I only hope somebody comes back to replace him, because if the program side of the argument isn't represented, and dissected, you'll never know how to really think and argue about the industry with any sort of skill. If you ever, for example, talk to another person about the industry, and they are skeptical about what you're saying, you need to be able to respond to their questions and explain how such a con is run. It also helps to understand it on a personal, healing, level. Certain people, especially those who understand cons or cults, get it immediately. Others you have to really explain to and/or argue with until hey get it. That's where people like Whooter come in handy.
Yes, he was repetitive, but his repetitive nature allowed different practice arguments to be tried again and again. Yes, he was dishonest/misleading in one way or another about ... well ... a whole lot of stuff, but if you ever argue with an industry executive or an ed-con, such practice comes in handy. Yes, he pushed buttons, but so does a program rep. Without practice, the mind gros dull. All in all, there are worse than Whooter. It is even possible he is a parent, though I personally doubt it. Was he survivor-friendly? not really. I can't even remember how many just couldn't stand him enough that it drove them off the site, or worse, off an edge. It's sad, but the policy of the site then, as it is now, is that we don't moderate on people's opinions or matters of fact, so if somebody lies about you, you just have to either take it, or point out their lies.
The reason for this is because is we start saying, for example, that Whooter lied about DJ's past, and that warranted punishment, we'd also have to delete all testimony of and punish each and every survivor after an "internet libel" complaint from, for example, a current staff member poster, or industry member. Real lawsuits would probably suck too because if we, for example, deleted a post, we would have probably implicitly endorsed the rest of the speech as truthful. We like to be able to limit our liability to individual posters and say "take it to the courts", which can be a fruitful battle to expose a program. Unfortunately, i'm sorry, we cannot defend you from lies, even blatant ones, by industry reps. The price you pay for posting on a free forum is that people will sometimes lie. You can sometimes effectively defend yourself and proving somebody to be a liar by outing yourself, but that comes with it's own risks.
There are subjectively moderated areas of the forum (Can), so if you want a safe place to talk about survivor stuff, you can do it in that "private club" rather than in the rest of the forum. If it's related to a thread elsewhere a forum, feel free to make a post with a link to the Can thread. People like Whooter will always be around. Hopefully CAN and FQA can help people feel a little bit safer.
