Well Dar, since you brought it up.......;)

As my role is:

1) New
2) Primarily in a lurking fashion
3) Posts about crap

I don't think anything I offer is in jeopardy, so it is easy for me to shrug, and say "if people can't govern themselves, they need to be governed."

I'm not taking sides. I don't really have a right to any input. As a teen I was told many times, "you will abide by my rules when you live under my roof."

If this keeps up, I'm going to end up in the Top 10 Poster list through attrition alone.

I'm only going on a decade of posting to the assorted Cellar incarnations, and quite frankly, I don't view the new policy as a major change. Tony's house, Tony's rules. We don't pay for the bandwidth and upkeep on this sucker, so we don't get to dictate what content stays and what content goes. If that's news to anyone, I'm surprised.

Has Tony traditionally been quite liberal in terms of what content's been allowed to remain? Yes, from the beginning. That's for sanity's sake as much as anything else. Policing the Cellar would be like moderating a modern USENET newsgroup -- you're thrust into the role of reading damn near everything, weighing the fairness and offensiveness of uncountable idjits' bleatings, trying to keep everyone reasonably happy, and spending far too much time trying to shield the place from spam, trolls and uncaring shitheads. And if one or more oldbies consider you to have erred in your judgement while cleaning up the place, you get an oversized ration of shit in your ear for a while.

I didn't read the Manifestos, I didn't read the Dave vs. Sycamore threads that spurred Dave's exit until the damage had already been done, I didn't read half of the things that have apparently triggered all of this. Hell, I tend to disappear for days or weeks at a time. I keep a healthy distance, instead of getting too intimately entwined in the personal lives of other posters. And maybe that's smart of me, because I've been watching Tony and several message-board frequent flyers snarling at each other over what I perceive to be personal issues, while I'm standing in the corner with no hard feelings towards anybody.

(Except Scott Boras and John Ashcroft. Fuck them. But I digress.)

For all I know, this board could be a huge Phil Hendrie running gag, with a handful of people assuming dozens of roles each and provoking unwitting onlookers into posting ironically humorous stuff. And that really wouldn't bother me, because I enjoy reading what shows up around here, and that's all I'm worried about.

My posting style isn't changing. My lurking style isn't changing. If I throw something out that gets on Tony's bad side, I'm sure he'll let me know via the Iron Hammer of Threadwhacking, but since I'm essentially separated from all of the offline drama that's apparently going on, I don't see that happening. If Tony wants to weed much of that out, I'm not having him fitted for a Brownshirt. And if I do unwittingly cross the line and take offense, fuck it, I know a handful of other message boards that are worthwhile, even if they don't have the unique history and Philly flair of this one.

I'm done babbling. Next!

[thread]Phil Hendrie? Can you explain him?? I've tried his show a couple times since they pu him on XM in place of Drew Garabo and now Bubba, and ... ick.. I can't listen for more than 5 mnutes. Am I missing something??[/hijack]

EVERY single guest on Phil Hendrie's show -- whether they're old or young, male or female, sane or cracked -- is Phil Hendrie. The callers are real (and the butt of the joke), everything else is a put-on.

OK, I'll give it another try. But... don't the callers know this? Or is it privileged information that I'll have to die now that I've been informed of?

Some callers know this, but most don't seem to... or at least they prefer to let callers on the air who aren't in on the joke. It's like Meta-Springer.