O'Donnell Negatively Judging Himself Through CLÉiRIGh

On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 at 17:51, Michael O'Donnell wrote to Sysfling:

Hi David,

David Rose  

Dear Moderator and fellow subscribers

Can I ask why the decision by the international committee to ban this person from sysfling since 2012 has been overturned?

This is a lie propagated by Chris, which I see is widely adopted in Sydney. There has not been a single case in the 30 year history of Sysfling of a person being "banned" (forcefully unsubscribed) from sysfling.

Back in 2012 or so,  the server hosting sysfling changed from my university to a listserv in the UK. This listserv had a default setting such that if messages sent from sysfling bounced so many times (could not reach the intended recipient), then that subscriber was automatically unsubscribed. This affected a number of people, unfortunately including  Chris, but the setting was changed, and anyone who was unsubscribed could at their will re-subscribe. At the time, many service providers were experimenting on rejecting what it thought was spam, not just tagging it as spam, but bouncing it back. Unfortunately, some of these systems had sysfling on their naughty list. So, Chris was unsubscribed by an automated system because his service provider was over-protective.

That is not how Chris tells it. He claims to have been victimised by the then moderator of Sysfling, and has launched a holy crusade against that individual, besmirching her good name whenever he can. he has lost contact with reality, but unfortunately is dragging others down the rabbit hole with him.

As for whether Chris should become the first ever ban on sysfling, that is open to debate. His behaviour is destructive to the list's community to a level that as not been seen before.

Your own behaviour a decade ago, David, was considered a problem (as hinted at by Maria). But you took the hint and have been generally well behaved for a decade. But your voice them was not silenced (unsubscribed), and you submitted to the community code of cooperation.

The present case is different though. Chris oiginally took on the role of David standing up to Goliath (with Rose being goliath), but David has supplanted Goliath as the menace to the community. Just because he started his activity for good reason does not mean that his bullying obsessive behaviour should be tolerated.

 Now, given the nature of this list, the first response of people has been to voice their protest by unsubscribing. Even those who have long argued for reason on this list, such as John Knox. But some don't want to unsubscribe from their community list because of one flamer. They have suggested forcefully removing the abuser instead of watching victims, and innocent bystanders, flee the scene.

But look what happened last time, when a faulty listserv setting dropped Chris off the list. That lead to 13 years of Chris bad-mouthing someone who has dedicated their life to serving the SFL community, who has done nothing but good for us, building the SFL community in Europe and beyond. What would this maniac do if he was actually banned in truth? I pèrsonally would not want to be part of that decision.

And why then am i writing this? Basically because I don't like seeing bullies get away with their abuse. I like to live in a community which is mutually constructive and supportive. I will not unsubscribe myself from sysfling, but hate to see what it is becoming recently. So I speak out my views, and will ignore Chris's chatgpt-mediated responses, which are not worth the bile they are printed on.

mick

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is entirely fictitious. For this, and the many other dishonest fabrications in this email, see here.

[2]

To be clear, Cléirigh's "holy crusade" was publicising the fact that he had been unsubscribed by Fontaine in 2020 and reviewing one of her papers on the basis on evidence. It can be read here. 

Cléirigh's messages to Sysfling were analyses of the rhetorical strategies used by Rose, Bateman and O'Donnell to bully. For reasons why O'Donnell projects his own toxic behaviour onto Cléirigh, see here. For reasons why O'Donnell received collegial support for his toxic behaviour, see here.