Hobie: “I don't think anyone ever consciously denied you membership.”
Correct, nobody has sent me an email saying that my membership was denied (because that would have been a straight and frank approach). But nobody has approved my membership either before Rayelan stepped in. A non-approved membership with no email response is a covert denial of membership. That way if anybody complains, the staff can always use an excuse like the one you came up with right now.
Hobie: “It's more likely that e-mails didn't arrive where they were intended to, including perhaps the notification e-mail that goes out when the enrollment form is submitted…”
You are free to offer an excuse; I am also free not to buy it, and I am not buying it. If RMN would be a new startup with an amateur web master doing it for free, perhaps using a free web hosting platform like yahoo groups; then I would consider giving you the benefit of doubt and accepting a “technical error-type” explanation. However, RMN is online since 1999 which should have given more than enough time to make sure that the signup process runs perfect, emails don’t get lost, and emails get sent out properly.
My email account is running perfectly, receiving and sending without a glitch. Therefore it is absolutely out of question that any email would not be received or lost on my end. I never delete any mail even from the junk box before making sure it is not an expected email. The fact that I could communicate with Rayelan also proves that my end is flawless.
If I wouldn’t get any response to my submitted application, but after sending a complaint to Susoni she would have responded, then I would have assumed that it was a technical glitch. If after not getting any response from Susoni, you would have responded to my complaint, I would have known that something is wrong, but would be willing to blame only Susoni. But the fact is that I have not got a response neither from the automatic process of approval, nor from Susoni for my complaint, nor from you in a 10 day period makes it clear that this was not a simple mistake or even a technical glitch.
Hobie: “The information we receive on new CGI Room applicants is minimal, with no way to know exactly who it is that's applying unless we already know him or her by name from private e-mails.”
That is obvious. I have never said that I was ignored because you would have known who I am based on my email address or IP. What I am saying is that I was not approved, because in the server logs (or other platform) it is visible that I was using Tor, which hides my real IP. Such anonymous and untraceable signups are undesirable, because RMN would be unable to know where I live and could not have the type of control over me, as if my location (and consequently identity) would be visible. Similarly like Google doesn’t like searches via Tor, and tries to discourage it by forcing you to enter several captchas before showing you the search results. The excuse is that they want to make sure you are not a robot, but a human. But the truth has nothing to do with this; it’s all about collecting information about the users, and keeping control over the users.
Susoni: ”Morfeus.. Just FYI, we can't see your IP when you join, only when you post... The only people who can see that is Hobie, myself and Raye..”
Again, you are free to offer excuses, but I am not buying it. The information about the IP and also about the usage of Tor is present on the server. Now exactly who, when, and how can get access to it is entirely an internal matter, which I don’t care about. I am not blaming any specific person, but the whole system.
The very fact that after submitting a post on the CGI forum we land on a page displaying something like “your IP address is: 193.111.136.162” is a sneaky subliminal threatening. It’s like saying: “Hey Jack… thanks for your post, but we know where you live, so be careful what you say! Just think about your children…”
But we are digressing with all this. You will probably press your enhanced excuses again, which I will still not buy; so this line of discussion will lead nowhere. Better to just focus on the subject of this thread, on the question: what is in my post that you are so eager to hide from the much wider readership of the RMN main page… You have already declined to give a straight answer, therefore I would suggest to let’s wait until Rayelan responds, if she ever does. It would be appropriate to wait, let’s say for week or two. That should surely be enough for a response. Then depending on the outcome I will make my conclusions and act accordingly.
Morpheus
