Reality Check

I have been asked this several times over the past year.  Here’s the answer, politically correct, or not.

Olav Phillips is a good friend (The Anomalies Network). He hosts my personal web page, for free for me, and has for many years.

He asked me to help him host the Forums many moons ago — almost ten years ago now — when Richard C. Hoagland (The Mar’s Face fella!  The Enterprise Mission) came upon some hard times.  Richard was having some issues with an ISP and not able to handle his site, they apparently shut it down or limited his bandwidth after a couple of interesting shows on Art Bell’s "Coast to Coast" show.

Around the very same time, Art Bell’s web site, run at the time by Keith and Mary Rowland went offline, right in the middle of the "John Titor — Time traveler" discussion.

I told Olav we needed to help, Olav already had in mind to get me on the site and run the forums. So, that’s pretty much how it started.

Over the years, we had our share of trolls, but conservative and liberal, skeptic and believer.  I have no problem with either group, and I prefer discussions that are, we will call them "somewhat heated" at times, and we wound up setting up rules for posting. Those rules were continually being ignored or the trolls would find ways to get around them very carefully avoiding the moderators.

Eventually, we got to the point where things were pretty settled.  Then Hoagland changed his idea of the way things ought to be.  He started telling me to ban people whom he previously wanted on the site, he wanted to close downt he detractors and I refused.  This caused a huge blowup on the site. Finally, Olav gave Hoagland the boot. He gave him 30 days to seek a new host, and haul his ass off of the Anomalies Network (and this was after we separated the Hoagland forums from everything else on the site).

We all went to great lengths to accomdate everyone, both sides of an arguement, ourselves, Hoagland and even to a degree the trolls causing the issues.

Finally after Hoagland found a new home and Olav transferred everything on the site, things settled.  Except for the trolls.  The staff had their issues with them and one day, I resigned.  Olav and I had a disagreement about things and I was being stressed to the max.  Olav asked me back, and I agreed.

However, there was an agreement made regarding the running of the site. By gentleman’s agreement, Olav made me "full partner" (hell, no pay involved and money coming out of HIS pocket all the time so it wasn’t that big of a deal to either of us).  He agreed that HE would be the network/hardward geek/guru as well as handle the amazing database, UFO pictures and the like, and I would be the sole person in charge of the Anomalies Forums.

I agreed, he agreed.

Over the course of a few years, this worked well, until the trolls decided to play mind games and Olav being overseas bought into it.  They created multiple accounts on the site, and started writing letters to Olav.  One day, after some personal issues had managed to keep me in total stress, someone started in on the "No plane hit the Pentagon" crap again.  I blew a gasket, locked a thread after spending time trying to get them to actually POST their evidence.

Olav countermanded me, reopened the thread and made sure to slam me publically about closing threads.  It wasn’t his field, it wasn’t his place to do it, and I quit… outright.  Then I found out about the trolls in the background pulling their crap.   I found out a lot of things.  It was too late, I’d resigned already.

Since the day I stopped being the administrator for the site, it has pretty much died.  Most of the major posters moved to the Trans-Asian Axis which has moved pretty much the entire political material to that site, including the terrorism forum, news, World at War forums and many other things.  The TROLLS are still there, on and off, and they post elsewhere on other sites about how "Evil" I was, but you know and THEY know that their own actions caused most of the problems.

The truth is, I’ve been working with BBSes, since the Dialup Days; since 1977.  I ran my own bulletin board service way, way back then, called AppleVenture ][.  It started on an Apple ][+ computer and ran little games people could play at the grand speed of 300 baud.  Eventually we advanced to an Apple //e, with lower case (ooh!) and a 9600 baud modem, a 20 megabyte HD and political forums, gaming forums and such things. We even had an email system capable of sending email as we know it today through various systems and into the real "internet" as it was begining to grow.  (We could send email to anyone with an email address in those days through Joey Schober’s "StarPort BBS" system).

Anyway, since those days, I’ve dealt with trolls, pirates, hackers, phreakers and just plain, old ordinary folks, and some famous ones as well.  Trolls have been there since the beginning and unforntunately, they won’t leave.  They will be around forever I’m sure since they seem to believe they have a "right to exist" to give others crap. I have no problem with freedom of speech, but I have a serious problem with trolls who think that they have a right to lie, say what they want and make things difficult on the folks that run web sites, and forums.

Anyway — I’m retired now from Anomalies though I still post in the Moderator’s Forum on occasion, interjecting my opinion on some subject or another.  Olav and I have, I suppose "buried the hatchet", though our relationship is somewhat "stressed" and we do not speak as often as I would like.  All I can say for certain is, Olav has been a very good friend to me in the past, and I consider him a friend now.