If people want to leave for no reason, or for reasons they are unwilling to express, that's their right. Good luck to them.
Aw, not go TDI. The Devil. Super B. Stay, innit. We'll make Belgian waffles, with chips, and watch Hercule Poirot. Look, here's Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Tower of Babel in your honour. I'll post you more high-water-marks of Belgian cultural achievement if you stay (assuming that I can find any more). Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Missing you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
tablariddim: Are you talking about this: Replace a moderator! There's no reason there, that I can see. That was a thread started purely to attack moderators, wasn't it? I mean, there was no attempt to start a reasonable discussion or anything. It was reminiscent of the kind of unconstructive vindictiveness we've seen from a few other posters in recent days.
That's the thread. I don't think it was meant to attack mods, it was meant as a serious attempt to gauge people's opinions of mods, with the intent of some kind of democratic solution to many members' grievances. As is all too common, the thead was overtaken by the idoit virus, which seems to prevail on these boards lately, and it went right off topic. As I can't use quotes or even cut and paste from that thread, all you have to do is read TDI's posts and mine to find TDI's reason for quitting. My post was the only serious attempt at a constructive suggestion to his opening post.
/Guilt Disgruntled members can always add their thoughts on the moderators to... The Sciforums Policy Discussion thread, in the knowledge that off-topic posts, trolling, flaming, etc. will be deleted: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=67636 Or to Bells' thread 'What do you want and expect from the moderators of sciforums': http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=67673 Or ask James nicely to re-open TDI's locked thread. Or start a new one (as is members' right, I think), with a polite request at the top to stick to the relevant Alpha rules (ie remain serious and stay on topic).
tablariddim: Oh come on, let's be serious for a moment. A thread started to nominate moderators people want replaced, and who they want in their place? That's just a pointless attack on current moderators. If he had really wanted to discuss change and improvements to sciforums, I have trouble thinking of a worse way he could have gone about it - starting a thread inviting a free-for-all attack on individual moderators. If this was meant to "gauge opinions of mods", then it should have been posted in a neutral manner - "What do you think of the mods?" perhaps. Not something equivalent to "nominate who you personally dislike and want to see disappear". Did you really expect anything else, given the opening post? If he had coherent reasons for quitting, he could have posted them in a sensible thread. If he instead decided to bury them among mindless drivel, well, that's his choice. To leave in the way he did showed little integrity, if you ask me.
Well, not strictly his choice, really. In fact he complained about it several times. After which, er.. I stopped. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Incidentally I think tablariddim's idea is excellent - the only danger being that Plazma, who I'm sure is very busy, might get snowed under with complaints. People need to invoke the Alpha rules more. If you want to keep the trolls at bay make this clear in your opening post. Moderators can then do their jobs and remove any deliberately provocative or off-topic content. Simple.
Sandy , not EVERYTHING in the world revolves about YOU ....or Bush ...:m: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
tablariddim's idea is a valid one, but should not be necessary. Any member who has a legitimate complaint against a moderator ought to send a private message to Plazma Inferno!. As administrator, he is the only one with power to appoint and remove moderators. The usual trend of posters creating public threads to complain about moderator decisions they don't like (95% of the time on their own behalf, after they have been the subject of such a decision) seldom produces useful outcomes.
I am not really sure , the way ahead is repeated attacks on the mods ...... dialog might be better ....... First you have to analyze the problems , then find the solutions ....... Blind criticism often have a boomerang effect ..........
Agreed. I think some members - especially those with a grievance - are fearful that nothing will be done behind the scenes. tablariddim's idea is similar to the private report system but provides useful public feedback at the same time. I like it a lot. Again, agreed.
So what are the problems : 1) too few posts in Science section ....often of low quality .... sometimes even jokes .. or infraction deserving .....How do we solve it ???? 2) Tons of posts in free thoughts, and the lower half of the forum .... is there anything wrong in that ? Please discuss..... 3) Occasional continued trollspamming - return of the banned without improvement of behaviour ....is that a problem ?...how do we solve it ...? Is this a SCIENCEforum ? ....... do we want it to be a SCIENCEforum only ....? Mods /Adms ....... how do we live with them ? .... how do they live with us ? Sometimes I think , it must be like having a second job to be a mod .... Are there boundaries/limits that should not be passed by the mods towards the members ? I do not want to live in fear, here on Scifo ..... Also should there be limits for the members in attacking the mods /adms...?? I have seen some mudthrowing here on Scifo ...... Could we start a fruitfull discussion ....???? What problems do you see here on Scifo .... ???
And why would that be? Because of overmoderation? Or undermoderation? Seems to be both of these are the mantras of the day. That is, we seem to all be a bunch of nazi bastards and yet somehow, at the same time, the problem is off topic posting due to undermoderation. The whole current 'crisis' was caused by Spurious's whining about Sandy and IAC which sparked a discussion in the mod section (which should have been public) about setting up some type of a policy which might somehow 'fix' the problem. (And, by the way, I made the prediction that Spurious would be the first to complain about the 'solution' to his problem. Call me a prophet.) Many things were said in the thread, ideas brunted about, but the main meat of the ideas that were thought to be feasible were presented in the public thread which was met with vast accolades of .... pretty much nothing. The only person with any type of real comments to make on the policy itself was TOR, but she intermingled with this with such vast reams of useless drama, gnashing of teeth, and baiting of mods and admin that the patience that had been shown her was rescinded. TOR manufactured her banning and this is obvious to anybody with half a brain. (And Spurious is posting on her blog? How fucking ludicrous is that? Wasn't he the target of her drama when he was mod? Fucking hilarious.) Nobody else, to my recollection, had much to say other than the usual. Bitching. And, that's fine. That's what we do here. We bitch. We bitch. We moan. We make lots of noise about nothing. Some of our more dramatic members throw up their hands and threaten to leave the forums forever. Some just leave without the stupid drama (and it is stupid. But funny.) Some stay gone. Some don't. (Most don't.) But, in the end, just as much happens as the users of this forum want. Nothing. Although, I've noticed that Avatar's nice little drafted out policy with all the discussion in the mod forum and the lack of discussion in userland has disappeared, and instead the WE&P rules drafted by Well Cooked Fetus and Goofyfish long ago seem to have been substituted in their place. Don't know why that happened. Anyway. This whole thing is just useless fucking drama. I respect Spurious for many things, but he is a drama queen. This isn't the first time he's ran off. Isn't the first time he's set up his forum as a refuge and whatnot. And, when he gets bored of it (most likely) won't be the first time that he erases the database of all the posts made there. And, the content of his site? Off topic is the order of the day... (or at least it was all the other times. I haven't really been spending much internet time lately. I find all this so... disinteresting these days.) What is his complaint? Overmoderation? Then why is his forum an example of undermoderation? Undermoderation? How could he claim that this forum is overmoderated? Because of Lou's banishment? Which is it? And TDI? Starting a 'serious' thread and complaining about off topic posting? How fucking ludicrous is that? TDI has never been on topic since the day he started posting here. Except, that is, for the brief period where he was bucking for a moderator position and he was going around reporting posts like it was going out of style. Jesus fucking christ, people. Can't you all see just how fucking stupid this all is? I swear, your hormones must be all worked up in a lather and your brains are flying south for summer. In my opinion, this is the meat of the 'matter'. The problem with resolving this issue is simple. And complex. Sciforums is a lax place. Always has been. This is part of its charm. The denizens of our fine forum have always had a degree of freedom for witty interchanges of discussion that need not strictly adhere to 'topic'. However, these days, there seems to be nothing but one line 'wit' contests that plug up every damn thread that rears its ugly head. A thread is made and in an hour has 5 fucking pages already. 20 page threads. 30 page threads. These are fucking normal these days. That's the problem. But, how to fix it? By becoming strict about topic and deleting off topic posts as soon as they strike? Then we run the risk of becoming a sterile place like all the others. Losing the very essence of the place we're striving to save. Give the off topic posting some leeway before stepping in to stop the 'madness'? Then we'll get accused of favoritism or some other bullshit. Then the thread will turn into an excuse for drama queens to rampage through the forums. Basically, the problem isn't one that can be solved by moderation. It can only be solved by YOU. The USER. Stop with the inane chatter. If you give a shit about this place then stop with all the bullshit. That's all. Don't run off and throw tantrums. Post as you would have others post. The Golden Fucking Rule. Idiots. Here's an idea. If you read something and a funny little comment comes to mind. Don't just post it like a fucking idiot. Use your fucking brain and actually come up with something on topic to say and then post your little witty bullshit. That's the problem. All you fuckers are too fucking lazy to even try to stay on topic. You're even too fucking lazy to read a post of more than two sentences. I don't know how many times I've read people complaining about lengthy posts... Lengthy posts. Here. At Sciforums. You're all a bunch of fucking newbs with ADD. Sigh. Anyway. I still think this shit is all funny. But, it's sad that the forum has degenerated to this. Frankly, maybe this 'exodus' will work wonders. Divest ourselves of the drama queens. Unfortunately, I doubt many have the courage of their convictions. Nah. It's not drama that's the problem. We've always been a dramatic bunch. It's the short attention span. That's the problem. Maybe we should make a minimum word count of 100 per post. Or 1000. That might solve the problem.
Beyond the quality of posts, lies the mind: it's the quality of posters then. And beyond that quality lies character: so it's the quality of character of the currently active here, and for it to be spotted signifies that it's the majority of posters here who are lacking in character—and that is what is being lamented about: posters in the science areas who would possess stimulating and forceful characters have either left, never were, or are being repressed. Whose fault might that be? Anyway, it's not just in science. Lol. Evidence of something? Something is trying to tell you something? A lack of commitment from the scientifically minded? The evidence being that this is a forum primarily and a science forum after that. Evidently there's more of a demand these days for a general forum over a science one. But if it's a science forum that matters and must be established, pronto, then cleaning house should be a piece of cake: get rid of non-science forums! Duh. Or, as a compromise, add many many more science forums to totally drown out and overwhelm the majority. That should hit home. Lol.
That's a slap in the face to the rest some of us who actually exercised, bone fide, thought and concern and, like, sure, I'll give a shit. However, this statement coming from a moderator sorta makes it a license to orthodox our irrelevancy. Authoritative, see?
It would have to be the times were there are notable changes on the message board. The border itself would be a time where one group of familiar faces disappeared, and was replaced with new ones. Another would be the old ownership, and the new ownership. A third could be the old domain name (I've seen people mention the old name was 'exo-sci' or something like that), and the new one. I'm being silly - I thought it would be an amusing concept.....particularly the part were the periods would be given fancy greek names.
The border I identify with was a triple occurrence, like Bing, Bang, Boom. Xev and Satyr Wanderer finally met and took off for Europe together, Gendanken and, I've forgotten his name, that slimy taciturn intellect met and she would eventually depart with him, but not before she and Xev (soon after her return from Europe and a falling out with Wanderer) started fighting horribly and bitterly together; it was just awful—things would never be the same afterwards: and sure enough, following this Midsummer Night's Dream, the server went kaput, people disassembled, and, oh. my. god. God that was fun.
