Oh, and P.S.
TubaDiva, do you realize just what your last remark sounds like?
“Nobody wanted her to work here, but I convinced them to hire her anyway. And this is the thanks I get! How ungrateful! Even worse, I’ve lost a friend too!”
Yep, my heart just bleeds.
I get the feeling that our dear TubaDiva will be losing many more “friends” before this debacle is over.
And Melin, if this little cliche makes you feel any better…
…with friends like that, who needs enemies?
Haven’t any of you ever been in a position where, as management, you had to fire someone, or one of your co-workers was fired, and they were free to bitch and insist that they were treated unfairly, and say whatever they wanted, and the management, bound by confidentiality, could say nothing?
Maybe some of you should think about that. You’re only ever going to hear one side of this story.
I’d like to point out a couple of inconsistencies, if I may.
Did Melin leave voluntarily?
TubaDiver: A resignation was tendered . . . and it was accepted. Hence, it was by mutual consent.
Ed Zotti: I decided Melin would have to go. The question was whether I should can Jill too . . .
Can the administration bring back deleted threads?
Lynn Bodoni: Once we delete a post/thread, it’s gone from the system. We can’t hide stuff and later unhide it.
Ed Zotti: . . . Melin had posted the identical response on multiple forums . . . In a moment of pique I said to delete them all. Later I thought better of it and reposted her message to the BBQ Pit . . .
Just thought I’d share.
Your Quadell
Jeez, take a Valium, you guys. Yes, the situation could have been handled differently. No, I probably wouldn’t have fired Melin if it were up to me, but you know what? It wasn’t.
I like this site – a lot. I think the moderators do a generally good job of moderating and the administrator does a pretty good job of administrating. I also think that criticism flies thick and fast the first time a mistake is made, while gratitude is rarely ever expressed.
I’m not going to stop participating on the Boards just because The Powers That Be made an administrative decision I might disagree with. Mr. Zotti’s point that this is not a democracy does not translate into “fuck you all;” it is an observation that the decisions made around here are not made by vote. It’s his site, he has to do as he thinks best, and while we may disagree with him, we’ve got to let him run the show – because it’s his show. Demanding that the Board be run the way the posters want is both unrealistic and literally impossible, since so few of us ever agree with each other. It would be like letting the monkeys run the zoo.
Look, don’t the moderators and the administrator generally do a good job? I think they do. And I think we should crawl down off of their collective back and let them do their jobs – even if we would do the job differently if it were ours to do.
Most everything that I have heard from Ed and Tuba has been articulate and reasonable. I really do not understand the anger felt by the other members here.
The powers that be have to assure that they have effective management of the boards. If those moderators are, in the opinion of the powers that be, jeapordizing the boards civility or order, then those moderators should be removed.
I know that this is an unpopular position. I personally like Melin and think she has some great posts. I also agree with the position she took that started this. But all of that aside, Ed acted within his authority and made a rational decision.
It is tough to be a manager. I am sure he did not enjoy having to fire someone. It is an unpleasant thing. And if you haven’t had to do it before…well wait until you do and then see how you feel about his decision. Cut the guy some slack.
“Do that which consists in taking no action and order will prevail” --Lao Tzu
I don’t know who “Cecil Adams” really is (and I don’t particularly care), but he at least pretends to be a real person. So where is his opinion? After all, the Straight Dope is his invention, this message board and this web site have his name all over them, and he should be ultimatly responsible for what’s going on around here. How about it, Cecil? Got anything to contribute? Or do you just keep your hands clean and let others do the dirty work for you?
>^,^<
KITTEN
Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language.
Diane – Blasphemer!!! 
Yeah, I like making a bad situation - WORSE! <efg>
Um, I’m afraid it does. Had you chosen not to resign, you would have been making the choice not to leave. Had you then been fired, you could claim that your departure was their choice, not yours. Assuming you have described the situation accurately, you made a conscious choice to leave.
(Note: this is not a comment on Melin’s alleged resignation, as I don’t know the details of that situation.)
Rich
I would agree that Ed has been helpful and honest in helping straightening out for users what really happened. Would you allow strangers to vote over which employees you should hire? This is not public office (Although the backstabbing quota seems to be full). Tuba’s comments did sound alot like a monitor attacking someone though.
I does seem like it is our loss though.
VegForLife, here’s a little more detail.
I knew that when I started applying for new jobs, I would be asked to give my previous employer as a reference. In the market for my profession, for someone with my relatively lightweight resume, an unfavorable reference would make it quite difficult to find a decent position.
The HR department at my former company has a written policy about references. If called about a former employee, they will offer only the following portions of information:
4a) “That person resigned.”
OR
4b) “That person was terminated for reason X.”
When I was asked to leave my job, my supervisor gave me the following choice:
Either way, I was to be escorted out of the building within ten minutes. So as far as I am concerned, the options were identical, except that one of them would put a big dent in the future of my career.
Now, tell me again why leaving was my choice.
Aura:
You brought it up, now I gotta ask and I hope you will answer.
Given that your firing seemed to be rather, shall we say, emphatic, what was the ACTUAL reason you were fired?
Are YOU ready for Y2K? Take my advice: Panic early and avoid the rush.
Long-time lurker, first-time poster. I have zero inside information about the particulars of this conflict. This is just to provide background and another perspective.
I used to be in charge of a commercial forum on AOL, and I hired several people to be moderators. Two of them were like Spock and McCoy – one was super-organized but a little cold, the other was empathetic but could get over-emotional. I had to sweat out a lot of carefully worded notes to both of them to keep them working well together.
Finally, one day the emotional one flew off the handle and would not calm down or back down. I had the interests of my company to consider as I let this moderator go, but I didn’t miss having to referee any more disputes.
I have no idea whether this true scenario has anything to do with the conflict you’ve been talking about, but I remember writing much gentler messages of regret as I explained to the users about my missing moderator, and I remember that there were many more things I wished I could say but couldn’t.
In the dispute here, I’m stunned that all these well-spoken moderators and administrators have been uniformly horrible in how they’ve handled everything. I can see both sides in the original philosophical dispute; reasoned arguments that express ideas without personal attacks are the best way to air such differences. So it started when both sides let their emotions run away with their typing fingers.
Then in the aftermath of the moderator’s departure, Ed et al thumbed their noses at the readers, pointing out correctly but undiplomatically that it’s their basement, their rules. They could have expressed the same general ideas within an honest message that they judged these actions to be the best for the boards and their users as a whole, and that they were sorry for any annoyance or inconvenience.
I hope that everyone learns from this. Type once, edit twice, then take a deep breath and reread what you wrote before you click the Submit button.
I’m sorry, you seem to have been typing without paying attention:
Your employer gave you a choice: resign or be fired. You chose to resign. By definition, that means that leaving was your choice. What your employer would have told prospective new employers is immaterial. Whether or not you deserved to be fired is immaterial. You resigned. Your choice.
Rich
Literally, “asked to resign” / “forced to resign” / “fired” are not the same. In practice, they are different terms for the same transaction. They differ only in the external story the two parties implicitly agree to.
IMHO, it’s not worth quibbling over “asked to resign” vs. “fired”. Most readers can see beyond the minor diplomacy of these semantics.
Veg, this is semantic distraction. Whether she technically “resigned” or not isn’t the point. The reality of it was that she was going to have to leave, one way or the other. Even Ed, always the realist, said he “canned” her.
Right. So, after all the discussion, what do we have?
Ed makes the rules. None of us voted when he hired the new moderators, so we shouldn’t feel surprised that he didn’t ask for our votes before he fired one.
Still, we should hold some sway, since we pay the bills in the long run. So we can voice our opinion, which we did with unbelievable unity for a group like this. And he can listen, or he can shrug us off. I hope he listens.
If he does, he’ll have the job of making some pretty specific guidelines about what’s allowed and what isn’t. If he doesn’t, he’ll have lost a very good moderator, and a piece of the trust of his biggest fans, the SDMB regs.
All eyes on you, Ed.
Your Quadell
Being a fairly new member here, I’ve sat back in total fascination at how the teeming millions (okay, at last count, it was under 45) criticize the decision of the people who run the show here.
I was personally surprised to find a moderator who’d either left voluntarily or been sacked flooding each and every message board with her “message”, obviously after she’d been told by the administrators the error of her way. Ed’s explanation addresses this action accurately.
I believe that when an action is taken by the administrators of this or any other such organization, to attempt explaining it to the people who are NOT administrators is unnecessary. By the rabid responses to those explanations, my beliefs stand firm.
I intend to go on perusing the boards, answering where I can…and enjoying what I’ve found here. Set my tail on fire in this message string if you wish, because I won’t be back. The administrators say the matter is over, and I accept their decision.
“There will always be somebody who’s never read a book who’ll know twice what you know.” - D.Duchovny
Just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding: I was never commenting on Melin’s departure, as I am not familiar enough with the details to make an informed opinion as to whether she was fired or she resigned. I was commenting on AuraSeer’s contention that, “the fact that I technically resigned does not mean that leaving was my choice.”
I stand by my statement that this is inaccurate (although the continuation of this tangent is taking away from all the fun flames). Had she not resigned and instead thumbed her nose at her manager and said, “go ahead, fire my butt!” and then been fired, I would agree that leaving was not her choice (although that act alone might have warranted the dismissal). Instead, she resigned. Perhaps with good reason (not having a “termination” on her employment record), perhaps not (maybe there could have been a “wrongful termination” suit in it had she let them fire her). In any case, by definition, to resign is “to give up deliberately.”
Regarding the specific case of Melin (and probably extrapolating to AuraSeer’s situation), quadell writes:
While I agree that it isn’t the point, I also believe that the distinction between “resigning” and “being fired” is important, and I therefore disagree with Captain Clueless’s contention that, “it’s not worth quibbling over ‘asked to resign’ vs. ‘fired’.”
Rich