I mean that all the rules have changed and were being forced to "put up and shut up" cause Erwin owns this site. Sounds like robot material to me.
I'm not sure how you arrive at such a conclusion. If we look at the specific changes, I believe it can be demonstrated to be exactly the opposite of what you claim. CF used to make us all robot material. The changes release us from that and allow us to be thinking, reasoning people.
For example; the rules used to be decided by a small group of people who kept very tightly to their own. If you didn't agree with the majority of this "elite" group, you didn't last long and the rules, once being adopted by this small group, were then thrust upon the majority. A bit like firmware being written by a small few to match the desires of an even smaller few and then installed into the rest of the forum to act as the robots to the small few, ("puppets" is probably a better comparison).
Many here haven't been eligible for positions in staff. We may have cared greatly for the forum and wanted it to be the "community" it claims to be. But we were never "good enough" to be true members of the community. We were just robots, following the directions issued by the protected and exalted few who tried to take on the status of royalty, ruling over the peasant robots. Erwin has now changed that allowing even the "peasants" to change class, to add a voice to the rule-making process and even to influence who will and will not be occupying seats among the staff. He's de-robotizing the majority of the forum membership.
In the past people would register with CF believing they were Christians. But based on criteria not accepted by them, they were sometimes told that they couldn't carry a Christian icon because they weren't "Christian enough" to please the few in power. They were little robots running around wearing the pin others chose for them. Erwin has changed that as well. People now choose their own identity rather than having it chosen for them.
I agree with you in your distaste for the robotic controls. But the robotic controls were a part of the old CF. The new CF seeks to remove those controls.
Christians, (those who were deemed "Christian enough"), have always enjoyed a number of things in this "community" such as the right to go anywhere they wish to go on the forum. They could post anywhere they chose. They could decide to submit an application for a position on staff and not be rejected without consideration because they weren't "right thinkers". If accepted to staff they could have a say over what other members could and couldn't post, carry as signatures and even what they could say in a PM. They could themselves violate the rules in claiming others had committed violations and then hide behind the protective curtain of Rule 3.8. Many eventually added their voice to the rule-making process and continued to create more rules to give them even more power and yet remain protected from answerability -- Rules such as 2.9.
All of these things you have had, have been prohibited for many of us here. Erwin has now changed that. He has taken nothing from you except the dark curtain of secrecy behind which atrocities could be perpetrated without fear of exposure. He has only given the rest of us what you have always had and this seems to infuriate you. Please tell me how you rationalize believing that you are worthy of all of these things while, at the same time, believing that the rest of us are not. What makes you so much better than the rest of us?
