"Culture of hate" ..... nahhh. We're all adults and responsible for our conduct there or here. I didn't need Sonny to encourage my negative or positive behavior and attitude any more than any anyone else did or does. And just because Sonny was the owner and moderator of his board, didn't mean he has to keep his (often controversial and polarizing) opinions to himself. His former passion for the band worked for but eventually against him objectively running his site. IMO, he deserves a lot of credit for mostly letting his board police itself. You just have to look at JA.org to see what a chilling effect heavy handed moderation can do to a message board.Tyler Durden wrote:It was Sonny who created, funded, enabled, and sometimes even encouraged the culture of "hate" that existed at xiola.org in the first place.Essence_Smith wrote: Agreed...I was actually thinking the other day how easy people found it to talk shit about Sonny after he "pulled the plug"...in retrospect I think what he did actually made things work for the better as I have yet to see anything even close to the shit slinging that people did at xiola here on this board
The only negative thing I can say about the guy was he seemed to be a victim of his own impulsive feelings and would get too drama queen-ish when he'd have his predictable annual meltdown resulting in shutting the site down for a few days. The last year or so, it was clear it was only a matter of time before someone else would have to put together a decent JA board.
I think the fact that it was more or less a group effort that resulted in ANR speaks volumes to the fact most of us feel more vested in the group we've managed to keep together and have a lot more tolerance and respect for each other now.