not have done so. Two wrongs do not make a right. Now I've apologised here, I no longer really care whether or not you apologise but you might want to think about the moral implications if you don't.

bmidler All I have to say to you is that a good mod or Admin is a rare thing in my experience. It's a crying shame there are not more like you. Thank you. As for having a Suggestions forum that is a very good idea. The other boards I post on have found them very useful.

emplynx I will post wherever I want to for as long as I wish. I will speak my mind wherever I want to. Similarly if I believe someone's authority can be called into question I will do so. If I believe the rules to be wrong I will break them. For the reasons outlined at the start of this thread I have no other choice. My beliefs and principles are that important to me. They are not part of some religion where I go to church on Sunday and pay lipservice to some God, they make up a state of being and affect every aspect of my life no matter how trivial or insignificant.

Strawberry Thankyou. By now you hopefully should've realised that, whilst this may not be as important as people dying throughout the world, it is important to me, and just why exactly that is.

So that's it in a nutshell. I apologise for my unwitting infraction of the rules and for my behaviour. But I hope people will understand that my earlier infraction was in no way deliberate and my later ones were due to the fact that I felt really very pushed.