Something I would like to share

[Bob Lemke]

First, I accept that my personality for a lot of folks would be an "acquired taste", but I would still like to participate on this forum. I got off to a rocky start, and am willing to accept the blame. I made some generalizations on my site that in retrospect I am hoping wasn't warranted. Honest feedback here would be greatly appreciated, but if negative, in keeping with forum rules, just PM me. I have always been an adaptable person, show me the error of my ways and I will do my best to change. Here are those Midwest generalizations I made that I hope I'm wrong about...... http://tbuckets.lefora.com/2012/07/11/l ... some-life/

I started here on our new full featured forum with a lot of enthusiasm, making 100 posts the first week. Through constant reminders via PMs, I was told of many complaints pertaining to my posts. All I seek is a consensus, either here or via PM, from the members themselves, rather than the mods.

Please allow this thread to remain, and a democratic consensus will result. I will abide by the wishes of the majority, I just want to give the majority a chance to speak up and not depend on the secondhand reports of just two people.

[Lee in KC]

In order to understand this post, you need to know that I am the Sergeant-at-Arms of the NTBA and a moderator of this website. It is my duty to enforce the rules of our club and of this website, as well as support the values of our club. That having been said, I would like to address Bob's post.

First, let me say that Bob's post was brought to my attention by a long-time NTBA member within 15 minutes of its posting. He urged me to delete the post immediately as he felt it would "only spiral downhill"... his words. During the day I have been contacted by three other members, two of whom are very familiar with the circumstances of the incident that Bob brings up in the post on his forum that is linked in his post above. Those who were familiar with incident urged me to rebut Bob's accusations either on his website or here.

Second, you need to know that Bob thinks I have something personal against him and that I was responsible for deleting or editting some of his early posts on this board. While I concurred with the decisions to remove the posts or edit them, I was not the one who initiated the action, as I did not have moderator authority at that time. But Bob was convinced I did it, and so his belief I was out to get him was reinforced. To be sure, if I had had moderator authority at that time, I would have done exactly what was done in my role as SAA.

Third, you need to know that Bob has been told by both me and the president of the NTBA not to put links to his forums on the NTBA boards. The reason for this is Bob has made it very clear that he intends to make his website the number one T-bucket site on the web. The board of the NTBA has discussed this at length, and we feel this is not in keeping with the vision we have for our club and the new NTBA website. We believe that the National T-bucket Alliance should be just that... an alliance of folks who are brought together by our common interest in T-buckets. To have someone trying to pull our folks away from that to an alternative, competitive site just didn't seem right to us. Bob was advised of our position, but he has chosen to ignore our guidance.

Now to address the incident that Bob refers to in his "Lets show some life" post on his forum. Here are the facts, which several members who were present can attest to. This happened on the T-bucketeers forum, which many of you follow. Last year at the Buckethead Bash, Bob got into a stop-light drag race with another T. Bob missed a shift and lost the race. This was the hot topic in the parking lot at the Ramada that evening (you folks know how those bench-racing sessions go, right?), as Bob is quite proud of the fact that he has a stick shift and a grunty 383. During the discussion, someone who I have a lot of confidence in mentioned that he had heard that Bob got beat by someone else, as well. It seems like he provided some details, but I don't remember them now. Well I did a dumb thing and repeated that rumor in the thread on T-bucketeers that popped up after the incident. Bob had been banned from T-bucketeers at that point and he couldn't defend himself, so he took great offense to my post, which he claims was not true. He accused me of lying and fabricating the story. I told him I was just repeating a rumor, and that was not like me, and I apologized to him. I said that repeating a rumor and fabricating a story (lying) are two different things, and he agreed. I thought he had forgieven me (for repeating the rumor), but apparently not.

I will let Bob's post above, and the link to his forum, stay up to demonstrate to Bob that this is not a personal thing. If people want to give Bob feedback on his inquiry, that's fine. However, they will have to do it by e-mail or PM, as this thread is now locked.