Why howard is gone

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I would recommend you read the entire thread first before you ask that. I came back from the forums after a long break and reading the thread made it apparently clear to me, so I don't see why reading it wouldn't help you.
 
I just went back to see who my first reply was, but it looks like the records only go back 200 posts. I have a feeling it may have been Howard helping me with a windows boot error though :).

Cheers Howard, and I wish you the best of luck.

EDIT: It looks like it was actually vnf4ultra, the boot error came shortly afterwards.
 
Wolfram was the first poster to me :D !

EDIT:
It was howard ;) . The 2nd post to me was in a video card comparison thread by Wolfram :grinthumb
 
Boogityboo04 said:
the records only go back 200 posts

The My Posts section goes back 200 posts, but if you go on your public profile and click View all threads started by *username*, that goes back right to the beginning :)
 
Best Wishes

That, as they say, is the pits. Rik, please pass on my best wishes and let him know that as I am not far away if there is anything I can do he is just to let me know. Send me a PM for my phone number.
Cheers to all.
 
cfitzarl said:
Wolfram was the first poster to me :D !The 2nd post to me was in a video card comparison thread by Wolfram :grinthumb
I do believe I remember that post :D
 
Oh my god.

I have been off the forums for awhile now and I come back to this!!!

EDIT and things become clear.....
 
Blown away!

baros1954 baros1954 is online now
Newcomer, in training

Member since: Dec 2007, 40 posts
My TS resignation.
Hello mate, it`s Howard here. I`m sorry for pm`ing you under a different user name, but I`m not allowed to send pm`s etc anymore under my original username of howard_hopkinso

I`m sending you this pm to let you know exactly what`s going on with Techspot.

As you probably know, I went nuts a few weeks ago and deleted all my own threads. This caused quite a stir amongst the mods and Julio and they took away my modship and put me on what is known as the Miserable Users list.

That`s a hack that Julio introduced sometime ago that makes it nigh on impossible for any member that is put on it to login or interact with Techspot properly. Julio and the rest of the mods don`t want anyone to know about this, but since their hellbent on being *****s, I thought it was about time, you our regular members knew about it.

I`m very sad to say, I won`t be coming back to TS under any user names again. The reasons for this are due to the way I`ve been treated and not only me. Some members who have supported me have also received poor treatment, especially at the hands of our arrogant leader Julio. for example, rik has been banned permanently as I suspect i`m going to be soon.

I find this situation intollerable and don`t thinks it`s fair that members should be treated like they don`t matter, which is obviously is the case.

The mods etc may well tell you TS isn`t like that, but I know for a fact it is. If only the powers that be would come down off of the high horses and realise that without our regular members, there wouldn`t be a TS.

I`d like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you for all the support that the regular members have shown me. It really is very much appreciated.

It has been a great honour to have known so many outstanding individuals on TS.

I wish you every success in the future and I hope life is good to you.

Regards your friend Howard.
Forward Message


Not only does this disturb me but does the fact that Howards thread was locked.
 
Just as a clarification, this thread was closed by me, not any other moderators.

Second, the miserable user modification was installed with the purpose of combating spam bots that registered under different IPs, making it impossible to ban over and over again. Here's more information:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?threadid=93258
Howard applauded the move when he was a moderator because he spent quite a bit of time combating these spam attacks.

Howard did not only delete "his own threads" but thousands of posts from other members, he went nuts, he became a miserable user.

Both him and rik did not help their cases by insulting the TS team later on after we had a very passive response over him getting a nervous breakdown or whatever you want to call it. We treated him with respect despite of the hurt we had already caused.

I was letting Howard return under a new username but with his erratic behavior, it's a no go.

They are now both banned permanently for being morons despite taking hours of my time answering to their emails and recovering some of the content that was deleted.

No member was treated unfairly in the process, that's not the way things work around here. I dare to say things are very democratic until we reach this point where I reserve the right to take things under control deliberately.

TechSpot is my home. This is where I have spent the last ten years of my life. No user has the right to mandate where there are rules set in stone that have taken us this far. Please do not believe everything one single user has to say.

This is probably the last thing there is to say on the matter.
 
Absolutely not man. If you want to leave, then leave, but you are ignoring the facts. Lets take a look at them.

* Howard was a fantastic mod, helped a lot of people out, did a good job modding.
* Howard had some sort of mental breakdown and with that took out every thread he ever created, in the process deleted THOUSANDS of posts, permanetly.
* Howard's moderation privs were removed when Julio found out what happened, the reasoning was because we were concerned his account got 'hacked' (this can be noted in the threads about him shortly after this happened). So we were giving him the benefit of the doubt initially, removing mod privs were a logical thing to do for 'damage control'.
* Those threads got brought back, by a very intensive manual process by Per. Howard didn't just soft delete them like all mods generally do, he perm deleted them, making bringing them back almost impossible without bringing back forum backups, leading me to..
* Rik knew about this the day it happened, he passingly asked in the IRC channel why Howard left, when it now appears he knew why. Nobody else knew, the mods didn't fully realize what had happened until 4 days later, all this time Rik and maybe others knew what happened and neglected to tell anyone in position to do anything about it.
* Per had to bring all these back by hand restoring from personal backups that he had, and painstakingly merging them into the actual current forums. If we'd just restored from when Howard went crazy we would have lost hundreds of new members and hundreds of new threads, and thosands of new posts. This again further emphasises my previous point in that at least one member knew what happened and withheld this information from the mods.
* Howard came into the IRC room and personally assulted me for closing a thread where Rik was on a vendetta to do something about Howard, when I closed I gave a reason why. I also soft deleted the thread he created right after I closed the first, I also sent Rik a PM telling him to take it up with Julio and quit trying to cause problems.
* Howard has resorted to fighting TS through selected members rather than directly talking to any of the mods about this. As far as I know, I'm the only mod that has directly spoken with Howard since he went crazy.

Its fairly easy for him to have a backing because of all the good he did 99.9% of the time he was here. That last little bit though, that isn't the Howard everyone knows, this is a completely different guy now.

Look at the mod list here, look at all of our join dates, nearly every one of the mods has been here longer than most of the active members. We love this site more than most of you, and we don't want to see bad stuff happening here. None of the mods, staff, or Julio did anything wrong here at all, the wrong was completely on Howard's end, frankly I'm a little suprised how people aren't seeing this. Howard completely screwed the site and he's getting the free pass..
 
The TS Mods and staff have done things pretty professionally here. I haven't seen all of the details, and shouldn't. But everything we've seen so far indicates that people were treated fairly well.

I've spoken to both Howard and Rik on IRC. Howard before he did what he did is a TOTALLY different person than what he is now. You really need to keep this in mind. I liked the old Howard, I grew to respect him. I don't know if I can do that now (Disclaimer, this was reading through logs, not talking with him, so I'll still give him a chance.) I could post some logs that would make you cringe. It really wasn't pretty.

At any rate, based on all appearances, the staff has been honest and straight forward with us users on this. They recovered from Howard's damages, and then contained the situation. Honestly, what would you have done in Julio's situation? Or if someone you employed set fire to the office or destroyed large amounts of client's papers?

After staff hearing some about the situation, I think Howard was allowed to return a little under another name. However, his behavior was erratic after that point. A second chance is amazing in this situation, you should understand why it'd be approached cautiously. When the signs were that things wouldnt' have worked, I can see why he'd be dismissed again. We try to help people here. A turbulent environment just isn't conducive to that.

Also, I should mention, I wish Howard a speedy recovery and hope he gets lots of support from his family, friends, and doctors like he needs. I feel for him, I've had a breakdown myself, it's no fun at all.

I'm going to disclaim that I do know SNGX1275 and Poertner in real life- went to college with them. But I've interacted with many current and past staff (Stormbringer, Soul Harvester, Nodsu, to name a few), and all of them have been pretty level headed, thoughtful, friendly, and cool about things. I'd have done a few things differently here and there, but honestly given this is the first major incident since I've joined here I'm impressed. I viewed the site as a guest for a year before registering, too. The nature of the internet is one that makes these ugly situations likely. It says something for the staff and how well they handle things that we've seen so little in the past, and how calm things have been now.

If you want to stay and contribute, by all means, feel free, but please give a little respect the volunteers who keep things running around here. A supportive and friendly environment is a fragile thing, and they do wonderfully to provide it for us. If you still think it's right to leave and think that things could have been handled better, good luck to you in the future.
 
Wow! Looks like we had some drama!

Geeze, I'm gone for a few weeks in a school and I missed a lot of drama here on TS! RE: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic93462.html

Sorry to hear about all of this hullaballoo.....

as for myself, I will be returning to my military education after Christmas break and I will be out of the net for a few months trying to earn my commission as a lieutenant. You may hear from me from time to time if I get a break.

I've posted a few more new guides for everyone to enjoy. :)

the "Tedster" ;)
 
Yea man you have missed alot of stuff. I just came back about a week ago right in the middle of it. I dont think anyone really knows exactly what happened, just general things.

Hope all is well with you! Hope your holiday was good. Good luck with your Army stuff.

And nice guides as always.

Sean
 
It's always fun to sit back and be an outside soap opera observer! hahahaha

thanks and enjoy the guides!

:)
 
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