Cool, so you can do whatever you want with your power, and violate someone's privacy, as long as they called you names first. Got it. And you're wondering why I have a hard time believing that my posts were removed because you have the utmost respect for privacy concerns .

We have nothing more to communicate here.

Send a message to Mat Sklansky, who is a site admin and owner of the site.

Complaints about any mod should be posted in ATF, or messaged to Mat Sklansky.

Thank you, please don't delete any of your messages. I'm alright with my private information being out there as long as it takes someone to investigate this.

Except change "called you names" to "made baseless accusations about your integrity" and delete the last sentence and we're good. I have no idea why you'd think you are special because I deleted your posts. Take a poll of community members in CCP on that issue and get back to me.

Why would I delete them?

Mat can see deleted messages anyway, so it doesn't matter.

I wasn't the person that posted about it originally.

OK that's good.

Would you say that Rapini is currently acting responsibility and in line with his duty as a moderator?

As a member of the MGM thread and a player at MGMNH I wish this could be discussed more openly if "privacy concerns" are respected. I've been in the middle of a bad situation there and while I thought security handled it well, it was also pretty terrifying in the moment. I think these are all *very* relevant topics to players there and something that we should be able to talk about. And yes - especially in this day and age.

But I'm also a mod on a message board with 250,000 members. Its mostly a giant pain in the ass - as much as I love the owners and the topic/site itself. Looking at it from a 50,000 ft view I think they have handled it just fine even though I know Rap has a way of getting under people's skin. Consider taking a step back, maybe taking a day off and cutting them a little slack.

Just my 2 cents.

I would say you're acting like an entitled child, and that the three of us have different ways of handling that situation. None of your complaints here make me want to help, or even respond to you, any further. You're just adding a lot of useless work for us now.

I am entitled to privacy. So yes, I'm acting entitled. Do you feel otherwise?

I've already suggested how I would approach having this conversation in the MGM thread - just don't violate any of the forum rules when you do it, and you should be fine.

We do have a rule against cross-posting the same stuff in multiple forums, but in this case it would be fine IMO. Link to the other thread here if you want, just be aware that commentary about the video which breaks this forum's rules will be deleted.

I'll sum up my thoughts in a less reactive manner.

I did not originally post that video, but I was participating in the discussion. I had relevant information and wanted to share. There was one post where I said that the floorperson said XXX, which was the only thing that was not private.

I have a very poor opinion of censorship. I'm a journalist in both poker and in other areas. I know from my time in Maryland that Rapini lives and plays in ther area, and I know that Johnny was all over this situation - and that he checks the thread every day. Since I didn't get that a public YouTube video can possibly constitute a privacy violation on this forum, my accusation of impropriety made sense to me.

I still feel that there was impropriety, especially considering his responses. I am willing to admit that I don't know enough about this forum to know if this censorship was outside of the norm, this may happen every time a Youtube link is posted. I probably won't change my opinion on this.

I haven't been insulting in any other way than expressing that opinion.

I do not feel that releasing my information in response to not liking the way I'm talking about this is a fair way to handle anything. The "well think about that before you accuse me of something next time" is extremely out of line, I don't think I'm out of line to be upset about that or him revealing protected information.

I'm happy to have a discussion about how I'm handling this, I even asked what I could post to keep the discussion going in that thread. I promise I won't be making any accusations of impropriety beyond the (possibly incorrect) opinion I already have. I will not reiterate that or use any new information to further that claim.

As far as I'm concerned, this is about what was said in this thread only - and I will discuss it with only Non-Rapini moderators so that neither my bias nor his is involved.

Good post Click, thanks.

I too appreciate your last post, thanks.

1- IANAL

2- No, I don't think you have any right to privacy in your posts on a public message board, or your registration info used on one.

3- You might have some expectation of privacy nonetheless, just as a matter of practicality, since we don't as a rule disclose that info. But I don't think this is worth much. The issue you have about user notes is not very correct IMO.

4- There may well be some commercial limitations to what 2+2 can do with your info, especially your email address. Read: spam you. But I don't think talking about your metadata violated this in any way.

5- Expecting more discretion from other people than you are willing to give them yourself is hypocritical, and probably not a smart plan.

6- lessons I think you might learn from his: Don't throw stones in glass houses. Don't pick information fights with people who have more of it than you. Or have thicker skin if you do.

7- Continuing to insinuate that we're lying about acting at room managers' requests is kinda insulting. I have literally never gotten a message from a room manager asking me to delete or edit a post. I guess I can't say with any certainty that Rapini didn't, but I'm telling you there is a high likelihood he was just moderating posts that violate our forum rules, which we all do all do all the time.

I have no interest in preventing you from discussing the incident . As a poker player, I appreciate it. Just follow the forum rules about it.

I am also no friend of censorship, but nor would I appreciate having my name or image posted here without my permission. These are the rules we think make sense for this community of live players who meet each other in a public place.

I'm not great at forum formatting, so I'll have to just respond to these below.

2 - I agree that I don't have any right to privacy in my posts. If I had posted this information before, I don't think I'd have this issue. I have not posted this information before - I'm not really sure why it was in my Notes either. I never used a work email address to interact here that I know of.

3 & 4 - I would assume that very few people had access to my e-mail address, and again I don't know how that one was ever put in there. I would not think that moderators were in that group of people. I don't think it is illegal in any way for Rapini to use the information he has against me or any such thing. I do think it's wrong, and I don't think it's the intended use of that metadata.

5. Expecting more discretion out of an authority figure than I would use in a position of being powerless is not an unreasonable expectation. I mention that Rapini plays in MD because he made that information publicly available on a post, not because I have access to a special trove of information that I was trusted with.

6 - I didn't pick an information fight, or at least I didn't think I did. AND I don't care even a little bit if people know who I am or where I used to work. When I messaged Mat I told him my first and last name right off the bat, where I work and what I do, and I've told the users that have PM'd me who I am too. I'm a reasonably public figure. What I do care about is that this is seen as an information fight, and that he believes that the private tools of the site are at his disposal if it were. My public information was not used, some private information was.

7 - If Rapini DID act inappropriately, he would be required to continue to lie about it. It's also entirely possible that he didn't. I don't know. I didn't mention any names (except that one reference I made) and every post referring to the video was deleted. I just wanted to have a conversation about it. I won't say "I'm changing my mind" because I haven't, but like I said in previous posts I don't think that's relevant to what I'm talking about here. I certainly believe that there could be a conflict, and I agree it's also possible that there wasn't, but appeared to be. There's no way I will ever know. I believe that you have never been messaged by a poker manager or asked to take something down directly, because you have not violated that trust.

We've done a lot of dancing around the topic - and the debate about how I handle myself is one I've had with my father since the day I was born. I just think it boils down to this:

After all of this discussion - do you think it was OK, and in line with twoplustwo's interests, to post that private information about me publicly as a reactionary measure to the way I was handling a situation?

Dude,


Calm down.

I can’t fathom why you’d think you have a right to privacy for all public information that you have not personally shared on this website. The mods can’t be expected to understand. Maybe take some time off to explore how you picked up such an idea?

For the benefit of everyone here in this forum I am posting this, to give some additional transparency about user notes, but fair warning that this is probably the last post I will make on the subject.

(Note: Your formatting is fine. Breaking quotes up to respond to each point one by one is great for legal or academic writing, but awful for forums IMO. Do exactly what you did.)

I don't know exactly why your user note was created either, since I didn't do it (and in fact, none of us three CCP mods did it), but I can guess. Here is the sum total of what it said: "has an @marylandlivecasino.com email addy".

I don't have the ability to see email addresses. Some mods might, I don't know. Admins definitely do. But as we've already explained to you, keeping track of which 2+2 users work for casinos or other poker related ventures is something that happens here on the 2+2 forums for various reasons, and is particularly important here in CCP because casino employees and reps are restricted in how they post here.

You say you never used a work email address to interact here. I would say it is obvious that you used one as your account email for at least some time, and that this was noted in your user note. Perhaps you never posted it, but that is not material to how or likely why your user note was created.

Deleting your post(s) wasn't personal. The original video post VIOLATED THE FORUM RULES. The responses to it either VIOLATED THE FORUM RULES, or made no sense once we had deleted the original video post. Your post, which included at least one name, VIOLATED THE FORUM RULES. We are clear about how we may moderate posts which VIOLATE THE FORUM RULES -we may edit them at times if we have the time and inclination, but we will instead often just delete them. This is particularly true when there are a long chain of posts which both separately and in toto just cause a moderation mess.
If you do not like the rules, please feel free to discuss them here and attempt to get them changed. Until they are changed, though, don't be surprised when we do exactly what we say we'll do when moderating posts which violate them.

Finally, as I mentioned before, the three mods here are all individuals and have our own ways of dealing with problem posters. You asked for my opinion, so I will now give it to you. I would probably not have done what Rapini did, I would have just ignored your dumb-ass comment. But I think what he did here was legitimate. You (quite wrongly) accused him/us of having some sort of bias for one room. He responded with (correct) data showing that, if anyone had bias in the situation, it was more likely to be you. The fact that you didn't know he had that info is beside the point. You getting mad about it now is childish, sour grapes.

The rest of this is about forum policy which I'm not here to change so I won't engage on that. I would like to add a reversed story for context about why I feel like it was so out of line to reveal that information.

I was a manager at Maryland Live. Let's talk about a hypothetical scenario there, this didn't happen but easily could have:

I was in surveillance investigating accusations of collusion in a big game. After reviewing some hours of footage I've found that the play is strange in some spots, and I want to do more investigation. The two players in question are texting back and forth a lot - so I ask the surveillance operator to zoom in and read their phones. (This can be done by the way, but only live - please be careful of your privacy people). During that reading of the phones I do determine that these two should be banned for collusion without a shadow of a doubt and I write down my findings.

This took a few hours though, and I was also privy to other information that they were texting, including the identity of Rapini - one of these players knew him and said it in the texts. This of course was outside the scope of the investigation, but I learned it anyway.

Fast forward a few years, and I have a forum spat with Rapini (fairly common as I've discovered since my original run in) and I don't like the way he's talking to me - so I decide to call him by his first name just to prove that I know something about him.

I got that information as part of my job, in an investigation that was important to my job. As a manager in poker we need to prevent collusion, just as you need to know who is a casino employee and who isn't when people are posting in these forums. It's fine that I GOT that information, but releasing it later to use as leverage is absolutely a violation of Rapini's privacy. It might not be illegal (it's more likely to be illegal than what happened - I had to stretch here to make the analogy on my end) Maryland Live would not be happy that I released that information because they wouldn't condone that, and I don't think the community at large would appreciate it.

My friends would probably back me up though, and so would all the forum posters that don't like Rapini - because **** that guy it doesn't matter that what I did was kinda wrong he had it coming he's an ass - and he needs to be careful who he's an ass to you never know what dirt they have on you.

DUCY?

I need to stress this is not actually something that's ever happened, I don't have this information, and this scenario is completely made up but plausible (I've seen demonstrations of the cameras reading serial numbers on bills live).

Do you really not see how associating 'Rapini' with his real name is a different thing then associating 'Clickitbak' as an employee of Maryland Live.

OK replace that real name with where he works. That would be fine?

Depends does he work in a place with thousands of empioyees or a place with one?

Why is that relevant to revealing information that I shouldn't have? He can work wherever you want him to. For reference there were about 16 people in the poker room that had @marylandlive.com email addresses.