Ack! You lost the trust of the userbase!

I believe the original intent of this prank was, given the bad press editors and Gods have had lately, to show what would happen if the site was invaded by trolls and they weren't able to help. Make us appreciate them as it were.

Well, that worked a fucking charm, didn't it?

The joke was, in hindsight, quite a good one. But it got out of control, people got genuinely panicked, and the plug probably should have been pulled. It certainly shouldn't have gone on for fourteen hours. Asides from everything else, by that point it was just a pain - E2 was moving like treacle, the catbox and new nodes were full of shit, and any nodes you wanted to read tended to appear in l33t.

Impersonation. One excuse an editor gave me was that "no active noders were impersonated without their permission". Yes, but we all know who DMan and Jay Stile are, even if they aren't currently active on the dbase. If someone created a dem_bones@slashdot.org user on some discussion board and used it to slag people off, it wouldn't be justifiable just because bones doesn't frequent that board. I can't comment on the DMan/Saige comments as I didn't see them, but it sounds like whoever did it should have known better.

Satirical Licence. The troll impersonations were excellent. I never would have dreampt that some of the Gods/Eds were capable of writing anything that offensive, even in the name of satire. I'm rather dissapointed to discover that they could.

Aftermath. April Trolls Day goes up, all the Eds/Gods have a good laugh about the chaos they've caused, some users join in. One user raises a valid complaint, gets insta-nuked. Users who complain are given the "my way or the highway" line, or told to just take a joke. Easy thing to say when you're the joker, not the jokee.

I acknowledge it was a joke. I acknowledge you needed to let off some steam. Now could you acknowledge that, for whatever reason, some people didn't find it funny, and apologise. The display of arrogance has pissed me off tremendously. Is it really easier to repeatedly nuke nodes, /msg users and eventually drive people off the dbase than it is to admit that you made an error of judgement?

I've lost a lot of respect for most Gods/Editors over the handling of this, and gained respect for a few. I'll cherish the memories of XP Whores repeatedly using Punch Thyself to 'gain' 10XP, and lament the loss of Magenta.

Now please, let no more be said.