Bear_Nenno, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about whether the board is in danger of “withering away” because the mods/admins occasionally rub people the wrong way. I don’t see it, and you don’t seem to have specific evidence to that effect, more like just a sense of the pulse of the board that’s totally different than mine.
But regardless, I just think you telling Ed and the other admins basically “I’m concerned that if you keep being such assholes you’ll lose your job,” is really condescending. Why don’t you let Ed worry about his job. That’s the part that really bugs me about yours and Sapo’s posts. You’re telling Ed how he ought to feel, instead of just expressing your opinion on the moderation. Basically, you’re calling the moderators assholes and acting like they ought to be grateful that they have you to tell them that. If you want to say “The moderation sucks,” just say “the moderation sucks”, don’t act like you’re doing some huge service to the board by expressing your opinion.
I’ve gone back through the thread and every one of his posts has been the epitome of reasonableness. Even when he makes a jocular comment including the words ‘goddamn’ and frickin’ he gets hauled over the coals, ferchristsakes.
Yes, he has, on several occasions, made the ‘I’m the boss and if you don’t like it, get out of here’ type of comment, which, IMO, is a big mistake, and will do nothing to engender good customer relations, but at the moment, I really think he is trying to be conciliatory.
But the Dope *really *wouldn’t be the Dope if there wasn’t a massive inquest on everything that goes on here.
You won’t mind if I wait for someone with more official standing than you to make that ruling, would you?
I mean, I’m all for people getting themselves banned in pursuit of the fight against ignorance and all, but I think we should all get our affairs in order first.
I see nothing in the post that is un-civil, or even trending in that direction. What I see are substantive issues that are being studiously ignored.
In the thread linked to above, where Euthanasiast’s suspension was discussed, there were several “common sense rules”, or guidelines, or something, that were cited. The trouble being, none of them were being followed. So they don’t seem to be as “common sense” as one could like.
And the big one is that the thread title that started the whole thing was no more misleading, and no more an example of trolling, than a dozen others every week, but which do not embarrass any sacred cows.
Now if the rule is “No misleading thread titles”, that is common sense. If the rule is “Misleading thread titles are OK in the Pit to make a point”, that’s common sense too.
If the rule is “Misleading thread titles are OK in the Pit to make a point, except on certain topics, and we won’t tell you which topics, you just have to know, and we will deny it if you say what you think it is, and any discussion that makes it clear is by definition un-civil”, that is not common sense.
This is perfectly reasonable.
Can we take it for granted that it is, and then address the other issues that have been raised?
This is not only about Euthanasiast’s insult. There are other issues. These other issues have to do with inappropriate mod actions.
I am getting the strong impression that you would like to dismiss or shut off any discussion where complaints about moderation are well founded.
Pit rules or not, people are making serious points. Could you please address them?
And FWIW, I don’t feel they should be grateful for my comments.
And I don’t think they should be overly grateful for the presence of each poster as an individual, either.
I think maybe I’ve just hit my limit of hearing “I don’t care if you stay, I dont need you, it’s free to stay, free to leave…” crap from Ed. It trips my meglomaniac sensor (probably much like your enterpretation of my reply tripped yours) and I felt he should be shoved back to reality. I feel like he does need the posters. Not me or you necessarily, but the posters in general. And when he condescendingly says otherwise, over and over, it gets old. I’m not concerned for his job, so much. But I would like to see the board thrive–with or without Ed and his ego.
See, he’s trapped in a time where people came to the Straight Dope to read his columns and articles. Nobody gives a shit anymore. The world has wiki. It’s moved on.
Now people come to the Straight Dope for the message board. For the content provided BY THE POSTERS. And I don’t think he fails to realize that so much as he is just too proud to admit it.
So if there was a better way for me to articulate that. Then pretend I did.
I really think expressing opinions in the Pit has gotten very risky very recently. No one knows what “uncivil” really means, especially if the sample Shodan has chosen is exemplary. And “uncivil” can lead to banning, so there’s going to be a certain reluctance to post things that are controversial, controntational, disagreeable, etc. Whether that’s the grand design of TPTB, I can’t say. I can say (I think) that will be the clear result.
I would like to speculate that maybe TPTB have been defending Pitters to the CL folks who really don’t have a clue as to the Pit’s role in a MB, or why the Pit attracts so many Dopers to hang out here, and have been advising TPTB every time they bring it up (if they do) to “Shut the whole Pit down, apply a heavy hand, go nuts” and now TPTB are frustrated with a more moderate approach and are applying the clueless advice of people utterly uninvolved with the SDMB historically. Certainly, that’s preferable to thinking this whole brouhaha is just an emotional over-reaction to defending **Lynn’s **honor.
I think the “Non-Pit Rules” idea is a fine one. It’s basically throwing up a caution flag on the thread. I think it will work best if it’s used sparingly and if it’s temporary, so that once tempers have had a chance to cool down the Pit-style discussion can resume.
There may only be one or two threads a month where it’s a useful alternative to just closing the thread outright. But why not have it as an option for those 1-2 threads a month? And if it turns out to be a horrible idea, or if it ends up being overused, they can scrap it.
Sometimes I think that if Ed came in and offered free ponies and ice cream to everyone who wanted them, we’d have a six-page Pit thread about it by the next morning.
I couldn’t agree more with this. Having customers being uncertain of the rules in such an inflammatory place as the Pit is very user unfriendly. And let’s be in no doubt, some rules are undetermined; in particular the one that started all this off concerning titling threads. In fact with this new NPR, I think it’s got worse. While Ed Zotti has cleared up the abusing mods issue correctly, I really think he needs to address this very contentious issue.
I just can’t see that the CL people would be that interested in the minutiae of the board. They may not like the tone, but I bet they like the footfall.
I couldn’t agree more. But it’s good in a way. It shows that people here really care about the SD. It means something to them. They’re committed. Otherwise they’d all just walk away.
I’m not actually suggesting that they’re deeply involved. I’m just suggesting that it’s possible that they regard TPTB’s time and energy dealing with Pit issues, to the extent that they’re aware of it, as wasteful.
Example: CL folks send Ed a message and he gets back to them 20 minutes later with the remark, “Sorry, folks, I was dealing with a Pit management issue, wassup?” and someone idly inquires what a Pit management issue might be, Ed explains the history, function, and purpose of the Pit in 10 seconds or less, and the response, before they move on to weightier upper-level-management-type issues is, “WTF? You have a section where posters feel free to abuse you? Shut it down, man, we’ll support you…” liberating TPTB from feeling that there’s any reason to take posters’ perspectives seriously now.
As I say, this is slightly preferable to thinking that this whole thing is just a justification of Lynn’s erratic behavior.
Y’know, instead of doing all this mucking about with changing rulesets mid thread, plus increased moderation time needed and all that, why not use the basic vBulletin function of splitting threads?
Instead of just declaring a pit thread to be no-longer-a-pit thread, take the worthy posts and make them into a new thread. Or strip out the pit-worthy posts into their own pit thread and move the rest elsewhere.
I dunno. I seem to recall hearing stories about a certain mod/admin/whatever telling people to tone it down because she put this place on her resume…this whole thing brought that back to mind for some reason…
A purely speculative number, pulled from the deepest recesses of my ass. It might be useful more often than that, or not even that often. My point is that I can think of threads where this might have been a useful option in between letting it go and locking the thread, but it’s a rare situation.
I imagine Ed used it in this thread as part of the experiment. Better to try it now so we can see the potential pitfalls than to wait until a thread gets out of hand. For instance, they’ve already fixed the problem of how to let everyone know that Non-Pit Rules have been applied.
I don’t know if it will be overused or not. I hope not.
Fair enough. Accusing them of what they didn’t do, then. Better? Just as Lynn accused Euth of trolling, Ed is implying that the post he quoted was being uncivil. It wasn’t. People don’t like being accused of something they didn’t do. Some fight back and presto! they now have an actual offense they can be modded for.
The thing is that the rules keep changing. And different people keep getting ticked (or banned) and leaving. Membership replacement might eventually no longer be enough to make up for the people leaving and then you have no board. And actually it is NOT their board. It is CL’s board and if they keep messing up, CL might decide that they are nor the path to profitability. So yes, they do need the people to be happy and stay. This doesn’t mean they have to do away with rules, just that they have to be smart about them.
If by “you” you meant me personally: Wow, how clever of you.
If by “you” you meant generic you. It is already happening to a degree and it might continue to happen or not. Time will tell. That attitude, though, is not the kind that builds and grows businesses. I hope you never get any position of policy making in any kind of business I have to use.
Nobody is offended (except you, maybe, as you seem to be taking this rather personally at this point). We are just adults talking things over. I have agreed with Ed before, and I am disagreeing with him now. If he doesn’t like it, he is more than capable of coming to let me know. He can do just fine without you getting underfoot, I am sure.
I ordered a salad, I got a wheel of cheese. Of course I will tell the waiter that this is not what I ordered. If the waiter tells me that this is his restaurant and I can leave if I don’t like cheese, well. In that case I just don’t care about the nosy guy in the next table saying “yeah, cheese roolz. Eat your cheese, you communist”. I will continue to try to communicate intelligently with the waiter and see how far it takes me.
Well, you let them know when you see them, and be sure to call them by their name because saying “Sapo” will only confuse them. That is not what I said. At all.
All I am saying is that I take issue with staff who say “The users should thank their lucky stars I deign to let them post here and kiss my ass on a daily basis”. So far none has, at least not with that many words. Which is why I have the decency of not putting words in their mouths. Try it.
