Raven, agreed let's not open old wounds here so we all need to grow up and move on to the subject at hand, the spacing between posts.

Look, the 2 person ban policy is set in place for one reason, so one person doesn't go around and go all willy nilly on banning people that piss them off. The * discuss is for getting other's attention in Sift Talk and the * ban is then invocated by another member backing up the first member's self-link/ban reason. I see no reason that by the time you research that the potential bannie has indeed made a bannable offense you should wait for a comment by the submitter for clarification.

It makes no sense for me to see a self link and verify that information then go off to twiddle my thumbs for hours to wait for a response from the submitter. I'm not going to be waiting for hours on end for 99% of the people NOT to respond then come back later to find out another user has gone ahead and seconded the ban.

Let's ban them now, if they are truly interested they will come back, and members don't need to sit on a post dicking off somewhere to wait for an answer that isn't going to come.

Whats wrong with having a set of rules as a guideline that you should stick by except in extraordinary cases? Not just because you want to give a congressional gold medal all willy-nilly and spend my damn money on it. Sorry, but I've got more important things to spend my money on like nonsense wars

Woah Woah Woah! I NEVER said the US aided the Taliban. As far as I can tell you are the one that brought that gem in to the conversation. It is you that are jumping to conclusions.

A) My credibility, your credibility, what does it matter. You brought two sources to the table, I brought four. You don't like my sources, I don't like yours. And yes in my view the us state department's public affairs is nothing more than a creation for suck puppetry propaganda.

B) I see you agree with me that's good.

"a greater us support for the afghan mujahideen meant more military successes, which in turn meant that osama and the rest of the arab mujahideen didn't necessarily need to risk their necks in battle, as we have seen was the case during the soviet invasion - this could certainly be seen as a benefit for the latter"

C) Look closely at my first citation from an interview given by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. He said, "It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would." And prior history notwithstanding, without the ISI's, and through them the US, insistance on bringing in Arabs to fight with the mujahideen there would LIKELY be no Al Qaeda. Not a forgone conclusion, but definitely well within the realm of possibility. Like it of not blowback exists. And as long as we continue to meddle within the internal affairs of other countries we have to know what we are risking and then act preemptively to mitigate the potential for blowback. Instead we get politicians, both Democrat and Republican, willy nilly trying to satisfy some itch.

D) LOL at your ability to open your mind

To be honest, I'm really first and foremost just disappointed to learn about this.

Anyways....

I had no idea taytv was created through administrative action, if I had known that I would have argued against it, although I guess regular sifters didn't have a say in that. Whether it was coming or not is not the point, the point is that all of us other sifters have taken the time to put effort into this community in order to gain standing and the trust (and friendship!) of our fellow sifters. What, aside from the draw of more site hits, prompted you to allow the creation of taytv, and skip this process of ingraining oneself into the community?

I agree with Raven on the point that taytv has, for all my intents and purposes, failed to provide the same kind of categorization and organization of sifts that every other collective has. I hadn't really mentioned it to anyone, but I had been thinking about it for a while, since I feel that's not in the best interests of VideoSift as a whole. (I'd have been in favor of administrative approval for any goldie's proposed collective, rather than allowing us to make our own willy-nilly.) In addition, with Fedquip's blog and all and the business with AOL and such, he IS gaining from self-linking, very obviously. It's bringing attention to him and his goings-on, and I feel that it's the motivation of self-interest that is harming VS.

I am vehemently opposed to a single-week ban, that's less than a slap on the wrist for what was an outright infringement of rules that Fedquip was very well aware of, and which would have, in the case of a newer user, definitely have resulted in a ban. I am definitely opposed to the taytv collective being allowed to stay. I'm for the most part opposed to a permaban; pragmatically, the truth remains that Fedquip does bring viewers to VS, which is not something I care about but that I'm sure the administrators of VS do, although if it were not for this single fact I would say a permaban is only right and fair. Actually, I personally think Fedquip's entire account should be wiped clean, so that he can start again from scratch if he's willing, although that may be overly draconian. At the very least, I think the collective should be deleted.

And James, I believe that this deserves a stronger response because Theo had absolutely nothing to gain from his self-links. Fedquip, on the other hand, has a financial and self-promotional interest, indirect though it may be, in his having the collective. I think it was wrong of VideoSift administrators granting him the collective to begin with, and I think it's wrong to allow him to continue benefiting from VideoSift's community in such a way.

I don't think any normal hunting that is not specifically to get food or control populations is legitimate, but this is more humane than just shooting willy-nilly and waiting for the bird to bleed out.

I don't think I'll upvote just because these people don't deserve the advertisement Videosift would give them.

That's like saying:

The Godfather? Looks like crime to me... what's the big deal?

Reactions like that are the reason plots are just slipped willy nilly in trailers now...