Yes, but each of those mods aproached the insults with a somewhat cheerful “O.K. fucker, you wanna fight? Lets throw down then” attitude. Manny, Coldy et al. never needed nor wanted an administrator to get offended on their behalf, I’d dare say they would have resented it. All of the mods you’ve mentioned were quite capable of taking on all comers in a battle of wits and usually wiping the floor with them, while still protecting the lines that could not be crossed at the expense of their ultimate authority.
Of course, being human they couldn’t keep it up endlessly, which is why I believe that most of tem resigned: they reached the point where it wasn’t fun anymore, it became work and the confrontations became more personal, so they stepped down. I note in passing that the admins who seem to demonstrate the most questionale judgement on these matters nowadays, Tuba and Dex, have been doing this for more than a decade. I think perhaps it is time for them to step gracefully down, not because we hate them, or that they are bad people or that their intellegence has eroded, but because they are burned out. There is no shame in that, they’ve been doing an oft times thankless job without any real compensation for far too long and should be commended for it. The real shame is not recognizing when the time has come to hang it up. Everyone suffers when that happens. Johnny Unitas did play in a Chargers uniform, Michael Jordon went out on the court for the Wizzards, but no sports fan admires those feats. Fun IS fun, but done is also done.
The administration here has shown on numerous occasions that they are willing to change a decision after reading threads just like this one. We’ve seen posters banned and reinstated, suspended and reinstated, threads reopened, the works. Sometimes they do not change their decisions, that’s their right, but there is ample evidence that they do not stubbornly stick by their decisions, regardless of other opinions.
Thanks, staff, for reconsidering the suspension so quickly.
This I believe is a key point, especially in TubaDiva’s case. During the Stage Manager kerfuffle it became apparent that TD provides a number of behind-the-scenes services to the board that no one else does, services which are vital to its smooth running. I suggested then, based on my own wretched experience as an “indispensable employee”, that TD needed backup to relieve the grinding strain of that role – a strain that wears one down to the last nerve, which in turn makes one prone to overreaction and blowups.
If TD still has no backup, is still the one and only for those services, then more blowups are going to happen, no matter how hard she tries to avoid them. Burnout will do that to a person. Even if she does now have backup, I suspect Weirddave is right and that she’s simply been doing this too long for her own good. This is all said with respect, not malice, and empathy for the weariness she must feel.
