UPM (which I think stood for Under Par Mikey) was a frequently banned member of the PDGA message board. However, he really wasn't a troll in the DGCR-sense of banned members. He's a real guy (whose name I forget, Mike Kernan maybe?) who was an active golfer in Louisiana? Someplace like that. Anyway, he had a beef with the PDGA and went on anti-PDGA tirades on the PDGA message board. Not surprisingly, the PDGA didn't care for that. So he got banned. A lot.
I don't really recall the details, though. I do remember he was running for the PDGA BoD and banned from the PDGA message board at the same time, which was epic. Pat Brenner was on the BoD and used to stir up the message board as well. It seemed like the PDGA didn't really have a handle on using social media, Brian Hoeniger was the PDGA Executive Director and he used to go on the message board and try to bully people. It was breathtakingly unprofessional, but the attacks he generally were responding to could get nasty and personal as well. It was a huge mess. We have had our moments here, but nothing as messy as the old PDGA message board.
It was all new, though. The Interwebz was new and people had to learn how to control all that flow of information and disinformation. I don't really fault the people involved, 'cause I was a pretty big-mouthed know-it-all in the Internet back then as well (even bigger than I am now, if you can believe that.) We all had to learn how to make this work.
