Forum Moderators: open
Yes, I've been guilty of name calling myself
Pot calling the kettle black...
:)
I see [webmasterworld.com] some of this too, but it's overwhelmingly from new members who are accustomed to more rough and tumble boards, are immature, or simply don't fit the demographics of this community.
On the other hand there are some longtime members who are quick tempered but are even quicker to apologize if it's a case of misinterprested words.
As anyone who has ever spent any amount of time writing can attest, words are at best several degrees short of adequate and can easily lead to misunderstandings.
Words wielded by those unskilled in the their use leads to poor results.
> perhaps most everyone is so upset over this recent update that tempers are flaring.
I think that pretty much sums it up. The recent Google behaviour is "disorienting" to novice and expert alike. Some react with a "wait and see" attitude, and some let their frustration (and fear) show.
If you observe really bad behaviour in a forum, you might want to stickymail an active moderator - I believe most will appreciate the heads-up.
Jim
I think it really comes down to leading by example.. all of us, that is.. and making it clear in the nicest possible way what standards are expected to those who aren't quite up with the play yet.
A while ago there was a situation where a new poster was a bit derisive of a response and the respondent understandably took offense... it was on its way into a bit of a barney, but pointing out to the instigator that he was out of bounds settled it pretty much straight away. Apologies all round and we got on with the debate.
Inevitably people will arrive who just plain don't want to fit in, or actively want to stir up a bit of trouble... but it's awfully hard to stay interested in fighting with yourself.
IMHO there's a place to draw the line between what's confrontive and outright rude. Also, some people have a natural way of expressing themselves that can sometimes be taken the wrong way by others. And everyone has a different tolerance level.
It's probably best for people to stay on the conservative side than be over-zealous in moderating. It isn't impossible for a remark that's harmless in intention to give the wrong impression. Probably the best thing is to overlook, go on and notify someone to check it out - two or more opinions can go a long way in avoiding misunderstandings.
IMO: What I find are people interpreting things wrong and instead of asking a question to clarify what was said, they stick a barb in first for no apparent reason. None of us are better than anybody else. We all make mistakes. We all cannot be experts in every field and we all need to remember that. Sometimes I feel it is the better part of valor to not put in a message with my opinions or ideas, which is truly a shame.
however,
all to often people will ridicule and/or just not read the posts properly and the thread falls into a trivial mindless series of clever dick remarks. No effort is made to run with the idea and accept there are flaws, in the hope of provoking original thought.
The sad thing is that recently it is the senior members who are guilty of this. Many of the good debates about the recent update were ruined by senior members or mods stepping in just because they didn't want to discuss a theory anymore, the reality was that they just didn't understand it. Some great information and observation was being made by new members, who will now probably be hesitant to post. I know it can be difficult to find information in a long winded thread but tough... no pain no gain. If you don't want to put the effort into reading the whole thread, even if it is populated by some silly comments, then it should be your loss. But it really annoys me when a senior member or mod just says in a pompous way "that's enough". If they have had enough, fine, don't bother reading the thread, plenty of others were still learning some good stuff.
Name calling etc should be edited, but I don't think a thread should so quickly be closed nor should anyone have the arrogance to say there is no more useful debate when there are still a number of contributors staying on theme.
>The sad thing is that recently it is the senior members who are guilty of this.
There are at least two problems imho that make it necessary to sometimes say "it's enough":
1) as i said in one of my recent posts, it'd be a good practice to flag guesses / rumours / specultions as guesses / rumours / specultions and not as facts. Many, many, many wild guesses are not clearly flagged as such.
2) newbies (and even seniors sometimes ;) get confused about what's fact and what's guessing. With some - not flagged - guesses you can hurt more webmasters than google would with messed indizes. WebmasterWorld is a authority - many people / members / lurkers take statements quite seriously and start to make changes on their sites based on wild guesses. Ouch!
3) many guesses are counterproductive. Yah, don't moan ... many are worth to discuss. However, discussing things one really can't know, is somehow useless, imho.
4) mäny peeple don't have the language skills to understand everything correct. So why make it even harder for them to differentiate what's a fact and what's a guess? Believe it or not - if your not a native english, it's sometimes really hard to differentiate facts / guesses...
5) many speculative discussions return again and again and again and again. Repetition is in many cases counterproductive. I'd vote for giving duplicate posts penalties to members who repeat themselfs more than n times in n different threads... ;)
Unfortunately someone recently said to me (after a little rant i posted) that i should respect the freedom of opinion and the fact that people should be allowed to discuss their thoughts. Absolutely right - but with saying "enough is enough" i don't mean: "shut up in general".
However, that's my opinion ... just the opinion of a newbie senior member. ;)
I think this thread has run its course. ;)
To respond to the original post: I agree. It is comforting to hear the invitations to sticky a moderator, and the moderators do a great job, but it would be nice if the world was a nicer place ;) . People are discouraged from contributing if the tone of previous poster is a bit off. When I saw martinibuster's 'weekenders' thread a few weeks ago I felt it was too negative. But after this weekend, I understand where he was coming from better. Some of what I have seen is not a case of mis-communication through the written medium; but rather a deliberate ego thing.
Shawn
PS I'm sure I have also been guilty of poor communications like the rest. Hopefully unwittingly, and hopefully I have made the required amends. ;)
Recorded. I agree, diplomacy is a good way to deal with such things.
>I'm sure I have also been guilty of poor communications like
>the rest. Hopefully unwittingly, and hopefully I have made the
>required amends.
Shut up you shawn you! LOL :)
It is! You should have flagged it as such! LOL :)
