ohiobucks1;1463176 wrote:Justin, I normally stay out of stuff like this, but at some point we need to recognize why we are losing so many of the recognizable posters that we started with. This site needs two things IMO going forward. 1. To add new members who will actually take part in posting and 2. To retain the guys we originally started with who understand the culture of the site. We are not doing either very well. If F4F really is the reason so many people are leaving, then he needs to not be a MOD anymore. I don't know if he is or isn't, but if it's even a chance, don't you think it's worth a try to just make him a regular member for a short period of time and see if it works? If it does, great. If it doesn't, then it clearly isn't him and we can try something else.
I've actually had a thread in the mod forum recently volunteering as much. Basically the gist of my thread was:
That I don't think what I'm doing with regards to the rules is outside of the context of the rules, but if you other mods think it is than I am most likely overstepping my bounds. I'm only a moderator as I intend to help the site. But if I'm actually hurting it I can stop enforcing the personal attack/trolling rules all together and only take care of unapproving spam posts and banning spam accounts (something that I know I do when I see them, I'm know other mods do as well when you look at the banned users list). But obviously your post takes it a step further and the complete removal of my moderator abilities.
Now in response to your post:
What is it that makes you think my moderation is affecting the attraction of new members? I generally have no interaction with someone in my moderator capacity unless they break the rules, this doesn't particiularly affect new members unless they break the rules, and we always give PM warning first to any first time violators. So I don't see how this would be a bad thing necessarily. I will occasionally do some other stuff like edit someone's post if they are having trouble linking a picture or changing a thread title upon request or deleting a thread upon request (but these kind of requests or instances are few and far between and not a big part of moderating duties, just being helpful).
The only other way my moderation can have an effect on new members is if they see all of the complaining from a few individuals (i.e. the people who have broken the rules, often repeatedly) as so distinguished in this thread. Now is it really my moderation that is having the negative effect or the complaining? I think this thread demonstrates that it might be more of the complaining.
Secondly with retaining the guys we originally had. There is this idea that has been repeated by posters in private messages, in reported posts and also by a moderator time to time. And you even see that complaint in this thread from someone like TrueBlue. Basically people grow tired of seeing the same negative posts all the time from certain individuals constantly and will stop posting for a long period of time. And to further expand upon this I'm going to just copy and paste a post I had in the moderator forum discussing this topic. I know we never post anything from there, but these are my own words and no one else is implicated in saying anything by this response so I feel okay sharing it as I think this is a sentiment that many reasonable posters share (of course some might disagree as well, such as yourself and I would consider you reasonable).
I think this is a sentiment that's repeated by numerous people. I went through this phase and stopped posting for a period of time because of CoA, Like_That, and that small group. Eventually I started posting again and just either ignoring those clowns or treating them like they joke they are. But they definitely don't make this place enjoyable in my opinion. They're always trying to be negative. When they have an issue with someone they manage to bring it to every thread.
When normal people don't like a poster or have an issue with a poster they either just let it go, or argue about it in relevant threads, but they don't bring it up in every single thread. I think that's the main difference. LJ and I have certainly had our differences in the past, but you don't see us constantly going at each other all the time. We realize that we disagree with each other, but we still know that it would be childish and unproductive to constantly troll each other.
Those guys when they have an issue with someone don't let up... they just keep digging and picking at the issue until we (mods) finally do something about it. And if nothing is done, they will go at it forever. For example, even just yesterday they managed to bring up jordo in a thread that he hadn't posted on, he hadn't posted here in a long time, but they still managed to bring up his name, call him turdo and laugh about him and just generally slam him. I'm not saying that jordo never posted stuff that could be qualified as trolling. The point is that they don't stop... ever. They don't know how to let go of things.
