The problem was the moderator. He barged into a conversation and started yelling at people and shoving them around. Nobody knew who he was, why he was there, or what he was even talking about.
The whole Robocop act of leaping in, grabbing someone by the scruff and yelling "PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND LAY DOWN ON THE CEILING RIGHT NOW! You have 10 seconds to comply!" was ridiculous. I was proud that people in there defended each other from the "invader."
It seems like he's very new to chatrooms because you don't just go into a room and expect any message you type in all caps to be taken seriously. If someone is doing that, they are being funny, or they are being an idiot. All-caps messages are to be either laughed at or ignored.
It's also a newbie thing to jump into a room with like 6 people in it and make a statement with absolutely no context, and not directed at any individual, and expect everyone to know what you are talking about, whom you are addressing, and actually expect them to stop what they are doing and listen to you.
My first thought was, "boy, Rich is gonna be mad when he finds out some 13 year old punk has hacked his chatrooms." He might as well have come in and said,
"l00k 4t m3!!! I 4m leet!!! I h4ve r3wt on ur b0x0rs!!! h4w h4w h4w!!1" and then started kicking people. He would have gotten the same response.
When the conversation continued about 10 minutes later, I tried explaining to him that nobody knew who he was, and that if he wanted peoples' cooperation, he would have gotten it had he simply come in and identified himself.
"Hi, I'm a moderator and we're trying to fix a glitch in the system. Hurley, how many chat windows do you have open?"
His response said it all: "I don't need to identify a thing!"
Dude, weak.
There was that, and throwing around threats to ban people, and comments like "don't give me any lip" (uhhh, dude, no way! You are NOT my mommy!) or something about "mouthing off." Being moderator does not make everyone your subordinates who are to be talked down to and must obey your every whim, unless you're on IRC in a room full of teenagers. I think his comments made it quite clear that he was on a power trip. I'm pretty sure that he was not given mod powers so that he could use them to coerce people into bowing down before him or paying deference to him.
I doubt that Rich would appreciate his business being represented that way. Moderators like that are the reason a lot of us are on this board instead of that other place.
I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. I don't have a problem with someone being a newbie, if that's the case. It looked like a misunderstanding but it also seemed like he wasn't willing to try to come to an understanding. Maybe he's usually a nice guy, but last night was not one of those times. If he wants to fix a problem and needs to interact with people in the chatrooms to do so, it would be helpful to treat them like peers instead of his children.
"Hi, I'm a moderator and we're trying to fix a glitch in the system. Here's what I need you to do... That would have avoided the whole mess.