So basically the same old, same overexposed olds will be on the Internets now? Epic Fail. Gordy was more of a moderator, this seems like the Ruling Class’ PR machine and a way to “promote” special interest and a certian someone’s speculative land deals.

I don’t know. Maybe this community needs more focus on realtors and developers. There just isn’t enough of an attempt to satisfy the needs of those groups in C-U.

I wouldn’t mind hearing from McCollum. He has some good ideas. (Is it wrong to add that during my college paper days, he was one of the sources who would tell me, during an interview, that I needed to get more information—somehow ignoring the purpose of the interview?)

I still think Hulten is a world-class dufus who never should have been appointed to the council. But that’s the way the Champaign City Council does things these days. I miss Dan McCollum, even if I was not always informed enough for his taste.

Also, whenever I slam Hulten, one of his anonymous minions shows up. Hi, minion! How’s the life of a coward on the Internet?

Robert Knilands, who often posts insulting comments here under the name Wenalway, <span style=“color: #0066cc;”>was banned from IP.com two years ago</span> for being unable to engage in any sort of civilized discussion on here.  For some reason, even though he’s repeatedly stated how much he hates this site and everyone who posts on it, he has returned and resume posting his repetitive, uncreative and insulting comments.
Please don’t respond to his comments, as I’ll eventually delete them.  If you’re interested in judging for yourself the online behavior of Robert Knilands / Wenalway, you can look at <span style=“color: #0066cc;”>the July 3 Open Thread</span>. 
Robert Knilands / Wenalway will no doubt stick around for a few days, posting more insults like a monkey throwing feces at the wall of his cage, and he will continue to threaten me with lawsuits for whatever offense he’s imagined today.
So please remember, as you read IP.com for a while, that Robert Knilands / Wenalway is banned for repetitive posting of infantile and insulting comments.  Thanks, and sorry for the hassle.

And the minion has arrived! Anonymous and cowardly, as always.
Just to add a little background:
* When the smoking ban was under debate, a bunch of the IP posters would gather at Memphis on Main. Then they started daring me to show up. I had no interest in going to MoM or seeing those woodenheads, so I passed. Then they started making threats. Instead of dealing with the threats, Gordy took other action. I guess his reading comprehension level is not very high.
* Last summer, when the July 4 parade was canceled because of the weather (maybe 54 degrees; very windy; lots of rain), the dimmest bulbs in C-U and maybe the planet started throwing a fit about how stupid the parade organizers were for canceling and not rescheduling. I could not resist making fun of them. I don’t recall how the July 3 thread got involved, but I assume the fracas spilled over to that.
* Calling Gordy Hulten a “moderator” is a joke. The guy has no reading ability and no sense. It’s a travesty that he is on the Champaign City Council, and it shows just how low that group (minus the two people who did not endorse his appointment) has fallen. The two other people who applied were way more qualified, far less biased, and probably quite a bit smarter. But a desk chair would be smarter than Gordy.
Also, I pledged a while ago that whenever Mr./Ms. Minion showed up to copy that comment that I would respond. So, without further ado:
http://peoriapundit.com/blogpeoria/2006/11/20/illinipundit-is-anonymous-no-more/
“But it’s not OK to use your anonymity to be untruthful or to yank your reader’s chains. Gordy Hulten/IlliniPundit did that by creating publicly quitting and turning his blog over to others, when in fact he was continuing to write articles. He did this specifically to avoid responsibility for the things he wrote under the “IlliniPundit” identity, and he did it to protect his clients, to protect himself from being possibly dumped by clients.”
Pretty chicken move there by Gordy, I’d say.
So pile on, but there’s not much to respect about people who hide behind a secret Internet identity and then cut and paste the same stuff.
Also, have I mentioned Gordy should not be on the council? 

Also, anyone who wants a bunch of misinformation about how a conference championship football game would work should check out that Halfway Interesting link.

What was it about the Illini Pundit that attracted so many nut jobs?

I think the nutballs knew that all their crazy theories would be accepted and embraced.
That parade argument was a great example. Never mind that unsafe conditions created a hazard to participants and bystanders—IT WAS A TERRIBLE DECISION TO CANCEL IT!@!!!!!!! Or at least that’s what the crazies thought.
I also think a lot of them are just really afraid of change. That’s a common theme with a lot of C-U, and one that’s going to drag the cities way down if they don’t start moving past it, but the IP posters were absolutely rabid about any threats to their backward, old world ways.
The typical IP poster was probably a caricature of the Midwest hermit. He has bars on his windows and doors. A typical breakfast consists of fried eggs with cigarette ash on top. The 30-year-old clock radio on top of the refrigerator pipes out country music. There’s a poster of Nixon somewhere in the house, probably next to a yellowed brochure warning of the consequences of the energy crisis.
If they made Gran Torino with the typical IP poster playing the Eastwood role, the movie would start out the same way, but when the gang fight came onto the lawn, the resident would just fire a bunch of shots through the window. Bystanders would be killed. A standoff would follow. Eventually the shooter would be arrested, but the cameras would pick up a rabid tirade about God-knows-what. After the arrest, the neighborhood convenience store would probably go bankrupt from the sudden decrease in sales of cigarettes and Little Debbie snack cakes.
That might be a fun series—how movies would change if IP posters played the main characters. That plot twist would destroy a film like No Country For Old Men. Instead of one Javier Bardem character, there’d be dozens of them lurching around C-U.

“ChampaignPundit” is a pretty broken site—effectively, you can’t sign up for an account, because there’s no way to specify or change a password. That means you either do the email “reset my password” thing to get a temporary password every time you want to make a comment, or else—after repeatedly telling them their site’s broken for two months—you decide that they really only want to be a site where the usual suspects say the usual things over and over, and they’re more or less giving you the finger.

Glock 21, an IlliniPundit regular has described the new incarnation of the site as “dead blog walking”. The activity and updates have come to a stand still. The site had its strengths and weaknesses, but was a good barometer of what the landed gentry were thinking. They were particularly strong at analyzing financial matters and predicted the housing crash and recession long before it happened. For a time, political wannabes kept an eye on the Pundit to weigh the tea leaves. Now it’s a thousand page graveyard. 

“Glock 21, an IlliniPundit regular has described the new incarnation of the site as “dead blog walking”.”
Glock21 is an example of “brain-dead man walking.”
“The site had its strengths and weaknesses ...”
Mostly weaknesses, though. The main strength was tipping us off there are many, many crazy people in C-U who need to be dealt with harshly. The secondary strength was having people who were so insane that it was humorous, except when it was scary. Tertiary strength—letting us know there are backward people in C-U who are afraid of change. But we knew that already.
“They were particularly strong at analyzing financial matters and predicted the housing crash and recession long before it happened.”
Yeah. Too bad none of that happened.
What really happened—a bunch of people were opposed to Obama. Then, when businesses mysteriously made cuts after Obama won, we had a recession. Funny how that worked.
Actually, I’m sure you could find a link or two where someone at IP threw something at the wall and got it to stick. That happens at quite a few Web sites—anonymous morons make crazy statements, and every now and then one of them turns out to be right. It’s not the same thing as “predicting the housing crash and the recession,” though. 
It’s sort of like the belief that if you have enough monkeys banging at computers, one of them will hammer out Shakespeare. In the case of IP, it would be insane monkeys throwing poo at each other while they bang away.

Mark, your first paragraph is mostly wrong.
The second paragraph is true, though. Hulten has been a conflict of interest from Day One. The Champaign City Council made a big mistake in appointing him. The other two candidates were a lot better, a lot more intelligent, and far less biased.

I’ll agree that Gordy tolerated a lot of crap, but his patience wasn’t infinite—hence the banning of the nutcase übertea Wayne Johnson, exactly the kind of guy who gives libertarians the reputation for droolin’ batshittery they have. Gordy was also unwilling to pretend that gaybaiting was a Republican Party value (even when it was), so ya gotta give him credit for swimming upstream on that one.