Jim, how does zotting work? Must you approve the zotting of any freeper who is not obviously a DU troll? or do your assistants sometimes do that without even consulting you.
And then is their entire history of posts gone permanently? or is it recoverable? Would your system keep records on what triggered it, who reported it, and which mod did the zot?
My reason for asking is I noticed a fairly new freeper (here for 3 weeks) who seemed to fit in nicely, and I admired his/her views. I intended to say hello and welcome them.
Then poof, s/he was zotted. and EVERY post the person made in their entire history was deleted. I am shocked, I strongly doubt that YOU did that, but at the same time, with so many left-leaning freepers leaving for greener pastures, I can't see why ANY of our Moderators zot a true conservative who fits the FR charter nicely. And how often is this done without your knowledge?
Now some background... As far as I know, I did not know or chat with this new freeper evilthatmendo, but I stumbled on some of his/her posts shortly before s/he was zotted. S/He signed up at FR on the day Terri died, Mar 31 2005. Hence his/her choice of names, I assume.
I was shocked at how well s/he seemed to fit in here and yet his/her account was deleted. It seems to me the last things that happened were most likely some heated exchanges over Terri with those 15 or so anti-christian anti-Terri freepers that still remain actively bashing most high volume Terri threads.
They used to call themselves the WPPFF and then wild turkeys club, now they seem to just magically take over an occasional Terri thread and drive out anyone not in their club. The latest of those seems to be here:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385118/posts
I see ETMD went there, I assume unaware, and got sucked up by their meatgrinder. I have about a dozen evilthatmendo posts from I assume an hour or two before the zot occurred, still in my browser cache, and they look like any normal grieving but respectful Terri-supporter, and as I said, very admirable posts. (at the last time I had hit REFRESH, there was nothing yet from ETMD that was heated).
Here also, are 67 google cache FR posts by evilthatmendo from the timeframe of april 15. It looks like ETMD posted on a wide variety of subjects and less than half of those were on Terri Schiavo.
Google search:
"by evilthatmendo" -"in-forum" site:freerepublic.com
In each case, you can click on the word CACHED in order to see the flavor of the posts "by evilthatmendo".
When posting on Terri, it looks like ETMD held mainstream conservative freeper values that agrees with the 85% of members who say "it was wrong to kill her".
I don't know what finally happened to trigger this zot, but I can imagine. I've heard the WPPFF club refer to an organized attack before as a "Three Musketeers".
I hope you will put in place a system where conservative newcomers are NOT driven out by the noisy nine-percenters club, and their mod helper(s). Perhaps YOU should have a VETO power over pending zots if you don't already.
I would like to see MORE people come here and stick around with conservative values; I think a lot of them recently have gotten driven out very quickly by the noisy nine-percenters club.
Thank you,
FUE
ps: Do you have the person's email-address on file so s/he can be invited back?