Friday, May 23, 2008

Yabbut, What About Those Trolls?

"Yabbut some threads just attract trolls. Often, trolls disguise themselves as Reflective Posters and it takes us a while to catch on. Or else, we believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, and we do, until it becomes clear that they are just well-dressed trolls..."




Christopher Woodman and Homprang Chaleekanha in July 2007 in the Wind River Mountains. Trolls thrive in that sort of environment.

12 comments:

  1. I'm a Poets.org regular, but I can't tell you more than that. It's an important place for me, that's all.

    I just want to say that Homprang is one of the best posters who ever came on Poets.org in my view. I don't understand why she had to be banned, that's the part that really gets to me. She never hijacked anything, was never rude, and gave us something in everything she wrote we could never find anywhere else on the net. Why get rid of the best?

    I hope she will accept my apologies anyway--I'm an active Poets.org member and I say that from my heart.

    I also want to say that all this locking and deleting sure makes Christopher Woodman's case look good!

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  2. Well, for starters, Homprang has not been banned. As for Woodman, if he spent as much energy working on his poetry as he does prosecuting will o' the wisps, he'd have that book published, which seems to be his ultimate grievance (boo hoo, the poetry conspirators won't publish me, I feel so betrayed). Beyond all that, I doubt that Homprang is even the author of the posts attributed to her, as they suffer from the same prolix and oily style as that of Woodman.

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  3. Dear Anonymous,
    Homprang is well aware of how you feel about her.

    She tried to start a new thread immediately after her old one was locked, and it was at that point that she found that she had been banned from the forum. In other words, she was banned at the same time her thread was locked.

    I have checked this out by letting her try her login on my own terminal, which is quite separate from hers, but the same result comes up: "You have been banned from this forum. Please contact the webmaster or board administrator for more information."

    Homprang wrote the Poets.org Webmaster about this yesterday but hasn't yet had a reply.

    This is a crucial point, so you should try to get it clarified if you possibly can. Indeed, the Poets.org Site Administrators ought to make a statement about Homprang's status as there are clearly members who not only respect her but were engaged with her on the thread that got locked. They have a right to know not only if she is banned but what she did after the last warning that caused that ban to be imposed.

    Many would object strongly if she were banned on the basis of her last post.

    What I want to know is why do you assume that Homprang, my wife, is me, her husband? Why don't you consider the possibility that I might be Homprang, and that I might always have been copying her prolix and oily style, and just neatening it up to make it look like that of someone who had been at Cambridge?

    Or are you one of those that feel threatened by Catherine Sophia Blake, Camille Claudel, or Gwen John, and feel that the Master might have compromised himself by associating with such brilliant women?

    Here are some other angles on husbands and wives you might want to consider.

    Are you married? If so, what do you do about the IRS? Do you have a joint bank account? When you fly, do the airlines book you in together on the same e-mail reference? When your children need to be represented at school does the PTA insist that what your husband or wife says doesn't represent the true interests of your children?

    Finally, would you say that Homprang and Christopher have the same interests in this matter? Did Christopher represent Homprang's interests before he got banned, for example, and did you suspect that maybe she wrote that little poem he posted, not him?

    Whoever you are, you've got whole gobs of egg all over your face!

    Christopher Woodman

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  4. I'm another one who can't really come and say who I am. A lot of us have that feeling too.

    Rogersc says she's sick and tired of people picking fights. Well, a lot of us feel that sbunch was picking the fight, not Homprang, and even though I didn't see much of the first thread that got deleted I never saw ACommoner pick a fight in the "Aspiring Poets" thread. Also I never heard him talk about his own career, and when I look at his credits I think he's pretty secure anyway, so why should he?

    Also none of us have any idea what ACommoner did that was so bad, but we guess that there was a lot going on behind the scenes. We never took all this talk about the PoBiz very seriously, but now we’re getting really interested. That’s why I came here to see, and wish you would say more.

    But what I really want to say is sorry to Homprang, because we didn't treat her very well at Poets.org and she was just trying to help her husband.

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  5. Yabbut look what the moderator actually says: "I'M SICK AND TIRED OF PEOPLE PICKING FIGHTS HERE. And that's what it is, despite the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth rhetoric and lofty-sounding appeals to principle."

    Sounds more like Christopher says things that can't be said around Poets.org. If he's polite and principled yet picking a fight, maybe he's just auditing the Academy's hiring policies, or questioning its charitable status.

    Sounds as bad as that!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for that, Anonymous--the moderators do tend to get a bit confused around me.

    During the first crisis Chrissiiekl wrote me that she was tired of my "constant agressiveness," that I "bickered," was "combative, rude and demanding," and that I posted "threats toward other members of the forum." And then the second time I was banned for writing insulting PMs to moderators, and for pitting them one against the other. So what about all this new quietist stuff that Catherine has come up with, where does all that fit in?

    Yes, the Administrators from Robin on down are certainly pitted one against the other, that's obvious, and there's even been a serious shake-up in the higher management of the forum during these troll troubles. On the other hand, exactly how the troll has caused all that only they could explain.

    At one point toward the end Larwar conceded I wasn't banned because of my PMs at all, but rather because I named names in a "potentially" libelous way. Indeed, she went to some lengths to explain that, trotting out the Rules & Guidelines to support her argument. Then in her very next post she reversed herself entirely and retracted the libel accusation, saying that it was because I called sbunch "a spy," and that that was a very bad thing to do to any American in our times, to play the patriot card like that. But even sbunch himself couldn't go that far--nor could anyone else for that matter.

    So the lights went out, of course, and even Homprang got banned in the confusion!

    So what was it? According to the most recent Poets.org indictment, I speak too quietly, am too principled, and am nevertheless always picking a fight--whatever that might mean. And never mind that none of that had ever been said before, despite the fact that I've been on the carpet numerous times and been twice out on my ear for something or other.

    But what? What was it?

    If you haven't guessed, don't worry, it'll all come out in due course--cheap thrillers tend to!
    Christopher

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  7. "The chick that is within him pecks the shell, 'twill soon be out"--of him, or her, or them--not me. Because whatever you think about me and my "obsessions," or "hobby horses," or "vendettas," or whatever you want to call them, they're never hidden in me, or within a shell. I'm always quick, and I'm always true, naive even. And I'm always straight forward too, and there's never any doubt about what I'm talking about--which is why I always get banned!

    I'll tell you tomorrow what this simple shipmate knows about this voyage.

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  8. We all must wonder: Is the austere locking behavior of poets.org due to profoundly irritated aesthetes defending the artistic reputation of The Academy of American Poets? Is Catherine ’Yabbut’ Rogers the living ideal of aesthetic sensitivity? Is Ms. Rogers ‘clearing the temple’ of barbarians and trolls who are shouting down an exquisite performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflote?

    Or, is Catherine Rogers feeling especially trigger-happy these days for other reasons?

    Is the editor of the Beeswax Review yapping behind the scenes? Is Ms. Fussbudget of the Cairo Walking Cane Manuscript Sleep-Over Conference of Pleasant Bunny Meadow memo-ing in a purple fit of rage? Is Ms. Billie Bubble-Blow of Crazy Tree Press howling out imputations of potential libel?

    Are the mice tipping over the tea cups in the Academy’s Headquarters? Are the soft, furry alarmists threatening to knock the Blue Sock Press Poetry Prize Trophy from its perch?

    Is Rogers a delicate cow snorting up a storm on her own?

    Or does she have packs of lawyers and editors and poets pleading, “Do something! We shall be libeled! Poetry will be irreparably scarred and wounded! The Academy shamed forever! Our Joint-Stock Company Criticized! Our Corporation Workshopped Meanly! Our Pretty Blue Club with the bas-relief portrait of Ezra Pound on the Door Revised and Edited! The Trolls of Scansion Play Tricks with Our Minds and Make Our Dreams Dactylic and Ravish our Iambic Souls! Our Craft will Die! Our Beauty will Wilt! Do Something Ms. Rogers! End this Madness now! Lock... Those... Threads!!!!!!”?

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  9. What a fine looking couple! It makes me want to eat more rice and contribute to the Cambridge endowment. But I'm nagged by the thought that appearances can be deceiving.

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  10. Cambridge doesn't have an endowment for obvious reasons, and you should know that.

    Also, don't get too nagged about it--such a tendency will make you suspicious, and that's fatal for any poet!

    C.

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  11. She's a real pearl and you're a dashing man.

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  12. What a bunch of slow-witted blowhards you are. Christopher the only reason you were banned from both sites is the fact that you have spoken out on human rights in Thailand. As you know all the American poetry journals, contests and publishers are under the control of the Thai Government. When will you sorry saps see the supreme glosss job? PoBiz? No, Politics as usual.

    [i]For now, the comment section is wide open; this is subject to change at any time.[/i]

    ReplyDelete

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