I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I’ll give you one anyway.
I am one of those ‘over 600 people’. I was invited to one of the new boards, and have posted more there in the last week than I have here in six months.
And for clarification, I did *not *leave because of any of the changes in the Pit. I rarely open up the Pit, and when I heard of the changes going on there I admit my first response was “well, that won’t affect me”. But it has. Because the changes there didn’t only affect the Pit. They affected **the posters **in the Pit, which affected the rest of the Board. And when some of them started leaving, they’ve taken some of the rest of us with them.
And it’s not just the Pit changes, either. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but this place just isn’t as interesting as it used to be. I used to spend hours here going from forum to forum, post to post. Lately, I could scan through everything of interest to me in 15 minutes, and then I’d head off somewhere else.
Now, I was never a prolific poster here, and I doubt my absence alone will have any direct impact on the board. But I can say from things I have seen elsewhere over the past week or so that I am not alone. There are a lot of folks from here who have taken the opportunity to see what else is available to us, and there are more like me who never ‘planned’ to leave the Dope, but now find ourselves with little or no reason to come back here. Some of those people were ‘casual posters’ like me. Some have been long time lurkers, and some have racked up 5 figure post counts here.
In fact, this is my first post here in over a week; I have only visited the Dope on a few occasions in that time because someone on another board linked to something here, and the only reason I came into this thread is because there is a discussion about Ed’s latest ‘apology’ going on elsewhere.
Like I said, I never intended to leave the Straight Dope for good, and I didn’t start typing this intending for it to be a ‘farewell post’, but right now I can honestly say that I feel no need to come back to post here again. There used to be ‘something’ here, but now it’s gone.
I hope things do turn around here, and if the ‘spark’ returns, I’ll probably return with it. But until then, I’ve found a new home, and I like it there better.
I appreciate your admitting that the delivering of promises does not have a good record. I guess I am one poster that has no more patience though.
I think it is time to start seeing some discussion of what is in the future and accepting some feedback on it. You don’t actually need a timetable or Gantt charts, just an outline with some goals. Jerry’s thread on changes stalled and stalled at a point where it appears the staff is afraid to make small changes and most importantly, Search has not improved in any way and the Dope was not kept open to google.
Now if this is a resource problem and time problem, you could always give the group a target required to pay for the hardware and consultant to do the work and hold a special fundraiser in selling merchandise and silly things like titles or more PM storage or whatever better ideas are thought of. Keep the fundraiser in the open, show progress towards the poll and when it gets done, make the order and higher the tech and put up the schedule for work then. If corporate finance rules does not allow for this, make an inquiry of the Controller to enlist him in finding a way where it would. Maybe under chapter 11 it is impossible. I’ll accept this. The real problem is you should have down this or something similar before CL went into Chapter 11 and before 600+ posters found other places to hang out.
I strongly suggest you open a special sub-forum of ATMB or IMHO that only you and the admins can start threads in and that has polls turned on and start asking questions of the membership. Think of it as a compromise between not wanting the overhead of vB polls and getting some real feel for what the community would like and how they would help. I’m honest enough to know I can be dead wrong about the search issue being important.
There are 600+ members at each of the two new ‘Doper’ related boards. They overlap at about 300. I am not suppose to directly link to threads at the other boards but the analysis has been done. So nearly 900 active posters on the dope have found another place to hang out with very similar communities and friends, with a massive amount of input in building the boards and the communities. That is as close to a cite I can give you. Feel free to nitpick it to death, but know that this time that a real change has occurred.
Excellent posts **Fenris **and iampunha. I would like to point out that these are two (dare I say it) beloved posters that when they returned after being gone were welcomed back by an on-line community known as the Dope. The Dopers stretch back way before I arrived and are great at welcoming new members into the group. But even more, seeing the reaction to iampunha who left before I joined, I think it is remarkable to a group of on-line posters to recall that well one of their own that departed. It shows the dope is more than just a place to waste away a few minutes or hours. It is a place where friendships are made. Now I was overjoyed to see **Fenris **return as he was always a must read poster in my opinion. His post here was another example of why.
This is the Hotel California—you can check out but you can never leave. Of course, 600 posters haven’t left—outside of getting themselves banned, they can’t leave—and even then they would still count on the Doper rolls. That’s a specious and self-serving argument. To the point, and as Jim’s post implied, do you think that the thousands of posts that have gone up on the other two new boards by (ex-)Dopers are IN ADDITION TO their usual posts here, or are they INSTEAD OF? Use a little logic, maybe read some of those posters’ tone where they’ve addressed the SD on the other boards, and do the math. Cite, my ass.
This is about my second or third post here this week—usually, I’m good for that many before my first cup of coffee—and I think this will be my last post here this week. I see no need that can’t be met elsewhere, and “elsewhere” is where I expect to find my on-line friends—like Fenris, and **Martini **Enfield, and **What **Exit?, and Rubystreak, and Sarahfeena, and Liberal, and Mangetout, and Jali, and Cisco, and JSGoddess, and Kalhoun, and SmartAleq, and TVeblen, and Oakminister, and Shayna, and Campion, and **Cartooniverse **and literally hundreds of other posters (some of whom might not even recognize my username, but I’ve enjoyed posting and sparring and chatting and learning from them over the years anyway). I couldn’t care less if I don’t find **Ed **there, even before his recent intrusion as a prominent poster here, and why should I? The least respectful posters I’ve encountered here on the SD, and I’ve gotten into some nasty shit with the more dismissive ones, have treated me with more courtesy than **Ed **has lately, both as an individual and as a member of his board.
I actually had a lot of respect in the good old days (pre-2008) when he was a rare presence here, but his board was such a paragon of online discussion, I gave him a lot of the credit, for setting it up, for finding some important unifying principles (like “Fighting Ignorance”) that worked, for finding able admins who were willing to do much thankless but essential work, and for letting the posters (for the most part) set the tone of these boards. If he wanted to bill himself (or his alter ego) as “The World’s Smartest Human,” well, who was I to say No? Last week I submitted a post to the mods of IMHO asking if anyone had ever lost more respect more quickly than **Ed **has around here? Any disgraced world leader, role model, celeb-in-a-scandal, etc.? The mods requested, very nicely, that I not post that poll, and I respected that polite request, though it struck me as a little weird. This place was becoming more about protecting **Ed’s **feelings, and **Lynn’s **and some other personages than it was about any other mission, and that’s not a cause I feel driven to protect.
**Ed **has nothing to apologize about, because the things he’s done lately that I find offensive were not slips or gaffes or mistakes: they were brutally honest expressions that were obviously (and painfully) heartfelt. He has a very limited use for most of us as posters, as clients, as human beings, and that has come across in most of his pronouncements. “If you don’t like my policy,” his constantly belligerent tone implies, “then there’s the door—buh-bye!” He’s the man with a million votes, so any pretense to being amenable to listening to others’ opinions is superficial. As others have said, I don’t really object to his new policy as much as I vociferously object to his manner of expressing it: Here’s the rules, I’ve spent the last few months making up my mind, and that’s that.
Probably the World’s Dumbest Human could have told **Ed **that he should have at least had an extended, open discussion of changes that were needed in the Pit and elsewhere, and the World’s Second-Dumbest Human could have given him a piece of advice about what to do when many posters expressed a strong view contrary to his own: Cave, and accept an idea or two—not only on issues you didn’t care about that much (which would be a given in any negotiation or discussion) but much more important, change your mind (at least for now) on an issue or two that you obviously did care about, and showed that you cared intensely about, because that would have two huge benefits: 1) you could always re-visit that issue six months or eighteen months down the road, and 2) you would in the meantime impress your clients that you did care about their strongly expressed feelings. Hell, you could be even dumber than the World’s Dumbest Human and still realize that. Probably there was an 18-foot tall ungulate around who could have given that advice.
But **Ed **doesn’t like advice, or at least he doesn’t seem to solicit it, or heed it very well. He does, however, enjoy giving it, and he gave it plainly several times here recently. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave. Not very surprisingly, many people have taken that advice.
Excerpts from The Tao Of Ed Zotti: How To Spite Loyal Customers And Drive Them Away In Droves:
1/ “…I think your question has been answered, and would prefer to talk about something else.” {4/3/09}
2/ “You’ll excuse me if I find this kind of thing exasperating. These questions have been asked and answered several times already. People just don’t like the answers they’re getting.”
3/ “If you want to continue participating here, that’s great. If you find some other venue more congenial, that’s OK too. I hope you have an enjoyable experience wherever you wind up.” {4/3/09}
4/ “If people are unhappy here, and they find another board to their liking and post there instead, this is a desirable outcome from both our standpoints.”
{4/3/09}
"5/ OK, here are the proposed language restrictions in the Pit. I’ll entertain discussion briefly. If your comment is something to the effect of, ‘We shouldn’t have any restrictions in the Pit’, save yourself the trouble. {2/3/09}
6/ “So my feeling was, I’ll just jump into this with both feet, and everybody will scream and shout, and eventually we’ll end up with something everybody can live with” {28/2/09}
7/ “Fine, so we’ve established that after all this huffing and puffing, the rule basically isn’t going to affect you to speak of, and you’ll deal with it, no matter how fucking retarded you may think it is. Works for me.” {26/2/09}
Any further comment - particularly about that last gem - is probably superfluous, but I will just add that you’re right, Ed, communication certainly has been an issue recently. If that was you not intending to alienate the SDMB community, I’d hate to see what you would have come up with if you really didn’t give a shit about what we thought.
I posted this, edited it, decided not to post it and here it is again, so clearly decisiveness isn’t one of my strengths, but this is really bugging me:
:dubious:
Um…an apology to you is “a magic combinations of words”? 'K…Gandalf the Grey here to help unlock the arcane secrets of the magic combination of words to “The Rites & Ways To Apollo’s Guise”.
An apology consists of 3 (or 4, depending on the nature/severity of the offense) parts.
A frank acknowledgment of specifically what you did wrong—in an active voice ("I know I hurt you by doing < such and such > "=good. "“I’m sorry that you were hurt by < such and such >”=bad. “Mistakes were made”=terrible).
An expression of regret–(“I feel terrible for the pain I caused you”)
2.5) (depending on the offense) A clear statement of precisely what you will do to make amends (sometimes not possible-“I’m sorry I stabbed your husband in the eyes with a pair of pruning shears” doesn’t leave a lot of room for amends–“I’ll trim your hedges for the rest of my life” really doesn’t seem appropriate for the severity of the offense.)
A promise not to do it again.
And that’s all there is to it, with one caveat: it can’t be a hypothetical apology. The words “If” (“If what I said offended you, I’m sorry”–not an apology, you’re postulating a hypothetical) or “but” (“I’m sorry I hurt you, but you hurt me too”–argument, not apology) can’t appear. That’s all there is too it.
There you go and voilà, there’s the “magic combination of words”.
And y’know what’s funny? A sincere apology does NOT sound obsequious or grovelly if written correctly. And even if it happens to, it’ll still be received better than a passive voiced hypothetical apology (“I’m sorry if you were upset at some of the changes that happened, but some stuff’ll get better some time…”)
You’re a professional writer. Here’s a sample: you could certainly do this 100% better but for example, you could have said:***
Folks, I made mistakes in the way I handled this–I made sweeping changes without working with the members of the community here, I assumed you were all childish and unreasonable jerks who’d complain about anything I said and I said it didn’t matter if you posted here.
For all that, and the hard feelings that have accrued as a result, I’m sorry.
What I’m going to do to start to make amends is to undo all the new rules–the Pit goes back to the way Giraffe, Veb and Fluiddruid had it. Lynn’s rules are now gone, as are mine.
The other thing I’m going to do is that going forward, when changes are considered, I’ll post them for discussion before implementing them–even if Corporate forces a change on us, I’ll still open a thread so the posters and the staff can discuss of how to implement those changes in the least disruptive fashion.
Thank you all for listening and I promise this won’t happen again.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------***
You are now in possession of “the magic combination of words”. Speak friend and enter.
Gandalf, keeper of the magic words.
That aside, what worries me is that after each of these huge…um…incidents? kerfluffles? fuck-ups? is that we shed posters. People said we’d lose a bunch of people in Pay-To-Post and we did–two of my favorite posters (Gobear and Mr. Visible) vanished and haven’t returned to regular posting. Hell, I haven’t fully come back–once you get out of the habit of posting on a message board, it’s harder to get back into it.
This one will be much the same–even with a sincere, heartfelt apology and a serious change in management style and even with fixes to the database, some of this next group of people exiting won’t come back. And each time this happens, the board loses a little bit more of the people who make the board what it is. And at some point–I don’t think it’s here yet, but there WILL be a point at which the board drops below critical mass and dies or becomes a ghost-board.
Sorry, Ed, but I really don’t want a box of kittens.
Too bad you have been able to provide reasonable rules, consistent moderation, a working search function, and a stable board.
If you are interested in participating in a vibrant general message board, you should consider joining Giraffe’s board or Domebo or both.
If you are not interested in participating in a vibrant general message board, and instead you are simply interested in obtaining copy from posters to fill up your board, you should consider going to pay to post, but I don’t know where you will find the money to pay posters to post on your board.
Don’t thank me for my patience, Ed. I don’t have any patience any more. Your condescending arrogant attitude has done me in. Go pat someone else on the head.
Ed, I’ve always liked you. There was a time, way back when, when we communicated from time to time via email (this was long before PMs were activated). I’m even one of the people who responded to your psychic orgasm questionnaire to provide you content for one of your published articles. I know my participation here has rankled some and encouraged or entertained others, but overall I do feel as if I’ve been (at least a small) part of actually creating and building this community. With all that in mind, I’d like to invite you to read the FAQs at another community message board I recently registered to participate at; The Cellar. Some pertinent parts:
Also, from their registration agreement:
That’s it; 3 rules, and only 3 rules. They have nearly 4,000 members and have been around since before “the internet”. And they’ve survived through it all with just 3 little common-sense rules.
Thanks for the memories. It was nice while it lasted.
P.S. So as not to mislead you, I didn’t choose to go elsewhere because of your new rules, but because of the hammer with which you banged me over the head with them, then told me I was welcome to go elsewhere. So I did.
It wasn’t my intention to tell you to go elsewhere, Shayna, and I deeply regret that I did or said anything that made you think I did. I’m not sure if there is anything I can say at this point that will change your mind, but let me give it a try.
However ineptly I may have handled it, my goal throughout all this was one I think (or thought) few would quarrel with: I was trying to get people to be nicer to one another. You can see that the rules changes, when all was said and done, were minor. Criticism of SDMB administration was moved to ATMB, and a small number of expressions were placed off-limits in the Pit. That’s pretty much it.
The first change I don’t think anyone really quarrels with. We probably should have done it a long time ago. It has never been my intention to stifle criticism of board administration, and I hope people don’t feel stifled now - I think it’s a healthy thing, one of the board’s great strengths. But putting it in the Pit meant that people felt free to express themselves in the most vitriolic terms. These arguments generated a great deal of heat and very little light. You can see that the discussion here in ATMB, while harsh, has been a lot more constructive. I think if I had stopped there, with that one change, people would have been fine with it.
The second change … well, that obviously hasn’t worked out too well. Pretty much everyone warned me against it. I pushed ahead anyway - foolishly, I now concede. But let me explain what I was trying to do, first by explaining what I WASN’T trying to do.
Believe it or not, I didn’t want to change what I considered to be the essential character of the Pit. It can be a rough place, sure. But in the end justice is usually served. Somebody makes an outrageous remark, someone else calls him on it, they have it out … I can’t say they wind up fast friends, but you have the sense of it having been a fair fight. I’ve read lots of threads like that, some of them pretty brutal, and none of them ever struck me as problematic.
But a few … I dunno. It was the ones involving mods that really stuck in my craw, that I admit. But every so often … I hate to focus on this, but it bugged the hell out of me to see women called cunts. Pretty old fashioned of me, I know. In the grand scheme, who cares? Lots of worse things happen in this world.
Thing of it is, had I been the Pit moderator all along, and made it clear from the beginning that there were about a half-dozen expressions I just couldn’t abide, I imagine people would have indulged me. My mistake was in trying to change the ground rules so late in the game. Even now I don’t think most people really care that much about having a few verboten expressions; they just didn’t like being told that, after 10 years of having something be OK, now it was not OK.
So that was one mistake. The second, and undoubtedly the bigger one, was in responding dismissively to complaints about the first mistake. At a certain level my reaction was understandable, I guess. The notion that we should take a vote about what seemed to me a question of human decency … I found it hard to swallow. I still do, to be honest. But I got my back up. I was abrupt and unresponsive to people who were politely asking me to reconsider. OK, some weren’t so polite. Still, I should have been big about it. I wasn’t; I behaved condescendingly. It was wrong of me to do so and I sincerely apologize.
Perhaps it’s too late. I hope not. I would hate to see a board that has gone through so much, and of which I’m very proud, dissolve or diminish over something like this. I still think the SDMB is the best board on the Internet. Plenty of forums run by big media companies have crashed and burned; I thought we would be different. If it all goes south I’ll have only myself to blame. I was stubborn and self-righteous and wouldn’t listen. I’m sorry.
Ed, thank you for this. I most sincerely hope that it is not too little, too late. I have not enjoyed seeing the flavor of the boards leeching away over the past weeks.
Yeah, some other guy tried that a couple thousand years ago and they nailed him up. Not that I’m making comparisons. (Sorry.) But it really seems pointless to try to make people play nicely with one another in a forum set up specifically for people to NOT play nice in.
So are you rescinding the censorship, or not?
I don’t know how many times I’ve used ‘fuck’ or a derivative thereof over the years; but if you search on my name and fuck* (with the wildcard) I think you will find that most of the time I was quoting, or using it in a joke.
I searched my posts on ‘cunt’, and Search returned three threads. One usage was a quote, one was saying I didn’t know if a woman was a ‘cunt’ or not, and one was in reference to a male television character.
You see, I prefer not to make a habit of using such words. But I’m not going to get bent out of shape if other people use them. Sure, I’ve been irked by a few usages. But if I’m reading something in The Pit I don’t have a complaint coming.
Most of us are adults here. Let us choose our language.
A friend of mine once gave me some sage advice, long after I needed it, but it applies here: If you’re know you’re going to a fight, wear golf cleats. The main reason comments about the Admin generated heat, but very little light when they were in the Pit, was because the Admin didn’t listen to our complaints a good deal of the time. Period. Paragraph.
My registration date here, as I’ve pointed out, is 01/01/01, and I have seen civil complaints lodged against the board Admin in the Pit. However, as anyone who has spent a significant amount of time here can tell you, they began to grow less civil, when it became apparent that the management of this place cared as much about what we thought, as Bush did about evidence that there were no WMDs in Iraq. When there were problems, we didn’t all jump up in unison saying that the people in charge were knob gobbling inbred gimps. We offered solutions to those problems. Only to be told we were stupid children who didn’t know what we were talking about.
When P2P was first floated, we said, “Why don’t you try ads?” We even pointed to a number of other boards who had ads, and were doing well, financially. “Nope!” came the answer. “Our people have ran the numbers and decided that ads won’t pay the bills.” Then, of course, those of us who stuck around for P2P got greeted with the announcement one day, “P2P isn’t cutting it. We’re adding ads.” The response then was mild anger. Then, of course, came the infamous day when P2P members got greeted with the talking banner ad. You remember that Ed? The whole damn board ground to a halt while we complained about that. Lots of backpedalling on your part. That was the only time you guys ever responded to something we said in a manner which indicated that you “got” what we were trying to say.
Look, Ed, I’ve done customer service. I know what its like to be strapped to a computer terminal, listening to some wanker scream at me, demanding that I do something which was physically impossible. It is some of the worst work imaginable, and the complaints we’ve made are nothing like that. We have tried to work with the Reader, we’ve done things that a number of message boards could never have gotten their members to go along with, because we loved this place. Time after time, however, we were patted on our heads, told we didn’t know what we were talking about, and you jerks did whatever it was that you wanted.
Now, the Reader, like every other paper in America, is in trouble. Your “solution” has been more of the same crap that pissed so many of us off in times past. Can you even tell me anything about some of the Dopers here who’re not on the so-called “Advisory Board”? I don’t expect you to be able to give me a complete rundown on every Doper here, or even on the ones with the highest post counts, just some indication that you know who the fuck some of us are?
Can you tell me, for example, who the Doper is, who makes his living buying and selling papers like the Reader? Because there’s at least one here (or was he may have bailed by now) who does that. Were I you, I’d have zeroed in on that guy, long ago. Since, you know, he might be able to provide some real help. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, you’re a busy man. Don’t have time to read the boards. Seems to me that if you liked your job, you’d try and find a way to pay attention to such things.
Now you say you’re sorry. Pathetic is more like it. You, who for over 30 years has made his living claiming to be intelligent should have known better than to jump into something that was already humming along without trying to figure out how it worked. You say that you think these boards are “the best on the internet.” Ed, these boards haven’t been all that great in some period of time. Had you been around here, had you been even just lurking on these boards in the time that I’d been here (forget about paying attention from the beginning), you would have known what was great about them. You’d have wept along with us when we found out that one of our members had died, celebrated when one (or two or three or more) of us got married or had children. Most importantly, you’d have known that we’re a creative bunch and that us hurling the word “cunt” at one another could, in fact, be a sign of affection, or even a minor insult. Many of us did, after all, learn how to sling invectives from you.
Another friend of mine liked to you say, “You’ll keep eating shit until you decide you don’t like the taste any more.” Well, I’m done eating shit. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but I’ve heard the promises of change. I’ve heard the “We screwed up, it seems.” I’ve even heard the "sorry"s before. (You gave one out in the wake of the talking banner ad, as I recall.) When are we going to see anything? Both Giraffe and CRSP have done more with their boards in a few days than I’ve seen the Reader do with theirs in the entire time I’ve been here. If they can do it, why can’t you? If you want me, and probably a few others to stick around, go through the various Pit threads over the years where we’ve made suggestions on how to fix things, then talk to Giraffe and the other posters who’ve got boards running vB, find out from them how to make some of the changes we put forth and actually make them! While you’re at it, try to find out who some of us are. Who’s the Doper who died after falling off a bridge? Who buys newspapers and then sells them for a profit? Who served in WWII? Who’s presently stationed in Iraq? Who’s gotten married because of these boards? Who’s gotten divorced? You don’t have to tell us everyone who those questions could be answered by. Just tell us one name for each. Can you do that, Ed? Because if you can’t (and that’s the way I’m betting), then its only a very short matter of time before these boards blow up in your face all over again. Assuming, of course, they can recover from this mess.
Based on the discussion in the thread linked right below this post, I’m rescinding the warning, Tuckerfan. But, please remember that insults are not allowed in ATMB, even when aimed at mods. We want to keep the discussions in here as civil as possible, and insults don’t help toward that goal.
I don’t know if it was so much what was said in some cases, as how it was said. This applies not just to the language rule (which I, and I’m sure many others could care less about) but to the upgrades, the requests for features, the perception of disparity within moderator decisions and actions, and probably a few other bits and pieces that have come up under someone or another’s skin recently.
From where I sit, if you (as the Big Cheese, the Boss Man, El Jefe) say we pay to post - we pay to post, if you say we don’t have to pay to post but we have to look at ads - we look at ads, if you say we need to avoid a couple of indiscreet terms when we fight - we avoid these terms.
But…
It’s when you say Love it or Leave it, then no matter how much some of us love it, we would rather leave it. When you say it’s your way or the highway, it’s time to hop up on 80, head east to 65 and scurry my furry butt back to the southland from whence I came.
When you tell us cool things are coming down the pike but cannot tell us what they might be because you do not want to talk out of school, we pick up on the shift from adult/adult speech to parent/child speech and, although what’s being said may be the best thing since sliced haggis, it’s going to raise a few hairs here and there. This kind of thing reminds me too much of work. I come here for information and entertainment, not for gainful employment or the level of treatment that comes with it.
The bottom line is, there is a level of respect that is missing. Not necessarily a level of disrespect that is there, but definitely a level of respect that is missing.
Some will see this as disrespect automatically, others will see it as the lack of respect.
Still others will not see it at all and wonder what all the hubbub is about.
You want to know my little secret? The truth is, I could live with this protopatronizing, I really could. However I do think the air changes as it absorbs the attitude. Perhaps it is The Force at work, tiny Midiclorians change in a small way from the language of us meat puppets, but change in larger, sometimes permanent ways from the emotions we express between each other. Conducting these dark emotions like tiny telegraphs. Even the lightest of endeavors and exchanges lacks the jovial luster of full intellectual freedom.
Perhaps not.
But my point is, as a Doper since before the board was even around, I value this venue. It’d just be kind of nice to see interaction and respect as opposed to the heavy handed corporate line that has permeated the fabrics of this board for over a year now. Just saying is all.
Thank you for the validation of my previous post, I was afraid I might have to search if someone called cite, having such a shining example so close at hand is the apex of convenience.
I appreciate this latest apology. It was a good one. The only real one so far. I really wish it hadn’t taken so long to come, because now it pretty much feels like, well, you never really wanted to apologize, never wanted to listen to us, didn’t have the respect for us that makes us worth listening to, and now you’re just doing it because you feel consequences coming, not necessarily because you want to.
I feel like deep down, you still really feel like it’s your way or the highway, and nobody else’s opinions about the community really matter. But now you’ve learned a lesson: don’t just say “my way or the highway,” say it in a nicer and less condescending way, even if the message is the same. (I know, this interpretation directly contradicts your claim that you regret not listening, but let’s chalk it up to a smidgen of mistrust you’ve bred). If this is the case, I’m not completely sure it addresses most people’s concerns, but it’s something.