@Tilly i was a member of another site prior to the Chip Kelly hire. Got tired of the BS associated with that place and searched for a new home. Found your epic Kelly thread and was hooked due to the free wheeling nature of that thread but I noticed the constant complaints for that freedom throughout the rest of the site. After looking around more, realized that was a one off so I kept searching and found this place. For the record, I had a good number of posts in that thread. It was great.
All that said, I don’t agree that those restrictive rules help with popularity. It may maintain the current membership but I’d be surprised if it helped it grow much. This place has grown a lot and I think it’s a direct response to how it’s managed.
Anywho, I was always a fan of yours and I don’t agree with any of these dudes here whining about your style of moderating. It fits that site. But you ought to stop by here more often and “stretch your legs”, so to speak.
I could be mistaken but I don't recall seeing anyone complaining about Tilly's style of moderating. I think that's a strawman he made up (again, unless someone can point to a post I missed, in which his particular moderating was the issue). The issue that I, for one, raised was that Tilly came to this site under false pretenses.
To recap, a certain group of posters from Gator Country quit posting over there a few months back, and switched to this site instead. The group included nearly all of the most prolific right-wing posters from the political forum over there. The exodus caused traffic on that forum to plummet.
So Tilly followed us over here, ostensibly just to make friendly conversation. He indicated that his intention was to post on both sites. However my suspicion was that he was here pursuing some sort of agenda out of loyalty to his "home," as he refers to Gator Country. I was ripped by one of the other Gator Country expats for saying so, and told to take it easy on Tilly.
However, after posting here for a fairly brief time, Tilly went back to his "home" and stopped posting here. Then, in jhbyrd's thread over there that is the topic of this thread here, Tilly said that based on his experience of posting on both sites, Gator Country is the better site. He also disclosed that Ox had offered to make him a moderator here, but he turned it down. That was a needless, sh*t-stirring remark IMO.
So my response to reading his post was that I felt vindicated, because it's apparent to me that the only reason for Tilly's foray onto this site was so that he could have a premise for making his "informed" pronouncement about the comparative superiority of the other site. His subsequent reply to my response was off the mark. Either he intended to re-cast and distract from what I actually said, or he just didn't get it.