Oh for heaven's sake, leave him alone. Hanging out on TSR doesn't make someone evil any more than being a Muslim makes someone a terrorist. Jfade has contributed a great deal to the community and has never charged money for his work. He shouldn't have to give up his old friends and haunts just because the place has changed since he got there. Aren't there some real paysite owners out there who need harrassing?
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Bolded was added by me)
This is rather like compairing apples and plaid leasure suits, but I'll take a stab at it.
No, being Muslim doesn't make someone a terrorist. Jfade having friends at TSR doesn't make him... uhm.. do we have a special word for paysite users? Well, okay, let's just say that having friends at TSR doesn't make him a Thomas. Being a moderator at TSR doesn't make him a Thomas either.
However, if you find a Muslim (or anyone else for that matter) in a room with a bunch of other people who are telling the flight instructor, "Nah, we don't need to learn how to
land the plane," can you really blame anyone who might come to the conclusion that even if this person wasn't a terrorist, that they are at least not objecting to the idea?
There are a lot of decent people on TSR. I was one of them for awhile. I know of at least one FA over there who I still respect and admire. I wish she'd wise up and stop letting TSR sell her stuff, but in a way, that's a minor point. But I will say that I'm very happy to see she has not been participating in that thread. If I find out later she does, I'll change my opinion of her.
That thread is a peice of work. TSR having a hall of shame doesn't bother me all that much. If they had just said, "Here are the names of people we banned because we thought they might be pirates" and listed only their TSR handles, I don't think too many people would be upset. However, they took it too far. They published real names. And Thomas and Steve can cry out that it was on a private forum all he wants, but the fact that all of us here now has access to that post, tells me just how secure that forum is. We're just lucky Coconut is decent enough to blur out the real names.
What Jfade wrote wasn't all that bad. He was merely making a point about the Wiki being changed. If it had been in any other thread, I don't think anyone would have noticed, because the remark was pretty innocent. But him making the post in a thread where personal information is being shared and the fact that TSR has banned these folks is being talked about with such glee, along with other plans to harm people? That makes anyone who posted in the thread look jerky. Because to me? If you post in that thread, you are at least saying that you don't disapprove of posting private information about people.
Aikea posted there and she was nailed up a bit about it. However, questions were answered and she's admitted that she doesn't feel the same way now as she did then. Okay, that's fine. We don't know how you feel about it. You are upset that we've said things about you, but in that situation, all we had to go on was that you posted in that thread and it wasn't to say, "Hey, you know, posting personal information about people just isn't cool."
Jfades contributions to the Sims community are not being questioned. The reactions I saw read more like, "Why is such a great person with that group?" I didn't see anyone saying "Well, now that we know he's a mod at TSR, we'll be sure to spit on him every time we see him." I still think his stuff is great, I still think he's contributed a lot to the Sims community. But, I will say I'm disappointed that he posted on that thread.
Since he's coming around here to defend himself, I'd like to ask him straight out, Did you approve of that post? Did you approve of the idea of Thomas posting full, real names of people that he suspected were pirates? If you did, then I'm disappointed. If you didn't approve, then why did you post there? Even if you didn't want to make waves there, you could have just ignored the thread. There are at few people who I know had access to that forum and that thread who decided not to contribute, so I'm pretty sure that posting in it was optional.
Edited because: I was buzzed and made some mistakes in POV. Fixed them.