I have decided to stop supporting Total Commander in any way.

[white]

I have decided to stop supporting Total Commander in any way. The background of this decision can be found here, where I wrote this moderator message:

Moderator message from: white » 2026-07-08, 11:57 UTC

Sorry if you feel offended, but this thread was going completely over board.

Your comment about my possible emotional state is irrelevant, off-topic, and constitutes another subtle ad hominem attack.

Your requests became more and more extreme - if I implemented them, the program would become completely unusable.

I did not make any requests. I simply pointed out issues. These issues are not extreme, and designing Total Commander in a way that respects protection by password and encryption does not make Total Commander completely unusable.

What is extreme here is your response to my assertion that it takes me more than three seconds to process a warning displayed in a tooltip if I didn't already know what it said:

Sorry but you are way too paranoid. If a user doesn't get it in 3 seconds, he will not get it in a 1000 years. Really, I don't know why I spend so much time on this bullshit.

What is also extreme is a user expressing the wish for another user to leave the forum:

And it wouldn't bother me at all if a user decided now to stop using TC and end his activity on the forum,because I am interested in further development, not stagnation.

What is furthermore extreme is that you encourage this behavior, contribute to it, and are now doubling down on it. These actions clearly violate the forum rules.

I simply could not go on with it like this.

That's hardly an excuse to violate forum rules. Even if extreme requests are being made, there are many ways to respond without misbehaving. For example, you could say, "Thanks for your request, I will take it under consideration," or "Thanks for your request, but I have decided not to change it." And if you are holding a grievance, you could have discussed it via email and in a civil manner.

2ghisler(Author)
You have made it clear now that you believe it is acceptable for people (including yourself) to violate forum rules and behave abusively or hostilely whenever they perceive that extreme requests are being made. This stance undermines some of the most fundamental rules that keep this community respectful and constructive. It also invalidates previous moderator actions taken to uphold these rules. Because of this, you've made it effectively impossible to enforce forum rules. Furthermore, I cannot support a software product whose author encourages and participates in abusive behavior, whether directed against me or others. Therefore, I have decided to cease all my activities supporting Total Commander in any way. These include the following activities where I made significant contributions:

• Answer support questions on the forum and help solve people's problems.
• Diagnose and report bugs and issues, test Total Commander versions and report test results.
• Make suggestions to improve Total Commander, including providing improved help texts.
• Activities as a global moderator:
  • Work in a professional and transparent manner.
  • Uphold forum rules.
  • Manage forum: move posts and threads, split and merge threads, delete duplicate posts.
  • Approve or disapprove posts by new users.
  • Fix quoting mistakes made by users.
  • Fix small mistakes made by Ghisler.
  • Give advice on fighting spam (resulted in significantly reducing spam accounts being created).
  • Keep statistics related to fighting spam, including generating graphs.
  • Delete spam posts and ban users.
  • Help configure and maintain the forum software.
• Create and improve wiki pages on the Total Commander wikis (English and German).
• Improve organization within the wikis.
• Maintain the wiki page List of changes that was created by me.
• Maintain the wiki page List of internal commands that was created by me.
• Maintain the wiki page List of checksums for installers that was created by me.
• Maintain Total Commander version information on the wikis.
• Help configure and maintain the wiki software, including functioning as a interface administrator and administrator for both wikis.
• Report errors and outdated information on the Total Commander website.
• Report configuration errors for the dns servers used for the Total Commander version check.
• Create and maintain tools related to Total Commander. Tools that I created are:
  • tcdownload.cmd
  • TC key.cmd
  • CAB Create
  • Thunderbird.cmd
  • Flopsave.cmd

2ghisler(Author)

• Please remove the role of global moderator from my account and remove all special privileges.
• Please remove the role of interface administrator and administrator for the English and German wiki from my account and remove all special privileges.
• All tools created by me are now withdrawn and I have removed them from the forum. Users who have one or more of my tools already on their computer may continue to use these tools, but distribution of my tools is not allowed.

I did all my activities because I enjoyed doing them. Thank you for the opportunity and the trust that allowed me to do them. It was fun, but I will now have my fun somewhere else

[petermad]

Indeed a drastic move - I hope you might consider changing your mind. You will be a big loss for the Forum.

If you don't reconsider this move, I will thank you for the great contribution to this Forum and to the development of TC, that you have given us,

[norfie²]

That's a pity.

[HerbieH]

To petermad: Support! Some people could learn from the way, YOU always approach TC issues and suggestions in a positive way.

To ghisler(Author): Support! Sometimes you have to put the foot down, and tell people the truth about behaviour very directly.

To white: Your contribution to TC has been outstanding. Although I don't write a lot, I often read this forum. If I should thank everyone, who have given me ideas to my own personal TC setup, it would make me much more annoying, than I already am .
Conflicts are part of life.

[Horst.Epp]

We will miss you
You are as long as I registered in this forum.

[hi5]

Thank you being a good steward of the forum - to slightly modify a quote of Mr Cleese (which I hope you take in good humor):

I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now so suddenly depart from the forum, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say, "Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading b*stard! I hope he fries."

[Fla$her]

2white
You know, your reaction is amazing! You've repeatedly made contradictory decisions (selective vision: see X, but fail to see Y), which users didn't like and never made concessions and compromises in personal correspondence. But when the problem of evaluating your actions affected you personally (very insignificantly), you immediately bucked and protested against the administrator, demanding consistency from him. Like, I'm a moderator, you can't touch me in public. This is due to egocentricity or something else, I can't assess it, but it's definitely something beyond the bounds of sound logic. In exceptional cases (when the boiling point is reached), a developer can express his emotions, even if he is an admin. I don't see any reason to look for a big problem here. And he evaluated you primarily as a user, not a moderator. You turned out to be too intrusive in questions that became unacceptable to several other users (not just here, by the way), and the question itself, given its importance to you, was raised surprisingly rather late. Just because the administrator usually doesn't act as you do in the same situations does not make him an encourager of violations. He always acts and acted many times more softly than you. But it didn't bother you until it affected you personally.

You delete all new user posts responding to your moderator's remarks, but now you hurriedly get involved in disputes with a superior who has made his final decision. So where is your sequence? In most forums, there is a rule not to make the administration's disputes public. Why didn't you follow this common rule?

There is no point in making the current rules into a literal and meticulous regulator for managing everything and everyone. This property of peremptory control in the likeness of the strictest prison is more harmful than not. There should also be flexibility in management. When you evaluate the posts of others, you transfer the accumulated critical mass of inappropriate messages in the topic here. What prevented you from following the same way in the last situation? Why put it on a personal level?

Even more surprising to me is this:

All tools created by me are now withdrawn and I have removed them from the forum. Users who have one or more of my tools already on their computer may continue to use these tools, but distribution of my tools is not allowed.

Please note that no one kicked you out of the forum, no one banned you. You were in the status of a supermoderator, i.e. the decision to burn your bridges and leave came only from you. Therefore, deleting useful content with your solutions is the height of cynicism and disrespect for users. This cannot but come from purely selfish thoughts. In my memory, people on various forums lost their moderator status not on a whim, and they also had the opportunity to edit old posts and even delete them, but they didn't do this only because they were demoted by their superiors. You do this to yourself, you punish yourself, your resentment factor is negligible compared to those who were publicly punished or temporarily banned. So why should others lose this payload because of your attitude? The very fact that you leave a mark behind you as a publisher or developer makes you stronger in the eyes of those who can appreciate it. And you just destroy everything, only burying "yourself" and your mark with it. The question is, why?

Some of your conclusions, frankly, seem far-fetched and hyperbolic. For a sane person, one topic and one situation cannot become a reason to give up everything. Therefore, I encourage you to return to sanity and reconsider your position (at least regarding you as a forum participant), because this all looks like nothing more than an impulse, a gesture of pique, but certainly not a rational approach. If you're burned out as a moderator, one can understand that (I have encountered this more than once), but turning away from the TC community is simply stupid, this is clearly not the right case.

[JOUBE]

In light of this thread, the following item of the Forum rules, Wiki, Guidelines for Moderators should be supplemented:

4.) Be nice to each other and respect the moderator. Profanity and insults will not be tolerated. If you have a problem with another member turn to the respective moderator and if the moderator can't help you send a private message to Admin.

4.) Be nice to each other and respect the moderator. Profanity and insults will not be tolerated. If you have a problem with another member turn to the respective moderator and if the moderator can't help you send a private message to Admin. There is no dual role: if a moderator participates, or has participated, in the discussion within a thread, he act as a regular member in that thread and cannot function as a moderator within that thread; instead, he had to turn to other moderators or the admin if necessary.

The change of role ultimately led to this situation, in which the belief arose that one could push anything through. Attempts to stop were in vain.

Edit: ... and cannot function as a moderator there; -> and cannot function as a moderator within that thread;

[white]

2ghisler(Author)

• Please remove the role of global moderator from my account and remove all special privileges.
• Please remove the role of interface administrator and administrator for the English and German wiki from my account and remove all special privileges.

2ghisler(Author)
I haven't seen any update regarding my requests to remove the global moderator and administrator roles from my account. Leaving these roles active might confuse users and prospects about my current support for Total Commander. Please remove my special roles and privileges as soon as possible.

[ghisler(Author)]

I'm sorry to hear that! You will be a big loss for the forum. I understand and respect your decision, and will remove your moderator rules.

Unfortunately your requests were threatening the very existence of Total Commander, so I could not compromise with you in this regard. I apologize for making you angry, though.

[white]

I'm sorry to hear that! You will be a big loss for the forum. I understand and respect your decision, and will remove your moderator rules.

I clearly requested twice to remove all privileges, but you only removed the moderator role. I still have the "Spam fighters" role and access to the private moderator forum. And it seems you changed nothing with regard to both wikis. Please remove everything as I requested.

Unfortunately your requests were threatening the very existence of Total Commander, so I could not compromise with you in this regard. I apologize for making you angry, though.

You used that deflection already (see the moderator message in the first post). This is about you violating forum rules and encouraging others to create a hostile environment.

Again, your comment about my possible emotional state is irrelevant, off-topic, and constitutes another subtle ad hominem attack.

Again, I did not make any requests.

Again, even if requests were made, that is no excuse for violating forum rules and encouraging hostile behavior towards other users. Your narrative that you were the victim of requests that "were threatening the very existence of Total Commander" and that you had no other choice but to violate forum rules and encourage a hostile environment in the forum is ridiculous. It seems that you don't want to take responsibility for your actions and that you don't care about the negative impact it has.

[Native2904]

2White
Hi,
I also find it a shame that you no longer want to be part of this forum… you were always a great help.
I just wanted to share a thought:
I never got the feeling, in your discussions, that you were harmed or insulted on a personal level… rather, I always experienced it as a very lively discussion among experts… in my own field (energy generation), there’s also plenty of debate (Between engineers and those who actually have to put it into practice), and emotions find their way in there too… but for someone to feel insulted and offended to the point of leaving the stage entirely… is actually hard to imagine - too much depends on a single mistake for personal sensitivities to take center stage.

[ghisler(Author)]

2white
Your special rights have been revoked.