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Discussion thread for dealing with drama

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Lily Rose
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Posted: Thu 15 Nov , 2007 3:48 pm
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If everyone really is sick of this topic, I would be happy to put a lock on it. Then the temptation will be all gone.;)

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Anthriel
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Posted: Thu 15 Nov , 2007 4:03 pm
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I'm just all geeked out that Ax used the word "meme" in a sentence.

:horse:

I LOVE good words. :D


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Faramond
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Posted: Thu 15 Nov , 2007 4:49 pm
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Hey I tried to lock it, but did anyone respect my secret uber-Ranger powers? Nooooooo!


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Axordil
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Posted: Thu 15 Nov , 2007 8:28 pm
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We just overrode them with our even secreter, even uberer, SuperRanger powers. :D

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Estel
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Posted: Thu 15 Nov , 2007 11:45 pm
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Because a lot of people don't want to deal with drama, as Rangers, I think we should come up with a pool of people who would be willing to work as something a little stronger (I hate to use the word mod, so if someone could come up with something less icky than that, I would appreciate it).

Basically, one person drawn from that pool at a time and only the rangers would know who that person was. Their only power would be to attempt to calm down disputes and relegate people to the bikerack if necessary. No changing of ranks, no changing of groups, no power to ranger or deranger anyone. No admin work basically. That person would have a seperate ID.

The superranger would not enter into a dispute unless called for by a ranger. Then their word would be law. Anyone, even if only on the periphery of the dispute, who ignored the superranger would be put into the bikeracks for two days.

If the superranger was found to be biased by the majority of the current posters of the board, they would deleted from the pool of superrangers indefinitely, and deleted from the pool of normal rangers for 1 year.


I think the most difficult thing about being a ranger is everyone knows who you are. We did that in response to TORC where some of the mods were anonymous. The problem is, when someone knows you and you're posting under your normal user id, it's hard to tell when you're posting as you and when you're posting as a ranger. Even if it's known that you're posting as a ranger, some posters feel that they can still do personal attacks or question your judgement. By having an anonymous superranger whose powers are limited to drama/dispute only, and only by invitation of the normal rangers, we lose that difficulty.

Otherwise, we could have the superranger ID which all the people in the superranger pool would know the password for, and anytime there was a big dispute, the rangers could pm a person in the pool asking for them to take care of it. That way, there's never anyone person at a time who takes on the mantle - it just depends on whether the rangers think they need anonyranger to come in and take things in hand. Current rangers wouldn't be allowed to be in the anonyranger pool, of course. Too much power :neutral: :cool:




Forgive the many misspellings - it's quite late here and I should've been in bed an hour ago. :tired:


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Anthriel
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Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 12:07 am
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I didn't notice any misspellings. But I did notice "anonyranger", and I really, really like it.

It's word day, here at b77. ;)


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Estel
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Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 12:25 am
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:D Thanks :cheers:


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 12:35 am
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Doesn't the charter or some welcome thread on this board request that members use common sense? I'm thinking in terms of Ax's point about one's desire to terminate the topic. If you say you're done, then you should shut your pie-hole. Go actually eat pie if it helps you to understand better. None of this baiting people crap, chums. We're not fish, so don't treat each other like fish. In the human world when the big one eats the little one, someone cares.

There is no reason to act like a hector over the internet. That's for Anthy. ;)

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Anthriel
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Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 1:18 am
Seeking my nitid muliebrity
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Hey! No fair! That's Dictionary.com's word of the day!!!


As IF I wouldn't notice. As IF I don't get the word of the day every day, and actually look forward to it. As IF I weren't a sadly geeky geek.


As IF.








Hmmmpppffffhhhh.


Insolent pup. :P



Although I think it's better used as a verb: "no reason to hector someone over the internet". Just sayin'. :)


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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 5:48 am
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You can't hector people. That's simply insanity. Next you'll be asking to harry cars while driving along the interstate. Insolent indeed.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 12:36 am
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I've been careful to avoid threads like this because my input cannot be considered constructive, really, no matter what I say, but a friend of mine adopted the following quote as a signature on his emails recently, and it struck me as so true, and so relevant to what all of us were trying to do with B77, that I can't resist posting it here:

"It is an unsound fancy...to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried."
Francis Bacon

This really was a noble experiment, regardless the outcome, and it does hearten me to think that it might ultimately succeed, even though I've not enough time to post here and also admin HoF at the current time (RL prevents it).

The charter is far more cumbersome than it needs to be, and I have always suppored simplifying it, but I think that mainly B77 represent a challenge to the imagination. It is not by known rules and procedures that an internet democracy could be enabled to succeed, because this kind of venture is something we have never seen before.

Jn

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The Watcher
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 3:05 am
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Jnyusa wrote:
I've been careful to avoid threads like this because my input cannot be considered constructive, really, no matter what I say, but a friend of mine adopted the following quote as a signature on his emails recently, and it struck me as so true, and so relevant to what all of us were trying to do with B77, that I can't resist posting it here:

"It is an unsound fancy...to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried."
Francis Bacon

This really was a noble experiment, regardless the outcome, and it does hearten me to think that it might ultimately succeed, even though I've not enough time to post here and also admin HoF at the current time (RL prevents it).
The charter is far more cumbersome than it needs to be, and I have always suppored simplifying it, but I think that mainly B77 represent a challenge to the imagination. It is not by known rules and procedures that an internet democracy could be enabled to succeed, because this kind of venture is something we have never seen before.

Jn
If I can come in here one time and really sound off, it is over posts like this.

Jny and Voronwe and numerous others put their hearts and souls into working out the administrative details here, but as their backgrounds suggest, the process got mired down in both cases by their very fear of covering all bases and all possible outcomes while forgetting the basic people that we all are..

Both Jny and Voronwe have for the most part moved on to a more regulated board, which they devised, and are I hope happy and content with., since it is their baby.

Discontent with things is part of human nature. There is no way around it.

But at the same time, one can try to overcome it and see past it and stop taking any or every post personally.

I will be honest here, I LOVE being able to post here without having my posts rearranged to fit into new split off threads or being able to grouse about stuff without being censored. I cannot do that on HOF, and I am by far an adult, older even than Voronwe himself. For all of the tolerance and such that other sites preach, I find we are MORE tolerant here than anyplace. Maybe too much so, but that is part of the price we pay for being this type of site.

So, what do people want?

It basically boils down to freedom or enforced guidelines. Some suspect that freedom without more complex rules will lead to anarchy, others here are still willing to try and support the experiment in basic civility.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 4:07 am
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Watcher wrote:
Discontent with things is part of human nature. There is no way around it.
Yes, that's my observation too. Some people devote their time to building things, and others devote their time to griping about what others have built.

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laureanna
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 7:16 am
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Estel, sounds like you want a Power Ranger. :D

http://www.powerranger.co.uk/spd/powerrangersspd.jpg

But seriously, I appreciate the thought you put into the proposal. I'm afraid I don't see how it will work on B77. You are, it appears, making these assumptions:
1. We want a republic. We want a representative democracy in which we elect someone to do our rulemaking for us, even if the representative does things that don't represent the majority opinion. We don't want a true democracy where everyone has equal voice.
2. The drama queen will listen to a poster wearing a mask who keeps popping in to say "please don't be a drama queen".
3. The uber-ranger will be above the law, and capable of committing actions not subject to the Charter, and not subject to appeal, since that might reveal the uber-ranger's identity.
4. A ranger who is protected by anonymity will say things that he/she wouldn't dare say to a person's face, and that's a good thing. If I find out later that a poster was patting me on the back in public and stabbing me in the back anonymously, I won't feel bad at all.

I do not go along with those assumptions. My assumptions are instead:

1. Drama queen bating is not a pretty sport. It is a group sport. It cannot be done by a single person without the support of others. Therefore, we are all responsible for making this a decent place to post, by the way we act or refrain from acting.
2. High drama is like wildfire. It produces pages and pages of angsty posts in a very short time. Perhaps, like the brakes on the Wall Street Stock Market, we need to have automatic cutoffs if a topic or a poster get too hot. Maybe post a 5 hour lock for cooling down. The automatic cutoff should be predetermined - say a certain number of posts in an hour in a thread or by a poster - so that it is not up to a reluctant ranger. This would also take the finger pointing away from the ranger, and the accusations about one thread being closed in preference to another kept open.
3. Some people need to resist reading upsetting threads. Perhaps the thread could be temporarily labeled "DRAMA" so as to warn people. Or the whole thread could be moved to the bike racks for a while. People who don't like meltdowns should avoid looking at posts in the bike racks.
4. Anonymity on the board is a bad thing. We do not allow it by Charter because it has historically caused a lot of grief.


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halplm
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 9:24 am
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If I felt that anyone would actually listen to me, I would say several things:

1. the desire for a "super-ranger" or any way to ban someone just because some people don't want to deal with that someone, is entirely a way to circumvent what this board was started to do... that is, to treat everyone the same, with respect, as opposed to one or a few getting rid of the ones they don't like.

2. People seem to forget the concept of "mutual respect" that I always thought was the only way a "member moderated" board could work. Maybe it never worked this way, but I always assumed that if "one member" felt mistreated and disrespected, and complained about it, and no one listened, and that "one member" got angry, and lashed out about it, then the first response of the board would still be to treat that person with respect, and try to understand what upset them, and work as a whole board to "fix the problem" not "eliminate the one member."

3. The charter sucks. I've said this forever. It is built to be a set of rules that define how to deal with the board, and changing it. It has no real say in how members treat each other. It has been very loosely interpreted to punish some people, and allow others to do whatever they want. It pretends to offer the "mutual respect" concept, far more than what other boards do, but it fails because it gives the rangers no teeth to see that people do maintain a level of respect, but at the same time it fails by seeming to imply that some behavior is unacceptable just because a small group deems it to be a "personal attack."

4. If Board77 ever intends to be what it was created to be, then a few things need to happen.

First, members need to give people the benefit of the doubt when conflict happens. People cannot assume guilt and treat others based on that assumption. This is a concept I believe is fundamental to the concept of democracy, which is another thing this board was founded on.

Second, while rangers must excercise their authority to prevent abuse on the board, they cannot be authorized to arbitrarily decide in favor of one side or another in a dispute. They are not judges, or a jury. If they are forced to do something to "maintain peace" they should do so in an unbiased way. Even if it seems one person is central to a conflict, they cannot confine that one person and let others be free... ALL involved in a conflict must be treated the same. If one person feels that 10 others are ganging up on them, they cannot be singled out, but if they and the 10 others are all confined to the "bike racks" or whatever, then there can be no complaint.

Third, personal attacks and offenses must be based on the perception of the one offended. If a person feels offended or attacked, THAT should be the concern of the rangers. Rangers should not decide one way or another if a statement was REALLY a personal attack or not. If someone feels they have been insulted or attacked, then 99% of the time they have, and it was intentional on the behalf of the attacker. If the attacker can hide behind some technicality or hide becuase they can convince the rangers they were ONLY attacking the opinion, not the person, then we've lost all concept of "mutual respect." At the same time, someone who is quick to claim they have been "personally attacked" should be asked to resolve the dispute without rule enforcement or ranger involvement. If someone claims they are attacked without any attempt to resolve the dispute in the spirit of mutual respect, then they are essentially attacking their percieved attacker with the accusation. The whole concept of B77 (at least as I had thought it) was that we could resolve disputes without rules, technicalities, and moderators (ie. super-rangers).

5. I have been appalled by people's discussion of me. Some have made up their mind about me, obviously, and I have abandoned any hope that such minds could be changed. I have not abandoned Board77, though, because if the principles of the board as it was founded actually are important to the members here, if people here can treat other members with respect, no matter what the disagreement, then people's biases and past abhorant treatment of me doesn't matter... because I can always expect fair treatment and discussion. I have not found this to be the case for a long time. I have felt that any time I wish to present a strong disagreement with people, i am ganged up on, and some pretense is presented for me to be characterized as a troublemaker and instigator, thus nulifying any argument I can put forth for my own opinion.

Who's going to listen to the percieved troublemaker? Who's going to listen to the sick, depressed, asshole who lashes out at everyone and everything just for attention? How can that person have a viable opinion about anything?



This board once stood for something, and the people that made it up could have made what it stood for happen... most of them have moved on, giving up on the concept. How many are still here that actually believe in that "something" for a messageboard? Seriously, who is left that feels that way?

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TheMary
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 10:53 am
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Hello Hal!!!!!!! Nice post, I read the whole thing :)

We have multiple rangers on the board so that no one person has "control" and I think this system works best. I don't think someone should have modly powers beyond this because there is no one person that EVERYONE is going to feel comfortable with their fate in that persons hands.

Alandriel created this board (literally) and never once said "HEY! I made this board therefore I rule" even though it couldn't have been easy to read some of the stuff that has happened here.

I would like to think that we are all adults and are capable of getting along. That doesn't mean we have to like everyone and it doesn't mean we have the right to be cruel either. Chances are someone here has irked "you", so stay away from that person. If that person follows you wherever you go to give you are hard time let someone know.

And if I lose this post because the board crashes again I'm gonna be pissed! :rage:

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 2:52 pm
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So, the sixty-four thousand dollar question now is, how do you actually move past this kind of topic, and get back to normal?

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Axordil
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 3:05 pm
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TED--

I would say the real question is, what IS normal here? I ask that not facetiously but in all seriousness. Can someone point at posts from a period of time and say "that's what we want?" Do we want comity or activity? Can we have both with the current arrangement?

The "Golden Age" lasted about two months here, if memory serves, and the conditions that engendered it are Gone Forever. Trying to recreate that time, or some luminary age from TORC, is never going to work. Decide on what the vision is NOW and go from there.

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Angbasdil
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Posted: Sat 17 Nov , 2007 3:36 pm
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hal,
Thanks for posting that. I know that took a lot of courage. And there's a lot there that I agree with (and a lot I don't. ;))

I address both those things in depth later when I have time to do them justice.


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Estel
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Posted: Sun 18 Nov , 2007 12:34 pm
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laureanna wrote:
But seriously, I appreciate the thought you put into the proposal. I'm afraid I don't see how it will work on B77. You are, it appears, making these assumptions:
I think I haven't been able to speak clearly for ages, as the assumptions are completely not what I was trying to say. Let me attempt to clarify :)
laureanna wrote:
1. We want a republic. We want a representative democracy in which we elect someone to do our rulemaking for us, even if the representative does things that don't represent the majority opinion. We don't want a true democracy where everyone has equal voice.
No, I don't want someone to do the rulemaking for us. I want someone who doesn't have to fear anything when enforcing the rules we already have in place.
laureanna wrote:
2. The drama queen will listen to a poster wearing a mask who keeps popping in to say "please don't be a drama queen".
If the drama-queen doesn't listen, they will be confined to the bikeracks - a rule we already have in place but is very rarely enforced. Since the uber-ranger would only be called in by the normal rangers when things get really out of hand, then the drama-queen would know, just by the appearance of the uber-ranger, that they are only one or two posts away from being confined and would hopefully take the uber-ranger seriously.
laureanna wrote:
3. The uber-ranger will be above the law, and capable of committing actions not subject to the Charter, and not subject to appeal, since that might reveal the uber-ranger's identity.
The uber-ranger would only be called in by the normal rangers, and only be able to do actions approved by the the normal rangers. The uber-rangers only abilities would be to tell people to be nice or they will be confined to the bikeracks, and to confine people to the bikeracks. I thought I said that in my original post :help: :blackeye:
laureanna wrote:
4. A ranger who is protected by anonymity will say things that he/she wouldn't dare say to a person's face, and that's a good thing. If I find out later that a poster was patting me on the back in public and stabbing me in the back anonymously, I won't feel bad at all.
Anyone who would say something that could be construed as stabbing in the back would not be an appropriate person for the job. The uber-rangers only function would be to tell people to stop the bad behavior or they would be sent to the bikeracks.
laureanna wrote:
I do not go along with those assumptions.
Thats great, cause neither do I :) I am very sorry that those assumptions are what you thought I was saying. It wasn't - not at all.
laureanna wrote:
My assumptions are instead:

1. Drama queen bating is not a pretty sport. It is a group sport. It cannot be done by a single person without the support of others. Therefore, we are all responsible for making this a decent place to post, by the way we act or refrain from acting.
I agree, but as so often has happened, some people cannot or will not refrain. By having an anony-ranger who can say "Stop it." without fear of reprisal or personal attack, perhaps we can get to a state where people will refrain.

laureanna wrote:
2. High drama is like wildfire. It produces pages and pages of angsty posts in a very short time. Perhaps, like the brakes on the Wall Street Stock Market, we need to have automatic cutoffs if a topic or a poster get too hot. Maybe post a 5 hour lock for cooling down. The automatic cutoff should be predetermined - say a certain number of posts in an hour in a thread or by a poster - so that it is not up to a reluctant ranger. This would also take the finger pointing away from the ranger, and the accusations about one thread being closed in preference to another kept open.
It's a great idea, but this depends on there being a very clearly defined post or two that takes the thread from being a basic debate to being a fight with drama-queen tendencies and angst. There could be different opinions of where that started, and thus lead to Rangers being attacked for the decision they made. Plus, as has happened so many times before, people just continue their fight in another thread, or start a new one to have it there. If the thread is already in the angsty fight state, why not do what we already have in the charter, and confine everybody who is actively fighting to the bikeracks with ranger moderation so they can have it out without sucking the rest of the board into it? As I said, we already have the rules in the charter in place for that, but sometimes rangers are afraid of using them for fear of personal attack and reprisals. With an anony-ranger controlled by the normal rangers, we finally have someone who doesn't have to be afraid of saying - this has gone too far. Everyone in the bikeracks.

laureanna wrote:
3. Some people need to resist reading upsetting threads. Perhaps the thread could be temporarily labeled "DRAMA" so as to warn people. Or the whole thread could be moved to the bike racks for a while. People who don't like meltdowns should avoid looking at posts in the bike racks.
Problem is, sometimes writing DRAMA on a thread would draw people in as well. I could see moving the whole thread to the bikeracks as being an issue - lets say the person who started the thread meant it as an intelligent debate and two or more people turned it into a big fight. Is it fair to say the whole thread is a big fight and move the whole thing? Or should it just be the drama-posters who are removed to the bikeracks, and the thread allowed to continue where it is so that people who really are more interested in intelligent debate, rather than fighting, need not miss out because some people were being jerks.
laureanna wrote:
4. Anonymity on the board is a bad thing. We do not allow it by Charter because it has historically caused a lot of grief.
100% of the time, no questions asked, a bad thing? When people who could make a change are afraid to because of personal attacks, it would be a bad thing to have an id who has no personality and thus can't be personally attacked?

I was under the impression that we didn't allow anonymity because we didn't want to have people to have a lot of user names thus confusing other posters. I know I had a lot of user-names on TORC and was a bit miffed that I wasn't allowed them here, but at the same time understood the reasoning.

Either way, this wouldn't be an anonymous poster per say. It would be anony-ranger - a simple username that could only be used when the rangers called upon someone in the pool to use it and at no other time. Because the rangers would be responsible for the actions of anony-ranger, they would only call upon the ID if absolutely necessary. Because no one actually is the anony-ranger the way people are normal rangers it wouldn't be possible to abuse the power the way it was for mods on TORC.

That's besides the fact that the anony-ranger wouldn't actually have any powers beyond what the normal rangers gave it. The anony-ranger would have to ask in the rangers forum if it was ok to confine people to the bikeracks. The only time AR would be able to do it without permission is if things were really really really bad and no normal ranger was online.

I just don't see how it's bad having an id that the rangers could call upon when things get out of hand, no one is listening to them and they're being attacked for trying to stop the nonsense. I don't see how it's bad when the only thing the id could do is say "Stop this or you will be confined to the bikeracks" and to, with permission in the vast majority cases, confine people to the bikeracks.

halplm wrote:
If I felt that anyone would actually listen to me, I would say several things:

1. the desire for a "super-ranger" or any way to ban someone just because some people don't want to deal with that someone, is entirely a way to circumvent what this board was started to do... that is, to treat everyone the same, with respect, as opposed to one or a few getting rid of the ones they don't like.
I said a super-ranger to put someone in the bikeracks, not to ban. Don't complain about people not listening to you when you don't listen to me either.
halplm wrote:
2. People seem to forget the concept of "mutual respect" that I always thought was the only way a "member moderated" board could work. Maybe it never worked this way, but I always assumed that if "one member" felt mistreated and disrespected, and complained about it, and no one listened, and that "one member" got angry, and lashed out about it, then the first response of the board would still be to treat that person with respect, and try to understand what upset them, and work as a whole board to "fix the problem" not "eliminate the one member."
Everyone seems to be afraid to moderate each other though, including the rangers who are supposed to step in when things really get out of control. I agree that banning anyone is a bad idea. We have the bikeracks - why not use them.

halplm wrote:
3. The charter sucks. I've said this forever. It is built to be a set of rules that define how to deal with the board, and changing it. It has no real say in how members treat each other. It has been very loosely interpreted to punish some people, and allow others to do whatever they want. It pretends to offer the "mutual respect" concept, far more than what other boards do, but it fails because it gives the rangers no teeth to see that people do maintain a level of respect, but at the same time it fails by seeming to imply that some behavior is unacceptable just because a small group deems it to be a "personal attack."
It's not that it sucks - it's that it's cumbersome and incomprehensible to people who don't speak legalise. I think that was the main problem with it from the beginning. It was great as an experiment, but to understand it well enough to put it into use, you would have to be Jnyusa or the V-Man or one of the others who understood it. For rangers that get put in through a pool process and who aren't rangers 100% of the time, it would take two weeks to understand it and memorize it before putting it into use and working with it. How many rangers do we have who make sure to read through the whole thing at the start of their term let alone get to know it well enough to use it in day to day rangering? I would be quite comfortable betting $100 that none of them do.

halplm wrote:
4. If Board77 ever intends to be what it was created to be, then a few things need to happen.

First, members need to give people the benefit of the doubt when conflict happens. People cannot assume guilt and treat others based on that assumption. This is a concept I believe is fundamental to the concept of democracy, which is another thing this board was founded on.
I agree :)
halplm wrote:
Second, while rangers must excercise their authority to prevent abuse on the board, they cannot be authorized to arbitrarily decide in favor of one side or another in a dispute. They are not judges, or a jury. If they are forced to do something to "maintain peace" they should do so in an unbiased way. Even if it seems one person is central to a conflict, they cannot confine that one person and let others be free... ALL involved in a conflict must be treated the same. If one person feels that 10 others are ganging up on them, they cannot be singled out, but if they and the 10 others are all confined to the "bike racks" or whatever, then there can be no complaint.
I agree again - I really wish we would use the bikeracks more.
halplm wrote:
Third, personal attacks and offenses must be based on the perception of the one offended. If a person feels offended or attacked, THAT should be the concern of the rangers. Rangers should not decide one way or another if a statement was REALLY a personal attack or not. If someone feels they have been insulted or attacked, then 99% of the time they have, and it was intentional on the behalf of the attacker. If the attacker can hide behind some technicality or hide becuase they can convince the rangers they were ONLY attacking the opinion, not the person, then we've lost all concept of "mutual respect." At the same time, someone who is quick to claim they have been "personally attacked" should be asked to resolve the dispute without rule enforcement or ranger involvement. If someone claims they are attacked without any attempt to resolve the dispute in the spirit of mutual respect, then they are essentially attacking their percieved attacker with the accusation. The whole concept of B77 (at least as I had thought it) was that we could resolve disputes without rules, technicalities, and moderators (ie. super-rangers).
Yes! Keeps the rangers from getting to much power but allows them to use the power they do have when necessary. I agree that the person attacked should try to resolve without using a ranger, and if possible, without using the board. Perhaps first, through private PM so as not to disturb the board, say something to the person who "attacked" them. If the rangers are called upon to do something every time someone complained, then not only would their time be wasted, but we would also have a board basically controlled by the people who complained the most (even if they were a minority) plus I wouldn't want to think about how many disallusioned rangers we would have who would no longer be willing to do the job.


hal wrote:
5. I have been appalled by people's discussion of me. Some have made up their mind about me, obviously, and I have abandoned any hope that such minds could be changed. I have not abandoned Board77, though, because if the principles of the board as it was founded actually are important to the members here, if people here can treat other members with respect, no matter what the disagreement, then people's biases and past abhorant treatment of me doesn't matter... because I can always expect fair treatment and discussion. I have not found this to be the case for a long time. I have felt that any time I wish to present a strong disagreement with people, i am ganged up on, and some pretense is presented for me to be characterized as a troublemaker and instigator, thus nulifying any argument I can put forth for my own opinion. Who's going to listen to the percieved troublemaker? Who's going to listen to the sick, depressed, asshole who lashes out at everyone and everything just for attention? How can that person have a viable opinion about anything?

This board once stood for something, and the people that made it up could have made what it stood for happen... most of them have moved on, giving up on the concept. How many are still here that actually believe in that "something" for a messageboard? Seriously, who is left that feels that way?
I believe in posting, not having to much drama, in being treated as an adult and not having all powerful mods. We usually have that here, so I'm happy here. There's drama now and then, but it's not that often. People think it happens a lot simply because the board gets busy when there's drama and it seems like that's the only time the board exists for some people. However, there are long quiet periods when we may wish for more posting, but this is still a place where we can speak to friends.

Don't give up on the board Hal.... or anyone else for that matter.

Remember when you give up on the board for the sake of a few people, you're giving up a hell of a lot of people who had nothing to do with whatever went on. Leaving takes more from you than staying and dealing with all the shit that comes with family does. What was it Kahlil Gibran said in the Prophet? Something like, the more sorrow carves out of your soul, the more joy you can contain.

I think of this board like that - we have our dramas and our crazy moments, but those moments allow us to get to know both the best and the worst of the people around us. Allows us to both hate and love the people around us - even to love and hate one person at the same time.

We wouldn't have emotions that strong if we didn't care, and since caring is the basis of this board, I think we have a basis that we can continue to work on and grow from :hug: I believe in us. Everyone who still posts here believes in us. We're family :love:


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