Or even The Other One (oh, alright: DoMeBo). It’s warm, friendly and caring there - from the top down.
My apologies for not replying sooner. Things have been a little hectic.
I wasn’t intending to alienate the SDMB community, and to the extent this has occurred I deeply regret it. What’s done is done, but I’m investigating a thing or two that may help make amends. I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver, so I’ll say no more for now. Communication has certainly been an issue and could stand to be improved. I absolutely want the community to continue. One of the problems we’ve had is that we’re attempting to establish a stable revenue model during a difficult time for CL, the newspaper industry, and the country in general. I ask your patience while we get this sorted out internally, but hope to give you some idea where this is all headed next week.
Thank you for the answer and I hope you get it all turned around. I have really enjoyed the Dope in my time here. It is good to see you say you do want the doper community here. As you can see, many are/were questioning it.
I guess many of us are getting short on patience. At least many of us have a new hobby in the meantime. The recent creation of two new boards of mostly dopers might relieve pressure here a bit.
Sorry Ed, but I’m not buying it. You implied, without outright saying, that our contributions are worthless to you. You repeatedly told us to go away. Now many of us have…and all of a sudden you say that wasn’t really what you wanted.
Not saying the damage is irreparable for everyone…but you’re going to have to make a better apology than that to even start to repair the damage you’ve done.
You mean you regret it to the extent that over 600 people have left in the past week because of what you’ve done, because that’s the extent to which it’s occurred.
You got that right. Two new boards is what is done.
Great things on the horizon? Oooh, be still my beating heart.
Why not? It’s never stopped you in the past.
No, Ed, your communication has been an issue: we’ve been communicating non-stop for a fortnight, and you’ve been cheerfully ignoring us.
Then stop bloody tinkering with it.
So it is money after all, and not your vision for the direction the community should take. So why didn’t you just say so in the first place?
Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.
In summary: mistakes were made, but maybe you can have avatars next week and then we’ll say no more about it, eh?
Interesting comments. I look forward to hearing about the new developments.
Unfortunately my other thread was closed before I could reply, so I’ll just say here that I am surprised at the reaction. I would think that the lifeblood of the SDMB is postings and viewings, and anything that takes away from that would be considered a threat.
For what it’s worth I am deeply ashamed. That’s what I get for posting something just before heading out and not proof-reading it.
Anyway, thanks for the reply Ed. I don’t doubt that you’re seriously investigating things that may ‘make amends’. However you must know that it’s the same sort of vague ‘carrot on a stick’ statement that’s been trotted out on this board for years, I not sure there’s any mileage left in it.
The community will continue, as I say upthread, it’ll just not be this community because a major portion of the posters that make up the ‘spirit’ of this board have already left or partially left.
And if you do ‘deeply regret’ the alienation then next time try running a poll on proposed changes (a proper poll, yes/no buttons, announced in each forum) rather than just making changes. But we’ve been told before that this board is not a democracy, you’re making into the board you want – regardless of what we want.
Using business language with people, not MBAs or clients but people, ain’t where it’s at.
You messed up. You.
You messed up.
But you can’t say that. You can’t type a simple sentence like that. You can’t hold the qualifiers while you admit, no excuses, simple sentence, that you messed up.
Saying “I’m sorry” and “I made a mistake” are things we expect our 3-year-old children to do.
And you can’t. Or you won’t. Or you don’t think you have to, or you don’t think you should have to, or you think it looks bad, or whatever. This brings me to my next (other) point:
You are bad at communicating, and you need to get better at it.
We have known this, and have been telling you this, and have been trying to get you to listen to us on this, for years.
You’ve had chances (and you weren’t the only one, and others who’ve done stupid things have fared largely the same). You’ve had years. You’ve had patience and anger and suggestions and you’ve done what you bloody well wanted to do, what you felt you should (has a major change not backfired yet?), what you apparently thought you had to do, and still you come back with passive-voice milquetoast businessese admissions of some infallibility significantly after the community has erupted in anger at these sudden and drastic fiats.
Sincerely, I say to you, learn to communicate with more sincerity and humility. Until then, you’re using impersonal language in dealing with people who are losing a sense of home and familiarity.
It’s personal.
It’s deeply personal.
People got married and had kids because of this place. People left abusive partners, graduated from college, turned 18, celebrated significant personal milestones here. Because of here. (Sometimes in spite of here:)) With the people they met here cheering them on in person and here.
We went through 9/11 here, damnit.
This is not just a Web site. This is, to borrow from a senior thesis from a decade ago, the Internet as a sense of home.
And if you don’t realize that – even despite the business side (and partly because of it; because this site is so personally important to so many of us, it’s hard to get us to go away once and for all) – then this site is never going to make you or anyone else money because you won’t realize what’s special about it and tailor the financial element to that.
You have to talk to us as people, not as business professionals.
And you don’t.
And you haven’t.
And I don’t think you will.
And if you’re coming back and saying the same things you always say – “Mistakes were made, and things will improve” – and hoping maybe some of us will see your “communication could be improved” as a carrot of hope – then you’ve learned nothing from any of this.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Goodbye.
You ever read any Sandman, Ed? You should, it’s great stuff. In the volume I’m reading at the moment, Season of Mists, ten thousand years ago Dream spitefully exiled an old lover to Hell because she spurned him, and after he’s eventually persuaded to admit that he made a mistake and then bring her back, he has this to say: “I now think…I think I may have acted wrongly. I think I should perhaps apologise. I should tell you that I’m sorry.”
Not much of an apology, is it? That said, it’s far stronger at any rate than what you just offered. And yet this is how his old lover responds: “You expect me to accept that, and say no more? One half-hearted apology and you’ve somehow kissed it all better?.. And you ‘think perhaps you should apologise’? You… You… You make me sick.”
Great things, comics. So you tell me, Ed, in your new-found spirit of communication: how do you think we should respond?
Maybe he’s just grumpy because he got a pay cut.
It’s not that you were intending to, it’s that you didn’t care. How do I know you didn’t care? You told me.
So you tell us you’re going to do things your way no matter what and don’t care if we stick around, and then you actually act like you’re going to do things your way no matter what and don’t care if we stick around, and then you act surprised people aren’t sticking around? :smack:
Well, it’s probably too late for many, but you could try this plan:
- Undue the absurd pit rule-changes you’ve made
- Promise not to make anymore without serious consideration of input from the community
- Promise not to mod anywhere anymore, ever
I can’t promise it’ll work, but it’s more likely than anything else you’re going to come up with.
Or, since Starbucks is laying off, you could scurry down to the closest McDonald’s while they’ve still got an opening.
Well, rather than try to find some magic combination of words, I hope to make some improvements to the site that will be of practical benefit. I’ll be the first to admit that delivering on promises hasn’t been one of our strengths up till now, however, so I’ll say no more. Your patience is appreciated.
I trust the basis for that statement is not the numbers joining other boards, as you must be aware that registering with another board in no way implies that you’re quitting this one.
So, as this is still the SDMB, cite for ‘over 600 people have left in the last week’?
In other words, you don’t care if your apology or explanation or whatever is believed or accepted, you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.
Huh. Where have we heard that before.
I do like the “rather than try to find some magic combination of words” bit though. I’ll try that on my wife next time I’m in the wrong and she expects me to apologize.
I don’t know it’s “have left” so much as “are in the process of leaving”.
Then please explain this
That’s the worst possible method of introducing change to a group.
If you’d come in and said “Hey guys, I’m seeing some stuff in the Pit that troubles me and I’m getting some crap from CL. We have to change things to get to outcome x, y and z. Any suggestions on the best way to achieve it?” you’d have had probably 75% of the SDMB behind you trying to figure out something that they could live with, 20% who wouldn’t accept the changes, but wouldn’t fight too hard and 5% who blew a gasket–and some of that 5% are people who, if you said “I’m giving every poster here $1000.00 and a pony” would bitch that the pony wasn’t the right color.
I think a lot of posters (I know I was) were kind of shocked that you seemed to lump all of us into that 5% category.
Look, the ONLY thing that makes the SDMB special is the people–“Cecil” hasn’t posted here for years and sadly, given Wikipedia, Snopes, and the rest of the internet, his column isn’t the draw it once was–before, he was the ONLY source to go to if you wanted to find out about trees that smelled like semen. Now? Not so much.
The only things any web-page have to offer are merchandise (Amazon, eBay) or content (Snopes, us). And the only way to get content is with posters. Random, condescending, arbitrary and capricious rules aren’t the way to keep posters.
A website of any size needs (at a guess) at least a few hundred regular posters. The ones who, day in and day out start a topic or comment on a thread. It’s nice to have a “star” poster (for lack of a better word–that’s not really the term I want, but I can’t think of a better one) who posts a brilliant or hysterical or profound thread once every other week–but it’s everyone else who makes a message board work. If a bunch of regular posters leave, what’s your business model based on? I don’t care if it’s ad-clicks, page-views, subscriptions, or sending robot monkey-goons to people’s doors to shake them down for loose change–without content NONE of them will work.
What you have (had?) here was near-unique: a fairly stable community of literate people that is (was?) mostly self-policing. Take a look at some other general-interest forums and look at what you see there. We are(were?) barely PG rated by comparison. And our topics ranged from pan-fried semen to coping with the death of a loved one to (really bizarre levels of ;)) Tolkien trivia (and sustained long threads–again, a draw-you can go anywhere on the internet and find a threads that say “Gandalf’s teh ghey!”/“no U!”. How many places can you go to read a dozen posters discussing why Gandalf’s sword didn’t glow at a given point in the story…then look down a few threads to see 30 recipies for mac & cheese, then switch forums to find an hysterical pitting of a user over an overreaction to the name of the desert, and another forum switch where current events are kinda discussed with some semblance of civility–each thread going on for pages.
Regardless of what business model you choose, your single biggest goal (IMO) should be “Keep the regular posters happy enough to keep posting”. I don’t know about what your statistics say, but I have my settings such that I get 200 threads per page is because the Pit and CS used to have such a huge level of activity that it allowed me to see all the active threads–and I still had to page back sometimes. Now? I can look at the Pit and see there are threads that haven’t received posts for 7 days. The “Weekly comic book thread” threads used to get 50-100 posts a week. This week? 5 at last count. Whatever your numbers say, the posters aren’t posting like they used to.
Any rule, any change that isn’t poster-centric is bad. That ranges from the utterly brain-damaged “No ‘pulling up a lawnchair to watch the fireworks’” rule that was recently reintroduced to the Pit (you don’t want people to join a thread? Why? I was around before the rule was in place–it wasn’t a problem for ME to see those posts. Rarely, if ever, did those ‘lawnchair’ posts get in the way-but for some obscure reason, it pissed an admin off, so suddenly Pittings that had “lawnchair” posts to keep them active until the pit-ee arrived now dropped off the page or, worse, to keep the thread active, people would pile on.) to the current “We don’t want you calling each other bad words” rule–even though nearly 100% of the people who’ve posted said “We don’t want you to protect us”. Almost anything (mod abuse aside–I think that was a good rule) that limits posters from posting is bad for business.
If a board stagnates it dies…or, worse, it becomes a zombie board with few or no regulars and a stream of drive-by traffic with a ton of “U suk!”/“No U! LOLozors!” posts.
I don’t know how or if this can be fixed–losing 600 or so regular posters…or even splitting their attention with another board can’t be good for the SDMB.
I’d suggest an honest apology with the understanding that yes, this is your Board, your sandbox, but it’s OUR content–and it’s a whole lot easier for members to find a new space to talk than it is for a board to find a stable of regular posters and an understanding that rules changes won’t be made on the fly again.
Good luck
**Ed **- please read, think about, and respond to Fenris’s excellent post.
iampunha, you forgot two things: We’ve mourned the losses of some folks who became pretty important to us because of this place. I know I’m not alone when I say that I’m the greater for having read posts by David Simmons, and much the lesser since he passed away. The other thing you forgot is that for many of us, this **was ** one of the few places we could have an intelligent discussion with people on various subjects. If I wanted to discuss politics with someone who wasn’t merely reguritating talking points spewed by this or that political party, I came here. If I saw a book/TV/movie/etc. as a larger allegory about something and I wanted to talk about it, I came here. Now? Not so much. I’ll pay attention to the threads I’m subscribed to, to see what happens with them, but as they fade away, so will I.
I’d say its been nice knowing you Ed, but you never gave us that chance.
Could you remind me again why I should give a rats ass whether or not you have a stable revenue model?
It has become perfectly clear that your (CL’s, whoever is in charge) contribution to this enterprise is the least significant. A message board can be set up in a matter of hours at a cost of somewhere between $50 and $500, with perhaps some Red Bull to keep one obsessive-compulsive administrator awake to work out the wrinkles.
Take your stable revenue model and your bad words list and shove them.
Changed mind about posting