TJR, in general, I agree with the vast majority of what you said regarding the nature of threaded posts and things like that. But here's where I think you're missing the boat--
You told Bill:
Don't get bent when people discuss things you post.
right after he had simply said:
My issue, not yours proffesor.
Now maybe you take that differently than me (and, apparently, others), but that didn't come across to me as "getting bent". To me, reading between the lines, it came across as "I prefer not to discuss it here." But apparently you didn't read it that way, and continued to push on. If you had just left it at that, none of the rest of this mess would have occurred. Regarding the "proffesor" comment--It came across to me as being more an attempt at folksy conversation than anything else.
You also told Bill:
Might I suggest you not bring up things you don't want to discuss on an OT board?
If by "things", you're referring to Bill saying that he doesn't have respect for Rich--read back through the posts, and you'll see that he's not the one who brought it up at all. It was Caymen who first opened that topic when he asked Bill,
Was your IP blocked from accessing or did you respect Rich's wished and not make posts?
And Bill responded with an indication that it was indeed an IP block, and was not the result of respect for Rich, simply because no such respect exists. Again, I thought it was worded well, in that it completely answered Caymen's question, but in a way that, to me, made clear that he wasn't going to discuss it further.
Maybe this is simply one of those cases where internet communication sucks when compared to face-to-face, simply because you lose nearly all sense of context. Most of the time, I find the complaints about you that some people repeatedly make on this board utterly ridiculous, without merit, and far more reflectant on the people making them than on you. But this time--sorry, but bill and others have a point.