Addressing False Accusation of A Citzen / acitizenArchived Message
Posted by AdminGCG1 on May 23, 2014, 5:22 pm
As a few of you know, occasionally our Discussion Board software experiences a glitch that inadvertently bans a random IP address for no particular reason.
On the few occasions that this has happened, (you can ask Dreamcatcher or Clancy) we are able to locate the problem and fix it quickly once notified by the member.
Unfortunately, we had a member (now truly banned) who encountered this same issue. Instead of contacting us to let us know that she was experiencing issues, she accused us of banning her account because we "have a selective discussion board, and because we are biased in favor of Mr. Carl Hozian, and because we will not let people post the truth". (This is not the complete list of her complaints)
She went as far as threatening us with local media, particularly channel 2, claiming they wanted an explanation as to why she was banned.
We responded to each and everyone of these emails as soon as we received them. We asked her to please supply us with the information necessary to narrow down this problem.
She still has yet to answer or respond to our emails, but only continues to threaten, accuse and demand.
In spite of her irrational behavior by refusing to help us to restore her posting capabilities, we worked on it feverishly finding the solution so she could once again sign in and post.
Even though our efforts as well as our emails went unrecognized, she apparently used the information we gave her to successfully sign back in the board. Now at her first opportunity she posted a lie claiming we had banned her for posting the truth, "haha I got blocked from posting the truth and now I'm back".
Rarely do we ban and IP address, actually the last time we banned was four years ago. We never close a person's account, change their account information and rarely do we edit or delete their posts.
In spite of her threats and hateful attitude and accusations, she was still allowed membership in the board. But after posting a lie accusing us of banning her for telling the truth, we made the decision to no longer allow her into the GraniteCityGossip.com Discussion Board community.
Below you can read the email we sent to her early this morning after 1:00 a.m., after working for hours to rectify her sign in and posting problem.
Please remember while reading this, we are only human, and experience frustration and anger just like the rest of you.
We hope this explains our decision:
Dear Sir or Madam:
We have attempted to understand and rectify any issue you are having with posting in the GraniteCityGossip.com Discussion Board.
You are apparently quite angry at us for some imagined actions on our end as owners and administrators of the forum that has resulted in you being denied access to post or respond to posts.
We have not blocked your IP address, we have not deleted nor modified your account in anyway, we have not removed, edited or changed the existing posts you have made within our forum at any given time.
We have explained to you that your sign-in or username is case sensitive, you have to enter it in the exact same fashion as you typed it when registering, meaning; the same capital letters, the same spaces, etc. If you do not sign in in the same fashion, it will not give you access to your account.
We DO NOT have record of the passwords you registered with, that is your personal information.
We are, however, able to assign you a temporary password in order for you to gain access to your account using either one of the usernames you registered with.
You can change the temporary password by clicking "User Options" once you have successfully signed in. At that time your password will be private to you only.
With that being said, we will now address your numerous accusations and threats:
We responded to your first email accusing us of blocking your posts or admittance into the board by asking you for your username, you did not respond.
We researched and found your two usernames by matching your email address.
We responded again explaining the possible reason you were not gaining access to the board and you respond demanding an explanation of why you are blocked from posting.
Again, we have NOT blocked you, we have NOT banned you, we have taken no action whatsoever that would prevent you from accessing your account and posting whatever information you want to post.
You accuse us of "silencing people who are posting the truth". Nothing could be further from the truth. You have posted in the past and most recently during the last week. The things you have posted are hardly complimentary to the person or people you are posting about.
Did we remove those posts?
Did we edit or modify them in anyway?
Did we remove or modify the posts from fellow Discussion Board members who were in agreement with you?
No one is keeping you from posting the truth about anything.
You accuse us of being friends with Carl Hozian. In actuality we couldn't pick him out of a group of three people for a million dollars.
We don't know him, we have never met him.
You accuse us of being biased? Again, did we remove any of your posts? No.
If you do a search of "citizen" "acitizen" in the search bar you will find dozens and dozens of your previous posts, many angry and unpleasant, yet they remain to this day in our message archive.
We pride ourselves in offering a forum where members are fee to discuss whatever they wish, with no subject being off limits unless it is extremely inappropriate and grotesquely offensive in nature.
Your posts regarding Mr. Hozian would not fall into this category.
Do not confuse GraniteCityGossip.com as being affiliated in any way with Granite City government. We are a personally owned and generated web site with no attachments to anyone in our local administration.
When we responded to your email and close by saying "please advise", that means we are asking for additional information that would help us understand why you aren't able to post.
Copy and pasting the message your are receiving when attempting to sign in and emailing it to us would allow us to narrow down the problems you are experiencing.
But instead of offering any information in either of your emails all we receive are rude and hateful comments, accusations and now a threat.
You DEMAND an explanation and say the media is also interested in why you aren't able to post.
We invite the media to contact us, through email or by phone at 618.402.0924. We will gladly show them your long list of posts regarding destruction of your property, issues with a shared drive way, theft, the issues you have with the Granite City Police Department not addressing your problems, City Hall doing the same, to name a few. This will make it clear to the media that we have in no way been "selective" in who is allowed to post and that no subject is forbidden.
Your threat of involving the media is welcome on our end.
And lastly, you are a member of the GraniteCityGossip.com Discussion Board at our invitation only.
This is not a paid service, we are not obligated in anyway to explain a damn thing to you other than trying to beat it into your head that you are not signing in properly. If your emails are any indication of your attempts at resolving conflict, you might consider rethinking your strategy when dealing with the many people you are having problems with.
And if you are still interested in gaining access to the Discussion Board, you will be granted access by signing up under either of your usernames:
acitizen Password: XXXXX A Citizen Password: XXXXX
on May 23, 2014, 5:22 pm