Anyways, Matt writes a few profanities, all but straight-out calls Mike a liar and a clueless one at that, and has the gall to end it by saying "with the utmost sincerity that I can muster." Now, in and of itself, Matt's email would not be enough for me to moderate him. It's all in the reaction it provokes from the other list members. If I had been paying attention to the list it's at that point I would have moderated the entire list. But I didn't even know this was going on at the time, a real goofup on my part.

The next three messages of note are from Leicky, Mistress, and Heresy. Strangely enough, Mistress doesn't go overboard, although she agrees whole- heartedly with Leicky who did cross the line. Heresy, coming a few hours later, gave this whole long rant which would have been ok normally except he used a few too many swear words at Matt. All in all these messages would definitely cause a reaction from the other side. Surprisingly, Mike also posts a message apologizing for how he worded things and trying to explain how he saw things. Mike's changed a lot apparently, because I fully expected him to just go off on Matt (and maybe he did offline).

It is at this point that I came in. On reading those messages I moderated the entire list. Now, not being one to deal with things directly, and since I had been working on a Cirran Restoration Society skit at work, I decided to finish the skit and email it, with a gentle reminder for people to calm down before I was forced to moderate everyone. During the two hours it took me to finish writing, three more messages came, for one side or the other or trying to be the voice of sanity. None were that bad so I let them through.

The next morning Matt tries to reply to the list with a vitriolic message. I reject it and ask him to calm down before trying again. He also forwards a message from Dyann, who was the one who sent the original broadcast message, and I let that one through since she has a right to defend herself. Other people are posting and I let just about everything through. A couple of messages are edited or rejected, after a lot of thought. This whole ordeal is rather taxing for me, as deciding whether or not to reject is a rather serious decision for me and one that I try to think through fully.

That night I notify Matt, Leicky and Heresy that they will now be moderated. Leicky takes it in stride, bless her heart, she understands what she did wrong and as a list admin of her own list she would have done the same thing. Matt for some reason assumes that Dan Berger and myself must be in the Mike camp. He's relatively polite but there's a very definite "you'll see how wrong you were when Mike leads the Fan Club down in flames" tone to his email. It's one of those, "eh, you're reading too much into my actions" thoughts from me.

I really become involved when Heresy and Mike return from the Chariots of War convention in England. Heresy, having endured a bad return trip, read my "you're now moderated" statement and totally went off on me. He also assumed I had taken the other side in the argument and that's why he was being moderated, as if list admins naturally take sides in every argument. Not only that, but he proclaimed loudly on the hleickables list how he had been wronged by me personally, which was a bit hurtfull, though I expected that kind of reaction.

Let me explain hleickables. Back in 1998 I think, when another flame war engulfed the HLML and people left in seeming droves (though it was only like half a dozen people), Leicky set up hleickables as an alternative list. She invited people to join, mostly people who regularly contributed to the HLML, so I was invited too and being the polite sort I didn't refuse. Hleickables has never been a big list, hovering at about 40 people and once again mostly overlapping with the HLML membership. I don't blame Leicky for doing what she did, I just don't think that she realized that in effect she was trying to fragment the list membership.

(continued)