THat may not be what is intended, but it comes across that way.
Well, then to over-extend the analogy, a regular customer comes to the manager and says, “I complained about a torn cover on a book I bought, and the clerk told me to quit whining.” To which you respond, “It’s a tough job being a bookstore clerk. Why don’t you just go to another bookstore if you hate clerks so much?”
So the customer disappears for six months. Then the customer returns, and, while browsing the shelves, sees the same clerk telling a different customer who complains about broken bindings “You probably did it yourself! I bet you are a shoplifter! I should call the cops on you!”
Then the first customer tells the manager “Your clerk is at it again” and the manager says, “We really want you back as a regular customer - and we would take your complaints more seriously if you didn’t just come back into the bookstore to complain.”
They weren’t - that’s the point. wring was a regular participant, and her complaints were dismissed and ignored.
I am a regular participant. My complaints don’t seem to be taken any better than wring’s.
I probably shouldn’t be dumping on you - you aren’t one of the mods who (as far as I can tell) many of the regular posters have any issues with. But those with whom Dopers have issues don’t respond, or dismiss and ignore complaints, or respond with accusations of trolling, or simply post back for the umpteenth time “You just hate the mods - I don’t see why you don’t just leave, you trouble maker”.
If you want to use the bookstore analogy, this is how it was.
A regular customer comes into the bookstore, and sees new rules posted, amongst others “don’t be rude to the clerks that work here.”
A bunch of regular customers complain to the owner, and the owner says “I’ve listened to what you’re saying, but you haven’t said anything that has made me decide to change my mind. I’ll tell you what, I’ll make some minor adjustments to the rule but the rules stand.” (note: hearing a customer complaint does not mean agreeing with the customer complaint, or that the owner will change the store policies because of a customer complaint.)
The customer disappears for eight months, only coming back a couple of times to tell the owner “I still don’t like those changes you made months ago, and here’s another example of what’s wrong with your bookstore.” In one of those visits, he sees another former customer who comes in occasionally to tell the clerks “by the way, those rules you put in eight months ago still suck and you guys don’t know how to run a bookstore”; the other customer is told “if all you’re doing is coming in here to complain, you’re wasting my time.” The customer is upset that the clerks are rude. The clerks are upset when people drop in just to complain.
(as far as I can tell, RedFury is speaking to a board moderator)
Not to repeat myself, but Syntropy, would you care to comment on this again? Because I still don’t agree with what you were saying, and I’m wondering if you are standing by your statement.
Arnold this is the second time in this thread where you imply that I am defendng being able to insult the mods. the first time, you quoted OTHER people, and I asked you to show where I said those things, and you admitted it was others, and here, you claim that my objections about the rules was about wanting to insult the mods.
prove it-quote me. Do a search of my posts since Feb (and I see that I did post more than 2 posts since March, but theywere all in one or two threads). You (and everyone else) will find me pointing out inconsistencies - a mod can say ‘bullshit’ to a poster, but another poster gets in trouble for saying the same, one poster is admonished for posting a link to another site where he gets no financial reward (calling it spam), but another poster posting a thread to link to a site where she could profit isn’t spam, arguing about the rules themselves, etc.
I resent your posts about me in this thread. I’d held you in high regard in the past, thought we had a decent opinion of each other, but you’ve mischaracterized my position horribly.
For me, it never was about the use of the word cunt, or wanting to be rude and abusive towards the staff.
Things at our local bookstore aren’t doing too badly. There’s occasional friction between clerks and customers but generally things work themselves out.
One day, a clerk, seeing a customer talking about a book she doesn’t approve of, blows a gasket, makes up a rule that if a customer’s shoes aren’t shined (the customer’s aren’t), it’s ok to scream at the customer. She does, under her magic new rule*. The customer, wrongly but understandably calls her a “cunt” which IS a violation of an existing rule and is banned from the store for 30 days. Nothing happens to the clerk who started the mess by inventing a new rule to censor someone she disagreed with. Many customers complain about the treatment of the original customer and a few (vocal) people keep trying to recast the debate as wanting to say the word “Cunt” when the vast majority of complainants are saying “No–“cunt” was wrong, but look at what happened before. That was wrong TOO.”
Then, the owner–the absentee owner-who only appears every few years, usually to drop a turd on the customers and clerks appears. A classic “Seagull manager”**, he waltzes in, and makes a bunch of quite literally incomprehensible rules. One of which is "There is to be no swearing in the “Angry Discussions About Books room.” he sez.
The customers (and some clerks) all say “Wha? That’s insane! The point of the Angry Discussions room is so people can fight”
The absentee owner, who has absolutely no idea of the ‘culture’ of the store, let alone the room then says “Ok-you can swear, but only if it’s funny”
The clerks say “That’s impossible to enforce!” and the customers say “What? That’s insane!”
The owner rapidly backpedals after being faced with near universal revolt over this new dictum from on high and says “Golly! I was just joking. Some words are OK and some words aren’t”
Everyone says “Which are ok, and which aren’t?”
The owner (who, remember, doesn’t really understand the store or it’s culture–he’s there just to fly over and drop turds) says "Ain’t telling. You’ll have to trust us. But “Cunt’ is forbidden. I’ll give you that much info–but too much swearing or other “wrong” words can also get you banished from the store. Which ones and how much are sooper sekrit”
The customers say "Wait–what?
The owner (not used to backtalk-this is the longest he’s EVER been in the store) says “Screw you all. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
A bunch of customers leave.
The owner (realizing what he’s just done) sez “Just foolin’. Come back. Folks? Anyone?”
A few vocal people (some liars, some just sort of not grasping what happened) say AND WON’T FUCKING STOP REPEATING) “See? They left because he banned the word “Cunt” and for no other reason.” despite all evidence to the contrary. This lie continues to this day.
There’s a bunch more back and forth as the owner keeps trying to dig himself out of the hole he’s already dug. Finally, mostly through trial-and-error, he comes up with a set of rules that…well…can be followed and are enforcible, if stupid (You can say: “I hope that if you get cancer, you suffer long and horrible agony and the when you fall into the gutter from the pain, you get raped by rabid pigs, you bilious asshole.” but if you lose the word “if”, it becomes a ‘death wish’ and isn’t ok any more. Or you can say someone a “get lost, you goat-felching, cum-burping gutter whore”, but you can’t say “Fuck off”). The new rules make absolutely no sense, but are at least semi-coherent.
After this owner induced drama finally peters out (mainly because the owner runs off again, only popping his head in the door a few times–note that he doesn’t actually deal with the mess he’s created), a few of the loyal customers who love the bookstore amd who had been going there for 8-10 years with NO issues at all poke their heads back in 8 months later asking “Is he gone?” and saying “Are his stupid rules still in force?” and a few of the clerks turn to her and say “If you’re only here to make trouble, why are you here, troublemaker?”
So–it’s kind of no wonder that people who were once very loyal customers want to come back but feel unwelcome.
*Since analogies can be a little obscure, for the newbies: this would be Lynn’s magic “All thread titles must be 100% perfectly accurate in the pit or mods can bitch you out and maybe warn you” rule that only existed for just that one thread. It’s never been enforced before or since.
**Seagull Manager: (quoted from wiki) is a “management style of interacting with employees only when a problem arises, making hasty decisions about things they have little understanding of, then leaving others to deal with the mess they leave behind.”
wring: in my first post I didn’t imply that, I was showing counter-examples to Syntropy who’s saying “it’s forbidden to be rude to the mods”.
In my second post I implied that. I thought that’s what you were upset about. You say that’s not true, it’s other reasons. OK. I didn’t understand that. In this post, where the issue of being able to insult the mods is being discussed, you never stated “I left for other reasons altogether”. My bad. I didn’t search all your posts to try to figure out what it is that made you decide to stop posting at the boards. I retract all implication that those are the changes that made you leave. I was wrong.
I’m surprised, though, that anyone who’d known me at all would think that my issue would be that I wanted the mods insulted. But this rift has been sad for many reasons.
OK Fenris. That might be the reason you left. But this obviously doesn’t apply to everybody. wring left for different reasons. Syntropy was saying “here is what the real issue is - posters can’t respond in kind to moderators”. Everyone is different. So when I say “some people” in this post let’s assume it just refers to yourself.
Issue number 1: I don’t know what thread you are talking about with Lynn Bodoni so I can’t review it. I will note that we have some people saying “your rules are too restrictive, you should just have ‘don’t be a jerk’ and let the moderators have more latitude” and other people saying “the amount of rules they have over there is just ridiculous.” When a moderator acts without have a specific rule laid down, then the argument is “well what rule did I violate? Show me in black or white what I did wrong.” Maybe Lynn warned for something she shouldn’t have, I don’t know. But then people could disagree with her decision and argue about it while still not breaking rules. In my mind, a moderator making a wrong decision is not the end of the world, and IMHO there is a lot of excessive wailing and doomsaying when a moderator might (gasp) make what someone thinks is a wrong decision.
Your second example: Ed Zotti made a rule that people should be more civil in The Pit. Maybe it was due to someone insulting Lynn, maybe not, I haven’t investigated. People complained, Ed Zotti said it would be whittled down to a restricted list of words. Some people would hold this up as an example of the board administration listening to the users and changing a decision that displeases a group of people. Maybe that’s what you meant by “backpedaling”? The people that don’t like Ed, of course, will view it as him cowardly backing down due to a popular revolt. I’ll let your bias decide as to what way you want to view it. The list is whittled to a list of words. Contrary to your assertion, the list of “forbidden words” is specific. It’s right here. In addition Ed Zotti says “don’t have posts that consist solely of vulgar words - here are examples.” Again, we see the problem where if you tried to list every possibility in legal language, people will say “look at that huge list of rules, that’s ridiculous, that just invites rules-lawyering”, and then if you try to make it flexible and leave it up to moderator judgement, other people will come in and say “oh my gosh he’s trying to make ‘sooper sekrit’ rules”.
Some people say “You didn’t ‘backpedal’ enough for us, if you keep that rule we’re leaving”. And Ed Zotti says “I’m sticking with what I have”. OK then. If people can’t live with those new Pit rules, that are “sucking all the enjoyment out of the board” for them, then I don’t know what other solution there is for them. I would suggest “why don’t you participate in the other parts of the board that you enjoy”. But if that’s a deal-breaker for them, well, I don’t know what to say.
You quote Ed as saying “Just foolin’. Come back. Folks? Anyone?”
I’d really be curious to see those posts where Ed Zotti is begging the departed posters to come back. I think this is in your imagination. Of course he’s not going to turn them away if they want to come back as posters.
You then say
So what are the other reasons? That they think Lynn Bodoni made a wrong call in The Pit? Or that Ed Zotti proposed a rule and then listened to the users and changed the rule to a restricted list of words? Or is it a different reason for every individual that left? It seems that the forbidden list of words is one of the reasons people left. You spend a few more paragraphs saying how the rule is stupid and unenforceable so it obviously seems to grate on you.
Then you say
I view it this way - a few of the loyal customers poke their heads in “to poke fun and tweak the nose of authority … to hold a mirror to the Dope and its faults”. Contrary to what you say, they’re not coming back to ask “Is he gone?” or “are the rules still in force”. They know that Ed Zotti is still in here and the rules still in force. They come in here because they are still upset about some rules. When you say “rules” plural, of course I can’t say it’s the “forbidden list” rule that they are upset about, because implying that someone is upset about that rule is so unfair. So I won’t even venture to try to guess what those rules are.
A moderator responds “we wish you would come back to post, but if you’re coming back just to beat an eight-month-old dead horse that’s not helpful.” I don’t see where what the moderator says is so wrong. If the people are complaining about other rules, then maybe they should say what they are. It’s hard to talk to people that say “your board is stupid” if you don’t know what they think is stupid about the board. And if it’s stuff that they already discussed ad nauseam eight months ago, then why would I want to get into it again?
Well, to be honest, when you said “I haven’t posted here for eight months”, I thought you left around the time of the new Pit rules and the fact that discussions of moderator actions was moved to ATMB, because I didn’t see any major changes in board culture or rules besides that. But now that you say that, for you, it was something else, I’ll believe you.
OK, I see Ed Zotti saying “I should have handled the situation better and been nicer to people who disagreed with me.” If Fenris had said “Ed Zotti apologized later for not having handled the situation correctly and hoped that the SDMB would survive this latest crisis” then I probably would have recognized what post he was referring to.
P.S. From my point of view, the SDMB has survived that crisis pretty well.
I don’t claim to be a SQL “expert,” but I was an operating systems programmer, built a MySQL-based website, managed a couple of message boards in the old days, and used to hold a teaching credential in computer science, so I do have at least a basic fundamental understanding of it.
Now, that said, I wasn’t involved in the big hardware changeover a while back. I know that some technical problems were introduced when we separated the database server out onto another computer and upgraded the board software. I know searches were darned-near killing board performance. I know that Jerry’s been working on the system configurations (although you’re correct that he’s not re-writing vBulletin).
So, he’s still “tweaking” the systems and the network, and something appears to have worked.
(a) I’m not the manager. I’m just one of the clerks here.
(b) I don’t recall ever telling a poster here to leave if they hated the staff so much–although I know I’ve asked a couple of people over the years why they were here when they clearly weren’t enjoying themselves.
(c) I’m not trying to say “it’s a tough life being a mod.” Not at all. In fact, I came into this thread specifically to say that I enjoy being a mod (because SmartAleq said, “Why in hell don’t you guys just go on strike?”). What I am saying is that we’re all humans, and we all screw up. Yes, I’ve asked people to lighten up on some of the staff sometimes. I’ve also asked people to lighten up on you, and Lib, and some of the other controversial posters that get dogpiled from time to time.
Oh, some of them do – but thank you anyway.
Speaking only for myself (as a moderator, but not speaking on behalf of the powers that be), I recognize the fact that things got uglier than they should have gotten here. Some valuable members of this board got pissed off–both posters and staff. There were a few people that I honestly believe were trying to stir things up and make more people upset (I will not attempt to guess their motives. Maybe they though making more people angry would eventually end up improving the boards. Maybe they just liked stirring things up. I don’t know).
But we are working on it. There are nineteen mods and admins plus a few people like Jerry behind the scenes. We all have different issues, different styles, different things going on in our lives.
If I said something obnoxious/insulting to you, it would be easy for you to cry out, “the mods here are dicks, and they hate me.” I’d probably get slapped behind the scenes for it. But there would be twenty other people who had nothing to do with it.
Some of the rules here have been put in place by all of the mods/admins working together. Some have been around since AOL days. Some are Ed’s. The job of the mods is to enforce the rules and do our best to keep things running smoothly.
I know, I’m rambling. But I really want to break this impression that the SDMB consists of a series of evil staff meetings where we say, “Who shall we crush beneath our hobnailed bootheels today?”
Sorry Shodan, you are either with me or against me. None of this pusillanimous fence-sitting behaviour.
But seriously, there is something in what you say. There are people that are generally happy with the SDMB (and/or its moderators), and that will colour the way they see things that happen at the board. There are people that are generally unhappy with the SDMB (and/or its moderators), and that will also colour the way they see things that happen at the board.
You are a very good writer. You have the gift of clarity. (Just wanted to make note of that, because you explain the mod stuff quite well. Much better than I’m used to.)
Geez, tough choice. Can’t I do a sort of creepy, love/hate relationship?
It works out well for my in-laws.
No Fair! In your analogy you were the manager - now you’re weaseling! No Fair! The mods hate me!
:), in case it isn’t clear.
Well, generic “you”, but I suppose that is much of the problem, on both sides.
To the posters, often the mods are seen as all the same. ISTM that to the mods, often you folks think of the posters as one big block. It is all too easy to see the stuff that gets the strongest reaction as representative of the whole, and the stuff that offends gets the strongest reaction.
But in fairness to the posters, it seems rather common, when any thread complaining about mod actions goes to the second or third page, some mod or other will post what I describe - “if you don’t like it, get out”. Heck, in this thread alone it took less than 20 posts to get there, and only ten more for the accusations of trolling to begin. Sure, it wasn’t you, but neither of the two mods have been back, either to apologize or to explain.
I appreciate that, very much.
Maybe that has something to do with it - the mods who enjoy it don’t seem to be the ones that people have a lot of trouble with. The ones who apparently don’t, or do enjoy it for the wrong reasons, have more issues with the posters.
I shouldn’t lump you all together, but it is hard to avoid. You seem to enjoy it, and I have never seen complaints about your moderation rise above the level of background noise. I thought Giraffe was a good Pit mod, also because he seemed to enjoy it. C K Dexter Haven seems awfully bitter about all the crap he sees himself as taking, Lynn Bodoni has had at least two major incidents where she reacted in ways that I (and many of the Dopers as well) feel was wholly inappropriate, and tomndebb seems incapable of abiding by the rules he sets for others (and can’t seem to disagree with others without impugning their motives).
As I said, it is hard not to take the worst examples of moderation as bases for grievance. And, IMO, that really does drag the Doper down.
You’re welcome, of course. And in fairness, there really are Dopers who hate the mods and look on every complaint thread as a place to dump, as they used to do in the Pit.
The rules against “Fuck you” and calling someone a cunt in the Pit are really not much of an issue with me. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I can chalk this up as, at worst, a whim of Ed’s and move on.
Just to be clear, I was mainly responding to Dex’s wafting-hand-to-forehead Sarah Bernhardt post that to me looked pretty much like “Oh you mean old posters you make it so HARD to be a mod and after all we do for you” and I was pretty much pointing out that an ATMB mod wouldn’t have much to do if it weren’t for one or two stupid and unenforceable rules that they nevertheless stupidly insist on attempting to enforce, which makes ATMB a much more lively forum than it no doubt has ever been. And if mods get tired after a hard day of circlin’ the wagons and enforcing the unenforceable rules, to the point where they apparently (and here not so much referring to Dex) pretty much lose their happy thoughts along with their ability to converse politely and without snark, then perhaps the mod staff ought to own that, and sit with it for a minute.
So my actual suggestion was to stop trying to enforce the stupid and unenforceable rules that, like all such critters, are responsible for a thoroughly disproportionate amount of fuss and bother and result in much more mod burnout–much more than all the other rules combined. Instead of taking it out on the posters when we continue to point out every instance of the stupid and uneforceable rules being stupidly and unenforceably enforced (“Look, the Emperor appears to be uncircumcised!”) maybe the more appropriate mod response is to say “Hey, this small subset of rules, yeah, the ones filed under “Stupid and Unenforceable,” produces way too much hassle and butthurtedness on all sides and since we’re all volunteers here we’re telling you you can either deal with the fact that we ain’t gonna play this stupid fucking game any more or you can deal with the goddamned hooligans yourself, good luck with that!”
From my reading, it’s not the rules that cause the problems so much as people that can’t accept the fact that eight months ago new rules were implemented. Unless you are referring to other stupid rules - in which case it would be helpful to know which rules you are objecting to.
– but thank you anyway.