 |
I befriended a new 40plus chatter with the nick of Lacie who also happened to live close to me. On the guise of being my friend, she came to my home and had a very curious mind about how I ran 40plus, it's websites, the radio. She wanted everything 'now'. She wanted to Op, she wanted to run my websites, she wanted to DJ..want, want want..and she was making me very uncomfortable. She also wanted to become a Starchat IRCop, which I had no problem with. We made her a 40plus @Op faster than we normally do and she was doing a good job for a couple of weeks, until she started going over my head and questioning room rules that had been in place for a long time. She then overstepped Op boundaries and her etiquette in the room one night was privately questioned by me. She didn't care for that and she resigned. She took up shop in Luverly's channel #40s50s4fun on Starchat and with the help of her computer literate husband Walker, proceeded to copy anything that 40plus was doing, especially the radio. She copied our scheduling, our formats and even recruited our ex DJs and current DJs all with Luverly's blessing. Luverly by this time was getting excited about having a radio and believed that Lacie could do no wrong. With the creation of 40s50s4fun radio, a public webpage forms with any Shoutcast setup, which shows the number of listeners and the current on air DJ's name. Myself and other Dj's who are familiar with these types of pages, were watching it to see what Dj's were on air. The page requires refreshing to get changing results and most of us just kept the page open in the background so we could refer to it often. After about a week, their radio and server went down and during Walker's maintenance, he pulled logs and saw IP addresses on there, especially mine and Arkie's. In his infinite wisdom and total inexperience of ever running a radio, he assumed that Arkie and myself must have been trying to 'hack' their server and reported it to Starchat and presumably my ISP. Utterly ridiculous of course, but they wanted to blame someone rather than the instability of their own Lairds server. Based on his report, Arkie and myself found ourselves banned from Starchat and it was all downhill from there. I was anticipating a battle to clear my name and gave ownership of the channel to Greg, awidow and Poge to keep it out of harms way, afterall, Luverly said that 40plus itself wasn't involved, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I knew that these 3 trusted 40plussers would have our best interest at heart and would take care of things until (and if) Arkie and I were unbanned. The Ops on duty noticed the next day that Luverly was messing with the modes of the channel, something only the ops could see. She had removed me as Founder, and also the new founders that I had put in place and placed 40plus in the ownership of Starchat and removed all the Ops. She said that she didn't want her or her channel badmouthed in 40plus and this was her way of keeping watch. Right there, she had ABSOLUTELY no right to do what she did as 40plus was not involved, but Luverly does whatever the hell she wants it seems and right now she wanted 40plus. She hindered all communications from myself to Starchat, especially Jinxi the owner, based of course on everything Lacie and Walker had said and never at any point giving us a fair hearing. The incident was important enough to get Jinxi out of semi-retirement after 3 years and she visited 40plus and 'interviewed' the roomies. Not one roomie spoke out against me and defended me to the hilt and yet, Jinxi wasn't listening. She believed what was being reported to her by Luverly and accused me of 'having become unstable'. She made the decision then and there to hand over the channel to Static, totally disregarding what the roomies were saying and what they wanted. He was an odd choice considering there were roomies far more senior and with better motives, but as we came to realize, Static was her puppet and had no intentions of 'minding 40plus for me or the loyal roomies'. He did not defend me nor reassure me in any way that he was acting in my best interest. He claims he didn't want the responsbility and would only take it on if Arkie was also reinstated. At that point, Arkie's ban was lifted and she was listed as Founder along with Static. They re-enlisted all the team of Ops and it seemed like everything was returning to normal, except for the fact that I was still banned from my own room. Behind Arkie's back, Static again removed ALL the ops from the list and it was clear that Luverly was calling the shots through Static and he was doing whatever Luverly was telling him and not what anyone else wanted, least of all me. At NO point did Static communicate with me from the time he obtained the channel. When Arkie saw what was happening, she immediately dropped herself from 40plus as a Founder and Static proceeded to enlist a few roomies that HE and Luverly wanted. No one from the original list of Ops. By now the roomies were very upset with her giving our room away as she pleased, as 40plus had nothing to do with any of this, and I was being pressured by the roomies to find a new server. They were adamant that they would not stay on Starchat without me. Finally realising I was fighting a biased losing battle and that we would never be able to run 40plus the way we wanted ever again without having Starchat constantly looking over our shoulders for any kind of infraction, we moved to a wonderful server called Serenity-irc.net, where we were welcomed with open arms. Our 40plus website is the only sanctuary where we have a voice and so that's what we are using. Starchat 40plus is no longer 'our' 40plus. It is just an empty shell now, so if you are looking for us, the Real 40plus, you will find links on our website to guide you to us. They are also forbidding us from redirecting our roomies over to Serenity at this point and they are trying to keep you prisoner on Starchat. Anyone that goes to the old 40plus and tries to tell people where we are are being kicked. Imagine that! If you are lost and held hostage in there, you just need to get the hell off that server and find your way to us, DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR LIES!! The server has been declining over the years, since Jinxi handed over control to Luverly, and that is evident of the number of people on the server as opposed to what it used to be. Luverly's hard handed tactics of taking over popular rooms has always been common knowledge. She has a conflict of interest with her own room and any room that starts to prove more popular than hers, she will find an excuse to take it over. Well she can have 40plus. There are many 40plus rooms on different servers...but it's no longer 'our' 40plus. Do not believe their lies at trying to keep you on Starchat and your attendance in either of those channels on Starchat is telling us that you believe them and you support their decision. We don't want anyone on Serenity that is still frequenting their rooms and the Starchat server. We only want honest and loyal people with us as has always been the case, so if you feel the need to float between the two, please just stay there because you will be viewed with an air of distrust as to where your loyalty lies. DO NOT SUPPORT EITHER OF THOSE ROOMS ON STARCHAT..YOU ARE CONDONING WHAT THEY DID!!! We are very much alive and well and so much happier on Serenity without the drama and the heavy handed tactics..and all you need to do is Email me or visit our IRC & Listserv Info Pagefor directions and instructions. Thank you to the multitude of roomies that have come over and shown their support by turning their back on Starchat over this. You are the heart of 40plus and they can never take that away from us! Hope to see you soon! |