Warning: People Splintering This Community Insta-Banned

[Leo Gura]

I have recently been forced to ban a group of members trying to splinter this community by starting an alternative forum and trying to recruits our members and even our Mods. This was an underhanded scheme which explicitly violates our Forum Guidelines rule against splintering this community into other forums and groups.

Several Mods and high level members of this forum were involved and have now been banned. They conspired to deliberately recruits our Mods to a new forum, violating my trust in them. I consider being involved in a conspiracy to splinter this community the deepest violation of my trust in you.

Anyone participating this such schemes, whether recruiting or being recruited, will be found, identified, and instantly banned. Any member here who is found on an external forum that replicates the Actualized Forum will be banned from this forum. So pick where your loyalties lie.

For those not involved, thank you for reporting any such recruiting efforts to me. I take the splintering of this community to be the highest violation as I do not trust anyone to run a community like this without turning it into something dangerous like a cult or a set of false teachings. My primary function in administrating and controlling this forum is to never allow it to devolve into a cult or a set of false teachings. If you do not trust my leadership in this regard, please leave now because this point is non-negotiable for me.

Everyone else, thank you for your support. I will be making some changes in how I behave and lead to set a better example for people on this forum in the future. Thanks for bearing with some of my shit.

To be clear, I have no problem with anyone starting their own forum or chat group, but you will not be recruiting our members to it. Go build it from the ground up yourself.

This type of incident was foreseen 5 years ago when I started this forum. I knew one day it would happen. Which is why PM monitoring is necessary. But this incident was reported to me by a fellow member so I didn't have to snoop through many PMs. I try as much as possible not to read your PMs.

Please report any future recruiting attempts directly to me.

[Spence94]

Thank you Leo.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Spence94

[Preety_India]

I wanted to pm you about Solipsism. I hope you don't ban me for pming you. 

Can I pm you regarding Solipsism? 

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Preety_India

[puporing]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Thanks for bearing with some of my shit.

You're doing good. ?

Thanks for the forum space.

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

I wanted to pm you about Solipsism. I hope you don't ban me for pming you. 

Can I pm you regarding Solipsism?

That's not the issue here.

You're not gonna get banned for PMing me.

[thisintegrated]

A question:  So.. what is this forum's discord then?

[Preety_India]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's not the issue here.

You're not gonna get banned for PMing me.

OK I sent you pm. It's important. 

 

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, thisintegrated said:

A question:  So.. what is this forum's discord then?

We don't have a Discord, and we do not allow recruiting or setting up Discord servers here.

This forum is the place for all discussions. This ensures that all discussions are publicly visible to everyone and properly moderated against abuse. This kind of community should not have unmoderated private groups. I want everything to be visible in one place.

[kamwalker]

I’m curious as to why these people are not just continuing to use this forum to discuss whatever. Why make another one? 

[Preety_India]

Just now, kamwalker said:

I’m curious as to why these people are not just continuing to use this forum to discuss whatever. Why make another one? 

Because they want to modify teachings and create some nuisance cult out of it 

 

 

[thisintegrated]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

We don't have a Discord, and we do not allow recruits or setting up Discord servers here.

This forum is the place for all discussions. This ensures that all discussions are publicly visible to everyone and properly moderated against abuse.

Hmm, ok, your call.  But imo you're limiting the potential of this community by not having a discord.  The forum is good for essays and serious debates, but unsuitable for anything more casual.

 

If we held a vote I'm pretty sure the majority would agree with me.

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, kamwalker said:

I’m curious as to why these people are not just continuing to use this forum to discuss whatever. Why make another one? 

Because first they are banned. Then they want to start their own community thinking they can run it better, then they recruit here because they have nowhere else to get traffic or members and they are too lazy to do the work from the ground up.

4 minutes ago, thisintegrated said:

Hmm, ok, your call.  But imo you're limiting the potential of this community by not having a discord.  The forum is good for essays and serious debates, but unsuitable for anything more casual.

If we held a vote I'm pretty sure the majority would agree with me.

I have my hands full just moderating this place. I'm not going to be overseeing a live chat group. This kind of chat devolves in nonsense and time-wasting very quickly. It will not be any more productive than this forum. It's hard enough to keep people from wasting their time on this forum.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

Give us a bulletin point list of the banned users?

Edited March 17, 2022 by Husseinisdoingfine

[Matt23]

K... soooo if we join another forum by invite from another person that's not via this forum, we get banned?  I don't even know the forum or the people you're talking about. How can I know if I join some other forum (again, not by some recruiting happening on this forum) I won't just get banned without knowing?

[BipolarGrowth]

Glad to hear you’re going to do more to set a good example. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with how you conduct yourself on here, but I think for many people it’s an easy target for criticism and leads some to not take you seriously. 

[Jacob Morres]

Damn I'm sorry for that man

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Jacob Morres

[Leo Gura]

32 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

Give us a bulletin point list of the banned users?

I don't want to give them publicity because they are recruiting.

31 minutes ago, Matt23 said:

K... soooo if we join another forum by invite from another person that's not via this forum, we get banned?

No

I am talking about joining a forum that's a copycat version of this forum and being recruited to join via this forum by current or ex-members.

I don't care what other forums you join of your own accord.

What's disallowed is leeching members from this forum into splinters and factions.

[thisintegrated]

Do not worry, Leo, nothing will replace this place.  Look at how reddit.com/r/SpiralDynamics/ is doing.  There's close to zero demand for this type of content, unfortunately.

 

And almost all forums other than Reddit are dead.  Everyone's on discord now, for some reason..

Edited March 17, 2022 by thisintegrated

[Ulax]

Hey, I came across the forum yesterday. I spoke to someone who mentioned they were joining it (they didn't try and recruit me). I checked it out, and it was an almost exact replica of this forum. My first thought was that it was setup as a sort of revenge against this forum. 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Everyone else, thank you for your support. I will be making some changes in how I behave and lead to set a better example for people on this forum in the future. Thanks for bearing with some of my shit.

Appreciate this dude ^

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

For those not involved, thank you for reporting any such recruiting efforts to me. I take the splintering of this community to be the highest violation as I do not trust anyone to run a community like this without turning it into something dangerous like a cult or a set of false teachings. My primary function in administrating and controlling this forum is to never allow it to devolve into a cult or a set of false teachings. If you do not trust my leadership in this regard, please leave now because this point is non-negotiable for me.

I get this must be difficult to do. Kudos for doing this. The cult issue, to me at least, is a v tricky one to avoid with the sort of work on here, I agree.

All in all, thanks for this post, Leo. Will report this sort of thing in the future to you.

Look forward to seeing how the forum progresses.

[Ulax]

Also, @Leo Gura, on another note, what are your thoughts on doing an/ some actualized.org in-person event(s)?

I recall a few years ago you floated the idea around.