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My name is Roy Chow (armorama ID: ericadeane). I serve as the Allied DG moderator. Jim Starkweather offered me the role and I'm glad to serve this great site.
I ALSO serve on the admin team with Paul Owen over on TL. While I don't condone Paul's logging into Jim Rae's account here, here's the reason it happened.
Yesterday, one of our administrators demanded to resign because someone had tampered with one of his postings on Track-Link. The only ones who can edit postings are members of the admin team. He concluded that one of his fellow admin people were tampering with him and he was irate. Paul Owen, figured out that one of us must have been hacked -- as many of us are registered on multiple boards (and sometimes with the same password). That is why he immediately posted a warning to the TL administrators and the entier TL community to switch their passwords.
Paul emailed the admin team to say that he was able to do the same (get into another website) as an experiment and warned the admin team that this was a security loophole with TL (and other sites). In working with Paul for several years (and frequenting his site since 1996), he's been a straight shooter.
Paul has also worked with Jim Starkweather to try to assemble the various modelling website principals in a webmasters guild to work on joint problems and to promote unity.
Jim: I would agree that it requires an apology. The steps Paul took weren't judicious at all. You've said he's done other things to other Armorama staff: I can't speak to that and have to trust that you're correct that "frostyness" exists btn Paul and this site. However, I dont' believe yesterday's actions were meant to harm you or Armorama at all. There really was a security breach at TL. My word on it
Hi Roy;
No doubt you have the fullest of good intentions with this post, and I imagine you actually believe Paul Owens take on events. However, Paul Owen is one of the biggest scumbags associated with this hobby, and the sooner he is not involved with it the better if you were to ask me.
He will have been the one editing the other moderators posts on your site, and he will be the one visiting other sites using the passwords of the members of Track Link to his own benefit. all of this story will have been concocted by him to cover his pathetic actions, and if people believe him, that is their folly. Consistently he has behaved with questionable motives on his own site ( which he told me he owned ) and on other sites. He has had constant run ins with people across the breadth and width of this hobby including myself, and continually he shows his nasty contemptuous attitude.
I am myself an administrator on Large scale Planes, and I know that if any one of us felt that there was some security siuation that we felt we needed attention, we would contact our fellow moderators on other boards personally rather than hack inot their site.
He's just been caught with his hand in the jar, and like any other petulant child, is concocting a wild tale to get out of it.
If I were you Roy, I would dissasociate yourself as much as possible from this retrobate, and speak to the actual owner of the site about removing him from the admin in order to restore some confidence in the site. I for one think that if there were in fact a "guild" of administrators as you put it Mr. Owen would find himself disbarred very quickly.
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Three senior Staff-Members on THIS site, have been the subject of his attacks on repeated occasions. There is no evidence whatsoever that he is doing this in an 'altruistic' manner. It is breach of trust - pure and simple
this perfectly illustrates his personality, and succinctly describes his actions. Well said Jim.
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For anyone else who says "Let's go to war" or wants to pile on personal attacks on people's family or marriages, please remember what Armorama, Finescale, Track-link, Missing-lynx (etc) are all about. It's a hobby that each of us delve into to relax and enjoy some community. I don't know many of us who are starving, live in the Third World, or are trying to extract someone trapped in a mine somewhere or trying to survive because your village was flattened by an earthquake. Please let's use some common courtesy (even if it hasn't been given to us).
Very nice sentiment Roy, and while I am sure all of us here appreciate the reality of the world at large, we are putting things in context, and what Paul Owen has done has nothing to do with ending third world huinger. In fact you mention that we should all try to remember what these websites are here for, and that is modelling! We all constantly act with courtesy, and it is Paul Owen who constantly acts with none. So please spare us the lecture.
Speaking of what the websites are here for, Paul Owen once proudly exclaimed to me in one of his nasty e-mails that he wasnt a modeller and thought modellers were pathetic and that it was a "childish passtime". Quoting his words exactly. I have saved this e-mail so if you ( or anyone ) wants to see it to verify it came from him then feel free to contact me.
All the best to you all,
Jay Laverty
Consigliere
