I dunno. I mean, mhendo asked a question, and he didn’t get a response. Then he poked it over and over again, and you finally answered. It seems to me that the only way to get an answer for questions like these is to keep poking. Unless you have an alternate suggestion…?
samclem said:
Thank you. This should have been done when he was banned. Isn’t that the policy around here?
Generally. But, as noted in the OP, some policies seem to be a little … fluid.
Generally, yes. I called for the banning, but I didn’t make the announcement. Shall make sure I do so in the future.
As the OP is asked and answered, I’m closing this thread.
ETA: Re-opened at the request of the OP.
-xash
Administrator
I’m also the OP – our threads got started at the same time and got merged by my request.
Thank you. I thought I was losing it.
By the way, what you are saying here is false. From what you quoted in the OP, she said:
If you want to yell at one another, use the pit. According to board rules.
If you want to discuss the issue reasonably, open a thread in the appropriate area (She never said “outside ATMB”). Also according to board rules.
The thread closing is making you so upset that you are not thinking clearly.
Usually I would agree that moderators need to answer a poster’s questions. But lately it seems that this has been leading to a never-ending circle where poster A will come in saying “I demand an answer”, argues for a while, then declares himself satisfied. Then poster B comes along, picks up where poster A left off, demanding answers. After poster B is satisfied, then poster C pops up. I have changed my mind now and don’t think that it should be a requirement of the job that every question gets answered. After a while it becomes pointless and a little ridiculous.
Don’t be ridiculous.
These comments were made in the specific context of closing a thread about moderator actions, and the thread was closed because, allegedly, it was “getting to be more about people yelling at one another than accomplishing anything useful.” What else what she talking about, if not the specific subject of that thread?
The fact is that her explanation for closing the thread was complete bullshit, because it had not devolved into people yelling at one another. There had been a couple of mildly snarky posts, none of which had derailed the thread, and which could have been reined in with a simple admonition, like, “remember this is ATMB, not the Pit.”
And, given this fact, the admonition to “open another thread” was completely pointless, because the thread in question was already serving its purpose quite nicely. And, if we wanted to yell at each other on the specific topic of that thread (which was clearly what she meant), then we couldn’t take it to the Pit because the topic was moderator actions and board policy.
The bottom line is, the thread should never have been closed, and the only reasonable conclusion we can draw from its closing is that the moderator in question will do anything she can to close threads where people are being critical of board policy.
How very convenient for you. The members don’t simply bow and scrape and say “Thankyou, your eminence” in response to any lame explanation you care to give for poor moderating decisions, so you decide that the whole thing is “pointless and a little ridiculous.” Well, some people might use the same terms to describe the capricious and inconsistent moderation around here lately.
While it might feed your sense of self-righteous indignation to believe that those who complain are doing so for no other reason than the stir the pot, to make trouble for its own sake, that is simply not true. I’ve been here for almost nine years, i have over 15,000 posts, i’ve paid for membership every year since paid memberships were introduced, and i get a lot of enjoyment out of the time i spend here. I’m not interested in making trouble for its own sake; in fact, i wish there were no need at all for any complaints about moderation or board policy. I’d be very happy if certain mods and admins would remember that their role around here is to keep the place running smoothly, and that “running smoothly” is not a synonym for “running in accordance with my personal whims.”
But i realize that i’m pissing into the wind here. I want to thank xash for reopening the thread, but i’m going to let it go now. If no-one else responds to this thread, i’m not going to bump it anymore. I’ll let it sink off the front page. It became clear to me a while ago that the mod in question treats this place as her own personal fiefdom, and that her own sense of decorum and personal preferences play a bigger role in her moderating decisions than any sense of what is best for the board itself. I’m going to try not to let her lack of integrity and professionalism spoil my experience here, and i’m not going to melt down over it and get banned, because i’m sure that’s exactly what she wants. She won’t be happy until this place is a dull clone of her own mediocrity.
What you are saying makes perfect sense, mhendo. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for some to understand.
I take what she says at face value. She thought that there was more acrimony than useful discussion. You disagree with that, fine. Then you can open another thread with an OP like this: “This other thread, mistakenly in my opinion, was closed because of alleged ‘yelling’. I will try to discuss the issue without the yelling in this new thread.”
It is OK to pit another poster in the Pit if you think they are acting stupid in an ATMB thread. It would be like discussing movies - if you want to discuss movies you go to Cafe Society, if you think the person is acting stupid then you take them to the Pit. The Pit thread would not be for discussing the movie, it would be to tell the person why they were being an idiot.
This is not what I’m saying. But when a moderator believes they have a valid reason, and you disagree that they have a valid reason, there comes a point when you have to “agree to disagree” because neither group is going to convince the other.
There are people who come here just to stir the pot, that’s true, but I’ve never said you were one of those. I would put you in the category of posters, who, when they have a disagreement with a moderator, come in with a harsh and angry attitude. The very title of this thread sounds like someone itching for a fight. I don’t think it’s constructive.
But i wasn’t yelling in the original thread.
In fact, the only really hostile or yelling person in that thread was bucketybuck, who said “fuck them all” about a group of posters he disagreed with, and then told me to “grow up” when i pointed out that this wasn’t exactly ATMB behavior.
Why should i have my thread closed because one single dropkick comes in and starts ranting and raving? Why couldn’t TubaDiva tell him to can it, and let the actual conversation continue?
But if i think the reason that they’re being an idiot is their retarded attitude to the rules and the moderating decisions, then this becomes a distinction without a difference.
And yet, if the moderator at least has the courtesy and professionalism to respond, the complainant can’t say that his or her complaint wasn’t addressed. And when the complainant present specific evidence or reasons for his or her argument, it seems reasonable that the moderator should, at the very least, make a response to them.
If that’s true, the reason is that i generally don’t let the little things get to me. For years on this board, i never even got involved in any of the big mod-related meltdowns, and there were a whole bunch of small, individual moderator decisions that i ignored (despite my disagreement) because they didn’t seem worth worrying about.
If i seem more angry now, in cases like this, it’s because the issue for me is not so much each specific instance, but the way these small instances add up over time into a pattern of capricious behavior by one or two particular moderators. Rather than “This was a bad decision,” it becomes, for me, “This bad decision is yet another example of why this particular moderator is ill-suited for the job.” And that does get me somewhat het up, because i just don’t understand why it’s allowed to continue without even a semblance of control by everyone else involved in running this place.
She could have done that also. But why is it so horrible that a thread is closed when a moderator thinks that it’s degenerating? Especially when she explicitly says “start a new thread without all the yelling if you want to discuss it further?”
That’s how it works. To go back to my Cafe Society example, if I want to yell at someone because they’re being an idiot with their retarded attitude to a movie, I take it to the Pit.
People can and do say it. I have seen several threads just recently when the moderator explains his decision, and posters come right back and say “your explanation is bullshit and fails to address the points I raised, and your response raises these further issues that you need to address.”
That is not so hard to understand for me. The colleagues and/or supervisors of this person either think that their behaviour is not so egregious as you think it is, or else they think that the person makes one or two mistakes but overall their performance is good enough to keep on the staff. I have plenty of colleagues in my company that make mistakes in some areas and are hard-working or excel in other areas.
And here, i guess, is the nub of the issue for me.
You say that she could have done that also, and then ask “why is it so horrible” that she closed the thread. But, for me, the default position should always be to leave the thread open, unless there is a compelling reason to close it. The fact that this doesn’t seem to be the case for the mod in question is, i think, a damning indictment of her performance.
Here, for me, is the difference between bad moderating and good moderating, in the case we’re discussing:
Bad moderating:
Good moderating:
Takes the same amount of time, makes essentially the same points, and leaves open a thread that WAS, in fact, discussing issues in a useful way.
As in so many things, the difference between doing a decent job and doing a shitty job often isn’t very great. Some people just have a propensity to err on the “shitty” side of the line, usually in line with their own selfish interests. And that’s what we have in the case of this particular mod. What you call “one or two mistakes,” i call a persistent pattern of poor decisions.
Personal insults are not permitted in ATMB. Please refrain.
-xash
Administrator
That’s not an insult. That’s the truth. What the fuck happened to this board?
I have seen more than one thread, again in the past month or so, where the moderator comes in and says “Please refrain from doing X”, and then has to repeat the same thing two or three times because people are still continuing to do X in the thread. So the warning in the thread, IMHO, isn’t as effective and requires more effort - not the same amount of time. I agree that in general a thread should remain open. I just disagree with you that, if a moderator thinks a thread is getting out of hand, it is worse to close the thread (with the invitation to open another) than it is to post repeated warnings and have to monitor the original thread more closely.
Or you could look at it this way - how many threads has there been criticizing moderators that haven’t been closed - do you count those as a pattern of good decisions?
It has always been the case that the rule about no insults applies even if the poster making the insult thinks that the insult is accurate and reflects reality. This is nothing new.
[Moderator Warning]
It’s an insult, which is not permitted in ATMB. Since xash pointed this out immediately before, I am making this an official warning rather than a note.
I simply agreed with what I thought was an accurate reflection with the state of the board.
Wait. You’re officially warning roland because he disagreed over whether or not mhendo’s comment was really an insult or not even though he didn’t actually make the insult himself? Did I misunderstand because if not, that warning is crazy.