Voice of the People™ Area Closed (18th April 2005)
The staff created a clearly bogus area called Voice of the People™ on 2005-04-04. During the recent April Fool’s joke (my news entry for it) they banned me for pointing out it was a joke. Evidently the timing of the area’s creation meant it was made whilst they were trying to pick up the pieces of their completely failed prank by trying a slightly different approach. The staff only gave themselves posting rights in the area but also gave posting rights to me.
Throughout the short while the area was running (just two weeks) the staff used it to poke fun at me and not consider the ideas seriously at all. They rather clumsily tried to make out that I was not using the area because I was somehow not interested in improving the boards. They locked the topic I made suggesting the structure of the area and announced that the area was going to be closed, which proves quite conclusively that they were never interested in a genuine discussion.
They made the area accessible to all for the last few days and despite many members taking part the staff have still gone ahead with locking it. This means that despite the members showing that they really do want to take part and that my suggestion to make it public would have worked (which was the suggestion they locked) the staff ignored the will of the members so that they could end the game they were playing before it turned against them.
Hopefully it will be many months before they use their staff controls for such sillyness again.