I’ve said it before but I will say it again. There’s a very simple way to approach any changes that Ed desires to make in regards to civility, attitude and respect towards mods and admins: make it reciprocal. Requiring mods and admins to follow the same standards for respectful behavior would go a long way toward putting people’s minds at ease.
The fact that this suggestion has been brought up before and soundly rejected by Ed himself seems to be evidence enough that there is, in fact, something to be worried about.
You can do the search yourself since I don’t feel like wading through page after page after page of results or waiting 5 minutes if I type in the wrong thing, but I and others suggested as much after Otto was banned in the thread that Ed started in ATMB. He directly responded saying that he preferred not to saddle his staff with those kinds of restrictions, and actually intimated that he preferred his staff to be on the disrespectful side.
I tend to disagree. I consider “Supervising the staff is my concern and isn’t a matter for public debate.” to be a pretty authoritative ‘No’ to that question and a sound rejection of any discussion about staff behavior in the future.
Well, it serves a useful purpose but I don’t like the PITing of fellow posters. I can’t see how that helps at all. I post on many boards, none have or need a PIT. (True, there are a couple that allow PITings anywhere, but I just left those)
I think you’re wrong here. I agree that personal statements about other posters are best forbidden in other forums, but sometimes those need to be aired. In my recent sexual harassment thread, a poster whose name I can’t remember and whom I’m too lazy to look up now made a remark I found insulting–aimed at the United States rather than me personally. So after a few posts I took it to the Pit, where we hashed out the issues in question without getting the original thread hijacked with personal issues.
Eh, maybe I’m too old for all this or maybe it’s a sign that I’m losing interest in life, but I say let’s wait and see. I don’t know Ed or any of the Mods as RL people. They’ve been good to me (here) overall. And overall, I see more judicious use of modding smackdowns than most are giving credit for. They are human and as such, are prone to mistakes and errors. I am sorry to see Giraffe and fluidruid go.
I’m loyal to the board as long as it fills my needs. When it doesn’t, I will go. I think I’m more the “norm” in this opinion than most. We all read the rules when we agreed to play in this sandbox. Thing is, we all have become attached to SDMB as an entity and have strong feelings about how it should run and what should be allowed and/or forbidden. I think TPTB have been somewhat responsive to the Teeming Million’s concerns (the ads issue, for one, comes to mind).
On the flip side, we are not widgets or plebians–the tone should not be “put up or shut up” (or even put up AND shut up). I’m not saying that that is the tone preferred by TPTB, but it can come across that way. Sure it’d be nice if Dopers said, “I say, Ed- I’m a wee perturbed at the proposed changes and would like a chance to chat with you and the Mods regarding this vital issue at some future date.”, but Dopers tend to shoot more from the hip.
Please remember that Admin’s and Mod’s posts are closely examined and carry more weight than “ordinary” Doper’s. Tone and intent can be hard to convey online and is open to misinterpretation by all readers.
So, my take is that there are some Dopers who are intensely concerned about this, some who are indifferent, some that are interested, but watching and waiting and some that are oblivious. But I don’t think that most of us would be expressing our concerns if we didn’t like and admire this MB as much as we do. It’s a quality establishment and stands like a beacon of reason in the dreck that makes up the internet. It would be horrible if it went down the tubes.
Just my 2 cents.
PS: The Pit is a genius concept that needs to stay recognizably The Pit. Lack of pits is often the cause of the death of message boards, IMO.
Thanks for finding that. There was another thread that may also be relevant where Ed said in a little more detail that he actually prefers his staff to be a bit snarky, although I don’t remember his exact wording and I don’t remember which thread it was in. It was somewhere shortly after that one, though.
I see no positive point to The Pit. I’ve posted on numerous message boards over the years and no other board I’ve posted on has anything analogous to The Pit.
However, I have a simple way to keep The BBQ Pit from bothering me. I don’t look at it, I don’t post in it. That way, it’s not a problem. So I’m not certain my attitude about The Pit has much value.
Still, if we lost The Pit, I don’t think that would do much to change the value of this board. If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say nothing at all. Thumper’s dad said that, and it’s still a good rule. The idea that we should as posters be able to spew whatever vitriol we are thinking or feeling at any moment out onto the “pages” of our tapestry by right simply cannot be supported. If you cannot participate here without being marginally civil, go find somewhere you can. I doubt we’d really lose that many posters, and I doubt much that most of us would miss the few who would insist upon leaving or being banned.
Having said that, if The Pit is about to undergo some sort of codification/clarification of its rules, then it would be a good idea for some things to be kept in mind:
If you insist upon HAVING a Pit, then the purpose of the place should not be hamstrung. You want posters to have a place to fling vitriol around? Then don’t be surprised if that vitriol stings from time to time.
Mods and Admins should NEVER act like snarks. EVER. If you accept one of those positions, you assume a role that has higher standards. That’s one of the reasons that people chosen for those roles should be vetted carefully to see if they’ve had a history of such postings in the past (I’ve always assumed that one of the reasons no one takes me up on my offer to moderate is that I DO have a history of letting my mouth get away from me at times ). As a teacher, I know for a fact that anytime I fail to treat my students with respect, the net result is a lessening of respect for me on the part of my students. So if a Mod/Admin. cannot post here, officially or not without even the whiff of jerkiness, give up the job to someone who can. Ed Zotti included, by the way.
When drawing the lines, make sure they are lines that truly need to be drawn. An anti-harrassment policy is a good idea. But an anti-“bad word” policy is not. Harrassment is the sort of behavior that needs to be prevented; it serves no useful function, and it’s not enough of an argument against it to say that it cannot be defined precisely, because that’s true of most rules we follow in life. But “bad words” are almost never inherently bad (that is, bad in and of themselves, in all situations), and are not a pattern of behavior. So it’s better to simply deal with them only when they stop being just bad words, and become harrassment (e.g.: calling the same poster the same bad thing over and over, thread to thread, or repeatedly in the same thread).
Don’t take permanent, or even semi-permanent actions against posters in the heat of the moment. Much of what has upset the “membership” of this community in recent months is the “reaction banning” of participants. That is, a ban that is issued in the heat of the moment, while something ugly is going on. Many times these have been undone, or lessened. Each time that happens, it undermines the authority of the Mods and Admins, because it makes one wonder if THIS particular action taken by the authorities is really the right one, or will it, too, be modified or rescinded. If something needs to be done to terminate a situation, there are temporary solutions, and a more permanent solution can be considered carefully by TPTB, before being implemented. Then, the authorities don’t end up looing like idiots.
Anytime someone in charge of this place has to post a thread calling for a “timeout” because things are getting out of hand, including the actions of the very person posting the thread, you know you’ve blown it. Frankly, there’s been much more of that in the last year than I ever recall from our previous, happy times.
). As a teacher, I know for a fact that anytime I fail to treat my students with respect, the net result is a lessening of respect for me on the part of my students. So if a Mod/Admin. cannot post here, officially or not without even the whiff of jerkiness, give up the job to someone who can. Ed Zotti included, by the way.