Hello Georgios,

I reread your opening post and all the other posts in this thread. I was surprised with some of the posts and others stuck to their overall theme.

Geo, Adland isn't a feudal fiefdom nor a communistic society as far as I know. There are no Lords, Barons, Lords of the Manor, peasants , bourgeois, nobles, aristocratic bishops, proletariat etc. As far as I know every body in this community is equal. Regardless of your statement that "something which was both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of privileges and relations" .  The POTW team had neither special privileges nor benefits. We were the equals of all the other members in the community.  The only difference was  that we gave many hours of our free time to serve the community.
We treated all members with respect and fairly. There was never any bias towards anyone and in the one instance as I wrote in my previous post when there was a problem it was resolved with respect and the utmost politeness. Please check the forum and see for yourself. In addition all the PM correspondence was the same and we saw the issue as closed. Unfortunately the person at fault here didn't. But that's another issue and will be dealt with elsewhere.

I'll repeat myself in regard to posting in other forums. As the POTW admin we had the right to participate in all the forums in the community with our personal accounts and express our opinions. You'll find that even when I disagreed with a member my posts were written politely and with the utmost respect. That is part of a discussion I think. The problem is that there are those that think if you don't agree with them you are attacking them. I think not and it's about time that people realize that a discussion is a discourse of different outlooks, opinions, beliefs etc. Even with you Geo, when we disagreed in the past my public posts were respectful but said exactly what I thought. As far as controversy is concerned the admin of the POTW is allowed even that as a member of the community.

You wrote that we received many complaints from members by PM. Hmmm, the only queries we ever received were with technical problems and never any complaints about the POTW admin.

The only posts we ever deleted from the POTY were spam or posts that a member asked us to delete for reasons of their own. This  happened a few times in POTW winners threads when the new POTW replied twice to the same member and asked us to delete one of the posts. When it was possible we did.

The issue on 1/12/09 was a different case and I shouldn't have deleted AnaMaria's mistaken post. Realizing I erred I removed myself from the POTY contest and resigned from the POTW team both publicly and via PM to Bogdan. You were there when I did it.

You mentioned Helen Elias in one of your replies in this thread and stated that you didn't reply to her and you decided to open this thread instead. You didn't reply publicly to her but you sent her a PM that was far from polite. She gave me permission to post it here but I would rather stop this public display and carry on business as usual.

There will be a new POTW team shortly and I wish them the best of luck with their new responsibilities.

Shalom,

Peter

Hi Peter,

It’s a raining Sunday afternoon here, so after a nice lunch I read your post and understand your point of view as well as your standpoint. I also understand Georgios’s and believe it or not, I have my own. J

I know full well that it is ‘in-line’ to consider that all are equal in this community, but one would need to give a detailed definition of this equality; must it be with knowledge of the English Language, age, business aptitudes or being allowed to post our thoughts? I believe that whoever tries to sort this one out will surely have a greater job on hands than regulating any of the polling activities that the Adland community enjoys far beyond other communities.

To consider anything else than the established democratic way of life to be as you say; “something which was both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of privileges and relations" is very different to what your new foreign relations Mrs Hilary Clinton said in Brussels only this very week. OK, I was amazed to hear this. Yes, She is picking up the idea that there is to be a huge effort to be undertaken in her country to make its citizens understand that other cultures, traditions have their rightful and justifiable differences. We must, sais she, understand them before even starting to argue or fight and thereby imposing our own systems unto them. That is a very different talk from your side of the Atlantic. As for you Georgios, is it not time to bring your King back to his rightful position? Hehehe!

There are two things for which I disagree with you Peter, one is as pointed out above, “everything that is not democratic belongs to some sort of feudal fiefdom,” (That is just political) and the other is your having resigned from your position of managing the weekly and yearly ballots. If whenever there is an error that this causes a step-down of the responsible, would you please explain how anyone is to gain the necessary experience in that field? I believe you are the best qualified, and it is not because of some hitch that you agree about that a resignation is called for. I could understandably have a slightly modified approach to the subject were it a function with retribution, but this not being the case. So you have my vote if we need to go voting once more. Unless there is a hidden agenda of sorts, a conspiracy, a POTgate in the making. J

Wow! The sun has come back, will go walk the dog.

Friendly yours,

Robert