Author: Pete R.
Date: 15:52:26 06/29/00
Go up one level in this thread
On June 29, 2000 at 18:32:02, Amir Ban wrote: >On June 29, 2000 at 17:30:24, Tom Kerrigan wrote: > >>We (the moderators) have been getting a lot of user feedback regarding Hans >>Gerber. This afternoon, we finally decided to (temporarily) suspend him. The >>process took so long because of disagreements between moderators, his reluctance >>to identify himself, etc. I apologize for the "delayed reaction" and hope that >>our action appropriately addresses everybody's complaints. >> >>-Tom > >I admit that I've not been following the controversy around Hans very closely, >but from what I read I didn't see anything wrong or extraordinary about him. > >To set the minds of all of us at rest that you are not engaged in senseless >bullying, can you explain why this happened ? > >Amir I'm sure the moderators can explain. However since I am certainly one of the users who provided feedback, here is my quick take. I'm personally convinced that this person claiming to be a Hans Gerber was none other than Rolf Tueschen, an individual who delighted in singlehandedly dragging the rec.games.chess.computers newsgroup into the toilet. He was clearly obsessed with Dr. Hyatt, and would bring up the same issues over and over and over no matter how many times they were addressed. Whenever someone new would join in, not knowing the prior history, he had a new victim to help perpetuate endless mayhem. Ultimately his purpose was just to entertain himself by fomenting these endless discussions by making sure no topic ever came to a resolution. I stopped reading r.g.c.c. a long time ago, but I imagine through killfiling and complaints to t-online.de he finally went into hiding. Since he is obsessed with Hyatt and probably other computer chess figures, it makes sense that he would lurk here to monitor things. He apparently felt bold enough to begin posting here, though his style was immediately identified by a number of people. If you followed his postings here you could see that pattern of always twisting the discussion so that nothing could ever be distilled into a concrete point, among other telltale signs such as his feeling that computer chess people are nothing compared to "real" chess players, etc. Having been identified, it was entirely predictable that he would then proclaim innocence by badgering the moderators, even ask for retribution against his nemesis Bob Hyatt if he could hopefully fool the moderators with a fake I.D. (in his dreams), and finally even try to go over their heads. He was sure to get banned eventually anyway since it would quickly become obvious that his goal was to cause problems here, but asking him for proof of I.D. was a quick way to flush him out. I applaud the moderators for taking swift action in this case, believe me you would have to look at the r.g.c.c. archives to begin to appreciate what calculated trolling this guy was into.
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