This was the second time I have felt it necessary to provide a "time Out"
for the Off Topic forum. The first time, we renamed it from "get it off your chest" to Off Topic. The thinking was that the old title was giving implicit permission to flame things and people and that anything goes. Well, this is not WoodNet, so that was never the intention and it will never be.
What caused me to close the forum temporarily? Well, one of those threads arose that happens every once in a while started and seemed to get out of hand. The moderators, rightly, jumped on it and tried to edit some posts and deleted others and finally the thread was closed. I would have thought that, that would have been the end it.
But behind the scenes, many people and staff members were still very upset and even angry. Their argument was the moderation was not even handed. That only one side of the argument was being moderated.
While we attempted to understand the root causes for that criticism, I closed the forum. That investigation is now complete has far as we are able to. So I will shortly re-open the forum.
But before I do that I would like to make a few points. What we found was that the thread in question had posts in it that I would characterize into 3 general categories.
Insensitive wording
Argumentative
Inflammatory.
We, the staff, are only human beings. We are doing the best we can, to maintain the excellent atmosphere that we normally enjoy. But we do not and can not always see how something will be taken by other members. In the case of this incident. The argumentative and inflammatory statement drew our first attention and were dealt with swiftly. The insensitive wording, which was probably the root cause of the thread going south, was overlooked because the other two categories drew our immediate attention AND the posts that had insensitive wording were just not recognized as such. Mea Culpea.
The staff now understands better that some things that were said without any intended malice, were indeed offensive to many of our members and staff. We all will try to better.
However, I will not be updating our written policy because of this. I think if we all, members and will use reasonable common sense, situations like this can be minimized.
Now some things that should be kept in mind.
The word "SUCKS'. As a carryover from WoodNet, we use it all the time as a perverted form of congratulations
But I don't think we should ban the use of the word, I think we should remember that in most contexts, the word will be construed as very negative. Please watch your use of this word.
Most of us live in NC. For me this is now my home and I love it, even though I came here from Philadelphia via a 25 year stint in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley/San Jose. Please recognize that Native NC'ers are proud of their state, as they should be, and can find it offensive, when some of us transplants make insensitive remarks.
"Go back where you come from" types of statements are extremely inflammatory, and will not be tolerated, whatever you think is a justifiable provocation.
Furthering the argument or piling on. - When someone is upset by a post, it
DOES NOT give them the right to lash back in kind. They become just as guilty as the person who said the offending item. They have 2 options, either or both would be alright in book. Report the thread/posts to a moderator and/or send a PM to the person and let them know your feelings. But I suggest that you word your PM politely or you will just cause another problem instead of calming it down.
"I just tell like I see it" - This is a code phrase for, "the **** with civility". I and the rest of the staff will not accept that as an excuse. In fact, it only emphasis ones lack of desire to accept and abide by the spirit of the policies and intents of this site.
Oh just to be clear, staff members, DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to do any of the above and if they do they are more guilty than whoever started it. If we do those things, we lose our credibility and thus our authority.
In closing I would like to add the following ideas.
Originally Posted by Tom Dunn Post Like You're Writing To Your Mother!
Of course, that assumes that you are on good terms with your Mother
In my case, Post Like You're Writing To Your Father, he would have knocked me on my ***, if he didn't like my tone
.gif "Drogar Laugh(DBG)")
And my way of thinking of it, is post as if you were speaking in front of and auditorium filled with 1500 people.
And remember,
"A smiley a post 
keeps the moderator away
"
03-19-2008, 01:07 PM
) and fairly active. I enjoy the knowledge I gain here, the friends I've made, the opportunity to feed my disease (WGD), and the occasional debate. While I'm not aware of being in the center of this controversy, I'm sure I have been before (right, Steve? 
). Personally, I never mean direct harm and I doubt many (any?) of us do. Sometimes we type things we don't mean ... a common problem with written form in the safety of being behind the monitor 
Other times the things we type are just taken wrong ... 
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