Could you please explain this to an uninitiated layman like me? thanks in advance
wsieber:
Your question sounds sincere so I will treat it with the respect it appears to deserve.
Etaoin hasn't got it quite right.
I believe everyone who posts here is entitled to respect, whether they post as a newcomer or as an old-timer or as a Carpal Tunnel.
But I think we all know that in order to get respect we have to give respect.
Respecting someone else, including their opinion, has nothing to do with "liking" them, or approving of their opinion per se. It is simply an acknowledgement that this is a public forum and everyone should be treated equally here, with respect, so long as they treat others with respect.
Most old-timers, including Carpal Tunnels, understand this reciprocal respect equation perfectly, but a few Carpal Tunnels do not. In the past, I have described these Carpal overlords as "the olicarpy" or "the Carpal elite" or sometimes just "the Carp".
The "oligarchy", no more than 5 or 6 Carpal Tunnels, believe that they are free of the ordinary social contraints which apply to the rest of us. They believe they can use hate language and vulgarities and calumnies and diatribes, usually tag teaming with other Carpal elite, to intimidate and assail and drive off any individual who is not as deferential to their priviliged pretensions as they believe all posters ought to be.
The way in which other Carpal Tunnels, who are free of the insecurities and pretensions of the Carpal elite, become complicit is that they acquiesce in all of the abuses of the Carpal elite, however disgraceful those abuses may be. Although other non-offending Carpal Tunnels will, on occasion, urge the abusive Carpal elite, offscreen, never onscreen, to respect the rules of civility which apply to everyone else, the Carpal elite have always ignored those entreaties.
In this way, the Carpal elite has made the entire Board hostage to their olicarpic pretensions and despotic tirades and abuses.
I have extended an olive branch many times to the leading members of the Carpal elite, as anyone who remembers me as Plutarch knows very well. But the olicarpy has chosen to 'fight to the death', accepting no compromise or peace under any circumstances, even if their intransigence throws this Board into complete chaos.
