On the very long "forum is moving to a new home/why is Flint being banned" thread at the old forum, Sysman signs off a post, "Later, from #7. Flint was #5". Is he inferring that you were both stealth sysops?

PS Banning you was wrong. I lost all respect that I had for the forum sysops, and I am an alternative power, beans & rice, 500 + rolls of tp, prepped doomer.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), March 04, 2000

Answers

Perhaps he meant that Patrick McGoohan was #6.

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered." - No. 6

"I am NOT a number. I am a FREE MAN." - No.6 [The Prisoner]

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), March 05, 2000.

I believe he was referring to the TB2000 statistics page in which Sysman was number 7 on the list and Flint was number 5.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), March 05, 2000.

Yes, Bruce (Sysman) seems fond of his ranking on the statistics page giving total number of posts. That's a matter of record, as tabulated by the forum software.

But what I think he's driving at is a bit deeper. I know you can count on one hand the number of times I cut and pasted from elsewhere, and he was never a regurgitator either. And of course my posts tend to be long-winded and tedious, but probably represent more sheer wordcount of original writing than any other 3 posters combined. This of course is sheer self-serving guesswork, since no such count will ever be made. Sysman also tended to support his position fairly carefully.

And beyond that, though our viewpoints differed, neither Sysman nor I could reasonably be considered adherants to the party line. When challenged (and we were), we tried to support our statements usefully, rather than just vanishing or resorting to personal attacks.

So I think what he's pointing out is that by losing both of us, Yourdon's new forum has lost a sizeable chunk of both its soul and its credibility.

The last thing I want to see is for this forum to become (or even be regarded as) another debunker site. But in my arrogant opinion, there weren't many frequent posters to the old TB2K beyond myself and Sysman to leaven the image of that forum as a loony bin. Quite a few occasional posters were thoughtful, but as the statistics page shows (showed?), not many of them posted often enough to discourage that impression.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 05, 2000.