SIMPLE: Quit wasting Wendell's time with P/R complaints.
Damn! Use your inside voice, please,
Don
SIMPLE: Quit wasting Wendell's time with P/R complaints.
Banning seems like the best solution, but I think Wendell's point is that he really doesn't have the time to check each post to find the offender.
What we need is a full time moderator (or possibly two or three part time people) to handle this, while Wendell takes care of the site's regular business or his personal business.
Therefore, I nominate Don Blameuser (a.k.a. prior commitment) to be a moderator. Yeah Don supports Obama, but I believe him to be a professional and that he would take an unbiased approach to the job.
Of course if Wendell thought that the moderator was being biased, unfair, or taking sides on issues, he could always replace them with someone else.
Just an idea.
I would hate to see the end of P&R.
SIMPLE: Quit wasting Wendell's time with P/R complaints.
I agree with having some monitors. I doubt Don wants the job, he seemed to avoid P&R. I believe he could be fair, but doubt he wants the head ache.
Pitfalls of P & R
> Anyone who went over to that other site and visited their P&R section (i.e., "The Lounge") knows that what would generally happen is someone would start a thread and maybe two or three good responses would come in, but after that it would become a "so's yer old man" type debate.
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> Although there may have been 130 or so people signed up to participate, I doubt that there were ever more than the same six or eight people posting.
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> It became rather hard to participate in a meaningful way, because the personal insults and inane arguing among the "Lounge lizards" would preclude anyone from making any points (not that it would really matter anyway).
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> After a while, it just go to the point that the shorthand banter between the regulars made it impossible to get a word in edgewise.....they'd only respond to each other's attacks.
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Geez, Angelo
Sounds like it would make a nice off-Broadway play material in an absurdist kind of way.
I never signed up fpr the lounge over there. I had referred to it as the dungeon a few times since I never could imagine it being a 'lounge'.
Who said the owners don't have a right to do whatever they want? I don't think anyone has suggested that the owners of the site don't have the right to make whatever decision they deem neccessary, and to suggest such a notion explicitly demostrates the actions of one who doesn't take the time to actually understand the comments others may elucidate.
I, for one, think the action of removing P&R entirely or even banning participants for minor infractions of the "rules"; however many times that may be, is also unwise.
AS3
Disagreement Noted but...
If you actually looked at the traffic statistics when the other site started to remove posts (well before the transition to the new format) you would notice the reduction in traffic is directly proportional.
AS3
Disagreement Noted but...
I think Wendell posted something a few days back showing the contrary. I really don't mind P&R, I actually enjoy it, but there are a few who continually push the rules.
I say bring down the heavy hand and get rid of them, eventually the rest of us will do a better job staying within the boundaries.
The last time I was there...
...RPLS.com had disabled all the groups except for the TOPCON, SOKKIA, ASHTECH, and ASK A SURVEYOR, with a message that they were working on groups.
But all other activity has been reduced to a crawl.
about moderating forums
> What we need is a full time moderator (or possibly two or three part time people) to handle this, while Wendell takes care of the site's regular business or his personal business.
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Tim, I was a moderator/administrator for Wendell in his previous endeavor. It's not easy to do since we all have our points of view. Sometimes you really have to bite your tongue and let things fly. Only a few times did I scrub [not delete] a few posts because of language. The only reason I did that was because I knew for a fact we had some kids signed up as users. Foul words and slurs don't bother me, but... when I knew kids were watching, that became a different matter.
I never banned a poster myself but passed on a few concerns to Wendell & Angel for their consideration. No, it wasn't Ted either. 🙂
Only once did I completely delete a thread and warn the poster(s). I don't even recall what it was about but I do recall it was getting out of hand and somewhat personal. Given the early morning hours at the time, I figured Wendell & Angel probably were not seeing what was going on. I took action based on what I thought they would do and then let them know.
It really is a thankless job being a moderator.
E.
Now that just went into my collection of wiseguy cartoons for future use.
Thanx
> To my way of thinking if a poster didn't physically threaten anyone, didnt' engage in petty name calling, profanity or use racial epithets, then anything beyond that is just a difference of opinion. What kind of conversation could we have if we didn't have differences of opinion?
From all I've read in these site issue threads it was the proclivity of some posters to "engage in petty name calling, profanity or use racial epithets", and even physical threats which led to the category shut down.
Simple difference of opinion is expected, and as you imply, often necessary for meaningful discussion. Difference of opinion wasn't the problem. How some (too many) were expressing it was.
I keep P&R turned off for several reasons: 1) I don't want to get sucked into fruitless discussions where everyone is griping about something but not actually doing anything to improve matters, 2) I don't want to subject myself to insults based upon inaccurate generalities ascribed to the larger body of people who share my views, and 3) there are those I've come to respect through their survey and other non-political posts that I don't want to risk losing respect for by reading garbage they may post under P&R. Something about those subjects often turns otherwise intelligent, sane, and courteous people into raving lunatics willing to hurl the most vile and slanderous insults at each other. It's a Jekyll & Hyde thing I'd rather not witness or participate in.
But as someone else said, those senior rights threads can get pretty close to the same type of conversations sometimes. Gotta be careful there.
Pitfalls of P & R
I haven't been over there in a while either. I thought it was mostly those two characters who represent the knee-jerk extreme responders who argue off talking points without ever considering the facts for themselves before posting. also last time I looked, those two were taking the same argument into nearly every survey related thread as well.
Has it changed at all?
Sounds like a lot of work, Eric
So many people are sounding upset with Wendell for turning off P&R, suggesting (maybe demanding?) that he instead just delete the worst posts or ban the worst offenders.
The problem I see is that it took me about 15 minutes to read through the other, longer thread on the subject, and I wasn't even looking for posts that might break the rules.
Watching P&R alone would seem like just about a full time job. How much income is in that?
Those who complain about how he is handling the problem, and those who complain when a particularly offensive post is not scrubbed after existing for a couple of hours don't seem to be considering how much time it takes to do that. Yeah, I'm sure removing one particular post or deleting one particular member probably only takes a few seconds once identified. But the only way to identify the posts and users in need of deletion is to read each and every post made. It would take hours to do, and then constant vigilance to stay on top of.
If enough forum users were sending emails Wendell on all of the posts which break the rules, I'm sure it would help immensely, but only if the emailers could properly discern between posts that break the rules and those they simply don't like. If he's flooded with "I don't like what ______ said in the ______ thread and I want it deleted" type emails, then it just becomes another level of babysitting.
Who has time for that?
Pitfalls of P & R
you mean beer an pseudo?
The problem has always been
that the board is someone's business interest and "they can do what they want". At the end of the day this is what lay at the core of the old board's problem and it appears this one as well. Like I said before, some folks see this as a professional forum where discussions on other topics are tolerated and others see it as a gathering place for surveyors where surveying is just one of a myriad of topics that are discussed.
These tow views will always come into conflict so long as the board attempts to be both. The original concept of creating categories was a compromise to attempt to have the board serve both functions and make everyone happy. To tell you the truth, that should have worked, but some people insist upon bringing their "professional forum" into P/R and demanding that P/R be something that it is not and will never be. Of course there were/are people who take P/R topics out into the other categories and that shouldn't be tolerated and we should all know better.
I suspect that at the end of the day Wendell will opt to keep this a professional forum out of business considerations. This seems to be the natural end result of these things and it is what leads me to believe that the core problem we are going to have to get over is using someone else's "place of business" as a gathering place. Wendell has created another site just for P/R. I've not been to it, but the fact that he has done so seems to indicate to me that he wants to retain this board as a professional forum and that P/R is incompatible with such a forum. I would think that the new P/R board will eventually also fail because it too will be "Wendell's board" and he will still have headaches from it (and probably no profit???).
Somebody earlier mentioned the idea of paid subscriptions for P/R. I would like to expand on that idea and suggest people becoming "shareholders" in the P/R board. I haven't spent any time thinking about exactly how that would work, but it does seem like it would resolve the fundamental weaknesses in the model we've been trying to use for years now. On a board where it is a kind of owner/member club, what potential advertisers or anyone else might think is not even a factor. I suspect though that one would find advertisers more interested in advertising on the P/R board than this one due to what I believe would be a higher traffic volume. But advertisers would be unnecessary (although they could help keep membership fees down). There would no longer of comments affecting anyone's "brand" or business interests.
Of course you'd still have to deal with the whiners but at that point the argument that "this is a professional forum...." would no longer be valid. It would be simply a gathering place for surveyors. A cyberworld watering hole. I suppose there would still need to be some kind of moderation, but it seems like it could be kept minimal and the duties could be rotated/shared amongst the members as part of the costs of membership. I know details details...but it does seem like the basis of a long term solution which protects Wendell (and doesn't cause him to lose money) and gives posters a stake and a say in how their club is run.
The problem has always been
So are you linking them to banks and Wall Street now? I disagree
Pitfalls of P & R
> you mean beer an pseudo?
lol! No mapmaker, I don't think that's who he meant.
Why don't you give it a rest.
Pitfalls of P & R
you rarely have anything to offer, just start trouble.
Pitfalls of P & R
...shaking my head...
You really should just chill...
