This question cuts to the heart of it for me, but I want to approach it from a slightly broader perspective.
It must certainly be stressful times for an old newspaperman.
All the print people, alternative and mainstream, are searching for any safe purchase they can in this era of Craigslist, and Zotti has for himself something unique, something special, something he clearly does not understand. Like all the other titans of the old print world, he is frantic for any way to squeeze some real dollars out of what he has, and what he has is this weird internet phenomenon he helped create. It is all about the business, and the business is dying. But what he doesn’t understand is that he’s like Dr. Frankenstein after the creature was created. He doesn’t have control over it in the way that he wants. He gave life to the boards, and now they have life of their own.
Hell, I’m a nobody poster, and I’ve had more posts per day than Ed Zotti (though I started in August 2002), and none of my posts have been administrative. No warnings or bannings or rules changes from me. Just my own small contribution to the culture of the SDMB. And my own small offerings don’t compare to the giants of the SDMB who truly make this place worthwhile. They’ve been building the content of this place for ten years, always under the eye of the higher ups, yes, but still free to negotiate their own view of how this place should work. And all of that has happened with practically no substantive input form Zotti himself to the life of the place.
He has no personality here. No one perks up in gleeful anticipation upon seeing his name attached to a post. There’s no friendly interaction with him or endearing longstanding obsessions from him. As far as human interaction goes, so far as it can be conveyed in this electronic form, he is a non-entity. He’s Zeus on Olympus, detached from our concerns except for that dreaded ability to sling a capricious lightning bolt whenever the mood strikes him. Other than that, he has nothing else to offer. This is not to diminish his administrative contributions, which are hidden from sight. And of course the columns themselves are still worthwhile, but as far as the message board goes, the weekly column could disappear and things here would continue pretty much as if nothing had happened. We received the charter to fight ignorance, and now that we have it, we can continue on that mission without further instruction on how to go about it.
Our very posts are experiments in fighting ignorance. (Also, some of our posts link to pictures of kittens.) And we have to experiment with our battle against ignorance (and coo at kittens) on our own. The columns can be useful examples, but a message board isn’t about listening to monologues from Olympus, which is how newspapers have always worked. The boards are an interactive exchange of ideas. Good moderation is always welcome, but it can’t be directed by a person who doesn’t understand how the environment and culture work.
And the Telemarketer Thread is one of the best examples of our environment and culture with respect to the Pit.
Cervaise called another poster a cunt, one of many apposite and necessary insults hurled at the dimwitted parasite in that masterpiece of rage. Using that one biting rhetorical tool in tandem with other similar words of scorn, derision, and invective, he crafted himself the single most memorable rant on the Dope, and also one of the best rants I’ve ever read on the internet at large. It was insulting. It was abusive. It was beautiful.
That telemarketer thread is a keeper, a landmark of the SDMB from an inspired poster who has continued to contribute in extraordinary ways to the boards. Over the years, his posts have forced me to rethink my conclusions about movies, religion, science, internet etiquette, writing, mental bias, and (yes, of course) vituperation. I don’t mean to get all gooey and hokey and internet-stalkerish here, but I am a better person for having been exposed to his thoughts, his humor, and his overall perspective on the world. And that is one poster on the SDMB. I marvel at Miller’s ability to swim across oceans of stupidity in gay marriage threads, all the while maintaining his calm, incisive, hilarious style. I open sports threads when I see that RickJay was the last to post, and I don’t even like baseball. And I always appreciate when mhendo has entered a thread. The smack he lays down is smack well laid. And on and on and on. The list of complainers in this thread includes some of our most noteworthy and worthwhile contributors.
The point is, I’m not here for Ed Zotti. I read the columns every week, and I appreciate the intellectual foundation he established for the place. The fight against ignorance attracted so many great folks, people I honestly admire. But it just happens to be the posters that I care about. I am here for them, not for a newspaper columnist.
It’s Ed Zotti’s sandbox, and we have to play by his rules. Fine. I love the people here, I truly do, and when they needed money to keep this place running, I gladly paid.* And when we turned free again, I still paid because I never click on ads. And if they had offered a tiered system, with ten bucks to pay for each meaningless little VB gizmo to “enhance” the board experience, then I would’ve bought a bunch of those, too. I care about the boards, because I care about the people here. And right now the people I admire most are upset, and the administration is not only indifferent, but outright condescending. And I can’t support that. I’m not going to flip out here. I’m sad, not angry. When we lose posters, we lose the people who create this wonderful interaction, and the entire environment suffers. If the clear arguments offered by Miller and Cervaise and the others aren’t enough, if I really have to “vote with my keyboard” because the Powers That Be won’t listen to reason, then that’s what I’ll do. I’m not going to buy membership, even when ad revenue is down. And I’ll never click on ads. I’ll even take additional measures to ensure no accidental clicking takes place. If they don’t care about a loss of $200, when they could gain several hundred easy from selling off meaningless technological perks, then that’s their choice. I’ll live with it. But I won’t support a system that exists in spite of the opinions of the best among us.
Bottom line, if you drive off the people who make this work, then there will be nothing left worth saving. Which is to say, if Cervaise ever decides to go, then I’m going, too.
*I could’ve let my Charter Membership expire, and then pay twice as much, but I wanted to keep the title. This is because I have a small penis, and I needed a way to compensate for that.