More on Yesterday

Congratulations to the LSU basketball team on another win last night. That makes four in a row, and I think we've accomplished what we wanted to accomplish regardless of what happens with Mississippi State on Saturday. Am I getting way ahead of myself to think we might have a real shot at winning the tourney?

Anyway, the Tigerdroppings issue is still in my mind. Let me make one thing very clear. I do not begrudge Tigerdroppings its success, nor do I set out to pick a fight with it. Quite the contrary, every conflict that has ever arisen between this site and Tigerdroppings happened because the administration of Tigerdroppings did something that I thought was jaw-droppingly surprising.

Was I warned against linking to this blog? Yes. Did I follow that mandate 100%? No. Did I follow it mostly? Yes. Was I kicked off for linking? No.

To summarize this, it is perfectly within the rules of Tigerdroppings, and even encouraged, to start a thread with the topic "Top 5 strangest places you've taken a dump," but you must not link to a blog that talks about football. Linking to the blog that talks about football is clearly outside of the purview of a message board about football. Hell, the topic on taking a dump will probably go on for 3 to 5 pages, and more than one admin will probably post to it.

I don't justify breaking the rules, but the Tigerdroppings rules are broken all the time. It's almost a rite of passage over there to break some rule and cause some drama and then it all blows over in a day or two. I broke the rule against linking to this website exactly once after I came to understand exactly what the rule meant, and I've been banned twice, neither time was immediately after linking this blog. It's not the linking that got me banned. It's something else. Did I break the rule? Yes. Am I the only user in the world who deliberately broke a rule once? There will probably be more than one TD user who deliberately breaks a rule TODAY.

Like it or not, there are some unwritten rules at Tigerdroppings. These rules aren't advertised except to people who unwittingly break them. Unwritten rule #1 is, "Don't talk about the unwritten rules." I guess if you talk about them, they're no longer unwritten.

I don't know why there are unwritten rules. I don't know why certain things are out of bounds, and I don't know why they don't want other users to know that it's out of bounds. It's certainly not out of fear of conflict, as the place is nothing if not full of conflict and drama. It's certainly not because they want to generally restrict what topics are discussed. Almost literally anything goes over there. The only things that are clearly out of bounds are the following:

• Use of racial slurs (though expressing racism is not out of bounds, as long as you avoid racial slurs)
• Posting of pornography
• Linking this blog, whether you are me or anyone else
  

One of these things is not like the other.

For more, check out the comments section to yesterday's post. Someone decided they did not agree with me, and you can check out his perspective if you want.

I've Gotten Into More Stupid Drama

Everyone knows that drama creates buzz, right. Well, maybe it's time this website got a few more hits because I seem to have gotten involved in more Tigerdroppings drama. Hence, we are calling an audible, and the post I promised you yesterday will have to wait.

In a thread over at Tigerdroppings, a poster named Catahoula Lake, who is a person totally unfamiliar to me, started a thread in which he quoted my post yesterday on Russel Shepard. He seemed to have trouble getting the link right. A little later in the day another user tried to help him fix the link and discovered that any attempt to link to this website is automatically garbled. Someone over there has programmed it so that it is impossible to link to this site from Tigerdroppings.

He pointed this out on the thread. I noticed his response, and I posted my own response expressing my surprise. Then I noticed that my response did not send the thread to the top of the page. The thread, completely harmless though it was, had been "anchored", meaning it was set to not to get bumped to the top when someone posted to it, so it would steadily sink to the bottom and off the page, where it would likely not be viewed again.

It was not anchored automatically the way the link was garbled. This was done by an admin that day, who chose to disfavor that particular thread, the one that mentioned this website, tried to link to it, and that prompted someone else (none of these people are me mind you) to notice that this website got special treatment.

Special negative treatment, that is. Links to national media aren't garbled. Links to LSU beat reporters like Glenn Guilbeau aren't garbled. Links to local LSU-themed bloggers like Dandy Don aren't garbled. Why is this website so disfavored over there?

I then started a thread on the Help Board asking about this. I will admit, I got a little testy. Frankly, I took it as a personal slight, which I think is a fair conclusion under the circumstances, and my testiness was justified. After a short conversation on the topic with a handful of users, the thread was deleted and my posting privileges were revoked. What's more, the message that pointed out the garbled links on the original thread, and how it only involved this website, was deleted along with my follow-up.

Recall, from the previous drama, the last straw was that they didn't only ask me not to link to the website or comment on it over at Tigerdroppings, but they didn't want me to ever point out that they had taken any action against me. It seems they did not want their users to know that this website was so disfavored. So, to recap, here is the relationship between GeauxTuscaloosa and Tigerdroppings:

• I can't mention the website over there
• I can't discuss the rules regarding not being able to mention the website over there
• Anyone who attempts to link to my website will find it impossible to do
• Threads that mention this website will be anchored
• Posts that mention that this website gets special treatment will be deleted
• People who attempt to bring this forward will be punished
  

I still cannot imagine why this website is held in such contempt by the people who run Tigerdroppings. I don't have a big enough ego to think that I'm some kind of a threat. Hell, this blog has approximately 15-20 regular readers. Tigerdroppings probably gets 15-20 new regular users every day or two. It's a behemoth. I doubt I take away one cent of advertising dollars, and I doubt I would take away a cent if my readership increased by a factor of 100. Why does anyone spend 2 seconds thinking of this place as some kind of enemy?

And if they are inclined to think about this place, why is it held in such contempt? In over 350 posts on this board, I've mentioned Tigerdroppings exactly three times that I recall. This would be the fourth, and the drama started well before the first time I mentioned Tigerdroppings in any negative way. Heck, all I do is post long, rambling articles about football. Most of Tigerdroppings clientele doesn't even have the patience to read them, much less care about them. To the extent I've been critical of Tigerdroppings for having an incredibly high number of idiots posting (and apparently at least one petty and vindictive admin), other websites have been at least as critical.

I think, ultimately, that's what bothers me the most. This is so petty on their parts. What's more, because they won't let it even be discussed openly, they seem to know that it's petty. The only reason I can think of to censor all discussion of this website and their rules regarding it is that they must know how unreasonable they're being, and they know that if it's openly discussed over there, people will point out how chickenshit it is (pun intended).

It also makes me wonder what other topics of discussion may be secretly censored.