Ed, I think your efforts to improve the Dope have been a failure so far.

About This Message Board
1

I want to post here so as not to be accused of backbiting or snarking.

I love the Dope, I have put in a lot of time on the Dope. I am one of the most prolific posters as I get reminded of often. I have been accused of being an ass kisser but rather I rarely had complaints and posted supportively as I believe in what I was posting. Now I have to accept the label of troublemaker I guess for the same reasons.

Since you have tried to make improvements, you have alienated older established posters, decreased views and reach for the Dope and mucked up the pit fairly bad over a few very minor issue. You have Lynn back in the pit and while she is a good poster, she is ham fisted when it comes to modding as you are yourself. Gfactor has thus far done a great job and on par with the previous moderators Giraffe and FluidDruid who were also great.

The dope has built up a community way beyond being a fan board for the Straight Dope, Cecil Adams and you. You do not interact with us as the leader of a community but rather as a heavy-handed boss of a company. You make decisions and then if a protest occurs you try to explain why the change was made and often fail. You seriously screwed up last year when you suddenly turned on ads with sounds but you finally backed off after huge hue and cry. The pit changes and this list of naughty words is another change made ex cathedra that has greatly angered many posters and made even more, uneasy.

Worst of all, for all your efforts the upgrade has been a failure. Search is still broken with a 5 minute wait and less functionality than the prior version of vB and prior server. Very few new functions have been introduced after brief views of powerful tools like Tags that could help the search issue. (One example only.) If you had ever asked for help from the community, it would have rallied to raise the resources to get things fixed right. While I think you took crap over the Barnhouse that was completely undeserved, I think the charges made that the board administration has been unresponsive to the users requests for other forums looks legit after the addition of the Chicago Dope forums and their rapid increases and decreases in numbers. Not only have none of your changes grown the dope, but also by observation (from many of your most prolific posters) and stats from Alexa.comand Bigboards show that the dope has shrunk.

I hope you take this as an honest critique and I don’t get suspended over this. But I felt I needed to post it.

Request to others that post a response to this, please don’t make this into a thread that will get closed. I plead for rational calm critiques and not just slams.

Yours sincerely and with hopes that things turn around,
Jim

2

I just want to second the props for Gfactor. He’s doing a very, very good job under what has to be the most trying of circumstances.

3

Gfactor is a great guy, poster, and mod. He’s stepping into some huge hoofprints and doing so very well. The Dope has always been lucky to have him.

4

The stats from Alexa do show a steady downward trend across the board since last summer. Oddly, that seems to correspond with the time Ed took a more active role in running this place. Recent events have caused significant numbers of posters…quality posters…to spend less time here, and more time elsewhere. As I see it, Ed’s about to improve this place out of business. (That’s hyperbole, but still).

Ed flat out told us he doesn’t want us here, and doesn’t care if we leave. So be it. The thing he’s missing is once other venues get established, that traffic is probably not going to come back, even if Ed admits errors. This is why one should not use a sledgehammer to squash a gnat.

Edit to 4th the kudos to Gfactor. He’s the best mod here. Others could learn much from his example.

5

Just chiming in to say that I agree with everything What Exit? said.

That is what I don’t get about this whole thing. Why? Why would Ed not want us here? What are his motives for driving us away? His actions don’t seem rational and there doesn’t seem to be a reasonable motive behind his behavior. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

6

Yeah, a recent thread of mine in GQ about the usage of the word “cunt” had the potential for controversy - which I studiously did try to avoid in the OP - and, once it wandered into anecdote and opinion territory, instead of getting on his high horse, he just moved it to IMHO, sans snark or veiled jibes, where it thrives happily: and for such a contentious subject, it’s a happy, even-tempered thread, which has opened my eyes about how offensive the word is in the US, and hopefully some other eyes about how much less offensive the term is elsewhere. For me it shows the Dope at its best, both for posters and the admin staff; the moderating you barely notice is the best moderating of all. Mad propz, Gfactor.

7

I’m only here to say that, if it comes to it, I too am Spartacus.

'Cept I’m prettier than What Exit?, of course. But that’s not his fault.

8

I am Breschau!

9

I’m guessing here…but I think Ed doesn’t quite get it. He still thinks his Cecil gimmick is the main draw here. It ain’t. Most posters don’t particularly mind if Ed likes to pretend to be somebody else and publish the columns…but that’s not why we hang out on the board. We hang out here to be with other smart people that post profound, insightful, informed, diverse, funny, silly, and sometimes obscene things. The posters ARE the draw. Ed could drop dead tomorrow (note not wishing that on him) and he’d probably get a eulogy thread, but if the mods recover their sanity, it’d be business as usual. We don’t need Ed. Ed needs us, or he has no board.

Ed thinks posters are fungible goods. In his view, Newbie01 is as valuable as Skald the Rhymer, Bricker, Quagop(hope I came close to spelling that), Q.E.D., Cervaise, Rick, What Exit, Silenus or any of the dozens of other well-respected posters who’ve made valuable contributions for years. Maybe from an accounting perspective that is true. Ads don’t care who sees them as long as they are seen. From an environmental perspective, it’s bullshit. Newbie01 has no history or established credibility here. Maybe Newbie01 will turn out to be a good poster. Maybe Newbie01 will turn out to be a dimwit.

One reason so many people are so upset is that they built this place into whatever it is. Ed does not appear to value or appreciate those contributions. He told them to go away. Like the old saying goes, sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until you don’t have it anymore. Ed does not believe he’s in danger of not having “it” anymore. I think he’s wrong.

10

I feel the need to second every single word in the OP. Ed, I say this not as snark but as constructive criticism: You are destroying this board. Please stop.

For the first time ever, I’m coming over here every once in a while just to check my PMs, and not even looking at the threads. It’s the first time I’ve ever gone straight to the User CP and not opened each subscribed thread with new activity in a tab. This board is dead to me.

I know my opinion doesn’t matter much, but I’ve been here for my entire adult life. I’m seeing a new chapter in my life unfold in front of me, one in which the SDMB does not play a role. This is not because of any one decision, but because the culture of this board has been changed–perverted, even, IMHO.

I hope things go back the way they were, but something tells me they won’t. And if they don’t, I simply won’t be spending my time here anymore.

11

And whose fault is that? I joined on 01/01/01, and for 99% of my posting history Ed, in any of his incarnations, has not bothered to post. Or, so we were often told, once long ago, even read the boards! (There was some kind of controversy going on with the boards, and people kept saying that if Ed knew what was going on, he wouldn’t put up with it, until they were told he couldn’t be bothered with us.) Seems he was “too busy.” I can remember people with sig lines that stated, “One of the X posters to be personally welcomed by Cecil.” I also remember people starting threads which were basically “Lets jump up and down and scream until Ed/Cecil shows up!” At least until we got told to “knock it off.”

So, he became, for a time, an Olympian figure, who’d occassionally dispatch thunderbolts from on high. He’d show up to announce some kind of proposed major change to the boards, and that was it. Now, he shows up, and seems a triffle confused that the locals have discovered fire and aren’t quite so enamoured of their god any more. Oops.

How does he expect us to worship him any more when our pleas in the past have fallen upon deaf ears? The books aren’t selling (uh, oh), newspapers are declining in popularity (whoa boy), and now Ed thinks that he can show up here make changes (without really knowing what’s been going on in the place for all this time) and turn this place into a success. It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t know who your customers are, and what they want, you cannot give them a product they desire. This is Detroit vs Japan all over again.

TPTB want this place to turn a profit. Absolutely, positively understandable. What is not understandable, however, is repeating the same mistakes that the previous owners made. Namely, defecating all over your customers. Prior to the board going pay-to-post, the lot of us offered a number of suggestions as to what could be done. The previous owners patted us on the heads, told us we were simpletons, and that their ideas would work. They didn’t. Rather than learning from their mistake, Ed is committing the same shocking cock up as the previous owners. Not a good thing, especially when your brand is built upon being an intelligent smartass.

12

Thanks everyone. I do wonder if we’ll get any sort of response.

13

You mean, besides, “Knock it off!”? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

14

We’ve had a response; it’s “I’m open to suggestions, but only if they’re suggestions I want to hear.”

15

Let’s keep in mind that Cecil is a classic benevolent dictator and is free to - once every five years, or when he feels the urge - come here and dictate. The place exists because of him and you can’t really say otherwise.

I doubt Cecil is worried about losing posters. It might be the case that the recent changes to the pit rules are in advance of letting search engine spiders in. They haven’t even begun to take advantage of the additional advertising yet. This place is basically a gold mine waiting to be spidered and I do believe Cecil has realized this. And if not, Creative Loafing will feel the economic crunch just as much, if not more, than any of us. They will force Cecil to let in the spiders before they go bankrupt.

Letting the unwashed masses in probably merits rule clarifications in the pit.

16

Oh come on, one thing you can’t possibly accuse Ed of (whatever position you take on this) is not responding. The guy has clearly been reading every post in the main ATMB threads on this matter and has answered many of them in detail.

You have to give him credit for that, he didn’t just issue a diktat then withdraw to let the staff deal with the reactions. (Or overreactions in many cases.)

17

I get the impression that not all of the recent changes have really been Ed’s decision. OK, the Barn House is certainly his idea, and probably the SD Chicago area, but those aren’t really problems, so far as I can tell: Worst case scenario is that those areas of the site fail but leave everything else unaffected. But the new Pit rules and other across-the-board policy changes look to me like he’s been getting pressure from his bosses on what should and should not go on on this site, and he’s trying to comply with his bosses’ wishes while minimizing the disruption to the board. Is he succeeding at that? Maybe not, but then, I’m not convinced there is a way to succeed at that: It looks like the new bosses’ policies are such that they can’t be implemented without disruption to the board.

So go easy on Ed. Near as I can tell, he’s doing the best job he can, under the circumstances.

18

Probably not, because we’ve heard the response in advance.

Really though, rather than see a response in B/W, I’m waiting to see, or feel a response in tone.

Improve/change/degrade… I’m still waiting to feel a weather change.

19

My dad used to say that for every one dollar it cost to keep a customer, it took a hundred dollars to get a new customer. So pretty much you can never afford to lose customers.

20

What Exit? is exactly right.