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ORIGINAL: CloudWalker
Philchetcuti3 was kicked off of the
Project 5 forum, forever.

Wow! Didn't expect that! - Here I was thinking it was all fun and games and we sort of "flirted" with continuing the talks that Phil generated... but now... yeesh! - I can honestly say I'm a little scared to "go out on a limb" topic-wise anymore... - Would have thought there would have been a slap of the hand first - not immediate banishment...

Hmmm... - definitely puts a damper on my day.

Here's to ya, Phil <raises glass>

I was wondering the same thing...

Wait, what did he do? ... I was wondering the same thing...

Time that we cleared the air on this, don't you think? Phil posted some off-topic discussions, as we all do. He'd been pushing the envelope until it was bursting at it's seams for a while at that point (as do I; all the time). But the subjects tread the dangerous ground touching on religion & politics.

Phil honestly just wanted some opinions from the people he calls friends, and perhaps went just a little too far in disregarding the incendiary nature. Cake decided that enough was enough. To Cakewalk's credit, they let a lot go here at the forum. You could substitute most anyone or anything in the place of those events, and Cake would've been well within its rights (even duty) to shut it down.

Phil got a 'cease & desist' warning first, along with documented complaints about his posts. Of course, Phil did what Phil does. He pushed again. Cake pushed back. In short order, Cakewalk pulled the plug on the tug-of-war. Phil's a very smart guy; he knew what he was doing. The same can be said for Cakewalk: smart people who made a decision and stuck to their guns.

So who's right? Neither of them, and both. Depends on which side of the fence you're looking from. So, now that it's out in the open, why do I still feel like total sh!t about the whole mess? Because the forum has changed. You can feel it in the air. Anyone who thinks that this is 'business as usual', please send me a DV of your view from there, because I sure don't see it that way.

And we lost a great source of input, inspiration, and music in the fight over principle: Phil's, and Cakewalk's. You can't fight a battle without having some casualties. As for myself, I've reduced my presence here because I need a breath of fresh air after this. I can't see that this incident would change anything that I post directly, but I still have this nagging feeling of loss here. This forum needs new-blood and old-school interacting together. That's what made it great. At the moment, I see a bunch of folks feeling like they got swatted by a rolled-up newspaper one too many times. They're flinching; wondering if & when they'll be hit next.

I'm going to contribute to this Funkfest. I missed the VD Challenge .
And I will modify the intended song for that to fit this challenge when I get back home. Live, of course.

Cmon, man. We have to. It's for Phil. Even if he is Canadian. The old fart. You can't take him anywhere.

Hey Phil...drop me an email.

Soapyboltz att hotmail dot com

you old fart.

Considering the thread CW I'll let you off the 'toon this time

but I still have this nagging feeling of loss here.

I'm with you on that one B. It's just not the same here. For me the whole community spirit got kicked and knocked off balance.

Probably wishful thinking, but it would be a nice gesture to this forum that so obviously misses Phil, if Cake could see their way to letting him back. Considering the quantity of his posts I bet he's missing the exchanges. C'mon Cake, this used to be the friendliest forum on the net! Now a lot of people are on edge...

He's posting his tunes on the Auditorium now. Come on cakewalk give him another chance. Please.

ORIGINAL: SuperGreenX

It sounds like he did something stupid several times after being told not to so he was banned. Seems pretty clear cut to me. Its his fault, he's not dead, he's not in jail or something....we don't need to make a drama about it. A lot of people take the internet too seriously (here and other places I post). Though that makes me wonder who cared enough to actually take the time to complain to Cakewalk about a faceless name on an internet forum .

Oooooo...you're going to get alot of crap for that comment Danny. ALOT of people appreciate Phil, even though you may not have.

we should be dissapointed in phil because as Brock said "he knew what he was doing"

Actually, whether I agree or not with Phil's (or even Cakewalk's) action, I'm kinda proud of anyone who stands firm for what they believe in, no matter what the consequences. I don't think that any one opinion here in this thread is any more valid than the rest. If we all weren't seeking out a diversity of views from across the globe, chances are we wouldn't be here right now.

Of course, people 'participate' in forums for a variety of reasons. Blatant self-promotion, feedback from like-minded individuals, living vicariously through an invented persona, cherry-picking knowledge without feeling the need to contribute back, genuinely just trying to learn something from a safe distance, curiosity-seekers: all very real reasons to frequent an online discussion. People are going to be people, on or offline. But some people can see the potential for a Gestalt whole to emerge, greater than the sum of its parts. The community gives answers, the community polices itself, and the community becomes something not originally envisioned. This is a give-and-take scenario that you'd be hard-pressed to duplicate in 'real-world' conditions. Or in any of a thousand other online 'communities'.

But it's a delicate balancing act. It isn't a perpetual motion machine that just keeps going on its own. That's something that we all have to work at constantly, if you find yourself a believer of the last category mentioned above. And when one of the main cogs in the machine is missing, you feel the jolt. I've said this before: nothing lasts forever, but some changes have the ability to ripple-effect in unexpected directions.

I've seen this mentioned here & elsewhere: why doesn't he sneak back in, and why not let Phil back. #1: I wonder who wouldn't recognize that it was Phil within two or three posts? #2: There'd be compromise involved for all. Someone will have to look like the guy who 'blinked'. And which 'side' do you think would do that? As much as I'd love to see Phil back, we've all made that close to impossible by drawing all this attention to it. If it was going to happen, it would've had to have been done quietly. Come to think of it: that's just not Phil's style.

Are we all making too much of a big deal out of this? I don't think so. This whole thing already has implications that extend way beyond the original actions. Sort of like your average thread direction here. Appropriate. Even on-topic.

Ever feel like a Danish cartoonist?

The problem with rebels is ... they wind up eliminated ...

← Or they get their olympic medals stripped from them. Topical, eh?

Oh, what I could start right now ... but that's not gonna happen ...

This is off topic, sorry, but I listened to some of your tracks. Real nice stuff, SGX!

ORIGINAL: ba_midi

This is off topic, sorry, but I listened to some of your tracks. Real nice stuff, SGX!

Thanks dude! New track should be posted soon.



Oh, the curse filter is back on? Laaame. At least we can say "assume" still.

I personally think banning him was a bit too harsh, then again I do not know if he had any previous history.

Certainly the place is worse off for his abscence.

Never thought of playing on anything funky before. Phil provided that opportunity. This was the result from a few weeks ago. Some of you may already have heard it.

Funked over Again

Well said MDK, and others.

I think we lost a couple of illusions here, and that's what stings, at least for me:

(1) That there is 'free speech' on a board with a fairly specific TOS (albeit one that is fairly loosely enforced, for the most part, and for that I'm grateful) and

(2) That we do police ourselves. Really, we don't: Cake does. I think we all agree that the P5 forum community is one where mutual respect is the norm, and that's what makes (has made/will continue to make, hopefully) it a fun place to visit. For the most part we do police ourselves, mostly by maintaining a high standard of openness and courtesy, but also, of course, by the atmosphere of friendly ribbing that likely prevents anyone from getting too full of themselves. However, the events of last week have shown that this isn't all that happens. Sometimes Cake will step in and take what appears to many of us to be drastic actions.

Given the circumstances that Tom has outlined, I don't feel like I'm sitting here typing with the Sword of Damocles waiting to plunge downward. I'm not sure that the tolerance bar was moved, from what I've read; Phil got into a fight with the moderators, largely by his choice, that he couldn't win. It sucks. But unless we make similar choices, I don't think that any of us will suffer the same consequences.

10 days ago, although we all knew that someone could be booted off at the discretion of Cakewalk, rather than that of the forum community, we lived under the illusion that it wouldn't happen. Today, we know that it will happen, under some circumstances. It's a bitter realization, for me at least, and when you combine that with the rather large hole that Phil has left behind, it does leave the place feeling kind of empty at the moment.

Sheesh. Can anyone say 'woe is me'?

sheesh
let's all get over it
it's not a grand and glorious free speech issue. we play here at Cakewalk's discretion. it's their board.
if you want free speech, there are plenty of other choices.
we're here to serve Cakewalk's product(s) and each other.
Cakewalk has a responsibility to keep the 'community' within certain bounds. And each of us shares in that responsibility to the community. Phil pushed the bounds of that responsibility maybe for no other purpose than to see where it would break. I can't say I understand Phil's motives in doing that, but he changed the tone of this forum even before Cakewalk chose to intervene.

Sure it seems like we've definitely lost something now, but it seemed to me we were losing something when Phil was pushing things at the time. He went out of his way on any number of occasions to push people's buttons. This 'free speech' motif was just another means to push buttons, including getting someone to push back. Why I have no idea, but if Cakewalk hadn't intervened I didn't get a sense that Phil was going to relent; that he would have stopped pushing boundaries.

And one good reason to stay away from certain topics and keep focused on things in common is so we can maintain the illusion that we're one big happy and not so far apart on how we think and feel about certain things, but obviously this itself would seem to be a divisive issue. And that is an illusion.
We're monitored. There are limits. We can be booted. Big deal. It's not news. Let's move on.