Awww... I thought ITYIWT wrote a great ending.
Some stuff really was sorted out - and the thread was reasonably mild (compared to some of the flamers I've seen in the past, here and elsewhere...)
Lots of people were hurt back then. Some left and came back, some never returned, some stayed all the way through - but hardly any of us who were here weren't hurt at the time. I was. HH was. Emma was. Alanzo was. Karen was.... it's a long list, I'd better stop here. My point is, very few people got through it unscathed.
But it was going on everywhere - Facebook, Indy sites, WWP... there was infighting just about anywhere you'd look at an ex site during that time. ESMB got caught up in it, too - but ESMB wasn't the CAUSE of it, either.
Emma made a bold move when she invited and introduced Karen and Mike. The introduction hit some as a celebrity sort of thing, but she clearly stated at the time and afterwards that she didn't mean it that way. She wanted to include people she liked and who were fighting the abuses, even if they were still scns (but out of the Cult of Scamontology scns). It was an unpopular idea on the board at the time, and Karen's announcement style and Mike's self-boasting style ticked off a few people. (Mike Laws doesn't really post that way anymore)
IMHO, in retrospect, inviting them was a VERY WISE move.

Who would know that by 2013, we'd all be working together?
ESMB has become a more integrated Internet site, but maybe its good to learn from our history.
I was pretty outspoken about not liking Marty a year or two ago. Now, well, :confused2: I sure like Monique, and I like the changes I've seen from Marty and I'm willing to give him a fair go.
People change. We grow up, I guess.
And that's the beauty of exscn and the ex network in general - we can CHANGE! We can roll with the tide, we can learn and grow, we can, and have, become better - because it's NOT Scientology. We can forgive. We can apologise. We can learn. We can admit our mistakes. IT's NOT fixed into a time like 1950. We KNOW we're not perfect, so we try that much harder.
Because we've healed so much since leaving the cult and cult-think.
Nobody wants to see a repeat of what happened then. If that was Alanzo's point, it's a good point. If it wasn't, well, I think it was worth a little revisit to that ugly time so we can remember those mistakes and how we overcame them and not repeat the same things again.