what the **** are you trying to take potshots at me for when i agree with this being a stupid decision

Hesitant to get involved in something I don't know enough about, but I will for a minute.

You guys can be brutal with Mason sometimes. Like Mat said, this isn't other people or situations. While some of the comparisons I've seen do succeed in making your post more inflammatory, they make the rest of it less meaningful. Well it means less to me anyway. Are you more interested in throwing whatever you can imagine in Mason's direction or having Gary around?

While not always easy to do, the first thing that comes to mind when I try to look at this as just a regular reader is that it's cool the owners allow this kind of discussion about these decisions on their site. And not only do they allow and listen to concerns, you guys get direct responses to hear their side of things. It should never be said that 2+2 doesn't care what you guys think or respect its members enough to let you know what's up with this stuff.

I don't know everything that's been discussed between Mason and Gary, but I do know it wouldn't be fair to allow someone to disregard previous warnings because of popularity. Pretty sure Mason wouldn't be looking to ban him, and it sounds like chances were given... and now he's getting another. In most other situations people would argue something like, "Well, I really disagree with the policy, but if he was warned over and over the ban is his own fault. 2+2 can set the guidelines for their own site, etc, etc."

From what I understand this is not dissimilar. I think, rather than getting extreme, the least people could do here is see what happens when those involved try working it out privately.

Surprising there could be any confusion when you make a post without adressing it to anyone.

I thought of those points, too Ryan and I'd like to chime in with appreciation for Mason's patience and general laid-back approach in administering this site. Obviously, the behind-the-scenes conversations are private and it's not possible for any of us to judge Mason's actions in an honest, knowledgeable way. It seems that he strives to be fair, and his taking the time to respond to user's concerns makes him pretty cool in my book.

I think it's obvious that many of us consider Gary an irreplaceable asset on this forum and hope that this situation will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction and that the reasons for it's occurrence aren't repeated.

Gary Wise is a good man and should not be banned.

That's all I have to say.

Ryan

Ryan,
I have heard rumors that having Druff involved in the espn thinktank was listed in the reasons for bad.
Confirm/Deny???

Confirmed.

I don't care about this situation at all but being a good man doesn't mean one shouldn't be banned.

So really it's just a matter of Gary needing to fork over money in order to get an open dialogue about his writing? That seems so democratic.

Seriously, alienating great poker personalities that can contribute something positive (Paul Phillips, Gary Wise) means that eventually the great poker minds won't want to come here, and we can have lots more of Brandi and Erik Ryland.

Would that be better for 2+2?

Ryan, banning someone like Gary was bound to have some reverb hereabouts. If Gary was criticizing 2+2 or any of their books without giving fair time for rebuttal, Mason should come out and say so. Just banning with no explanation is going to look suspicious and possibly heavy handed. I don't think Mason has given the whole story. I think that's what people here are looking for.

Gary self-promotes. So do plenty others. I know it's a commercial site that sells advertising. So does ESPN. Yet the WSOP has promotional stuff everywhere. None of it hurts ESPN. I think it's silly that a casual mention of a podcast earns a banning. Out and out spam is another thing and few here would put up with that like it is in other forums. But then we aren't about making comparisons, are we Mat? We know what is good/bad right/wrong smart/dumb intuitively. We don't need to draw on experience, do we?

So let's stick to the topic at hand. Mason banned Gary. Mason said Gary is a self-promoter. Mason's the boss. End of discussion. Yes sir.

What makes you believe that 2+2, a privately owned website, should be some kind of micro-version of a democratic state with free speech for all?

This, however, might be a good point. From a business perspective, and I hasten to add that I know next to nothing about what's been going on behind the scenes here, some of the recent bannings seem to be have been handled poorly. From a PR perspective that is.

Part of the business end of stuff like this is how regular long term readers/users of the site respond to decisions you make.

If the business decision is simply "we don't care who is around and who isn't" then simply say "We gotz roolz yo and we be enforcing em when we want".

Mason would probably be better off saying that it was done in same spirit the Druff banning was done -which is to say for reasons relating to Mason's views on integrity, associations he wants on his site, whatever, because while people would probably have a problem with it (something about a sniff test)- they might at least think this issue was being handled openly and straightforward.

But I understand how it would be ridiculous to try to sell the 2+2 community on that sort of thinking about Gary, and why it's easier to just say "he can come back if he wants"- even if that really means he has to grovel.

Uh, how is this guy not banned yet? If not for his association with all these people, then for his inability to space paragraphs properly.

wtf, this is pretty simple. To advertise your **** on 2+2, you pay money. You can't go around posting links to your latest blog article. You can't go around posting links to your rakeback site. If someone else not involved with the project is like "hey, check out this espn article which is pretty interesting" then people can discuss it. If nobody does, well, it's probably not worth discussing.

This is not true. I have supported 2+2's traffic by supplying very interesting mechanical analysis of hitters and pitchers in the Sporting Events forum, and they let me mention my blog as a result. This precedent has been set before - users who contribute to the forums are entitled to a bit of self-promotion.

www.korn.com

I think there is a (maybe subtle) difference between mentioning your blog and driving 2+2 traffic to a commercial enterprise like a rakeback site or (in some cases) a podcast.

I was banned for talking about my old show and I understand why. I thought that because I was a poster here since the start and was providing some free content that it would be ok. It didn't occur to me that advertisers had paid for access to the traffic and that I was essentially taking it from them.

Kyle, if your blog was sponsored by a handicapping site and someone posted in your comments driving traffic to another pick site would you allow it? If you would, it probably wouldn't make your sponsor very happy and it would cost you real money to do so.

Anyway, as someone said my guess is that there is more to this than has been made public.

Can we please ban Fossilman for his blatant spam in that coaching site thread?

Your line of logic makes no sense. Believe it or not, 2+2 users are able to open up not one, but TWO (or maybe even more, who knows!) browsers and look at content on the Internet simultaneously. Website traffic is not a zero-sum game.

Your analogy is also terrible. Gary Wise is a respected poster and isn't "someone posting to my blog who supports a handicapping site."

Well if he was made fun of, that is punishment enough!

This is dumb.

Is 2+2 worried about losing traffic to ESPN's poker content? Sure I read Gary's articles but where do I always come back to? Yeah that would be 2+2. If 2+2 is afraid of losing traffic maybe they should work on their product instead of kicking people our of their club.

Personally I think the product is already good enough and 2+2 shouldn't be worried about someone leaving the site for 15 minutes to go read an article.

Do you guys really want everyone to be able to spam all over the place?
You want to have signatures included for everyone screaming: Read my blog!! and Sign up Here!!

I sure don't want any of that garbage. It really gets in the way and makes everything look ugly.
I don't know how over-the-top Gary's posts might have been. But I do know that I definitely don't want people to feel like they can push whatever blog or other spammish stuff on us because that would get annoying really damn fast.

okay, how the hell did the poster above get his name in music?

QFT

Gary is one of the best contributors to the Sporting Events forums and should be allowed to post. Many members do things a lot worse than he does and those people don't even get reprimanded.