Trouble in Forum Land

17 OCTOBER 2013

It's hard to imagine a public forum being completely trouble-free. Yet Talking T Gauge has had the distinction of being an exception for five years.

Then slowly, quietly, all hell broke loose. It started with a new member, a youngster going by the name of T Gauge Steam Loco. A precocious pre-teen, his first mission was to have the greatest number of new posts in the history of the forum. After some back-and-forth, we established that Talking T Gauge was not a social medium for kids, but instead an informational resource for modelers. That seemed to help settle things down.

For a bit. Then one of the adult members, DesertStorm, became totally unhinged. A former teacher in Britain evidently fed up with children, he took exception to the youngster having being allowed any access to the forum at all. Indeed, he proceeded to rail against anyone inclined to simply ignore the trivial amount of "noise" generated by our admittedly over-enthusiastic young member; ultimately, DesertStorm withdrew his membership in protest.

But it didn't stop there. DesertStorm then proceeded to level a series of scathing personal attacks against me for what he deemed "irresponsible management" of my forum, the consequence being that the "spoiled brat" has "ruined" years of information residing there (I do not exaggerate). The personal attacks continued to escalate as he turned me into the whipping boy for all of the world's ills, simply because I am an American.

Now, I'm no chest-thumping, flag-waving patriot—I'm entirely aware of this country's flaws—but I do happen to call the place home, and don't perceive it as some sort of Hell on Earth. But DesertStorm elected to make me the personal target of everything he loathed about America; the man is so full of deep-seated hatred toward my homeland that he continued to assail me with increasingly dire threats even after I demanded that he stop. Surely this is evidence of a gravely imbalanced mind in desperate need of professional attention.

It was a personally painful lesson learned. It taught me a) not to trust anyone, even a fellow modeler, and b) I must be ever more diligent about managing the forum in order to avoid sick über-trolls such as DesertStorm. I sincerely hope this is never repeated, as the consequence would be to close the forum—no one should have to endure what I've just experienced.

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