Dave's ESL Cafe

[color=red][Moderator’s note: The Following thread was split off from This Post][/color]

No wonder Dave’s ESL cafe banned you!

I thought that it was you who banned me, and now I know that it was. I recall that we had some discussions over at Dave’s just prior to my departure that went the way of this thread…nowhere!! It seems pretty clear from this little outburst that if someone asks you a question that you can’t answer then your solution is to get rid of them (on Dave’s) or try to insult them (Forumosa).

Either way, it seems that you can now officially be relegated to Aristotle status. That is a two-bit internet trroublemaker, that has nothing to offer, cannot defend his positions, but wants Taiwan to somehow resemble the Wild West. You have failed to supply a single reasonable answer to any of the questions that I have posed here. Your efforts in trying to make something out of nothing have resulted in a long term foreign resident getting deported from Taiwan. You have managed to maintain false hope in a grieving old lady for about a year now. You have made a mockery of the situation with your poorly worded and misplaced letters to authorities that may otherwise have been able to help. For all of this you should be very proud, and after our short discussion here it has become clear to me how valuable you are to the expat community here.

Contrary to popular belief there is only one person who can ban people on Dave’s ESL Cafe. That is Dave Sperling himself.
Dave Sperling is probably one of the single most respected people in TESOL. He was also a native English teacher for many years.
I believe you were banned for trolling. Having read pages upon pages of well written, mindful and superfluous information about the way you would like Taiwan to be, I suggested that he ask you to voluntarily stop posting.
Obviously you didn’t take his advice and he gave you the boot. His name is in the title thus everything that you post on his site reflects directly on him.
I am sure that being a foreign teacher in Taiwan grants you some leeway to embellish.
Why don’t you talk to him about it?

Contrary to popular belief there is only one person who can ban people on Dave’s ESL Cafe. That is Dave Sperling himself.
Dave Sperling is probably one of the single most respected people in TESOL. He was also a native English teacher for many years.
I believe you were banned for trolling. Having read pages upon pages of well written, mindful and superfluous information about the way you would like Taiwan to be, I suggested that he ask you to voluntarily stop posting.
Obviously you didn’t take his advice and he gave you the boot. His name is in the title thus everything that you post on his site reflects directly on him.
I am sure that being a foreign teacher in Taiwan grants you some leeway to embellish.
Why don’t you talk to him about it?[/quote]

oh come on he’s hardly laying his reputation on the line by calling it dave’s cafe now is he? thats like saying everyone named mcdonald is besmirched by their shite food…and what the fuck does “he was also a native English teacher for many years” mean? he taught the natives English??..as fine an example of superfluous posting as i’ve ever seen…ban him i say

Um, are you confusing me for Aristotle?!!!

That is absolute crap and you know it. My posts over on Daves were just about all informative. If you were really serious about banning people for ‘trolling’ by posting ‘superfluous information about the way you would like Taiwan to be’ then you would have to ban just about everyone on the board. In particular, Aristotle would have been kicked off the board long ago if what you said held true. You would even have to kick yourself off to be totally fair.

It may be very true what you say about Dave himself being the only one who can actually ban people, but you as moderator make the recommendation. By your own account you recommended that I be banned, and therefore you were the one who effectively banned me. So I was right in my assumption.

I knew it was you, as on more than a few occasions you were unable to support your ridiculous claims when I questioned you on the matters. Just as you haven’t been able to on this very thread here at Forumosa. If you were a moderator over here I would no doubt have been banned for my involvement in this thread for ‘trolling’.

In order to prove what a ‘troll’ I was on that board, why don’t you post links to a couple of the threads that you pointed out to Dave as being evidence of my trolling.

You might want to check with your old mate Dave on this one as you are singing his praises without knowing exactly what happened. I received no notification or warning that I was to be or even had been banned. Unless of course you PM’ed me after you had already locked me out. I certainly didn’t receive any notification in my registered email box, which is no doubt where you should send such a notice. I assume that old Davo will be able to produce a copy of the supposed notification that he sent me, complete with headers showing the date and time that it was sent. I was locked out about six to eight weeks ago, and have heard nothing from Daves since.

That may be true, but it certainly doesn’t explain why people like Aristotle and yourself are allowed on the board. You haven’t made a single informative post on that forum. I have made many. If Dave is really as concerned as you suggest then I would recommend that he review his choice of moderators. In fact, I might just point him in the direction of this thread to get an idea of what kind of image his chosen moderator is giving out.

I’m glad you ask. After being locked out I sent three emails over about a four week period asking about why my account was inactive. I sent these to the only email contact that I could find on the site sperling@eslcafe.com. I checked out the help function on Daves and this is what it recommended I do. Each email contained a subject line such as ‘Help needed - Unable to access my account’. Each email was very polite and I did indicate on each that this was my second contact and third contact. I received no reply and not even an acknowledgement that I had even taken the time to send an enquiry. In my book this is very bad behavior and doesn’t reflect upon the professionalism of the individual involved at all. A simple ‘You have been banned because we don’t want you to post here anymore’ would have been far better than ignoring genuine questions.

Finally, I have to call into question Dave’s level of professionalism as an English teacher concerned about other English teachers when he has a moderator (you EOD) who openly advocates working illegally and constantly criticises the country that he chooses to live in.

For the record I respect Dave for setting up the site, and for getting in early with something that has become a valuable resource for English teachers. My only beefs are:

  1. You shouldn’t ban people in a manner that contradicts the protocol that you advertise on your own site.
  2. You should show the respect of replying to reasonable emails.
  3. You shouldn’t let an idiot become moderator of what is an otherwise very good board.

Once again feel free to direct us all to these posts made by ‘the troll Brian’. Or will you fail to back up your claims once again?

Brian,
My sympathies are with you in this time of great loss of face. I have lived in Taiwan long enough to understand how this loss of face can be so detrimentally to your own self image.
I would apologize but as I was not the one who gave you the boot I do not feel it is appropriate.
On the positive side you will notice that the Taiwan forum has quieted down considerably since your departure. I am sure you more than any other poster on that forum can understand the need to maintain the hegemony.
If I had to pick one reason that you were banned it would probably be your insistence that others be banned when you yourself instigated much of the trouble.
Now I don’t know if you are a government hack or just some wayward soul, to tell you the truth I don’t care. However if you really would like to get back on that particular forum I might suggest an apology to all those you so thoughtlessly offended. No guarantees but it is a good start.
You will have to also consider that you are given free range here on Formosa which is the most widely read forum for those in Taiwan. Dave’s on the other hand is more for people outside of Taiwan who are comparing Taiwan to many different places for many different reasons.
While your rationale may seem the only logical way for things to be from a Taiwanese perspective, I think you will find that much of the world would disagree with you. Obviously the folks over there don’t agree with you and I suspect many here don’t either. They just don’t care enough to explain it to you.
My suggestion to you would be to write it off as one of those lessons in life and let it go.

As I mentioned in my original post on the matter, I don’t care to be part of Daves forum as it doesn’t show the simple respect of abiding by it’s own rules. This is why I have not returned to that forum as a user since I was banned. I have noticed a big move from there over to here at Forumosa, which even includes yourself, the moderator of that board. If you feel that Daves is such an esteemed board then why is that you very, very rarely post over there, but regularly post here?

Well, by your own admission in your earlier post here it was your recommendation that got me banned from Daves. You said it so either you were:

  1. lying and trying to create an impression that you are somewhat more powerful over there than you really are; or
  2. you are trying to back down from your earlier statement as you now realize how it is clearly a case of revenge.

Quieted down would be one way to put it I suppose. Died is probably a more correct description though. Take a look at the quality of the posts over there (I just did a quick recon). It really is a case of the blind leading the blind. Good move moderator EOD!! Yet another thing that you touch turned to poo!

Wait a minute. Further up this thread you said that you had me banned for trolling. And now it is for asking that others be banned. Well which is it. It is the third option isn

I think there’s a “move” to Forumosa just because people find it useful for Taiwan info. I looked at Dave’s once or twice, but it’s not country-specific. And of course Tea**it’s censors/moderators have made it f*cking useless.

I can’t believe this guy got banned. This is what the internet is all about sharing ideas whether you like them or not. Whoever banned this guy really sucks. What’s to stop him from getting a new login anyway, nothing absolutely squat. I am very interested in what he/she has to say.

stare

What is happening to freedom of speech?

Read what’s going on on Dave’s ESL cafe:

eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewt … 83a2be1a0b

A recruiter scams people. So, TaoyuanSteve, posts a warning for teachers about the recruiter.

Dave’s moderator then removes the thread because it might offend an advertiser (supposedly)… or whatever they censored it for.

These boards are an important source of communication between a disparate group of people, ie. foreigners. Foreigners may not have another vast resource of info in order to make intelligent decisions whilst overseas. Some people may find themselves in trouble with an employer. This automatically means that their visa situation is in peril if they obtained a work permit. They can’t speak the language, have trouble even using the phone in the strange land. Where are they going to turn to if the friggin forums are censored by hyper-anxious moderators?

It is not easy to become a member of Dave’s. Try it. There is much more info to fill out than in Forumosa’s. What are they worried about? And even then, Dave has to review your application and approve it if you want to post something. Look on their Taiwan board. There are fewer and fewer unique posters and not too many new relevant threads. It seems to me that schools are not allowed to be mentioned, nor bad experiences with an employer.

Sad, but is it inevitable?

Another thing.

There was a super thread started by a woman named Santensanke. It was intelligent, she gave so much information including her identity and emails verbatim to support her claims. There was a huge response and was like the number 1 thread for many days. All kinds of people came out of the woodwork to respond to her orginal post.

Then Dave’s deleted it. She sent him an email asking why, but he ignored her.

She then posted again. And read below as to her comments about Dave’s.

Read this first from Santensanke:

eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewt … ht=#121841

(You’ll see that a moderator Kalgukshi has edited her post.)

Then this where she talks about the censorship:

eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewt … ht=#117876

I must admit I’ve watched Dave’s site decline drastically over the last little while. Fewer and fewer posts there all the time. IMHO, the user Brian was not the sort who should have ever gotten banned. Ditto, the recent thread wherein an individual was simply seeking payment from a recruiter who had ripped him off. Really not surprising that this place has siphoned off a lot of that site’s regular users. I still go there, but it’s really a site for people who haven’t discovered this one yet.

Couldn’t agree more :notworthy:

Anyway, despite my claims that I would never go back, I am back on that forum posting under the name of a small furry marsupial.

You guys are right though. Daves is going down hill. If you look down the threads a little bit you will see some posts made by a user under the name AKATDN. This guy was an absolute nutter as you can see by his lengthy, off topic posts. When he started threatening other users with physical harm I posted a request for the moderators to either warn him or ban him. This was supported by most of the regular users before the thread was removed.

All of us who posted got PM’s threatening us with banning. My crime was posting on the Taiwan forum (where the individual I was talking about did his posting) and not in the moderators forum. [color=darkred]Can anyone find the moderators forum on Daves? [/color]I can’t, so I don’t know how I am meant to know that I should post in the moderators forum when it doesn’t even exist on the webpage. Unlike here at Forumosa where it is clearly visible.

A number of the other regulars reposted threads asking for AKATDN to be banned, and each was in turn threatened with being banned themselves. Finally they got rid of him.

The most recent case was the one mentioned above where a user made a legitimate complaint about a foreign recruiter based in Douliou in southern Taiwan named Robert Phillips. It seems that Robert promised to send on the last months pay to one of the teachers that was leaving Taiwan. The pay never arrived and the teacher laid out a story of how Robert had repeatedly told him that it had been sent, but the money never arrived, and no proof was ever shown that the money had in fact been sent. Upon my involvement Robert the recruiter sent me an insulting PM in which he admitted that he had collected the money, but claimed that he had sent it on months ago. His PM was very immature, condascending, and not the sort of thing that you would expect from a professional recruiter. I suggested that he produce the receipt for the teacher to prove that he had sent the money on. A day later the whole thread disappeared from Daves.

I contacted the moderator ‘Mr Kalugaski’ or whatever by PM two days ago asking for him to clarify the rules of the board as far as what posts would be removed. I haven’t heard anything back from him and am not holding my breath.

Forumosa will clean out the competition so long as it can handle the load.

Word of mouth. We’re a small community and if Forumosa keeps things above board, straight as an arrow, people will come. Let the others die off slowly.

AFAIK the mods on Dave’s are not paid. Why would anyone volunteer to work free for a company (and yes it is a company) that is making money? I estimated once the site was bringing in US $20,000 a month with job ads and banners. It’s not surprising then that posts critical of paying advertisers are cut quickly.

[quote]IMHO, the user Brian was not the sort who should have ever gotten banned.

Couldn’t agree more :notworthy:

Anyway, despite my claims that I would never go back, I am back on that forum posting under the name of a small furry marsupial.[/quote]

Well, you’re welcome. BTW, I suspected that you were back over there incognito. I’ve watched the Dave’s Taiwan Forum over the last couple years and, I have to say, a lot of nutters have passed through in that time. “They call me Trinity,” “Jason_Seeburn,” and “AKATDN” are just a few examples of users who were repeatedly abusive to other users, hijacked threads with off-topic nonsense, posted threats and obscenities and otherwise flaunted the rules with impunity. Dave’s site was, IMHO, too slow to ban all three. Then they banned you, Brian. For what? Yes, perhaps you did break some rule, but I bet it was in response to the abuse of one of the three I listed above. If they can accept, for many months, the personal insults and other crap posted by the dingbats just mentioned before finally doing something to restore sanity to the forum, then they can cut you a little slack on a first offense (especially if it was provoked). Most of the time, your posts were informative, factually correct and respectful of other users. You were an effective foil to the nut-cases and one user going by the name of a classical Greek philosopher (while choosing Che Guevara as an avatar).

Then there was the case concerning the Mr. Phillips thread. The thread started out as a discussion about recruiters, then Mr. Phillips came along and tried to portray himself as example of an honest recruiter. We shouldn’t lump all recruiters together as bad and disreputable was his message. He almost had us believing him, too. Then a teacher calling himself Enrico came along and asked him, “Hey. Where’s the 40,000NT you owe me?” Mr Phillips had no response to this and suddenly stopped posting. Every once in a while though, Enrico would come back and add another post, something like this: “3 months and no money Mr. Phillips.” Then one day the whole thread completely disappeared. Turns out "Mr. Phillips advertises on Dave’s. Truly a disgusting display of money before free speech.

The presence of a more country specific site (this one) has played a big role in the Dave’s Taiwan forum’s demise, no doubt about it. However, the questionable moderating over there has created an environment in which nut-cases like AKATDN barf on their keyboards and post it, but people with real contributions to make are banned or see their posts deleted. What a shame.

I found Boomer’s (AKA EOD) comments regarding my banning from Daves somewhat amusing. Within his posts he definitely claims that he was instrumental in my being banned by making such a recommendation to Dave. The funny thing is that he danced around with various reasons as to why I was banned, all the time missing the real reason. This makes me wonder what if any authority he actually has as moderator over there, as he does seem to be out of the loop when it comes to the banning of people from the very forum that he suggests that he presides over.

For the record, I was banned for revealing the true identity of Jason Seeburn. Seeburn had been posting absolute crap over there at Daves in a way that suggested he was an authority on life in Taiwan when in fact he didn’t even live in Taiwan, and had only done so for a nine month period some time ago. A lot of the posts that he was making were factually incorrect and even though these inaccuracies were pointed out to him time and time again by every regular user of the board, he kept pumping the refuse out.

TS may recall a thread in which Seeburn claimed to be proficient in Chinese, yet refused to accept that the store clerks in 7-11 and the like actually called out a welcome in Chinese as you enter the store. He was adamant that the suggestion that clerks in stores islandwide would all call out exactly the same phrase in this manner was ridiculous, and that in all his time here no one had ever called out anything whenever he entered any store here in Taiwan. :loco:

Anyway, my revealing of his true identity was out of line, and I accepted it. I was never warned nor notified of my banning, and only became aware of the problem after being unable to log in. I sent off a number of emails to sperling@eslcafe.com asking what the problem was, but never received any kind of reply. It wasn’t until Boomer made mention of my banning over here at Daves that I have discussed the matter openly. As I have said before, despite Daves having clear protocol about board usage, warnings, bannings, they didn’t follow this protocol in my case as no one from that board has ever actually contacted me in any way.

In my defence, all of the information that I posted about Seeburn was already available on Daves Taiwan forum. I just brought it all together in one place. By putting two and two together I discovered that Seeburn originally posted under a different user name. Within the posting signature of that other username was a link that he placed to another website. The other website was his own site that contained pictures of him plus his real name and other personal information. I posted the link to that website on Daves forum. It was removed and I have been unable to log on from then on. I notice that Seeburn has been back a few times, but pretty much gave it away after my outing of him so I guess one good thing came out of it.

Hasn’t Aristotle lost his previous steam? He is looking pretty worn out and pathetic over there at Daves now. He posts only from time to time, and even when he does post it is all just rehashed. I think that he must just cut and paste. There is no actual information in his posts, just a link to his own website. I guess that a lot of what he used to fight for has been diluted in recent years, and his ‘the sky is falling’ claims have now become somewhat redundant.

Finally, Robert Phillips seems like a waste of space. A recruiter without a backbone who cannot even begin to defend his actions. I think that he was well and truely exposed for what he really is over there at Daves. He claimed to have an impeccable record and stated that ‘you won’t find anything negative written about me on any forum’. Well sorry Robert, but that is no longer true. Why don’t you just pay Enrico the money you owe him and try to at least salvage some dignity?

Daves can be a good laugh at times and I hope that my posts over there along with posters such as Taoyuansteve and Fortigurn add some balance to the forum. But here is where the real stuff is!!

By bringing this to the front again Enrico has reminded me of something that is relevant to the earlier discussions.

I re-registered over at Daves under a different name, and EOD (AKA Boomer, AKA Eric Lier) continued his usual ridiculous form of moderation.

Finally he resorted to calling me ‘like a bad case of herpes’. I complained to the other moderators about how unprofessional the behaviour of the moderator EOD was and how his behavior was tarnishing the image of that board. I included a link to this very discussion over here at Forumosa.

I am pleased to say that Dave removed EOD’s moderating priviledges and he is no longer a moderator over at Daves. This restored my faith in that board, as EOD’s involvement certainly tarnished the image over there for a while.