Wednesday, Oct 22, 2008 at 20:56
I understand your frustration David. You have built a wonderful and unique web site. The information available is fantastic. You have a real quandary. The
forum brings a lot of regulars to the site, some of whom then contribute to the overall value via topics,
blogs and
places entries (to mention a few). They also add value by sharing experience and knowledge via the
forum.
Some of us (and I am one) also use the
forum as a form of entertainment; a replacement for TV (not hard to beat that these days) and to some extent, human contact.
The
forum and its contributors add real value to the site. It also detracts and in some cases turns away potential members or regular visitors (almost as important as members in some respects). I've sometimes thought 'why do you bother with the
forum', but of course without it, the site would lose a great deal of it's appeal and value.
I've been a member for a few years. When I'm at
home, I visit the site on most days. When away travelling, I visit on average a couple of times a week (often via mobile broadband). But in the past 12 months or so, I post much less. I've never been seriously abused, but I've read some stuff I regard as seriously objectionable and unacceptable. Very early on, I tried to intervene in some of the nonsense, but quickly learned that normally has little effect and can often just give the protagonists another excuse to post their vitriol. On a couple of occasions I've used feedback to alert you to particular threads. Now I generally just ignore it and don't return to that thread.
I have also developed a short list of posters to ignore. If I see a thread started by them, I rarely open it. Sure I might miss some good threads, but I think the process serves me
well. If I come across them elsewhere, I ignore them and rarely read their posts.
At its best, this
forum is a wonderful place. Great and generous people, with wonderful information and experience. At it's worst, it is a nasty place with battling egos and bleep contests that just turn me off.
My late dad used to say ' If you have nothing good to say, say something intelligent. If you can do neither, say nothing at all' Good advice. In this more modern age, something I have tried to drum into my kids (now grown), is 'Don't say anything in chat rooms, SMS etc that you would not be prepared and happy to say face to face with the other person'.
As you know, moderation is a fine judgement call. Allowing healthy and informative debate, but seeking to prevent personal abuse and offensive posts. Something I have seen work on other sites is a 'sin bin'. If someone breaks your 'code of conduct', you ban them from posting for a week. Second offence maybe a month. Third offence gone for good. How effective is that? Can they just re join using a different name?
Well you would know the answer to that better than me.
In an ideal world, enough of us would just ignore the offensive posters and they would end up talking to themselves (or each other), but their posts would still be part of the history and character of this site. In an case, this is not an ideal world.
A long winded post I know - and doesn't say much. But I got to have my say, and hopefully did not offend anyone in the process.
Keep up the good work David and Michelle. It is appreciated and worthwhile (though it might not always seem so).
Norm C
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