The Martialist: The Magazine For Those Who Fight Unfairly

The Inevitable Demise of The Martialist's Hosted Forum at MartialTalk

There's No Room for Martialists Among Sheep

By Phil Elmore

As you may or may not know, until May 29, 2006, The Martialist maintained a "hosted forum" at MartialTalk.com. Bob Hubbard, an IT professional who's fairly prominent in the Western New York martial arts community, owns and runs MartialTalk, which is a large high-traffic discussion forum that has been kicking the virtual posterior of sites like e-budo.com for some time now. Bob's a nice guy and works hard to run his site in a fair and professional manner. Unfortunately, the size and scope of MartialTalk, combined with its prevailing culture, cause him some logistical difficulties where anything but the the left-leaning lowest common denominator are concerned.

Specifically, MartialTalk is dominated by the art in "martial arts." A high proportion of the posters there are the touchy-feely, learn-about-yourself, "develop your feelings and your inner chi blah blah blah," martial-artsy breed of technical and traditionalist exponents. These are people who place a premium on colored belt rankings and related credentials. These are people who start to freak out whenever practical, pragmatic use of force is discussed. These are people who fear weapons, for the most part, who hate political conservatives, and who consider a publication like The Martialist to be "paranoid" and "fearful."

Bob and his administrative team have implemented page after page of rules, quite literally, in an attempt to run the site in an objective and evenly applied manner. The problem, though, is that like in any legalistic and highly controlled environment, it's almost impossible to remember and keep in mind all those rules -- with the result that almost everyone is violating a rule regardless of whether they know they are (unless they never have an opinion stronger than, "I like satin gis more than plain cotton gis," or maybe, "Hooray! I passed my green-belt-with-two-yellow-stripes test!" The site has so many rules, in fact, that just banning troll takes days if not weeks of secret deliberation among the moderator staff, while the threads in question are locked "pending admin review" and various "suspensions" are handed down by the "team" to individual posters. I can't help but think that this approach -- codifying every possible permutation of user behavior in an attempt to make the rules as objective as possible -- removes individual judgment from the process and leaves the whole thing ripe for abuse.

That brings me to the last few weeks, in which I was slumming at a few different non-martialist sites in attempting to 'enlighten the masses,' or words to that effect as described here by one of our members. As you can imagine, whenever I utter an opinion at a site like that, I immediately anger a lot of people. Some of them are traditionalists who naturally feel threatened by pragmatic, non-traditional martialists who don't fit within their hierarchal framework. Some of them are simply insecure individual martial artists who number among the ranks of trolls who dislike me personally (for any number of reasons, up to an including jealousy and resentment for my success in the field of self-defense). Some of them are simply spectators who never met a populist hero they couldn't cheer on from the sidelines; there were a few MartialTalk posters who garnered the applause of the mob simply by having the courage to post and insult me.

What none of these people could ever muster the courage or the wherewithal to do was debate me substantively and rationally on my ideas. Every thread to which I posted invariably became a debate about me rather than about what I had to say -- which is to be expected when a strong-willed advocate of pragmatic self-defense is willing to discuss and defend such ideas among the weak-willed and weak-minded.

After a while, it was impossible for me to post anything at MartialTalk without prompting howls from scores of "martial" artists who couldn't handle an opinion with which they disagreed -- and who couldn't actually debate anything reasonably. Bob started taking flak from all sides, as he'd get dozens of reports through his forum system anytime I wrote anything, all while fielding my own complaints by PM (because I was told not to engage trolls directly when they started taking shots at me). Every so often I'd get a self-righteous nastygram from the "admin team" warning me about my behavior (which was never quoted or specified).

This culminated in me being "suspended" from the site for two days for "abusing the reporting system," when I reported multiple posts that were simply personally insulting. Members of Bob Hubbard's moderator staff started taking shots at me and actively trolling me, bringing up disputes from other threads in unrelated topics. To his credit (and I would like to stress that I have no complaints about Bob or his handling of these matters -- I get the impression that the members of his "admin team" exerted a lot of pressure on him and put him in a difficult position) Bob handled that situation and I understand that this is not how he runs his site or intends it to be run.

In circumstances only too representative of what it's like to try and participate at MartialTalk, however, I recieved yet another message from the "admin team" informing me I had been suspended while an exchange I had was reviewed. (Specifically, a troll banned from Pax Baculum posted at MartialTalk complaining about this, and when I told him to "get lost," this offense was so great as to prompt an eventual "two week suspension" during which, I was informed, my continued involvement with MartialTalk would be reviewed.)

I originally had The Martialist's hosted forum created at MartialTalk as a means of cross-promoting both sites. Bob benefited from the added traffic and The Martialist benefited from the added exposure. The forum never had much traffic except when things got heated, because (obviously) most everyone inclined to post in our forum posts HERE. Still, I liked having my little outpost of reality-based practicality among the frontier wilderness of misguided martial-artsy sheep (among whom were sprinkled more than a few wolves I could respect, including Bob Hubbard himself).

When I received the e-mail tonight informing me of this two-week "review" process, I decided there was no point in continuing to cause Bob further grief. I myself was a little tired of the pompous administrative e-mails chastizing me for daring to call trolls what they are, or for defending myself from personal insults. This suspension business, coming as it did on the heels of blatant violation of MartialTalk's rules by those responsible for enforcing those rules, was simply too much to take. I e-mailed all concerned and asked them to remove both my hosted forum and my account, as The Martialist and MartialTalk simply are not a good fit. Their cultures are not compatible and persisting in mingling the two would only cause more harassment for all involved.

Ironically, while not banned from MartialTalk (unless they eventually decided I would be, I guess), I have voluntarily joined the ranks of the dispossessed (ranks that include various Bullshido trolls painstakingly and laborious removed from the site after trolling it for weeks). It saddens me a little not to be able to provide a realistic and practical alternative viewpoint to the many members of MartialTalk who mistakenly believe they are partaking of reasonable self-defense information (if they are even looking for such information, which is not a given)... but I've learned that no matter how much I might like to, I cannot save such people from themselves. Trying to do so leads one to the sort of policed-ideology approach that has doomed and is ruining sites on the other end of the spectrum, where in-crowd cliques drive off anyone who dares to question the party line.

It is clear to me that the community we have built at Pax Baculum represents the ideal balance for a discussion forum. We offer reasonable, informed, rational discussion on realistic self-defense, in an environment where trolls have a short shelf life, the ridiculous is ridiculed, and strong opinions are not considered forbidden for fear of upsetting those who lack emotional fortitude. I have long fought the suspicion that we are somehow special because I don't want to believe that so many other sites (and therefore their populations, with exceptions) simply don't get it. I am not happy about giving in to that suspicion even in a small way tonight. It underscores the ever-tightening, always-shrinking envelope of practical self-defense in which we choose to spend our time -- outside of which so many "martial" artists find themselves.

I hold Bob Hubbard in high regard and he's welcome here any time. I wish I could hold his discussion site in similarly high esteem. I cannot. MartialTalk will continue to grow and prosper; of that I have no doubt. Sadly, the bigger it gets, the more it will cater to the lowest common denominator -- though this denominator is at least an order of magnitude better than the predominant profile at troll sites like Bullshido. MartialTalk, as a high-volume, high-profile forum, doesn't need a niche forum like Pax Baculum or a realistic self-defense publication like The Martialist.

I cannot help but think, however, that it has lost more than we have gained from my decision to close out the hosted forum there.