ST-v-SW.Net :: The Warsie Support Group

(alternate subtitle:
Wanking Out Star Wars, Consoling One Another, And Stroking My Ego Since Who-Knows-When)

I'd previously heard rumors of a similar list being used by the Star Wars side in an effort to present an united front during the old alt.startrek.vs.starwars days (part of that whole "groupthink" thing I used to point out to them), but this was the first time I'd heard anyone actually speak of such a thing openly. Wong's half-joking response of "Shhh!!!! You have broken your vow of eternal secrecy!" was the icing on that particular cake.

To be sure, it was well-known that Wayne Poe wasn't coming up with his site updates strictly on his own. With his frequent mentions of Brian Young and a few other people, it was clear that there was a lot of e-mail support going on, and that thus he was probably a member of the list.

I wasn't sure if this was the same list, of course. The "Curtis" mentioned above was Curtis Saxton of the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, a fellow who has frequently disavowed any activity in the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debates. Indeed, those who've dared to suggest that Saxton has an interest in it have been called all sorts of names for daring to even speak the name of Saxton and the debate in the same breath.

Of course, the truth is that he used to be active and with all the vitriol we'd expect from a Vs. Debate poster, what with declaring SW tech completely superior, calling fellow post-grad astrophysics majors "typical Trekkies" for disagreeing with him about the Alderaan explosion energy requirements, and making reference to "silliest Trekkist fallacies". Both of those were made on Star Trek groups, by the way, and delivered with such an air arrogant loathing as to make it impossible to believe that he's disinterested in the Vs. Debate. If anything, it suggests a deep interest in the concept, with a sense that he's above having to interact with 'those people'.

So since then, he'd kept out of it, at least publicly. This is not to say he wasn't involved with the people on his side . . . as many have noted, Mike Wong, Wayne Poe, and others showed up on the acknowledgements of Saxton's Episode II: Incredible Cross Sections, which featured highly-inflated firepower figures for Star Wars. And, sure, I'd seen a few things that could've been quiet responses to my work, but I'm not so conceited as to think that I'm the focus of everyone's attention all the time.

You see, it recently came to my attention that there is indeed a currently-active e-mail list being run through Mike Wong's StarDestroyer.Net server. The list membership appears to include Mike Wong, Curtis Saxton, Wayne Poe, Brian Young, Martyn Griffiths, Adam Gehrls, and maybe others (though I can't identify some addresses). (Brian Young also makes use of the "staff of analysts" from BabTech-onthe.Net, including Sean Robertson.)

The group seems to be a loose confederacy doing research on Star Trek and Star Wars away from the curious eyes of the hoi polloi and 'lesser Warsies'. That sounds fine in and of itself, though of course I might be annoyed were I one of those lesser pro-Wars folks thus excluded.

Sadly, I didn't get full access to the list, but I did get a small peek. And even in that small peek were some very choice bits.

The part I find amusing, though, is the goal of a lot of that research. Naturally, given the obsession of some of the members of that list it should be no surprise that I'd be mentioned, along with those horrible "Trekkies" in general . . . but the fact that they talk about "pushing to add more examples to make [me] look foolish" is amusing. I especially enjoy how much effort they expend explicitly trying to frame their collective position so that there's nothing for me to be able to argue against . . . not to mention what a poor job they do of it, historically.

I'm not the sole focus, of course. They lament about things as any researchers would. For instance, who can avoid hearing the pain of disclosure when they say that "It is possible that we undercalculated this for the ICS"? Especially when the message reminds them of their obvious efforts to try to make sure that "things make it a better comparison to Trek"!

But, then, few in Vs. Debate circles seriously doubted that the E2:ICS firepower figures were anything more than an anti-Trek wank, even if the Warsies cried foul at the mere suggestion that Saxton's ICS figures were based on anything other than Saxton's careful research of AoTC (despite the fact that he had little to no actual movie to base most of the figures on). And, of course, I'm sure they'll label this a personal attack on Saxton, too, just as they did whenever anyone else besides them dared breathe his name.

That said, I guess this explains why Saxton never responded to those two e-mails I sent a couple of years ago. I'm a dirty "Trekkist" whose work had to be attacked in private e-mails, not to mention disagreed with in the pages of an otherwise pretty EU book that he and the boys did calcs for with a view toward inflating Star Wars past Star Trek levels. Woe is unreplied-to me. :)

But, I digress. Why is all this amusing, over and above the fun I've already had above? Because, with rare exception, this site is mine. I've conferred with a handful of others on occasion (and those others know they have my eternal thanks), but over the years this site has existed I have invariably been the primary author and primary creator.

In other words, I realized that I'd been kicking the asses of Wayne and Mike and then the whole gaggle of SD.Net denizens for a long while, thanks to ASVS, the Wong Debate, and the Battle of Britain (not to mention their efforts to harass me out of the debate) . . . but I never realized that they'd been crying for help to a secret smoke-filled e-mail list of other guys for all this time.

Come on girls . . . I know you hate to avoid using that numerical advantage, but increasing it via secret dispatches to Curtis Saxton and Brian-and-the-gang is getting a little ridiculous, don't you think? Why not a little one-on-one?

Update: The How and Why of the Above

I would've tried to e-mail list@stardestroyer.net for comments before publication, but given Wong's redirection of links to from here to there to porn sites, his probable blocking of my e-mail address, and so on, I just waited until a few hours afterward:

There was no response. No big surprise there, of course, but as I said . . . I try to keep a measure of optimism about others.

Within a few days, though, I saw that they'd figured out how it all happened on their own.

You see, if a webmaster wants people to be able to see all the files in his web directories, all he has to do is not make an index file. At that point the server will have instructions as to how to handle the situation, and either the directory contents are shown in index form or not, depending on the server's instructions.

Let's give some practical examples, here. For instance, we have the domain st-v-sw.net, or the URL http://www.st-v-sw.net. Now, I have a directory entitled "images", which contains (astonishingly enough) the images I use for the site. (Incidentally, way back in the old days (i.e. before the site was even located at ST-v-SW.Net) I used to have *everything* in the same directory. That's why the vast majority of my page filenames start with STSW . . . it helped me keep the pages organized. But I digress . . . )

So, let's take a look at a directory with an index page . . . http://www.st-v-sw.net/archive/, for instance. You get a webpage called index.html that I've made. On my directories, though, if there is no index then there is nothing you can see. For example, http://www.st-v-sw.net/images/ . . . if you click it, you'll see:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /images/ on this server.

That's because I set up my directories ages ago, and I decided then not to allow people to surf the naked directories.

But, let's see what happens if that isn't done. I've created a directory entitled "text". Now, take a look at what happens when you try to look at http://www.st-v-sw.net/text/. You get an indexed directory, and if you've surfed the internet a lot it probably looks familiar to you. If pictures, pages, or what-have-you were in there you'd be able to see them and pull them up at your leisure. You can even click on other directories inside that one and see their contents.

So now you know the technical reasons the above was possible. Let's look now at the reasons it actually happened:

The obsession with me that one of my opponents suffered from had been on the rise again. Minus some spikes here and there, it had been on the decline since "the good ole days" when he'd posted his torture and murder fantasy about me on ASVS.

(And, incidentally, Wong once conceded the concept of this being a death threat, though he's always denied that any threat or harassment of me was to be regarded as a death threat. Funny, that. Of course, I probably shouldn't have mentioned that, because having a long memory and being able to point out their obsession and hypocrisy simply means that I'm the obsessed one, somehow, 'cause they said so. Or something.)

The obsession culminated in the "Darkstar Database", a one-stop shop for assorted distorted contorted abortions of logic as were employed against myself and my writings over the years.

But I read it, since in between various unfounded attacks on me there were occasional references to actual facts relating to the debate, and as such there was the possibility I could find something with which to further idiot-proof my pages. On such an occasion I clicked my browser's "up" button instead of the "back" button, and quite accidentally found myself at his directory structure. There, like a panorama, was everything he had. I saw his pages and images. I also saw pages in progress . . . images as yet unused . . . and text files that Wayne had somehow managed to cut-and-paste from his e-mails without injuring himself.

I sat on that info for awhile, amused. I was tempted to post something about it immediately, but paused.

Tactically, merely mentioning it would tip him off to my access, and I did briefly entertain the notion of freaking them out by having ready-made rebuttals (including quotes from his just-posted pages) that could be posted instantaneously.

Strategically, they'd howl and scream about anything I said based on it. But, fact is fact, and I couldn't simply let their pretenses continue. They try to warp fact and history to paint me as the dishonest side. They are obsessed, yet desperately try to paint me as such. They discuss me at SD.Net day after day, now over two years since I posted there, and even have a list devoted to the topic. And yet, when I point this out to them, they claim I have "a bizarre persecution complex". (No, I'm simply acknowledging that you guys are freakin' weird, and that yes I have a long memory about it.)

They even claimed that this "outing" of the contents of their e-mail group constituted stalking, while they ironically and simultaneously point to their oldwebpage which purports to present all my personal information to any prospective stalker and harasser (and they know it's been used), from back when the Warsies were trying to harass me off the internet. Projecting much?

The simple fact is, my opponent's sloppy webmastery had just validated everything I've ever said against them in one swift stroke.

Meanwhile, at SD.Net the anti-me brigade has posted numerous pictures of themselves, rants about work and bosses, pictures of workplaces, and so on and so forth. If I were really the harassing stalker as they claim, their lives would be a living hell . . . just like the one they've sought to create for me.

Update II: The Poe Détente - May 2007

The above update has been edited somewhat. After yet another round and yet another offer on my part, a "Détente, Of Sorts" occurred with Poe.

I've largely removed direct references to Poe from this site, just as he has deleted his "Darkstar Database". I did, however, have to leave some of the references to him here, albeit obliquely, simply because I could hardly construct a narrative of how I got access to the list without reference to his site's text files.

The Star Wars Support Group

Update: The How and Why of the Above

Update II: The Poe Détente - May 2007