It’s the exact same personality here that it is in ‘real life’. What I said was that the tone of voice people read here is impossible for them to hang on to when they actually meet me out there in meatspace.
It’s easy to assign a tone or an emotional state to someone whose face you can’t see and whose voice you can’t hear. So people have decided that because I speak bluntly I must be angry, bitter, rude, whatever. I’m just as blunt in meat space, but out there people can’t as easily start telling me how angry and bitter I am when they can plainly see my face is not mad and my voice is not raised.
Part of my personality is that I say things in arguments so that they’ll be heard. Why bunt when you can hit a home run?
I make my point, I don’t hold back, and I stand up for myself. If that’s a bad thing, well, I don’t care.
What I said was true, and the questions I asked were tough but fair. I still have not gotten an answer to them, nor has anything been said in any kind of official capacity about TubaDiva falsely accusing me of being deliberately dishonest to stir up shit (which sounds like trolling to me) and thinly disgusing a desire to ban me because she doesn’t like me.
To clarify, in simple words: TUBADIVA receives a modest compensation for helping Ed Zotti with the home page and related: things like thread-spotting, posting classic columns, fixing the coding on Staff Reports, etc. This does NOT include time spent on the Message Boards; in fact, when she was on a hiatus from the Message Boards, she still helped with the admininstrative side of posting columns etc and still received the compensation. Her pay is NOT linked to her Admin/Mod duties on the Message Boards, but to her behind-the-scenes help with other aspects of the Straight Dope pages.
That’s exactly what tomndebb said, except I’m trying to make it clearer for anyone still confused about the diff between “Message Boards” and “Home Page.”
I do not know amounts, but I do know what some other payments from the READER are, and I’d guess that TUBADIVA’s “modest compensation” would probably be enough, after taxes, to cover lunch once a week.
No, she doesn’t. She’s an expert at making a mountain out of a molehill, in a nasty fashion. She did so, in the Pit, and got a Pittish response to it.
Newsflash: if someone makes a vague suggestion about something that will happen at some indefinite point in the future, and that something hasn’t yet happened, there are plenty of explanations for the phenomenon besides deliberate dishonesty. If you want to find out what the correct explanation is, contemptuous sarcasm isn’t the best approach.
LHOD, the only difference between a kiss ass and a shit head is depth perception. You may want to take a step or two back before you get all messy.
Tuba owes catsix a fucking apology. Your litte pussyfied, ass kissing self can fuckin’ chew it if you can’t even figure that out.
[/contemptuous sarcasm]
Holy fuck I hate you.
Now then…Tom was wrong. He got shown he was wrong. Then he starts in with the “Oh, we discussed it off board and it all got straightened out” bullshit. That is about as believable as the drippy cunt sausages we have for mods and admins telling us that there are new features coming down the line.
So, lessee, if I hear a weather forecast that predicts massive thunderstorms, and I tell you that I think there’s probably rain coming… and then there’s no rain, then I’m a liar?
I work in the software business myself, and the problem as I see it is this: the developers of the service and the consumers of the service never see eye to eye on the requirements. So you get basically two classes of interactions… users who are satisifed with the product and grovel to the providers like some sort of cargo cult, and users who are dissatisfied. A healthy hatred develops between the developers and the users because the developers take affront at the notion that a lowly user would dare to criticize their golden code. Normally this conflict is buffered by some sort of customer service department who actually cares that the user is happy (or perhaps they don’t really care, but some component of their compensation depends on the users being happy), so the divergent views of the product are balanced in a productive way.
Here at SDMB, the customer service department is missing. The developers are sitting right on the front line, not only with posting privileges, but also with post control privileges over other users. When you make a complaint about the product or administration, what you get is pure, unfiltered spite of a provider who takes affront at criticism and has the ability to simply squash it (while perhaps flaunting this ability a bit). This is a natural and unavoidable consequence of having nobody with a stake in making the users happy. In fact, the incentive is for dissatisfied users just to leave. In a board famous for performance problems and carping users, hostile administration solves 2 problems in one swoop. You are left with a board that performs faster and a content cargo-cult of satisfied users who praise you for delivering such a wonderful service. Everybody (who is still here) is happy with no effort required from anybody.
So really, this boils down to a problem of incentive and priority alignment. Until these change, the situation is going to remain the same.
Some people might not list their address because of spam or stalking fears, however would still like to get contacts from other members. Even the free messageboards I am on (EZ Boards, most of them) have this feature and it does come in handy. If EZ Boards, which is a free messageboard system, can have this, then why can’t this board? It shouldn’t be that hard to set up.
And while I don’t know the entire backstory re: TubaDiva, I do think that it is helpful for a board if the admins and mods are switched around more often, either as a temporary leave of absence or a total “regime change.” You can tell when a moderator is burned out and it seems like she is. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, it just happens. If Tuba can’t recognize for herself that she’s burning out then it might be time to put gentle pressure on her to take a leave for awhile. That’s the way it’s always worked on my other boards. But then, none of the mods or admins on my other boards are paid, either.
The same thing was said about Jersey Diamond and Joe Cool-“Oh, but they’re sooo nice in real life!”
Well, most of us don’t know them in real life, we probably won’t meet them, and so we judge them on how they act here. The whole, “Well, she/he is REALLY nice in person!” excuse doesn’t cut it.
This isn’t necessarily directed at catsix, or anyone in particular. I just think that argument is bullshit.
While I agree that catsix made a mountain out of a molehill (aren’t we all?), I feel that the response was out of line due to factual incorrectness and a veiled threat. I also feel that requests for or expectations of apologies are silly.
Where did I make a mountain out of a molehill? All I asked was whether this was going to be like the previous times that members were asked to spend money and tolerate advertising because cool new stuff would be coming later. Now, at re-up time (when the administration is trying to get people to spend money by renewing subscriptions) we’re hearing the ‘cool new stuff’ line again. I wonder whether there will actually be cool new stuff after the mass re-up, or will it turn out like before with the ‘We never promised anything.’
It’s a fair thing to wonder.
That’s hardly a fair analogy, since no human being has the ability to control the weather. If you were a baker and you said ‘I’m going to bake some cool stuff for you guys, possibly cakes or muffins or scones.’ and then two years went by and no baked goods at all showed up, then I’d say you had lied.
If the fact that I debate to win and defend my points aggressively in the Pit and GD make me an asshole to some people, then I’m going to live with some people thinking that I’m an asshole. I’m not about to start pussying around and becoming a doormat so that someone won’t claim I’m a bitch. If someone wants to insult me, and they get it back just as good as they gave it, that doesn’t make me the asshole. That’s the chance they took when they threw the insult.
Where I think people have gone wrong is reading anger into debate. A person (me) can debate something stridently and it doesn’t mean they are pissed off or bitter.
Course this isn’t about me, this is about TubaDiva, so perhaps we should return to the topic at hand.
No one said you had to be a doormat, just stop being so defensive all the time and thinking everyone is attacking you. Sometimes I think you see offense where none is intended.
However, if everyone is getting the wrong impression, you might try wording your arguments a little differently. That goes for everyone, not just you.
In this case, yes, Tuba owes you an appology, but I wouldn’t request one, because then it’d be meaningless.
Besides, as I said, my post wasn’t addressing YOU personally.
That’s all. I never said you were a bitch or an asshole, so calm down.
Sometimes people have to decide whether enough people are getting the wrong impression or if it’s just a couple of people who seem to jump at the mention of a name.
In the latter case, it doesn’t make sense to change everything just so those few people will be happy.
I know she owes me an apology. I’ve already said a couple of times that I don’t expect one and I’m not asking her to make one.
The fact that she hasn’t has said enough.
There you go assuming I need to calm down. If I calmed down any more I’d be in a coma.
Can we get back to addressing the unprofessional attitudes and behaviors of TubaDiva now, please?
Pretending that controlling your own message board is akin to repeating someone else’s weather prediction is fucking laughable. You really are totally full of shit, aren’t you? You must really move the cars off the lot.
I think it’s lame, but letting people pick custom titles would have taken pretty little effort and very little server strain. You could have thrown that bone but li’l Ed didn’t bother, even suggested charging extra if it did get implemented. It really seems like you’re all quite satisfied with the cycle described by Brain Wreck.
Fine with me-I really don’t give a shit one way or another.
As for unprofessional behavior, at this point, I don’t expect anything else. She’s either totally burned out or she just doesn’t give a shit about the impression she’s giving.
OK, I can understand hauling the mods over the coals now and then. What I really don’t get is the deep hostility evinced by some posters towards them. Some people really don’t like these guys and take every chance they can to make that dislike plain.
The obvious question is, why the hell stick around? Ah, they reply, because I enjoy the board as a whole. Then, enjoy. I’m sure that if you ignore the mods then they’ll ignore you. On the other hand, if you poke them with a stick …
As for the restaurant analogy, try telling the chef he can’t cook for shit and the staff that they’re a bunch of morons who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, then see how polite they are.