… the moderator comes back from lunch, seated at his desk, a 3/4lb burger clutched in his stubby left hand, dripping juices down his already stained shirt.

One fat driblet escapes being absorbed by dropping into the yellowed pocket protector. It realizes it’s doomed anyway when it sees the petrified pickle huddled in the corner. The pickle lays with some dignity, like an Egyptian mummy pickle of old.

The moderator is oblivious to the drama in his shirt pocket, as he is oblivious to most things in this mortal realm. For he is realy the MIGHTY MORPHTAR (a level 13 elf in evercrack). His day to day job only allows money he needs for his “real” life. Money for things like the once yearly video card update, the bi-annual computer upgrade, and fastfood. (He has escaped the dreaded “rent” or “morgage” trap by living with his mother).

His glossy eyes finaly drift toward his screen. He scans down the list of recent posts, opening the threads one by one. As he opens your thread he exclaims, “BY THE GRACE OF MORPHTAR, A DREADED LINK!!!” As he scans the title of your link eyes drooping eyes fall on the words “cheat sheet.”

His bloodshot retinas turn into pinpoints, his sphinter tightens (leaving a small hickie on his leather chair). The “fight or flight” rush of adrenaline has kicked in. He quickly reaches out and …

cut to:

… It was four years ago, fresh out of college, a shiney new MIS degree tucked under his arm. He was thinner then and full of hope. His first week on the job. A forum moderator position was just a foot in the door, he was destined to be CEO. Everything was going his way, even that cute receptionist, “Ramona” was starting to flirt with him.
Some said that he was too fresh for the responsablity, that a green kid like that should never be saddled with the awesome responsabiliy of moderating a technical forum. Others said he was just lazy.

Regardless, he let one slip by. A dreaded link to an exam cheat sheet. This wasn’t just an ordinary link to a study guide, oh no. It was a link to actual exam questions and answers to a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer exam.

Nobody knew about the mistake until the MS helocopter landed on the company roof. Word spread quickly that “the lawyers” were on the way. His phone rang … and rang… and rang … it wasn’t until the sixth ring when he answered it. “Yes, I understand, yes sir, no sir, never again sir,” his speach growing ever quieter until he slowly put the receiver down.

He vowed from that day forward, no cheaters would ever post to his forum.

cut back:

… bans your user name from the forum and deletes your thread.

End of story.

Seriously, “Girl Geekette”, I don’t think their reaction would have been as strong if you had named your posting or link “Study Guide” instead of “Cheat Sheet”. They probably did not follow your link and looked at that fine piece of work.

There loss! Let them dye the slow death of “being to busy to look at the facts.” Many companies go that way.

Good news, and mega kudos!!!
The good news is that you are the number 2 google listing under the search phrase:

xk0-002

The truth can not hide from the mighty google spiders!

The Kudos come from the fact that I am a Linux instructor (Cisco, Unix, and Novell, too!). I found your study guide to be an excellent bit of work If I have time, I’m going to mindmap it and use it in my classroom. (I’ll send you a copy too!)

Good work! Thanks for the giving spirit that made you post it in the first place. I guess my (hopefully) amusing little story pays you back (a little) for the effort you put into it.

Louie
AKA “The Blargman”
(Students gave me the nickname, something to do with an old pirate saying “BLARG!”)

“You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any applicable laws, including brain dumps (actual exam questions) or links to them. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned. The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that the webmaster, administrator and moderators of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time should they see fit.

“Posting, requesting or promoting the use of braindumps or braindump-in-pdf-selling-cheatsheets-like companies will result in a permanent ban.”

I did none of those.

While, it IS *their* forum and they can do *whatever* they want to… then obiovusly they are not in it for helping others, only themselves.

Out of the 10 years and hundreds of forums I have moderated.. no one I have ever known just banned someone for no cause and never bothered saying WHY – especially if that person was contributing and trying to do something to help.

Did anyone bother looking at the study notes I made? When someone accused me of only posting to drive traffic to my site for money from ads.. dude that isv *so* funny its unreal. Its so not true. And I even politely replied when that was posted to me that was not my reason and that my reason was to help.

The study sheets are ones that I made while studying for the certs. Thye are notes taken from countless number of books, man pages etc. They are nothing from the forbidden mentioned above. And, the same links ARE posted in other forums.. and actually are appreciated. Hence why I did not thinks someone would go off the deep end here.

I am not some little script kiddie looking for answers for the tests. I am probablly 2x that age at least. I have my values and ethics. I work in this industry and have for years. While I did appreciate the study material from that site, I do not appreciate the childliness. My 12 year old has more maturity than the ones that treated me like that.

To get on a whim and treat people like I was treated.. well, it speaks for itself. If that is how they want to be, then more power to them. I personally have better things to do than treat people like dirt and then claim to be all so great to everyone else. I will leave that to the ones that treated me like they did

At another IT forum I’m at, the same rules apply: you can’t make multiple posts/threads with links to your/whatever site. You might not get banned, but they will be deleted.
Same thing at another forum I help mod.

If you want I can ask Webmaster to see if he can do something about your emails…

I had been a member of TechExams since 2003 and never had any problems before. I was trying to help, and I exaplined what I was posting. I made 3 posts in different categories with links trying to give anyone a chance to have more information for studying.

After being accused of posting only to make traffic to here, and I politely retorted that was not the case.. and then Asking why all 3 of my posts had been removed – and not getting any reply, only banned – I think that was very unfair.

Not only that, but if you want to talk about spam, I keep getting it from techexams since I get a reply to posts from there and I am not allowed to log back on to discontinue to replys.

‘If you no longer wish to watch this topic you can either click the “Stop watching this topic link” found at the bottom of the topic above, or by clicking the following link:’

and considering I cannot click on the link to remove myself, I keep getting unwanted emails. I would call that spam.

Granted, one might think you were the victim, but there are two sides to every story. And making a public thread was definitely not wise.

I’ve posted many links (and posted many posts) there and have never run into any trouble; likely because I understand general forum policies.