Thank you for that. I’m getting a Tim Curry/Rocky Horror type thing floating across my brain.
Surely you mean Dr. Frankenfurter, not Rocky Horror?
Sure, sailor. I bet you say that to all the mods.
Oh, yeah…
P.S.
Mod note:
Title changed at the OP’s request.
Tuba’s attitude, while possibly, understandable, was not justified. If there is a policy that admins have established they should follow them. If they don’t they don’t really have the right to complain about someone asking about it at all. While they can be annoyed by constant harping about every decison, decisons or actions that are contrary to their policy should be fair game to honest questioning.
I know what I meant. I’ve seen those pics of Skipmagic in his undies, and “Horror” is a perfectly apt descriptor. 
I finally start my first Pit thread after seven years, and this is what it turns into? I was worried about Lynn’s andTuba’s reactions to this, but now I’m afraid Giraffe is gonna ban me! (From the pit, anyway!):smack: 
I’d really hoped Lynn or Tuba would have something to say here. I even hoped we could discuss what happened without anyone getting ugly. (I know, I know. I hope Belgian chocolates wrapped in hundred-dollar bills fall from the sky, too.)
Oh well. One thing I absolutely won’t say is that anyone owes me (or anyone else here) anything (besides continued access to the boards for the duration of the subscription and the my compliance with the rules).
I still wish I knew–are the folks who work here really that stressed/pissed? Are the members really that hard to deal with? (Not me of course, I mean you other guys!) If it gets so bad, why do they do it? Most people burn out here after a while, but Lynn and Tuba have both been working here since the AOL days! Has anyone else been here in an official capacity that long? (Besides Ed and Cecil, of course.) They must like something about putting up with us, or is just habit now?
I think it’s the whole “bathing in the blood of virgins” thing. It seems to rejuvenate.
So that’s the secret ritual you have to go through to become a mod, Lynn and Tuba drain all the blood from you.
That explains why they are so touchy, the quality of virgins of the recent mods must have dropped off lately.
Here’s my 2 cents:
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. We can’t blow up at people in ATMB (at mods, admins or other posters), so why should mods/admins? I don’t give a fuck if they’re sick of feeling “second guessed” all the time; I don’t care if they put a lot of time into making this board what it is; I don’t care if they just got stung by a fucking bee and are in a bad mood. Why? Because we might be sick of something; we put time (and money) into making this board what it is; and because no one gives fuck all if we get stung by a bee and are in a bad mood. We aren’t allowed to snap in ATMB. Open a fucking Pit thread!
We hear all the time from mods and admins “If you don’t like the things the mods/admins do, don’t let the door hit you on the ass.” Kind of a rude thing to say to people that pay to be here, but whatever. Well, I gots news for ya, Lynn and Tuba: maybe you should replace words “mods/admins do” in that quote with “posters ask.”
If you take an action or make a decision, people are going to be curious about it. They’re going to open a thread and ask “Why?” Part of your jobs as a mod or admin is to answer people’s questions. Just like customer service or human resources. If any customer service or human resource rep snapped like you guys did-- and god knows how often those people get asked the same fucking stupid shit-- well, maybe dealing with the public just isn’t their thing. Maybe once you start getting so fucking annoyed or assuming that posters have alterior motives for asking about every little thing, maybe you need to think twice about dealing with the public here, too.
As far as I’m concerned, you guys don’t just represent the SDMB, you represent the Reader. And one reason I read the Reader every fucking week now that I live in Chicago is because of this place. So whether we, the posters, are just customers of the SDMB, or potential customers of the Reader, I don’t understand this pissiness you feel you have the right to.
Just because you guys are doing this as volunteers doesn’t entitle you to be dicks when you’re asked a question, even if it’s the 800th time you’ve been asked it. AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE ASKED QUESTIONS, SOMETIMES OVER AND OVER AND OVER. If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, or if you don’t like feeling “nitpicked” all the time, well, maybe it’s time you took a deep breath, step down from your position, and become a “regular” poster. Or even just moved on.
But just because you’re being asked something that you assume is second-guessing your decision, it doesn’t mean you’re right. Just because you’re annoyed by a question, doesn’t give you the license to be rude.
Lynn and Tuba– you’re getting sick of answering the same things over and over? Well, how many more fucking times does poor bibliophage have to say “Welcome to the SDMB, newbie. A link to the column is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: www.straightdope.com” before he gets to be as pissy as you?
Happy
Forever?
that would be ulterior motives. Just saying.
And, do you always sign your posts “Happy.” Nickname or were you asking a question and forgot the punctuation? Just asking.
Well, speaking neutrally (I don’t know where the OP stands), there’s a big difference between saying something over and over to newbies and saying something over and over to veterans, or worse, people who have an axe to grind.
Where do I stand? On my feet, of course.
I’m not sure what you mean, but I think Happy hit the nail on the head. I just reckon you catch more flies with honey, I should be the change I want to see in the SDMB, et cetera, so I try to be as polite and open in my posts as I can. I really do want a dialog and I really do want to know what’s really going on in people’s minds, and experience has shown that posts like Happy’s (or even like my OP) can cause more ill will when people are already feeling thin skinned and irritable.
Plus, I just can’t get that worked up about it. Being non-confrontational is just easier for me than getting angry. I’m not really angry with anyone, just upset and disappointed. If I get upset and disappointed enough, I’ll just leave quietly, but at the moment, I still get more pleasure from the SDMB than disappointment.
Nevertheless, there’s not a word Happy wrote there that I don’t agree with completely or could have expressed better. And I did stop to wonder whether, if The Reader payed any attention to what goes on here in the first place, they wouldn’t worry that incidents like this don’t cause more ill will toward The Reader than the boards are worth.
And now that I look back, I missed that that is your name. I apologize.
I believe that should have a question mark at the end, being a question and all. Just saying.
And that would be my username.
Well, the axe-grinders, some might argue, would be T-wording. If that is the case, an admin would be better off taking the bibliophage stock answer approach-- pointing the poster to one of the ten stickies relevant to the discussion-- rather than blowing a gasket and, thus, feeding.
From the ATMB thread in question:
So these questions, she feels, are just being posted to aggravate the mod staff? They’re not as innocent as they are made out to be? If that’s true, then that seems pretty jerkish. Doesn’t seem like getting all fired up and letting loose is the best way to discourage this. I also don’t think letting loose based on mere assumptions (if that’s all they are) is the best route to go either.
Happy
Accepted.
I don’t know about Lynn, but in Tuba’s case (as of nearly a year ago, at least. . .), she gets paid to do “a long list of tasks” that Ed says would eat up his time if he had to do them himself.
Not necessarily THE reason, but perhaps A reason.
Did you bother to read the thread? If not, will you do so now and point to where anyone was being second-guessed?
I cannot believe that Lynn and Tuba read the thread before jumping in. The on-point posts were simply asking whether policy had changed. The off-point posts were answering an (unasked) question by supporting the moderaters actions. They had no call to be snippy at all.
To recap:
A question of policy was raised. (Read the thread title)
Some posters responded on-point.
Other posters, perhaps reading too swiftly, or too poorly, or perhaps not at all, responded off-point.
Dex answered the question.
Lynn and Tuba popped in and complained about something that had not even happened.
I asked for the thread to be closed as the question had been answered and misapprehension was ensuing in squads. (Check the next to last post.)
Sorry, Alan, but it looks like you won’t be answered here either.
I wonder that too sometimes, and I really hope it never comes to that. This place has created a lot of public awareness for the Reader, and been a great resource for informationand entertainment, and it has the potential for even greater things.
But the knee-jerk and innapropriate behavior of some of this board’s administrators really makes me shake my head sometimes. Yes, at times, some of us act like jerks-- unfortunately you get customers like that-- and it’s the responsiblilty of the mods to take care of that. But overreacting because you assume every decission is being second-guessed, and then displaying an attitude that you’re the “parents” over us “kids” does not do this very effectively.
At the end of the day this is the situation:
Lynn and Tuba have yet to offer a “Mea Culpa” for the misunderstanding. Which, I guess, futhers Lynn’s analogy of their untouchable position of being Because-I-Said-So Parents over us. Even when they fuck up, and get called on it, they still owe us nothing. Great customer service.
Yeah, well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Tuba at least was thoughtful enough (or impulsive enough) to reply to my email, basically just saying that she didn’t want to participate in her own pitting. Not a peep from Lynn, though, which is somewhat disapointing.