Official Apology to Kobashenka

This is not the first apology I have had to issue, remembering long ago when I had to apologize to Mayor Emanuel, Link, Karakoran and the fallen Leninsbeard. But I am a man who realizes that he is not perfect and will own up and take full responsibilities for my mistakes when I make them.

As many of you know recently a new member on the forums by the name of @kobashenka has joined and really happened to take it by storm.

Despite the fact I was presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary from several forum members, I continued to believe that she was in fact not who she said she was. More specifically I believed that she was the ghost of Matthew Chris returned to haunt us.

Then yesterday evening I engaged in a conversation with Koba and it was a delightful conversation because she turned out to be and extremely interesting and all around good person. However pure interest was not the soul motivation for contacting her, my other motivation was to figure out if she was the person she said she was. This was not something I vocalized up front and even after the conversation where I was presented with more evidence to the contrary, I still vocalized doubts about her identity to other forum members and tried to locate inconsistencies in her story which lead to several breeches of privacy.

The only reason I vocalized any doubts about her identity was my own irrational paranoia. She is without a shadow of a doubt the person she says she is. It was extremely rude, insensitive, and mean-spirited of me to treat her with the amount of paranoia and suspicion that I did. No one deserves the feeling of being looked at as if you’re not who you say you are, or being lied to about your motives for talking to them, or having private information shared with others. Especially when it is not their fault and you are merely projecting your own fears and doubts onto them. For this I unreservedly apologize and feel nothing but shame.

She is not the first member I have treated with suspicions of multi-accounting, but I hope she will be the last because this cannot go on. We cannot treat every new member as if they were Napoleon, or Matthew Chris, or Stormfront, or some other person in our past. This incident has helped me realize how silly my paranoid beliefs are and how much they can come to hurt not just the community, but the individuals wrapped within them.

I don’t expect Kobashenka to forgive me for the way I have treated her but I can sincerely say that I hope that she will remain on the forums and be a productive and contributing member of them.

William Spencer Downing VII

Иосиф В. Сталин