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#140144 02/23/05 06:31 PM
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tsuwm Offline OP
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Dr. Bill and I, through a bit of front-end collusion, have come up with the idea of posting a Petition here which would eventually petition Anu to provide Jackie with enough moderator power to delete patently offensive posts plus any scurrilous responses; i.e., flame wars.

Anyone in support of this petition could then copy that portion of the post, sign it electronically and PM it to me. I would then collate the petition and "signatures" and send them to Anu via email (not PM).

If you have comments in regard to this, make them here and now, not in your "signature" PM. If need be, the petition can be reworded; but I don't want to get too wrapped up in rewording and resigning battles.

The Petition will follow in a separate post, which I will now proceed to wordsmith.


#140145 02/23/05 06:39 PM
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Have y'all asked Jackie if she wants this, tsuwm?


#140146 02/23/05 06:51 PM
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We've made an assumption here, all right; based on the fact that she's always said she doesn't feel she can go against Anu's last word on the matter. And she may be just as glad she doesn't have to make those decisions.

On the other hand, as things now stand, she's all we've got.


#140147 02/23/05 10:37 PM
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and if Jackie feels it's too onerous a responsibility, the alternative would be ron, obviously ;)


#140148 02/23/05 11:04 PM
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I knew a Ron Obviously at university. He was a Sigma Chi, I think.


#140149 02/23/05 11:10 PM
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Waiting...waiting...where's the petition?

For the record, I think it is a very good idea for some moderator to have the power to remove 'patently offensive' posts that lead to flame wars. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I think fights should be handled privately through PMs and not on this board.

Anyway, I'm waiting with both baited and bated breath to read your proposed petition.


#140150 02/23/05 11:27 PM
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tsuwm Offline OP
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I floated the first draft to a couple of very interested parties. hang on..


#140151 02/24/05 03:40 AM
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FWIW, yes, I'll do it unless somebody else wants the job.
Caveat (hi, Dgeigh): this was a verbal instruction so I may be wrong, but as far as I can recall the only thing I was told not to do was edit or delete individuals' posts. I have closed at least one thread, made a couple "sticky", and have not banned anybody, certainly not permanently; there's no real point, even if I'd wanted to, since anybody can sign right back on again with another name.

To be frank, I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of being "The Judge", as it were: I know I wouldn't like having my words interfered with, and so I imagine most people would feel. Plus, although my style of communicating works pretty well for me most of the time, I don't much care for the idea of what might become forcing my style onto others.

But outweighing this is ...well, the enjoyability of this board. Open as it is, any one with any type of personality--to say nothing of mental illness--can post here. I have thought about this quite a bit, and I think this place has a lot in common with other places that people gather voluntarily: as long as it is enjoyable or at least not awful, people tend to stay. But when it gets uncomfortable (and everybody's different as to what this means) or unsatisfactory, most take the easy route and just leave*. For ex., our local PTA clothes closet has been run by one main volunteer and a couple of assistants for something like 12 years, and it was working well. But a new president came in, forced her ideas on how things ought to be done, and the 3 longtime volunteers left.

My point in saying that is that this is an established group, and as such, we have developed norms and expectations. Not so much regarding WHAT people say as to HOW they say it. And it is absolutely too much to expect an established group, us included, to simply accept and welcome a new person who disrupts--consistently, that is--the norm. No, we are not perfect; tempers have flared; I certainly have made posts that I later regretted. Several of us have been here pretty much from the very beginning; and the reason we have lasted this long is the norm that we have established of mostly trying to be polite, and if that slips, we fix it if possible; in other words, overall we have made great efforts to accommodate each others' sensibilities. The only truly major troubles we have had have occurred when someone would decide that things should be done their way, and tried to force the rest of us to change accordingly.

I do realize that some people have gone away unhappy, and I am sorry about that, particularly the ones who got hurt by our being unnecessarily harsh. But I remain steadfast in saying that the vast majority of the time, the only people who have received a great deal of harshness are the ones who tried to insist that things change to be done their way.

No established group can be expected to change in order to accommodate the needs/wishes of every person who comes along to join it. None. And again, I am sorry for hurt feelings, but it is simply a fact that sometimes people are going to try out a group that just plain is not a good "fit" for them. Just because someone doesn't fit in here isn't even necessarily a reflection on them; just as with making new friends and finding a potential mate: you're going to come across some that you just know aren't going to be what you had hoped for. So it can be here, too.

*I, for one, am very reluctant to give up what I have enjoyed so much for so long because of a "spoiler". But I sure don't want to come here and find a bunch of ugliness. Judging by the departures of some fine, intelligent and wonderful contributors, they don't either. If this board is taken over by people who want to act ugly all the time, so be it; but if I can prevent that by trying to actively moderate, yes, I'll give it a shot.






#140152 02/24/05 04:01 AM
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Well expressed J. You're right, it has the potential to be an uncomfortable burden in theory, but the alternative has proven worse, here and on most other uncontroll'd forums I have frequented. Thank you for being prepared to take it on. Now we'll have to wait on what say all the contributors here, and then whether that poses any problems for Anu.


#140153 02/24/05 04:41 AM
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tsuwm Offline OP
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okay, here is a proposal for everyone to comment on. I tried to keep it fairly short.

In reply to:

We the undersigned support the notion that the moderator(s) of this public forum should have the power to limit the amount of unsolicited spam and unwarranted flaming to which users are subjected. We support the codifying of this stance via a publicly posted message, appropriately highlighted. Here is an example of such an announcement:

A basic tenet of any public forum should be that the sincerely held opinion of each person is highly valued and therefore should not be silenced. However, moderators of public forums should retain the right to intercede in discussions that have devolved to personal and/or other forms of ad hominem attacks. Such attacks are an infringement on the rights of all to post their own sincerely held opinions in a friendly and open environment.

Moderator intercession may include the locking of threads, deletion of individual posts, or deletion of entire threads -- with the understanding that these actions would only be undertaken when normal communications and especially PMs have failed to resolve a conflict.



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