Moving Forward...

I've said just about everything I have to say for now regarding the Ravelry situation, so I think it's time to close the comments. If something else happens, I'll come back and update.

For those who are interested in knitting content, see my other blog elliejaneknits

well. well. well...

Casey's latest statement on Ravelry leaves no doubt - we were banned solely because we are conservative and he is afraid of the members who ran around causing problems for us rather than have them obey the rules.

It's nice to have him finally come out and stop the bullshit excuse of "they were causing technical problems" and admit that he has no control over his own site.

Like I said before, the problems on Ravelry will never end until Casey and Jess decide to figure out how to run a community.

I know the truth and I know what happened, as does Casey - the rest has just been a gigantic CYA on his part. I know this because I was there - and for those commenters who keep trying to feed me the latest Ravelry line about what the Bunker did or didn't do... let me give you one of my favorite quotes...

"You don't know. You just don't know. You may think you know, but you don't know. And you never will."

Let me just say this...

Everything that is going on?

Could have been avoided a month ago with ONE email, yet the same mistake keeps getting made over and over. I guess sometimes people have to learn the hard way and then the even harder way.

Also, when someone extends their hand with a lifeline to escape the quicksand, it's not a good idea to turn them away because you are too proud to admit that you goofed up.

I'm done protecting you - you are going to have to live with the consequences of your actions. You and I both know what the truth really is.

And for the naysayers, haven't you learned by now that I have backup for everything? I don't post things without the proof. Screen-shots to follow tomorrow at the end of the day.

Get out your tinfoil hat...

Okay, this is now bordering on the absurd. Ravelry really needs to stop listening to the paranoid delusions of it's sycophants.

Here's the latest rumor - that the Bunkerites were planning an "attack" on Ravelry. Something like a "denial of service" attack or some other such idiocy such as that from our off-site board.

Absolutely 100% not true.

What we did on the Bunker off-site board was exactly what is done on the Rubberneckers and other boards ON Ravelry every single day. It's also what other groups do on their own off-site boards and through Plurk and Twitter. We linked to certain messages on Ravelry that piqued our interest and then commented about them. Some people joined in the discussion on Ravelry and some just clicked a few buttons. Most just read the Rav posts and then brought the discussion back to our own private board.

That's it - that's the "truly vile" thing that we are being accused of. Posting links on our board and actually clicking them.

If you are going to accuse a bunch of people of doing something "truly vile", then you had better have the proof to back it up and you don't because it doesn't exist.

Also... you might not want to get caught impersonating a lawyer - just some food for thought.

Hey, it's another screenshot!

Today's screenshot comes once again from Casey - it was a day or two after the Bunker closed and he and I was expressing my displeasure at his not at least having the courtesy of notifying me via email before he deleted the group (something he has now admitted would have been the more appropriate thing to do). I strongly objected to his smearing of the moderators, and especially me, because I had bent over backwards trying to work with them.

It looks like yet another hole has been blown in the "moderators wouldn't work with us" line of crap that keeps being spewed.

One of the things I keep coming back to in this whole "let's paint the BunkerBabes as troublemakers" line of propaganda is what happened on Ravelry right before the election. A week or so before election day, a "wall" was put up so that opposing groups couldn't post on each other's boards in order to eliminate the drama. What some people didn't realize was that "wall" was only one-way. Liberals were barred from posting on Conservative groups, but Conservatives didn't have that same restriction. The logical conclusion was that Casey knew where the problems were coming from - hence the one-way barring.

**just to note - I redacted some information in the above screenshot to protect them and because I didn't feel like looking at Casey's face the rest of the day **

And for the idiot liberals in the audience... the "please stop trashing us everywhere" was MY subject line to Casey - not his to me - so nice try - thanks for playing.

So the latest lie...

It seems that the latest story going around is that the former Bunker members were banned from Ravelry because we "coordinated attacks from offsite and disrupted the site" or some such crap as that.

That's a bunch of bull and a boldface lie.

If they have the proof, then produce it. They can't because there isn't any. All we ever did was nothing more than certain groups did ON and OFF Ravelry - point out certain posts to each other, click on the links, and then read, post, or click a button. OOOOOHHHHHH - I guess that's disruption. I think the Rubberneckers should be very worried.

I'm sorry that Ravelry doesn't like that some people have a problem with donations made for the use of the site go to idiotic purposes like carbon credits. That's the thread where the latest accusations of us "coordinating an attack offsite" came from this week - and Casey chose to buy into their paranoid delusions.

Let's just stop dancing around what really happened. Casey and Jess are liberals who have a bunch of liberal friends that didn't like us being on the site. They did everything in their power to cause trouble for us and complain at every turn. Rather than alienate their buddies and the rabid masses, Ravelry chose to get rid of us.

Here's a newsflash though - banning us won't stop the real problem that exists at Ravelry - poor community management. Maybe instead of drinking themselves silly at Boston bars this weekend or getting ridiculous crocheted "pasties" from their groupies, they should be taking seminars on how to manage their site.

So why am I doing this?

Why am I bring up something that was supposed to have been over weeks ago? Because I'm tired of getting shit on by the Rav PTB. When the Bunker closed, there were a lot of people VERY upset about it, but even after all that, I was still trying to work things out and ease the tensions. I don't dislike Ravelry, Casey, Jess, or MH - I just want the trashing of us to end.

I want people to know that there is another side and maybe prevent the crazy from threatening me again. That's what this is all about.

well, lookie here!

So, one of the big lies that has been told is how the Bunker mods were so difficult to work with and how we didn't do our jobs. Screenshots tell a different story. This is from Casey - and was written at the same time there was a big kerfluffle going on with the Rubberneckers who were being quite abusive to him on the site and on their site-linked chatroom. Yet, none of them received a mass banning, or an individual one either - nope, they were allowed to regroup and go on their merry way until the NEXT kerfluffle when they basically had to neuter the whole group.

And yeah, I have a lot more where that came from, all of which prove that not only did the Bunker mods bend over backwards to keep the peace, but how willing we were to come up with solutions.

Do I like posting these screenshots? - absolutely not, but I feel that I have been pushed to do this because the twisting of the truth just never seems to end. I have been silent for weeks while my name has been trashed as well as the names of my fellow Bunker mods and members. After the banning incident today, I'm not going to be quiet any longer. I'm not going to sit quietly by this time and let people only hear one side of the story and lead some other nutcase to defend Ravelry's honor by threatening my children.

There is nothing that anyone said in the Bunker or anywhere else on Ravelry that was as heinous as someone threatening my kids. NOTHING.

Our side of the story...

There has been a lot of speculation, rumors, and gossip about what happened between the Ravelry PTB and the Bunker moderators that led to the Bunker group being shut down. So far, I have kept quiet waiting for the right thing to be done, but now I’m going to set the record straight and present our side of the story.

In the spring of 2008, I started a pro-McCain group on Ravelry. From my experience in other Conservative groups, I knew that I was in for a rough ride, so I implemented the Deletion policy of guests who were there to stir up trouble and argue. I made it very clear in the group rules who we were, and that posts to “educate” us were not appropriate. Casey and I had a discussion about this and he allowed me to continue the policy until the day the Bunker closed. He understood that it was much better for the members to not have troll posts sitting around – much like if someone took a crap in the middle of your living room, you wouldn’t just let it sit there and stink the whole place up – you clean it up and go on with your day. I want to make it clear that Casey was well aware of the policy and approved it.

More problems came when we changed the name to “The Bunker”. Small minds went immediately to the Hitler reference, which it wasn’t. The President of the United States has a bunker below the White House as well as bunkers being used throughout military history. If anyone has watched an episode of “24”, the Presidential bunker has been used many times in the show. It’s a command center that provides safety from outside forces – much like our group had become for Conservatives on Ravelry who were under constant attack from Obama supporters all over the rest of Ravelry. That was the meaning behind the name – nothing more. Besides, Hitler’s regime resembles Obama’s thought process, not ours – so the irony is quite humorous.

But now to the situation at hand…

The demise of the Bunker has been placed on the moderators of the group. This is not the whole story. We worked diligently behind the scenes to keep the dramas to a minimum. Casey and I did have a discussion about a month ago about having problems with one of our mods, but after a discussion, he said he would handle it instead of putting me in an uncomfortable position (which is what I had done for him when he needed something done that would have put him in a tight spot).
Casey told us more than once how nice it was to work with us, much more than other groups and how our members weren’t the kind that attacked him (until he unfairly shut down the Bunker). He has also admitted that our moderators were thrown under the bus and that our entire relationship was not dysfunctional. We were not given the same chance as other controversial groups to re-organize – just a notice that we were being shut down. Casey has told me that I should have been notified first to see if something could have been done to correct the problems he was having with some of our mods – but now it’s too late and he doesn’t know how to fix it without causing more problems.

The Bunker was a lightning rod for those who didn’t agree with our political opinions and couldn’t seem to follow the Ravelry rules to leave other groups around, so the majority of the moderators’ time was spent dealing with BS flags, PMs, posts, and very conflicting information. For instance, we were told that it was okay to say that Sarah Palin should be raped with a hockey stick, Dick Cheney should be pushed off a cliff, and other sorts of things, because that was just “venting” but a comment about Obama’s scarf was twisted around in circles to make it look like a “threat” and should be deleted. Pictures of Nazi propaganda with GOP symbols in place of swastikas was fine, as was calling GWBush a Nazi, but mention it the other way and it was “hate speech”. Calling us “Repugs” and “fundies” was fine, but “libturd” was not cool. The examples of the double standard could go on forever, but all of this led to us being very confused as exactly how to moderate within the Rav guidelines when there wasn’t a consistent standard to follow. Did we make mistakes? Absolutely – we weren’t perfect, but then there’s only one person in the history of man who can claim that title and it isn’t any of us.

I don’t know of many other mods in other groups who more than once had to sit at the computer for 30 - 45 minutes straight deleting all the posts of people who refused to follow the rules of Ravelry and insisted they had the right to post things on our board that violated the group rules. That’s the kind of crap we had to deal with and as far as some kind of “culture of hate” on our group – just look around Ravelry and I think that moniker fits a lot more with other groups than it did with ours.

All we ever wanted was to be left alone to enjoy each other’s company, but I guess the “get in their faces” order from their Dear Leader went to an unending loop in some supporter’s brains and they just couldn’t get over it.

So let's fast forward a few weeks now - It seems that Casey has decided to ban almost all the members of the off-Rav site of the Bunker because he terms them "disruptive". Yet another load of horse crap. More on that little piece of idiocy later.