Is there any good reason not to just move all discussion of Mod activity to ATMB?
I’ve never understood the rationale behind putting all mod complaints in the pit – it encourages hostility and drama, and discourages useful discussion.
Some people who might otherwise complain civilly end up thinking that since it’s the pit, they are near-obligated to throw in a few epithets; and even if the person doing the pitting is polite, there’s nothing to stop other people from ratcheting up the venom. Moreover, when faced with an angry, profane complaint the mod is put in the position where their only options are to ignore the pitting (which makes them look bad), respond in venomous kind (which makes them look un-mod-ly) or else try to civilly engage people disinclined to return such a courtesy.
What’s the problem with just telling people to complain civilly (in ATMB) or not at all? It’s fairer to the mods, and it’s fairer to people who have a sincere complaint.
If someone wants to just be nasty to a mod, they can open a pit thread, I suppose … but the mod will be free to just drop in with a “fuck you, too. If you had a real complaint, you’d have taken it to ATMB, you loser.”
This “in the pit but not really” stuff is absurd.
Could you folks do yourselves–or at least me–a big favor and please STFU about improvements in TBTB’s Big Pit Lite System of Chaos?
You’re making **Ed ** look like a pretty dim bulb here, coming up with about six gajillion much sounder ideas in only 24 hours than he and his crack team of Mods Without Meds were able to devise in a week of all-night sessions of brainstorming and deep philosophizing. You’re making it seem as if he should have simply turned the solution over to our care for coming up with an idea instead of going to his A-1 team of geniuses working around the clock in super-secret session, and you just know he doesn’t like being outsmarted like that.
And if anyone has had their dog or cat or goldfish come up with any useful ideas–PUH-LEASE don’t even mention that on the boards. **TPTB **will positively have a conniption fit that could shut us down forever. Be discreet, and avoid any discussion that even suggests that we’re capable of coming up with workable, sensible ideas. It only makes them mad. If you must, say your ideas softly, offhand-like, preferably in a tone that suggests you’re being sarcastic, and maybe they’ll steal it for their own and claim they thought it up first. DO NOT keep coming up with good ideas out here in public like this–PLEASE use your heads.
Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better, I was in an all-day meeting today, the major decision of which being that while I did indeed have a convincing argument that headquarters’ plan was shitty, we would nonetheless proceed with that plan.
Well, it’s been my night time, so I’ve been asleep. But after reading the first half, my first thought was ‘WTF - prr’s had a character transplant. He’s gone over to the dark side.’ Then I started waking up, and I realised it’s still the prr we know and love. Phew.
This would be a terrible idea, as it would leave it up to the mods to decide when there is only one side to a debate. We’d end up with some sort of political orthodoxy-- something I consider anathema to this MB.
If you don’t have the balls to defend your post in the Pit, then don’t post there.
The intention was that an NPR note would be added to the title of an ordinary Pit thread that had gone seriously off the rails, but which we didn’t want to close because we felt it raised issues worth a sober discussion. As such, I figured “non-Pit rules apply” was something the staff would add to the thread title. We prefer that OPs not put NPR in the title themselves when starting new threads. Rather, questions or comments about the board where you’d like an answer without the distraction of flaming should go in ATMB.
Am I missing something here, John? You’re usually the epitome of clarity, but I’m not following you at all.
How does this leave it up to the mods to decide whether there’s only one side to the debate? It’s a call we, as individual posters, make every damn time we open a thread in the Pit that has to do with politics, religion, and other GD topics. Or every time we think, “close, but not quite - I’ll put this in GD.”
How does that create any political orthodoxy? We’ve been doing this since 1999, after all. Sometimes those Pit threads turn into decent debates, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people take advantage of the fact that such a thread is in the Pit to slam their fellow posters in the way they can’t in GD, sometimes they don’t.
So you’re saying I should just post 'em in GD, even if everyone’s going to ask, “WTF is the debate, here?”? Should I ‘Pit’ Blago in GD, in the absence of a debate? And if I Pit him in the Pit, what’s the connection between concluding in advance that Blago’s not going to have any defenders, and creating a thread where people can attack each other in ways they can’t in other fora? If an actual debate breaks out, why not create the thread in such a way that it can be moved to GD?
I don’t see why a judgment call about which side of the line an issue’s on should determine whether people get to Pit each other in the thread or not. It makes no sense at all to me - never has.
To be honest, your suggestion makes no sense to me. If NPR is invoked, the same rules apply as in GD, so why not post your thread there? Your idea, if I understand it, is that NPR would allow you to say Blago is a douchebag, but wouldn’t allow posters to call each other douchebags. But that’s not how it works. NPR means you can’t call ANYBODY a douchebag. If you have something else in mind, then I’m not getting this at all.
If we let non-staff invoke NPR, we’re going to wind up with all sorts of threads in the Pit that belong someplace else, which is emphatically not the idea. NPR is supposed to be a rare thing meant to halt train wrecks.
Okay, now I’m getting confused. I thought that it has always been okay to call someone in off-board life a douchebag (or any other invective) in all the forums, including GD, and that it was only verbotten to refer to other posters that way.
I’m not trying to make things difficult, I’d just like to make sure I’m up to date on what’s allowable and what isn’t so as not to run afoul of things myself.
Ed, I’m trying to be as respectful of you as possible here, but when posters understand the way these boards are set up better than you do, and anticipate problems with the new rules you’re improvising better than you have, don’t you think you might want to step back from taking hands-on control of something you’ve been pretty hands-off from? We’re not trying to compete with you, and we recognize that it’s your site, and you can do pretty much whatever you feel like doing, but maybe it will work more smoothly for you to discuss what you’re thinking about changing first, instead of laying down new rules that you then need to change, tweak, revise, and modify. You’re changing ground rules around here that have worked pretty well for years, and all as a result of Lynn’s mishandling of a minor situation which resulted in her getting one poster to lose it with her last week.
What are you talking about? Who do you think set the boards up? Me, that’s who. With my own hands I have typed up the rules to which you apparently allude. Are you claiming to understand the rules I made up better than I do? You’ll appreciate this is a notion I have a hard time getting my head wrapped around. My possibly naive take on things is that there are certain unfounded assumptions about the rules that I’m trying to adjust. But never mind that. Is there some specific rule to which you object? If so, which one? Just now we were speaking of who gets to impose “non-Pit rules apply.” This isn’t a rule that has been around for years; this is something I came up with a couple days ago, which I’m starting to think may not have been my brightest idea. But your reference to Lynn makes me think you’re not talking about that. Rather, perhaps you’re speaking of the alarmingly persistent notion that in the Pit people get to say anything they want to a mod at any time and under any circumstances. Is this what you mean? If so, I don’t know how this idea has taken root, but it’s mistaken. It’s quite true that for many years we have allowed posters to Pit mods in threads started for that purpose, and it seems evident that some posters have generalized from this that anything goes. I’m starting to come round to the view, expressed in this thread and elsewhere, that a far simpler rule would be to require that all criticism of SDMB administration be confined to ATMB, where comments of the “you douchebag” variety are not permitted. I’m genuinely interested in hearing comments about this. If none of the above addresses your concerns, I blushingly and sincerely confess I have no idea what you’re referring to, and hope you’ll do me the favor of spelling it out.
You wrote the rules in the first place, but have you been responsible for applying them day-to-day like the mods have, or posting under them like we have? (Serious question, not snark.) You built this car, and it is a great thing, but us posters have been driving it for nine years now - we have a good idea of how things work, too. How do you think posters like me have 19,000+ posts in eight years and not a single warning? I have a pretty fair idea where the lines are.
I don’t think pseudotriton is talking about the creation of rules or the enforcing of rules per se either, just more of a general idea of how things actually work down in the trenches. I can’t speak for anyone but me, but I think the general consensus from people who frequent the Pit (like me) is that we don’t understand what was so broken that it needed a new rule to fix it.
Ed, I think my question may have been part of the reason for prr’s post, plus perhaps a little confusion over terminology. For as long as I’ve been a poster here, calling off-board people and things insulting names has been allowed in all forums, not just the Pit. Your comment above (“But that’s not how it works. NPR means you can’t call ANYBODY a douchebag.”) seems to contradict that.
So prr (and my apologies to both Ed and prr if I’m wrong) may be of the opinion that you either aren’t aware of that, or that rules you had once established have long since gone by the wayside.
My father established a very successful business which he eventually grew to the point where everyone knew what to do and the business pretty much ran itself. From time to time, my brother (his top employee) or others would suggest a better way of doing something and he would always find some way to shoot it down…usually with the observation that he had a good reason for establishing the method in question, and that even though the reason may have been forgotten, if it was good enough then it was good enough to stick with now.
Years later he confided in me the real reason for this: he knew how everything worked and how things were supposed to be done. If he allowed changes to made here and there, and in light of his frequent absense, sooner or later things would get to the point where he didn’t know how anything was supposed to be done or how to fix problems that might arise.
It seems to me (and I think this is what prr is trying to say) that this may be the situation you find yourself in now. You occasionally make pronouncements like the one I referenced above which are contrary to what most of us recognize as S.O.P around here, and some of us are becoming concerned or confused about just what the rules are, and I think prr (and I, for that matter) are beginning to feel that perhaps you’ve been away from the day-to-day workings of the board for a little too long and have become somewhat out of touch with its workings.
This is not an insult in any way, and it is not an attempt to suggest you bow out. As a matter of fact I was pleased when you said you were going to begin taking a more active role around here, and I hope you continue to do so. But I do think that perhaps a little time spent getting to know the place a little better, along with more communication with the mods and administrators (or even posters around here whom you’ve come to have regard for, like perhaps Una Persson, before you set about instituting changes (or as you institute them) might not be a bad thing.