Astromart And The Plantation Mentality

[herbhighstone]

Hello to all the folks --

FYI, I was recently kicked out of Astromart via the usual arbitrary decision by Mr. Herb York. This includes a total deletion from Astromart of all messages ever posted there by myself. That is a vital part of Mr. York's Orwellian system. He tries to remove every trace of the people whom he has exiled. George Orwell's "Big Brother" would have liked this procedure. It shows the type of paranoid excess that any true dictator admires.

Mr. York is acting like the owner of an old-style Southern plantation. Nobody on the plantation has any rights except for him. Everybody else on the Anacortes Plantation is merely a sharecropper, with no rights that Mr. York needs to respect.

Several people have told me that Mr. York has the legal right to do whatever he wishes with Astromart, because the web site belongs to him. However, there is a difference between legal rights and moral obligations. When people participate in a community, even a digital Internet communtiy, these citizens deserve to be treated with respect. Unfortunately, Mr. York respects nobody and nothing, except for himself and his ever-shifting personal whims.

Mr. York can't do all this on his own. Every plantation has employees called overseers who enforce the will of the "ol' massa." The master issues his orders from the grand plantation house, and the overseers convey these orders to the lowly field hands. I can't resist comparing the moderators of the various Astromart forums to overseers in an old Mississippi cotton plantation. This is not the kind of job that I'd like to do, and I wonder why the moderators continue to do it. After all, Simon Legree is not a widely admired figure in history.

I had mistakenly thought that I had friends among the Astromart moderators. Unhappily, when Mr. York decided to get rid of me, these so-called friends tiptoed away from the situation as fast as they could. They showed quite clearly that their total submission to Mr. York's every whim was much more important than any mere personal relationship. I am deeply disappointed to see American citizens acting like this, because bowing down to petty dictators is not supposed to be a core American value.

It would be a very happy gesture if Mr. York's enablers, overseers, and enforcers would muster up the guts and the gumption to quit Astromart en masse, and leave Mr. York to try and run his little plantation all by himself. Those enablers, overseers, and enforcers who choose to stay with Astromart are unfortunately demonstrating that they agree with Mr. York's way of conducting business. The moderators naturally don't see it that way, which reminds me of the old joke about Germany right after World War Two. The usual telephone greeting at that time was said to be, "Hello, I was never really a Nazi!"

I will admit that in many ways, Astromart can be a fairly comfortable prison if you're willing to slavishly follow every single order from the dictatorial warden. And as Voltaire famously said, it's difficult to free slaves from the chains that they love. But to any independent-minded person, Astromart feels like the proverbial bed of nails.

Best wishes from Herbert Highstone

[starbuck]

You have witnessed first hand what goes on over there and why people are coming here and to other sites in droves. The guy must have been picked on in school or something and is now taking out his hostilities on his flock or membership. I promised bryan that I would not use any foul language but I really do have to bite my tounge.

You will also find that all of your friends on AM will turn against you as fast as flies on crap as they know if they say anything publically against the master of AM, they too will be banned from his site. This is why you mainly only see people talk out on sites where he has no control over such as here! Wow, imagine that. he has no control here over what people say! This must keep him up at night tossing and turning.

Understand that he could care less about you or anybody else and only cares about money. Even his son does not work at his store anymore, geez I wonder why?


John

Originally Posted by herbhighstone

Hello to all the folks --

FYI, I was recently kicked out of Astromart via the usual arbitrary decision by Mr. Herb York. This includes a total deletion from Astromart of all messages ever posted there by myself. That is a vital part of Mr. York's Orwellian system. He tries to remove every trace of the people whom he has exiled. George Orwell's "Big Brother" would have liked this procedure. It shows the type of paranoid excess that any true dictator admires.

Mr. York is acting like the owner of an old-style Southern plantation. Nobody on the plantation has any rights except for him. Everybody else on the Anacortes Plantation is merely a sharecropper, with no rights that Mr. York needs to respect.

Several people have told me that Mr. York has the legal right to do whatever he wishes with Astromart, because the web site belongs to him. However, there is a difference between legal rights and moral obligations. When people participate in a community, even a digital Internet communtiy, these citizens deserve to be treated with respect. Unfortunately, Mr. York respects nobody and nothing, except for himself and his ever-shifting personal whims.

Mr. York can't do all this on his own. Every plantation has employees called overseers who enforce the will of the "ol' massa." The master issues his orders from the grand plantation house, and the overseers convey these orders to the lowly field hands. I can't resist comparing the moderators of the various Astromart forums to overseers in an old Mississippi cotton plantation. This is not the kind of job that I'd like to do, and I wonder why the moderators continue to do it. After all, Simon Legree is not a widely admired figure in history.

I had mistakenly thought that I had friends among the Astromart moderators. Unhappily, when Mr. York decided to get rid of me, these so-called friends tiptoed away from the situation as fast as they could. They showed quite clearly that their total submission to Mr. York's every whim was much more important than any mere personal relationship. I am deeply disappointed to see American citizens acting like this, because bowing down to petty dictators is not supposed to be a core American value.

It would be a very happy gesture if Mr. York's enablers, overseers, and enforcers would muster up the guts and the gumption to quit Astromart en masse, and leave Mr. York to try and run his little plantation all by himself. Those enablers, overseers, and enforcers who choose to stay with Astromart are unfortunately demonstrating that they agree with Mr. York's way of conducting business. The moderators naturally don't see it that way, which reminds me of the old joke about Germany right after World War Two. The usual telephone greeting at that time was said to be, "Hello, I was never really a Nazi!"

I will admit that in many ways, Astromart can be a fairly comfortable prison if you're willing to slavishly follow every single order from the dictatorial warden. And as Voltaire famously said, it's difficult to free slaves from the chains that they love. But to any independent-minded person, Astromart feels like the proverbial bed of nails.

Best wishes from Herbert Highstone

[BT Technologies]

Welcome aboard Herbert and we hope you enjoy our community here at astroclassifieds.com!!! I promise you that we are a lot less strict than your previous experience that you posted...

Its great to have you here and I look forward to your posts in our forums, image galleries and classifieds ads section.

[Spoonsize]

"Foucault Tests & Aperture Stops".....very good article, Herbert!

Now, that is the "Highstone" I remember from my past days on the mart....

I look forward to more of the same, and expect nothing less from you.

I, for one, appreciate the fact that you were removed from over there, it brought you to this site!! and we(I) are happy you're here.

[markvcostello3]

Hi Herbert,

I remember reading quite a few of your posts when I visited Astromart more regularly. (I "lurk" there but haven't posted there in almost two-and-a-half years.) I always found them to be polite and many times quite informative. Hopefully, you'll post here and help make this forum the "in-place" for amateur astronomy.

[dciobota]

Hi everyone,

My first post on here and I'll probably sound like a complete whiner, lol.

I see some of the ex astromart gang is here, cool!

Like Herb, I was a member in excellent standing on amart, and although fairly silent in the forums, I was fairly active in the buy/sell classifieds. Tbh, I found no fault with the astromarters, and although I've heard about Mr York's acid personality, I decided to sit on the fence on that one.

Well, Mr York anaged to give me a nice big push off that fence and off I come tumbling down all the way here. My story's a bit different, it all started out with an email. Yup, and email written to astromart support, inquiring about an email delivery message I receved, listing some forwarding service (you know, like the one that sends a user an email when you respond to their ad) that aparently forwarded my message, complete with email and personal details, to a spam email list provider.

The response was a terse email from Mr York pointing to their "support" page. I asked what the connection was, and he sarcastically (my guess he calls that witticism) remarks that since I never paid for "support" he would feel disinclined to waste his money and time researching the matter.

Yup, the exchange degraded fast after that with the result that I am now one of the banned-n-proud crowd.

The punchline though came today. I didn't realize Rod Molisse was owner of cge-telescopesUNCENSORED, and in an answer to a post made on there I shared my experience with amart... BIG MISTAKE!! Mr York proceeded to call me names and Mr Molisse followed with his own derogatory remarks. He also censored my response to defend myself (which contained no foul or otherwise inappropriate language). So I gues cge-telescopesUNCENSORED doesn't quite live up to its name. I can now count on Mr Molisse as one of the bully's cronies and have found another individual to totally avoid.

So that's my story folks. Sad, that such people can sour the community experience. It really has been a shock to me how much of this is going on with no recourse for others to voice their opinion. Maybe I find myself a new home here amongst the renegades. Looks like I'm in good company.

Glad to be here.

Daniel

[BT Technologies]

I am sorry to hear about your dealings with others in the astronomy business. Rest assured, we are all NOT like that!! You will NEVER see us asking for money/donations from our members. The site is here for everyone to exchange in free ideas without any undue censoring of ones comments.

In regard to other people that go to the defense of others when they are CLEARLY out of line, you have to ask yourself how does that person benefit monetarily by doing so... If you look hard enough, you will see that there is a business relationship going on there so it is in that persons financial best interest to do so even though he is clearly wrong....

At any rate welcome to Astroclassifieds.com and we hope you will contribute to this site and tell your friends about us!!

Originally Posted by dciobota

Hi everyone,

My first post on here and I'll probably sound like a complete whiner, lol.

I see some of the ex astromart gang is here, cool!

Like Herb, I was a member in excellent standing on amart, and although fairly silent in the forums, I was fairly active in the buy/sell classifieds. Tbh, I found no fault with the astromarters, and although I've heard about Mr York's acid personality, I decided to sit on the fence on that one.

Well, Mr York anaged to give me a nice big push off that fence and off I come tumbling down all the way here. My story's a bit different, it all started out with an email. Yup, and email written to astromart support, inquiring about an email delivery message I receved, listing some forwarding service (you know, like the one that sends a user an email when you respond to their ad) that aparently forwarded my message, complete with email and personal details, to a spam email list provider.

The response was a terse email from Mr York pointing to their "support" page. I asked what the connection was, and he sarcastically (my guess he calls that witticism) remarks that since I never paid for "support" he would feel disinclined to waste his money and time researching the matter.

Yup, the exchange degraded fast after that with the result that I am now one of the banned-n-proud crowd.

The punchline though came today. I didn't realize Rod Molisse was owner of cge-telescopesUNCENSORED, and in an answer to a post made on there I shared my experience with amart... BIG MISTAKE!! Mr York proceeded to call me names and Mr Molisse followed with his own derogatory remarks. He also censored my response to defend myself (which contained no foul or otherwise inappropriate language). So I gues cge-telescopesUNCENSORED doesn't quite live up to its name. I can now count on Mr Molisse as one of the bully's cronies and have found another individual to totally avoid.

So that's my story folks. Sad, that such people can sour the community experience. It really has been a shock to me how much of this is going on with no recourse for others to voice their opinion. Maybe I find myself a new home here amongst the renegades. Looks like I'm in good company.

Glad to be here.

Daniel

[johnpaul1165]

I find it somewhat humorous that the most traffic on this site is about AstroMart.

John

[dciobota]

Thanks Brian, very much appreciated.

So, I guess you did see the CGE thread. I noticed Warp posted on that too, but I can't post replies since I am "moderated".

John, I can't speak for anyone else on this site, but I joined here after getting that kind of treatment from astromart. My guess is that many others on here have been similarly treated and formed this site as a truly uncensored forum to express opinions and ideas.

I for one am glad of the experience, as it opened my eyes and directed me here.

Daniel

[BT Technologies]

Hello again,

Yes, I did read that post and frequently scan most of the Yahoo astro-related groups just to keep "tabs" of what is going on.

It really is too bad that there has to be so much division among some of us in the astronomy world as in the scheme of things, we are a pretty small tight group.

Welcome again Daniel!!

Originally Posted by dciobota

Thanks Brian, very much appreciated.

So, I guess you did see the CGE thread. I noticed Warp posted on that too, but I can't post replies since I am "moderated".

John, I can't speak for anyone else on this site, but I joined here after getting that kind of treatment from astromart. My guess is that many others on here have been similarly treated and formed this site as a truly uncensored forum to express opinions and ideas.

I for one am glad of the experience, as it opened my eyes and directed me here.

Daniel