Hi Michelle Malkin,
There's a social network called Ravelry.com. It's for knitters. It's a website where knitters can search for patterns, yarn and stores to buy these things from. The social network also has discussion groups to fit many different interests. We had a few conservative groups on that website. One of the groups was called The Bunker. It was for unapologetic, sassy, conservatives to talk about knitting projects and current events. The group was originally to support John McCain in the election, but when Obama won, it became The Bunker, for us to deal with the next four years.
Well, the liberals on Ravelry did not like us from the time the John McCain group was created until now. There is a sort of kudos system for the discussions and liberals would always stop by to click the kudos that says "disagree." If one of our family members died from cancer, they'd click the kudos that says "funny." The liberals would harass the site owner, Casey Forbes, about our discussion group. Despite the owner complimenting our moderators on their fine job moderating our group, he decided to close the group down and blame our moderators. Meanwhile, the liberals still continued to troll other conservative groups to their hearts' desires, and all complaints about them were dismissed.
One member tried to negotiate with Casey Forbes privately. The liberals caught wind of this and one went as far as to find out where her kids go to school and threaten the lives of her children. We gave up negotiations.
Although many have given up on Ravelry as a place to voice our opinions, we have still used the website to search for patterns, yarn and ask knitting related questions. Today, when we tried to log on, we came to find out that we've all been banned and suspended.
http://www.ravelry.com/banned
"Your account has been suspended until further notice. Please direct inquiries to Craig at legal@ravelry.com."
One member who happened to miss the ban, happened to find this gem on their boards:
"
A group of users have been organizing together on another website and visiting Ravelry directly from it, disrupting normal site activities. All users of that particular site have had their Ravelry accounts (including any duplicate accounts) suspended until further notice. This is a serious action that we felt needed to be done to protect the Ravelry community.
All inquiries can be directed to legal@ravelry.com."
We do have an offsite Bunker now and we do discuss what happened and continues to happen at Ravelry. However, there are liberal groups on Ravelry who have offsite groups as well. The only thing Bunker members can be accused of is daring to link to forums on Ravelry, reading them and disagreeing with discussions. Considering how many people on this planet link to Ravelry and how many people disagree with discussions, this should not be considered "disrupting normal site activities." Once again, Casey Forbes is making excuses for the fact that he just doesn't like conservative people on his website.
This is getting very much disgusting. I'm one of the youngest Bunker members. Many of our members are mothers or grandmothers and are completely harmless. We've all been discriminated against because we think and believe differently.
Thank you for your time,
Melissa
ETA: March 24th. For anyone who happens upon this page, there is some very interesting proof of the treatment of Ravelry towards one of the banned members. It should prove as enlightening to anyone who thinks the banning was due to behavioral problems and was completely justified.
click here