I’m looking forward to one of those “I’m sorry you misunderstood me” kind of apologies. Those make the heart feel better. 
Me? I’m not looking forward to, but I’m expecting this to get thrown into the Pit where any hope of reasonable discussion (note that no “voices” have been raised, no namecalling is in evidence, etc. In other words, no pit-worthy behavior) will be flushed down the toilet and the thread will descend into fights over whether it’s worse to call somone a cum-bubble or an ass-stain rather than actual issues. :rolleyes:
A system where any customer concern is thrown in the Pit is simply an instant way of ending any hope of discussion. The stated reason (paraphrased) is because “Any discussion of moderator action will inevitably descend into name calling and shit-flinging, so we might as well start there.” (The other, oft-repeated line is “Jeepers, you can certainly discuss mod actions calmly in the Pit. Just cuz it’s in the Pit doesn’t mean it has to get nasty.” is so obviously silly that I only bring it up because if I don’t it will be brought up. Yeah, it doesn’t have to get nasty, but c’mon. There’s a 99 in 100 chance that it will get nasty.)
Wonderful customer service folks. Imagine a real business run on those principles: You call the Chicago Reader and say that the ad you placed has a typo (“I said I was a successful businessman looking for a woman interested in banking, not spanking!”) and the Chicago Reader phone rep says “Gee Mr Smith, I’m sorry you feel that way, but since it’ll end up in court no matter what I say, fuck you and I’ll see you in front of the judge.”
Not that this suggestion will do any good, but wouldn’t it make more sense to deal with issues calmly or at least make the effort? If politics can be discussed in GD and political hysteria can go into the Pit, why can’t discussions of mod actions be in ATMB and anti-mod actions rants go in the Pit? As it is, there’s no outlet for customer complaints without shit-flinging.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter now. Any apology at this point would obviously be meaningless. It’s too late.
The point is that this wouldn’t have spiraled so far out of control with multiple threads, who-knows-how many posts and views, tons of bad-will* if just very, VERY basic customer service skills were in evidence.
I don’t care how pissed you are at a customer’s rudeness, you don’t start screaming back at the customer especially when the store is crowded and when you’re trying to encourage repeat business. Basic customer service 101. Even if you’re completely in the right and the customer’s not only wrong but being obnoxious about it, all you’re going to succeed in doing is escalate the situation AND make the other customers uncomfortable.
Someone here should really start paying attention to customer service. The olden days of “Hey, we’re all one big happy family and since you’re posting here free we can do what we want” are over and gone: they died with “pay to post” and the Google ads put the final stake through the heart of that concept… We’re no longer officially “family” or a community (regardless of how individuals feel and I’m certain that many angry “Hey! I’m still part of the family and this IS a community” responses will be forthcoming, especially when this gets dumped in the pit), we’re paying, ergo, we’re customers. It’s exactly analagous (IMO) to the difference between hosting a party in your house vs running a resturant (if we want to torture the analogy, the resturant is a “one price for all you can eat but pay up front buffet” type). If the party’s in your house, you can get away with treating your guests any which way you want-you can get drunk and throw up on them, you can arbitrarily throw them out, you can pass on gossip, etc. Your guests may not come back, but they didn’t pay anything to get in so you really don’t owe them anything. In a resturant, you can be friendly with the waitstaff and management of the resturant and you can certainly gather together with friends, but the waitstaff don’t have the luxury of threating to spit in someone’s food and the owners can’t just make veiled threats to throw people while keeping their money simply because a customer is vaguely snarky about their opinion of the food.
Fenris
*I’d venture to say that regardless of whether one feels that Catsix was owed an apology for the liar thing or for the I’ll-get-you,-just-you-wait thing, or not, almost no one came out of this with a better opinion of the Board. During a subscription drive. :: shakes head ::
Dammit–I meant this sentence to read as follows
Honestly, it doesn’t matter now. Any apology at this point would obviously be meaningless. It’s too late. But that doesn’t mean that lessons can’t be learned for the next time this sort of thing occurs.
I never liked the “owed an apology” angle. However, someone from up on high should have mentioned that veiled troll accusations were not permitted, even by our hardest working admin.
and in the hombre thread
(my bolding)
Maybe Tuba got some kind of email warning, who knows. That would be good enough for me, she doesn’t need a public dragging through the streets, but I think what I said last year still stands:
I would think she could still do her SD homepage duties without being an Admin as well.
MHO, anyway.
(Speaking of intemperate.)
Divorcing this statement from your examples, whence comes this strange idea? Admins and mods are allowed to warn and ban posters for being trolls. I (and you) have seen far more than veiled accusations of trollish behavior from mods. Do you (perhaps for personal reasons) believe this should be an offense?
I don’t think there’s much good in divorcing my statement from my examples. Either Tuba was giving an official warning to catsix and hombre for trolling or she was downplaying their opinions by hinting they were trolls.
Was she talking with her “mod hat” or not? It’s confusing with the promises of holding back she made.
(on preview, I’m adding this: rereading, this post could be taken in a number of ways, only one of which is intended. Please don’t read this with any animosity, as it is not offered with same. It is offered with sincerety and respect, but also with a firm appeal that the proper action be taken.)
Any comment on the rest (i.e. a large part/the majority/more than a nitpicky little piece) of this issue?
Or is it going to be kind of a “unified front” deal?
Considering TubaDiva’s been back on the boards since this discussion has happened, and in this forum even, without posting further, I’d guess the latter.
Take your time. Figure out your strategy. Ask Ed what he thinks tomorrow; I’ve already emailed him for that purpose as well.
The point is: This is an issue that needs resolved. A wrong was done, and it’s a wrong that the person who committed it seems to not even realize was a wrong at all (or maybe she does, but is too full of herself/haughty/uppity/oblivious/proud/whatever to admit it, but the end result is the same).
A wrong was committed, and the administration needs to put it right. If not out of respect, out of duty to its paying customers. TubaDiva was wrong for doing what she did, and for her actions afterward. She needs to make it right, or she needs to go.
Piffle. You are the only one who has imagined that catsix was accused of trolling. Even she herself is only bent out of shape over her perception of being called a liar. Being called a liar does not equal trolling, and never has, for any poster.
Your HeyHomie example is taken out of context of the thread. In post #37:
You seem to wish a system where instead of going into a thread in IMHO (for example) to give a specific or general “cool it” comment, I (for example) would issue “Official Warnings” to all involved. Am I misunderstanding you?
Please see the first paragraph of my response to CarnalK. I’ll only add that TubaDiva has just as much a right to issue her opinions as a poster as the rest of the mods/admins do. I am completely bewildered as to why what should be a simple poster-vs-poster fight has escalated into the questioning of TubaDiva’s fitness to continue as an admin.
Yeah, you are and the actual events as well, ISTM.
Tuba didn’t go into a thread to tell someone to cool it. She responded to a question directed at her in both cases with, what I read as, veiled and not so veiled troll accusations. Didn’t get an “official” feel so much as an angry one.
Maybe Tuba can flesh out her position. Why should we debate our interpretations when the author is the moderator of this very forum and appears to be online right now?
Then I suppose the argument hinges on whether she was acting as an admin or not in that thread. I posit she was, and couldn’t say it better than Fenris did earlier:
If you’re trying to say she wasn’t acting as a mod in that post, then I’ll ask you just as I asked her: What exactly was it that she would like to “promise” catsix, and for what reason, exactly, would she need to “try to overlook it”? I can’t read that as anything but either a physical threat or a threat of suspension or banning, one of which IS against the rules, and the other of which was proposed as a rule in this very thread. She couldn’t clarify which one she meant when asked directly. I don’t expect you to either.
Her greatest offense here is mistakenly accusing a poster of lying and promising to do something bad (as it looks like right now) to that poster. That is in no way a breach of the rules however you want to interpret them.
The customer service argument does not fly here. People here generally accept that mods are allowed to behaving like posters. You can not accept this and then get upset when it happens. Tubadiva was behaving like many other still active pit posters. If Catsix asked her question in this forum and Tubadiva responded the same way, it would be a different story.
The problem is that everyone expects Tubadiva to act like the customer service department when we know she does not have to. In the pit she is allowed to flame and make false accusations without penalty. If you do not like that, then suggest a rule that prevents mods from acting like posters in the pit. All this new rule might do is perhaps calm down certain people that get offended by “improper” behavior that has absolutely no consequences towards them. This same rational goes to the suggested rule in the OP.
Your first mistake here is saying that TubaDiva is a mod. She is an administrator. There’s a difference, among other things that moderators don’t have the ability to ban someone directly (and thus the same threat made by them, though I still believe it would be inappropriate, would be slightly less so). Your second mistake is saying that “everyone expects TubaDiva to act like the customer service department when we know she does not have to.” I’d suggest that she has to, or she’s not earning her paycheck.
(bolding mine)
FWIW, no he isn’t. I interpreted both posts exactly as CarnalK did.
Ok, I see. Amend “everyone expects TubaDiva to act like the customer service department when we know she does not have to” to “everyone expects TubaDiva to act like the customer service department all the time when we know she does not have to.”
The moderator and administrator distinction does not matter here since you want them both to adhere to the proposed rule.
Let’s just amend the “Dont be a jerk rule” to include “Don’t be a bitch”. Problem solved.
I’d like to answer this, since it touches on the rule i’m suggesting. Mods are allowed to warn and ban posters for being trolls, most certainly - that’s part of their job. Posters cannot. If a mod gives someone a warning for being a troll as a mod, that’s fine. If a mod personally insults someone by saying they are a troll, in a flaming situation, then they are acting as a poster and should be punished just as we would be. If a mod implies someone is a troll, they clearly they do not have enough evidence to allow them to come right out and say it, and again suggests a *personal * attack rather than a simple board issue.
It also looked to me as though she were accused of trolling. If not, I look forward to being able to add “Maybe you’re just stirring the pot because you’re a dick” to my list of approved insults.
. The problem lies in that the lines between a mod-as-poster and mod-as-mod are unclear; that’s something I’d hope this rule could address.
I hate this rule, personally. It’s far too vague.
If I might butt in now and mention how ‘she’ feels about being told that she is making up deliberate lies:
I think I was accused of being a liar in a manner that assumes I wanted to stir up shit. I think TubaDiva was accusing me of lying and making up fictions just to get a reaction out of her. I think I’d still like to know what it is she wants to promise me, because I doubt that it’s tea and cookies.
I think that regular posters have been given official warnings for things just as subtle, and that one of them has recently been suspended for the “Fuck off and die” colloquialism that nobody I’ve ever met takes as an actual wish of a real death. I think that the promises TubaDiva wants to make me are either banning or physical harm, I think that she was very angry (and very wrong because I wasn’t lying, which other people proved pretty damn quick) when she made that post, and that if the title underneath her username had said Member instead of Admin, she would’ve at least got a warning, or possibly even banned for what was said right there. I think it would’ve been cited in a thread in ATMB with the ‘promises’ as ‘wishing death and/or physical harm on another poster’ and the false accusations of deliberate lies being painted as ‘calling other posters troll is not allowed here.’
I’ve been fairly quiet about this whole thing since it happened, mostly because I really don’t want to be the center of attention, and I think that regardless of whether an apology is ever made, although TubaDiva is the one who did something wrong, I’m the one who will face the consequences. I have no doubt in my mind that she’s going to remember this, and if I so much as get close to the line or make a typing mistake on someone’s name when quoting them, I’m history.
And I really think that something should be done about false accusations by mods/admins of trolling and/or lying. When a mod/admin is wrong, it shouldn’t count against the poster!
Bwahahahahahahaha.
Now that’s funny!
I’m not out starting threads about it, and I’ve probably made fewer posts about it than a lot of other people have on the topic.
Every thread, every new discussion of it, and all of the requests for apology have come from someone else.
If you have insults to make, this is not the place for them.