A troll board, or a flame board, should have a different approach to the way its run than a standard message forum. Standard forums often kick out “trolls” or trouble makers after a few (or more than a few) times. Flame forums and Troll forums, by their nature, need to operate by other standards because they are mainly geared towards general discussion of discussion on things like entertainment, family, or other topics.
By rights, a troll/flame forum should only ban someone who violates the TOS. And they should have a set TOS so that the members know if they’re following the guidelines or not. Being a troll forum, insults shouldn’t be a reason to ban a member. Neither should an insult directed at an admin or a moderator, especially if those individuals flame the members, be grounds for banning at a troll/flame forum.
Cosmic Outpost launched its “Fight Club”, now called “Ultimate Fighting” forum, over a year ago. It started out well. The Wise and Powerful, who had served as a moderator and “promoter” of matches at Flame Champs, was placed in charge of the Fight Club. He had Mr. SoulCancer (called SoulCancer at Flame Champs) as his moderator there. SoulCancer was more of a standard troll, with a short fuse, but TWAP’s experience would help balance out SC’s shortcomings. Originally the owner/admin, alternately called Unemployed Kernel and Unemployed Farmer, set standards which seemed reasonable. For instance:
1) Moderators and admins should not take sides.
2) The forum should be a neutral ground, for people from various forums and flame boards to meet, compete, and do battle.
3) PI should not be used (although PI was not clearly defined).
4) Children should not be used for flame fodder.
5) Copyrighted pictures cannot be used without the owner’s permission.
However, as things progressed, Farmer, an admitted troll, proved that whatever standards he set up meant essentially nothing. His moderators quickly began to pick favorites, as well as his administrators. Famine, a global moderator there, was one of the first who not only began flaming various people but clearly took sides. High Flyin Bryan, an admin, had obvious favorites as well. Two of these favorites were b.k. barunt and caskur. Bryan very quickly demonstrated that he would never vote against either barunt or caskur. In fact once, one time when barunt didn’t even show up for a match, Bryan voted for him to win anyway.
Things got worse at a rapid pace. It became obvious that Farmer preferred to run trolls on his own membership. These trolls included; pretending that he got a complaint to his host and that his url was in danger of being suspended; pretending that the United States government seized his domain and suspended it; repeatedly claiming he wanted to get rid of his site and turn it over to someone else when he had no intention of letting go of the ownership of it; posing as a Middlesex, New Jersey, County Sheriff and threatening a member with arrest and prosecution; signing up as a Federal agent in a copy of his own Sheriff troll; the list goes on and on. The sheriff and FBI agent handles were in direct violation of his own edict that admins and mods not take sides.
Farmer also proved to be a PI hound. Various people from other sites verified that he was known for investigating his new members and spreading around their personal information to others. One of the members he investigated was called TheProwler. Farmer googled Prowler’s IP and discovered the man was running a home server with a couple of websites off of that server. Farmer did a whois check on the websites and discovered the man’s real name, address, telephone number, and other vital information. Farmer them proceeded to send out Prowlers info to various people, including myself. Farmer allowed an admin at CO called Pogo to take the blame for spreading around the PI.
Farmer also violated several of his own “rules” that he set up. As mentioned before, he established a rule that children not be flamed or the children of members. Farmer himself flamed the child of a member called AlphaNova. Farmer stated that a member’s pictures could not be used on the board without the member’s permission; Farmer himself found pictures of caskur’s family on her photobucket account and sent links to them via the personal message system. It became clear that none of the rules that Farmer set up were going to be violated---not only by Farmer but by his other admins and moderators. The only admin who followed a code of ethics was The Wise and Powerful.
When Farmer’s deeds were exposed, he began threatening others that he would find out their PI and, as he stated, “the fun will begin”. Farmer displayed a short fuse, often banning people who flamed him back on his board. One member, called Wayne Reynolds, posted that Farmer was running a kiddie porn business off of his server. Farmer not only banned Reynolds for this but also changed a post of Reynolds so that it appeared as if Reynolds was soliciting kiddie porn. After Reynolds was unbanned, Farmer again banned the man when he posted a porn picture in a thread. Farmer falsely claimed the photo was kiddie porn; Reynolds, on other sites, proved it wasn’t. Not only that, but Farmer threw the moderator of the Fight Club, SoulCancer, to the wolves so to speak. SoulCancer posted in the thread where Reynolds posted the picture. SC did not object to the picture nor thought it was of kiddie porn at the time. Farmer, however, allowed SoulCancer to take the blame for not removing the picture from the thread.
Keep in mind that Cosmic Outpost’s Fight Club was supposed to be a combination troll/flame forum. Farmer was clearly throwing out, albeit temporarily, people for flaming him. His co-admin, High Flyin Bryan, proved just as worse. Bryan not only would ban members who flamed him, but he would additionally delete the handles of people who flamed him as well. Bryan also would go into member’s profiles and change their handles and/or their signatures. Bryan would openly threaten to delete members who challenged him. Bryan posted personal messages of people without their permission, and would put his own spin on what was said in the messages. Bryan himself admitted he discovered a member’s personal information (a member called JOODOG) and posted that info at another board (Troll Valhalla).
The global moderator and moderator of the Flame Forum, Mr. Soulcancer, also proved to be extremely short tempered. When I was tag team champion and flamed SoulCancer repeatedly, he posted openly that he had discussed with the admins how I was flaming him and that I would be stripped of the tag team title…despite no violation of the TOS. SC also threatened numerous times to post personal information about members. In a massive meltdown because members who SoulCancer disliked were not banned, SC actually spammed his own forum for an entire morning.
The clown show got even worse with EARTH RAPER, a moderator from the general forum, getting involved. ER bragged that member’s ability to report inappropriate posts was removed. This was done because caskur and TheProwler were repeatedly threatening to murder people, including myself, and both EARTH RAPER and Farmer didn’t want to have to ban them for making death threats. So Farmer prevented people from reporting the posts so as to claim plausible deniability. Farmer then began repeatedly changing the TOS. At one point he declared that members cannot flame moderators or administrators even if said people flamed the members. He also stated that members who bad mouthed the site would be banned.
Again and again Farmer, Bryan, SoulCancer, EARTH RAPER, famine and another moderator, Wick, proved that they would go into their panels if they were flamed. When Wick would be flamed, he would change the titles of threads, delete messages, and alter content. Essentially, the owner and staff of CO demonstrated that they could dish it out but they could not take it.
If Cosmic Outpost were a standard message forum then some of the actions (but not the PI spreading) might be considered appropriate. However, for a troll and/or flame site, it is not. The Wise and Powerful has made various attempts to make sure that the site is run fairly and with some standards, but the owner Farmer repeatedly sabotages those efforts. People should keep in mind that if they sign up at CO that their PI could be exposed by Farmer. Also, if they irritate the owner and staff they will use their panels and abuse their members.
I began my own site, called Cosmic-Outpost, to demonstrate what Cosmic Outpost was supposed to be. It’s located at
It is not the same site as Farmer’s Cosmic Outpost, but an original site without the mod/admin abuse. The Wise and Powerful, the only ethical admin at Farmer’s site, is an admin at mine.
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