Jedi Master Spock wrote:I will comment to say three things:
First, it would require a few hours of work to create a good believable hoax screenshot.
Minutes, actually. Sure, you can screencap and then go all Paintbrush with it, but it's trivial to do it in-browser and then cap that. (At least in IE.)
Why invest that sort of time in creating a hoax?
Because we must be made to believe that the hardcore SDN folks are half-lunatic uncivilized internet savages who, like so many village idiots let loose upon the web, should have their access rights revoked the moment they started plotting nefarious attacks and making threats against people over a flippin' sci-fi debate.
Y'know, because nobody here ever thought anything like that before.
Oh, wait . . . ;-)
I mean, sure, this could simply be an effort to rile up the "silliest Trekkists" out of boredom . . . perhaps even a little TK action or somesuch . . . but that's basically like showing a bunch of Jews yet another secret war document purporting to prove Nazi ill-will toward Jews. Ho hum.
If it were a hoax, one would expect that it would be something current, like current secret plans to disrupt SFJ's hosting or hack the board or get a new ICS book written with Saxton and his cronies getting carte blanche to put in whatever BS they choose, along with a secret plot to drug Lucas and get him to sign a new canon statement or something. Boring ancient crap doesn't get attention, except the attention we are now giving it merely to comment that it is boring ancient crap.
No offense intended, Brunner . . . I applaud and approve of your action. It's just Mojo's time of the month.
(And why then make a page that says "Bravo Delta Zero" instead of "Bravo Delta Zulu"? The latter is the standard NATO phonetic for BDZ, so I understand how someone would come up with it; but I view the mistake as evidence against the hoax.)
Given that the whole choice of calling it "BDZ" was based on, well, the BDZ thing, I don't find that slip of the pen particularly troublesome either way.
What's more disturbing is that Brunner feels worried about retaliation.
If he's a semi-old-timer from over there, he saw them at their worst. I'm not aware of any recent evil on their part (haven't been keeping track), but back in the day any Enemy of the State was targeted . . . remember the maps of people's homes being discussed and commented upon, with planning escape routes and so on after knocks at the door? It's just a step from there to some loonie killing a pop star, as it were.
And if he had access to this private forum, one can't help but wonder what other similar things were observed behind the scenes.
That said, though, if that were my rationale I'd hardly be interested in painting a crosshair on myself (if even a dim one given how many members there were) by posting it to a billboard at the Enemy capital. But that depends on how many people were in the forum, my sense of their current activities (i.e. are a lot gone), and so on.
Honestly, therefore, the retaliation part is the worst aspect of the case. But people deal with things differently so I don't necessarily view it as a disqualifier.
But again, it's all a ho-hum thing. And again, as stated a few paragraphs up, no offense intended on that, Brunner.