Roar (Part 2)

Some of you already know that in SpinTunes 5 Round 3 I had to step in as an alternate judge.  I did all I could to avoid using my reviews, but we didn't have a 5th judge that round.  In my rankings I put Menage a Tune's entry last.  JoAnn was in a Google+ chat that night with me & a few other SpinTuners, and she had a unpleasant reaction to narrowly missing out on making it to round 4.  She yelled & cursed at me & put 100% of the blame on me for her not getting through.  Even went as far as publically insinuating that I rigged SpinTunes so she couldn't win.  Personally I know that's total bs, I don't care who wins, but it's not exactly something I want spread around the internet.  I don't really care that much what people think of me, but imagine how hard it would be to get new people interested in SpinTunes if you had someone telling them it's rigged.  There were some other smaller instances of poor sportsmanship as well, and I decided that it was best to just ban her from SpinTunes...so I did.

The ban had some conditions though.  I told her I'd be willing to talk with her in Google+ after she was banned for a certain length of time.  During that conversation I would decide whether or not I thought it was a good idea for her to be a part of SpinTunes again.

When it came time for that discussion, I wasn't looking for an "I'm sorry" as much as I was looking for signs of her being able to control herself & not cause issues in the future.  In my mind the worse case scenario is her flipping out on someone that I got to volunteer their time to the contest other than myself.  A friendly debate or disagreement is one thing, but I don't want them slandered just because they didn't like Hamlet or something else.

In my discussion with her she still believed all the things she had in the past.  I was given a couple different sob stories to justify her behavior, but not much that showed me she wouldn't be an issue in the future.  I really don't like banning people from SpinTunes, so I came up with a compromise that in the end I shouldn't have.  She wanted to compete...so I let her, but I kept her banned from the social media aspects of SpinTunes.  For instance the LP's, the Facebook group, etc... were things she was not allowed to be a part of.  I thought that maybe limiting her contact with the judges & others would lessen the chances of any more issues.  She was told this is the way it would be until I told her otherwise.

When the current contest started, I guess she forgot about this, because she seemed surprised when she was kicked for joining the LP.  I never implied that the conditions had changed, but now I was getting grief for it.  I was advised by a few people that I should just let her back into the contest totally.  In the minds of some a half banning was worse than being totally banned because she enjoyed the social part of SpinTunes more than anything.  So I scheduled another chat with JoAnn to discuss things.

In that chat...it was very evident that nothing had changed, and she nearly got herself completely banned again.  But after about 15 minutes of trying to talk some sense into her I gave up & just told her how it was going to be.  I told her if she continued with the stuff about me she was done with SpinTunes for good.  I mentioned multiple times that it wouldn't take very much.  A single misguided tweet would be enough because I was tired of dealing with it. (and honestly I was pissed at this point) If she attacked a judge, guest judge or another competitor, was a poor sport, or caused any issues at all she was done.  There was no way I could have emphasized this any more.

A few weeks later I was shown a blog post by JoAnn.  In it she mentioned me being the one that kicked her out of the round...but worse...she throws all of the people who had been willing to work with her in the past under the bus & was complaining about the song topics people wrote about.  That was the point in which I said I'm completely done with her.  She has been rebanned from SpinTunes with NO chance of ever being a part of it again.  No shadows, no collaborating with someone else (that's an instant DQ), no social media participation...she's done.

Before I ranked her group last that one time I would have considered JoAnn a friend.  We weren't best buds, but we talked dozens of times on Google+ & ArtiFicition, I had liked a number of her songs in the past & had given her positive reviews.  Too bad none of that measured up to getting 1 low ranking in her mind.