APRIL FOOL's you farkers!!!

OK, in light of events that have transpired, you are all allowed a full explanation of today's shenanigans.

First off, please understand this was meant to be a fun, light-hearted April Fools gag on all of you Whackadoodles and fellow Brethren.:bow:

Shortly after I came back online and helping with the Throwdowns, I was alerted to a nefarious ploy in the works by Ron and Moose.:becky: It was a pretty innocent gag, they were going to ask Phil to announce major changes to the TD's and that they had been relieved of their duties.

I thought it was funny, but I suggested adding one little twist. I suggested that I should be banned, and then I made some modifications to the "note" Phil would post alluding to my bad behavior and that all nonsense int he TD's would stop immediately.

They liked the additions.:loco:

Much, very much to my surprise, Phil agreed to the plan.:clap::clap2::clap: Phil is one helluva guy to give this any consideration. I imagine if he had seen any potential issues, he would have killed the idea, but he was OK with it.:becky:

So, I spent the next few weeks going out of my way to push every limit on the rules possible. I had to make the banning and rule changes LOOK LEGIT.

Trust me, it is not easy to be a jackass of such a degree to not ACTUALLY push things TOO far and REALLY get banned. I came close on a couple occasions, particularly with the Camel Toe-Down.:redface:

To all who I have offended or put off in any manner by my facetious jackassery over the last few weeks, I apologize. That is not really the real me. Yes, I am a nutjob and post crazy chit all the farking time. But I am not THAT extreme or offensive normally (at least I like to believe that, anyway).

The plan was to have Phil ban me, which he sort of did by changing the text under my name to "banned" and disabling my ability to receive PM's. This gave all appearances of my being banned. All I had to do was not log in and nobody would be any the wiser.

Phil then made the following post after "banning" me in the Throwdown forum to get the ball rolling...

bbqchef33 said:

IMPORTANT AND PERMANENT CHANGES TO THE THROWDOWNS

As some of you are aware, I have been receiving complaints off and on over the past few years about the so called “whackdoodlry” that occurs in the Throwdown forum, which is a subforum of Q-Talk. We let it slide for a long time, but things have spun out of control with a certain member who was also graciously allowed to moderate this forum who was posting inappropriate content in entry threads, despite being advised to keep the wacky crapola isolated elsewhere and to serve as an appropriate role model to our members. Along with the other two Throwdown moderators who were unwilling to enforce the standards of Q-Talk, both of them have been relieved of their duties, effective immediately. The other one has been banned permanently (trust me, it was a LONG TIME coming).

This has given me pause to make some important changes to the Throwdowns that will finally allow us to purge the conflict of whackdoodlry within Q-Talk once and for all, and focus strictly on what our more upstanding members and quality contributors have always used these Throwdowns for, which is A COOKING CONTEST.

So, if it’s not obvious, I am taking over as the sole Throwdown forum moderator, and beginning next week, these are the new rules:

1. There will be no more off topic entry threads. Q-Talk does not need all of this other junk inside of it, and moving it to Woodpile violates cross-forum posting rules.
2. Comments of any kind are no longer allowed in entry threads. You post your entry, and that’s it. The voters will decide. There is no need for half a million posts that say "Looks great!".
2. There will be no more vote threads. If you like the entry, hit the Thanks button. The entry with the most "Thanks" is the winner. Period. There is no need for more than one thread for each Throwdown!".
3. There will be no comments allowed in the winner’s announcement thread, either. This has been thoroughly abused to increase peoples post counts, as evidenced by the number of wackadoodles listed as our top posters.
4. Since we do not have time, there will be no more certificates handed out after next week. I never liked the idea of farking certificates ever since all that Moink/Boink/Who the fark cares what they're called crap. It's time to get this site back on track and cook for food and fun, and not for farking virtual pieces of farking paper.
5. There will be no more prizes. If you want to send someone a prize, send them a PM to get their address and send it. No big deal there.
6. There will be no cross announcements in Qtalk promoting the Throwdowns that the previous moderators did. However, you are still allowed and encouraged to link to the throwdown entry thread in Qtalk if you wish.
7. DO NOT post a COOKING thread in farking WOODPILE! Do you have any idea how much that farks this place up? There are some amazing cooking threads that people never even SEE because it is in the "stupid" forum where all the incessantly babbling douchebags hang out. That ceases immediately.

Our decision on these matters is FINAL; do NOT PM me or any other moderator on this forum asking for reconsideration. Both of the prior Throwdown moderators have agreed that this is the best course of action, and the banned user knows damn good and well why he was banned (it goes beyond just the Throwdowns, he couldn't even post polite comments in Q-Talk, and really?? A Camel Toe throwdown?).

We believe this new format will greatly enhance the credibility of this sub forum and will help showcase all of the great entries from our participants without all of the silly chatter. It will also bring more SERIOUS eyes to this forum who up until now have perceived this whole place to be one big joke.

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Needless to say, this caused a bit of a stir in the Throwdowns.

I was being careful not to log on, and all I could see all day were the posts in Q-Talk and the TD forum, as I can not see WP without being logged on.

At one point, I opened up a different browser for something I was doing at work. When I finished up, I clicked over to here. What I didn't realize was I HAD NOT CLEARED MY COOKIES in that browser!:doh: So I was automatically logged on. This updated my "Last Activity" status, and with that I got some facebook messages and some emails. People were noticing I had been online.:tsk:

So I went ahead with the plan and I posted, acting like nothing had EVER happened.:becky:

It seems this caused some undue stress that was not intended on some members. You know who you are. I think I speak for ALL of use that this added stress was not intended, or foreseen to be perfectly honest.

I honestly thought the only downside would be all of the people coming on and celebrating the fact that we were gone and the site was going serious. Amazingly enough, that didn't really happen (except by folks who appeared to be joking.....I think).

So, there's the scoop.

I was going to leave it be and pretend nothing happened. But knowing now how this affected some, I felt a full explanation as in order.

In summary, to wrap up everything I just said...

It's all Ron and Moose's fault!:becky:

Gore said:

I can't believe you're no longer "Banned" -- the least they could do is make you "April's Fool" :tsk:

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I suspect that might happen.:twitch: Now that I exposed the ploy of the BBQ Illuminati.:shock: