Stifled Voices, Disillusioned Posters and the Death of a Community

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by ly_yng, Dec 22, 2008.

  1. BasX

    BasX I Win

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    Dans la ville avec cette chute d'eau énorme
    M Two One isn't an admin... when did this happen. I'm jw. Not to cause a stir.
     
  2. Hudge

    Hudge Active Member

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    Can I just say this is the best thread I've been in like ever.
    Ly-yng, I think a heated argument turns into a flame war when the points from either side turn into insults, rather than structured arguments.
     
  3. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    He is PMing with the people that were banned, and he starts a thread asking "what happened"?

    He knows what happened. He's not in ignorance. That he was chatting with WP at the same time he chatted with Denny demonstrates that.

    So... why would he start a thread asking a question he already knew the answer to?

    Ed O.
     
  4. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    Why would it not be enforceable? How can there be a rule for each and every possible agreement that Admins make with staff?

    Another way of looking at it: both sides that made the agreement presumably thought it was enforceable, right? If so, then how can anyone else complain when it is enforced? And if one side did not think it was enforceable (presumably the side with his ass on the line) then they were not acting in good faith, violating a basic tenet of the site and deserving being banned.

    Ed O.
     
  5. ¹²³

    ¹²³ ¼½¾

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    It's interesting since I was looking at the top posters from this site and noticed this:

    Shapecity (36,095) - Active member
    Black Mamba (18,736) - Active Member
    BrewCityBuck (17,498) - Last activity in 11-15-2007
    CB4allstar (13,580) - Last activity in 10-17-2007
    GMJ (12,140) - Banned
    huevonkiller (12,125) - Active Member
    pegs (12,124) - Las activity in 10-01-2008
    AdropOFvenom (11,591) - Last activity in 08-03-2007

    Posters really come and go, sometimes without any "real" reason.
     
  6. JE

    JE Suspended

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    BCB and CB4 are BBW members.
     
  7. ly_yng

    ly_yng Active Member

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    Honestly, I think he started that thread for the same reason I started this one - there appeared to be no public accounting about some actions that had upset and frustrated a majority of the core Nets community here (despite the insistance of the site higher-ups that "the subject has been publicly discussed").

    In fact, I started this thread in REACTION to Tim's thread being closed. Even if you believe his actions were in bad faith, they inspired me to do basically the same thing, and I think the result has been good for the site.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2008
  8. ly_yng

    ly_yng Active Member

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    I think you're kind of giving the game away here, Ed. The issue isn't so much that a suicide-pact agreement isn't enforceable - it's that a lot of us feel that it shouldn't have happened in the first place. I'll explain my thinking:

    As I understand it, War Poet lobbied for KC to be reinstated - he vouched for him. This (through who's suggestion, I don't know) led to a sort of suicide-pact between the two: if KC needed to be banned again, then War Poet would be banned as well.

    This, to me, being perfectly frank, seems like a terrible idea, and one reeking of a lack of accountability or leadership from the top. We are all human beings, with free will, and an ability to make our own decisions. The idea that one of us could be held responsible for another's actions is a a really scary, irresponsible thought. If KC deserved to be banned, that's one thing. If he deserved to be unbanned, that's another. In the end, for something this controversial, it should have been Denny's (or whoever else gets to make decisions like that) decision, and his responsibility.

    An idea like the War Poet suicide pact is just a total pawning off of that responsibility. It's like the admins said "Well, if KC goes off reservation, it wasn't OUR decision to let him back in." That's bullshit. Of COURSE it was your decision, and leaving someone like War Poet on the hook for that is TOTALLY unfair.

    Either a controversial poster is adding to the board, or subtracting from it - and whether a mod is advocating for one side of the argument or the other should have no bearing on that mod's ability to contribute to the board.

    To cut you off at the pass, I understand that War Poet did some other stuff that the modding staff considered bannable. Point taken. But this isn't really about the enforcement of the suicide-pact, it's that it existed in the first place.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2008
  9. ¹²³

    ¹²³ ¼½¾

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    What is BBW?
     
  10. DaRizzle

    DaRizzle BLAKER

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    Oh I think you exactly what that is "King of Pictures"123
     
  11. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    But did you know the answer before you started this thread? Are you chatting with the banned members?

    Notice that no one is accusing you of stirring things up.

    Ed O.
     
  12. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    Why is it your business?

    I mean, really. Why is it your business what deals are made between other people? Why is it your business whether a friend is willing to put his ass on the line for another friend?

    I totally disagree that it reflects poorly on any party involved. You're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to mine. Neither of us, of course, run this site so our opinions aren't terribly relevant.

    Ed O.
     
  13. ly_yng

    ly_yng Active Member

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    When I started the thread, no. But we've got to distinguish here between the post and the poster. It doesn't really matter what I know. What does matter is whether there's a public accounting of this stuff on the site. There wasn't, and now there is at least a start.

    FWIW, I have started chatting with some of the banned members, trying to get a handle on both sides of the story. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's one thing to say that you don't want some members posting on your bulletin board anymore; it's quite another to say that anyone associating with them in any capacity has no right to ask any question.

    I think it would be a shame if contact with them would require that this thread immediately be closed and hidden away.
     
  14. Chutney

    Chutney MON-STRAWRRR!!1!

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    I'd just like to add that this is something I've learned since our experiment with the Nets forum and its something I think the entire staff has kept in mind for the future. I was on board with ghoti, as somebody who thought we should make an effort to put threads in the right place and integrate Nets posters with the rest of the community. And I still agree with that in principle. But I no longer see that as a practical approach, with too many posters being just naturally averse to such heavy-handedness.

    That's fine. As a staff, we're fallible. We made what turned out to be a mistake and learned from it the next time we had to deal with a big migrating board. Some people took that as a blatant double-standard, when it was just us refusing to make the same mistake twice. The reality is that we've treated the Nets board since that failed experiment just as we've treated the Blazers board, and every other board for that matter.
     
  15. ly_yng

    ly_yng Active Member

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    SportsTwo Forums > SportsTwo > Feedback

    I'd assume that the existence of a feedback forum would imply that our opinions are, in fact, relevant. Why else have a feedback forum?
     
  16. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    It does matter. It matters if the Admins are going to be taking criticism for shutting down the thread that was started by someone who (a) knew the story, and (b) has a rival site that might be improved by his rabble rousing over here.

    Ed O.
     
  17. Ed O

    Ed O Administrator Staff Member Administrator

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    I certainly can't speak for the Admins (I'm just a Blazers mod) but there's a clear reason for a feedback forum, even if opinions are regularly ignored (which I'm NOT saying is the case here): Fair Process.

    Fair Process, in case you don't know, is a management technique where employees get a chance to give input and feedback without any guarantee that the feedback and input will be implemented. It has a soothing psychological effect on employees. It might (occasionally) might result in a good idea, but the letting off of steam is the primary purpose of Fair Process.

    With all of that said, maybe my use of the word "relevant" was incorrect. Our opinions are controlling. We don't make the final decisions. The Admins decide.

    Ed O.
     
  18. MikeDC

    MikeDC Member

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    Right. And we disclosed to the owners of that other board what we were doing starting S2. And we never went over there and complained about things after our association with them with them was over.

    We did our job their to the best of their abilities, and we had the common sense to recognize that we'd look like idiots or jerks or both if we went over their complaining and criticizing at the direction of things there. Even if we did have the best intentions in saying something, it'd come off as lame, transparent and self-serving.

    To this day, I consider the main guys over at BBF (like truebluefan) friends. But even if I didn't, I'd have more respect for myself than to leave that place and then come back skulking around and casting aspersions about the "direction" of the site and other nonsense when I had an obvious axe to grind and an obvious interest in another site.
     
  19. MikeDC

    MikeDC Member

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    I wasn't party to the whole agreement thing, but let me offer that sometimes agreements like that aren't made to be enforced. They're made to hopefully never have to be enforced. Now, you might rightly question the wisdom of that, but I'll say for my part that I'd strenuously object to actually banning a mod simply based on such an agreement.
     
  20. Jurassic

    Jurassic Trend Setter

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    Edit: Resolved
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2008

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