A note to our readers

The plan was to have this whole thing fully done and ready to post. We did the Cat Ballou review. We had the Dear Third Estate Sunday Review. But that's about all we could manage as we saw C.I. attacked and then Rebecca. As we watched while Betty considered packing it in and Folding Star wondered how much crap you're supposed to put up with.

Two small fry bloggers decide to flame on like Johnny Storm the Human Torch.

And that shelved any hopes of being on top of this edition.

We went with the flow. Instead of doing an all night session, we all took a five hour nap after getting the interview with Common Ills community members Gina and Krista (who do the gina & kristin round-robin e-mail). Betty and Rebecca helped out there so thank you for that and thank you Gina and Krista for the interview.

The humorous piece was written by Rebecca, Betty and The Third Estate Sunday Review. Ava did work in a joke C.I. had used on another topic but, please note Paul and Dopey, C.I. didn't participate so save your angry, flaming e-mails.

While Ava and C.I. did the review of Living With Fran and the DVD review of The Electric Horseman, Rebecca helped us with the editorial.

We hope you'll find something to enjoy this issue. There is humor here. But we're also addressing a serious issue.

For the record, the issue of counters came up due to "Paul." That can't be stated often enough. If he hadn't shot his mouth off about supposedly being able to read an e-mail composed while someone visited his site, due to his counters, it never would have been an issue.

We don't think it happened. If it did, that's pretty scary. And all of Dopey's whining about corporations don't change thing.

If it didn't happen, then any "hysteria" that's been caused has come from Paul claiming an event that never happened. But instead of getting honest, both want to bully Rebecca and C.I. in e-mails.

That's pretty shitty.

Paul's obsessed over the fact that in a roundtable, C.I. didn't note that Paul had apologized. Why should that be noted, that wasn't the topic and if you want your apology -- which was an "aside" at best and a weak one at that -- noted, you've got a site. The same site that you posted your "HOW DO YOU SLEEP!" slam at The Common Ills becaue they didn't choose to come to your party (to use Rebecca's analogy).

Dopey's obsessed over the fact that The Common Ills community doesn't know that corporations track. Dopey needs to learn to read. Maybe it's because he came in late, but that's been noted repeatedly on the site. It's also been noted (along with firewalls, Paul) in the UK Computer Gurus newsletter that TCI members receive.

C.I.'s comments in the roundtable were hoped to be the only comments on it by C.I. For two weeks, nothing had been said about it at The Common Ills. C.I. cancelled out on a roundtable we'd scheduled the weekend after the attack because of the fact that we were going to address it there. C.I. also asked us to rethink the editorial we had prepared on your attack that weekend.
(Didn't say, "Pull it," asked us to think if we really thought anything good would come of it. Knowing all that C.I. has to put up with up, we pulled it. Our decision.)

Rebecca didn't want to be silent. And somehow that was C.I.'s fault as well, according to you, Paul. Ask Rebecca, she'll tell you the wish that she not write anything about it was conveyed to her. She'll tell you C.I. refused to discuss the attack with her on the record or off.

Krista and Gina also attempted to get C.I. to talk in their round-robin e-mail. C.I. remained silent until it came up during the roundtable. And Rebecca wasn't done when C.I. interjected. As everyone present knows, Rebecca was just building up to a bigger point when C.I. jumped in to take the "high road." (We just used "high road." Dopey, you can accuse us of visiting your site now.)

All along, C.I. tried to balance two things at once, what was best for the community and protecting your privacy.

You blew it when you started your e-mails after the roundtable went up. You blew it by badgering C.I., bitching about Rebecca and acting like a total prick. We've seen the e-mails, Paul. C.I. takes the fall (again) and apologizes for mentioning you by name and linking to your site. Paul, we didn't want that. None of us at the site did. Ava and Ty ended up siding with C.I. over it because it was important to C.I. The point was to show that there were no hard feelings.
But to you, it's a conspiracy to destroy you. Yeah, Paul, that's how we do it. We wait two weeks to go after you. Guess we needed the surprise option?

You need to own your mistakes. Ava just said this is turning into an editorial.

So to our readers, we are very upset about this. One person wants to blow a gasket and act like he never started up the issue of counters, when he did. He wants to explode because in a roundtable, his weak apology wasn't stated. (If it had been, our remarks about the apology would have only pissed him off more because none of us, except possibly C.I. found it sincere. Did C.I. find it sincere? We don't know.)

And the second person is pissed that C.I. didn't drop everything and blog about something that the idiot didn't ask to be quoted on, didn't write up anything for the community on -- something that had been blogged on and noted repeatedly already.

A lot of time was wasted that could have gone to other things. Ava can tell you because she's helped C.I. a great deal last week.

So if there's a theme to this edition it's about how bullies think they can have the last word. We expect that from the right. When it comes from the left, it's a shock.

-- Jim, Ava, Dona, Ty and Jess