Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

[hellphish]

Originally Posted by KSagal

And of course, those of us that do not believe in conspiracy theories will have trouble understanding all the subtrefuge.

Some of us are like me, and not too bright. We may not be as good with the word smithing, but like it simple and direct. An occasional straight answer is nice to hear.

AMEN Brother!

[pam]

So far, no subtrifuge. Those who think there is are conspiracy theorists, or have their own ax to grind. If we've not made it clear enough, let us know, and we'll try to explain things in a different way.

Pam

[quade]

Originally Posted by pam

If we've not made it clear enough, let us know, and we'll try to explain things in a different way.

Pam,

There's yer problem right there . . . you're engaging when it isn't required.

Et al.,

The site owner and moderators are in control of the web site. All of us, including but not limited to; regional representatives, dealers, users, past presidents, Dean Kamen and general boneheads such as myself are here at their pleasure. If we don't like the rules of the site, fine, we can go somewhere else and start our own groups. Done. No further explanation is required by the owners or moderators.

[pam]

Thanks, Quade. I'll keep that in mind <G>. I do think it's nice, though, that newbies - who might not actually stroll through the FAQs, get some sort of idea of how things are done.

Pam

[i2Glide]

I'm new here and quade has stated the rules pretty well but missed a point which I see on the other BBs I play on. There the ops and mods are always very open about why they did something. That always makes everybody realize they did the right thing.

If the ops or mods are hiding things then you get questions like the one at the begining of this post because people wonder what happened.

[pam]

Well, and we have found that what this does is it opens up a whole nother can of worms where people feel they must comment on every little thing the moderator does.

We'll keep it the way it is, i2
Pam

[hellphish]

i2Glide: First off, let me welcome you to the forums! I'm sure you'll find a wealth of helpful information here, and lots of friendly people.

Second, you're right. Most boards online keep very public lists of who was banned and why, as well as an infraction log. At the very least, any edits made by a moderator are clearly labelled as such and are never simply swept under the carpet. How else would new members know how to act? In the past, Segwaychat's moderators have been bad about keeping their policy public and have been spotty in their application of that policy, but lately I have got the impression that some of them are at least trying to improve.

Again, welcome to the family!

EDIT: Pam, what is so bad about comments? People comment on our president, and do so openly, and I think nobody would disagree that the ability to comment makes our country one of the greatest.

[JohnG]

Having run online communities for the past decade, I'll give you a little insight of what's "wrong" with comments on actions. I wouldn't say, "wrong" so much as, "wearing people down to the point where it's no longer any fun and therefore difficult to find new mods to volunteer to help out." That's the problem -- the more every little decision or action is questioned and second-guessed and analyzed, the less people you find willing to step forward to volunteer their time for a thankless task.

So by limiting such discussion, it means the admins and mods can do their work without fear of having to spend most of their time in a community defending their actions.

The "check" in this system is that you have a team of mods, as we do here, that run things by one another and ensure nothing smacks of a personal vendetta or the like. And with the team we have here, there's no problem in any one of us calling another on something that didn't sit right with them.

Look, nothing anyone could come up with is "ideal." But we do the best we can with what limited resources we have (e.g., people's time and energy), and it usually works well.

And if there's one person I have no doubts about their abilities to see through some of the members' BS around here, it's pam!

John

[pam]

I have never openly said that, and I have never done it. I don't even know how. I am pretty sure I know who said it to you, since I was wildly accused of it this morning, but whoever said it was being less than honest. And that person is trying to manipulate the forums (and you) right now...
Pam

[BillPaxton]

I have vbulletin, not the latest version but nearly current that we use on an internal intranet - we've only had it around three months but I've learned it pretty well. I am fairly sure no one can read a PM except for the poster and the recipient(s). I *may* be wrong about this, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that a couple of months ago I sold a part to someone that forgot to pay me and did not frequently check email or SC - I was fairly certain I had been ripped off and I had managed to delete the name and address of the person I shipped to and could not remember the username. I asked all of the mods separately to see if they could trace the PMs and each gave the same reply independently - we can't see PMs and if we can, we don't know how. They offered other means to help me find the lost name and address so I have no doubt this advice from each was in earnest. Incidentally, the user in question remembered a week or so later and not only paid but felt so badly about it that they purchased a nice gift card for me that made the transaction less than beneficial! (just goes to show, you can be SO convinced you are right about something and be SO far from the truth that its embarrassing when you see how wrong you were)