Farewell to Our Friend at Absolute Wrong and Thank You For Helping Us Expose The Mac Stone Regime

Our fellow in the struggle to expose harmful advice and cyberbullying at Absolute Write Water Cooler, Fell of Absolute Wrong (a private investigator and all around nice guy who has vowed to continue to help us in our fight), has decided to retire his blog for personal reasons; however, he has generously donated his best Absolute Wrong pages to us that portray an organization not only engaged in acts of repugnant bullying but also operating illegally as a business entity, as follows:

The Real Owner of Absolute Write - Mac and Melodi Are The Same

In New York and in Washington State, it's illegal to register a business under an assumed name unless you also register your assumed name as "doing business as" (DBA). You can review the regulations at the New York's Division of Corporations and Washington's Business Licensing Services pages.

This is important because, at the time of this writing, MacAllister Stone, owner of Absolute Write, lives in Washington State and has Absolute Write registered in New York (UPDATE 1/15/2014: Scratch that; it's no longer registered and is operating illegally). However, MacAllister Stone is not a real person. Her real name, Melodi Susanne Sherman, is not registered as a DBA of MacAllister Stone in either state (UPDATE12/31/2013: It was at one time, however). That makes Absolute Write, the business entity, illegal.

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Absolute Write Owners on Shaky Legal Ground

Melodi Sherman aka MacAllister Stone appears to be on shaky legal ground concerning her use of an unregistered DBA for business purposes. Silly me, I assumed Absolute Write was properly registered. You know what they say about making assumptions?

Apparently, when Melodi purchased Absolute Write, the registration moved from New York to Washington. Absolute Write didn't come up in previous database queries because all three names were registered under the same umbrella: MacAllister Stone. If you follow the link to the Department of Revenue and check the UBI, you'll find the business license for MacAllister Stone that expired in 2009.

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Silencing the Lambs - From The Lost "Absolute Wrong"

If you're a member of Absolute Write, I guarantee you've seen the moderators sweep into a discussion where the topic is one of their pet peeves, use the unfortunate poster as a punching bag, invite long-time members to join them, and then lock the thread and sometimes boot the member.

It's never a straightforward warning about the rules, or a request for clarification. The moderators are not there to facilitate discussion, they're there to drive the discussion. If it ventures out of the bounds they like, even if the discussion is polite, it gets locked if for no other reason than "attitude."

It took me about five minutes to gather some examples. I went to a single topic and looked through the first few pages for locked threads. To be fair, two of the threads I saw were locked for legitimate (at least, what most forum admins would consider legitimate) reasons: resurrecting ancient threads. The rest were examples of moderators treating members like garbage.

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Moving Forward; or, Is There Life After Mean People?

If you're reading this blog, it's likely you fall into one of three categories:

1. You're a member of the AW in-crowd. You aren't likely to be an average AW member, because average AW members aren't considered good enough to know about the Sekrits (TM).
2. You're an active, engaged, and curious member of the broader online writing community. By now, this blog has been mentioned on several other sites dedicated to fighting "mean people" behavior.
3. You've been recently mistreated on AW and found your way here through referral or a search engine.

I want to address this post to all three groups, because they all have one thing in common: they've been victims of mean people at some point in their lives.