Great news! We now have three moderators: @Rookie @Celia and @Peter-CA!
There are also two admins here at paddling.com.
@bnystrom regretfully declined
@CapeFear and @Marshall are both still in the running.
Let me know if you are interested.
Thanks to everyone for helping to keep spam off the boards.
I’m happy to help if you need it.
Good choices all.
Hi Brian,
I’m interested but I’ll PM you about the duties involved.
See you on the water,
Marshall
The Connection, Inc.
Hyde Park, NY
845-228-0595 main
845-242-4731 mobile
Main: www.the-river-connection.com
Store: www.the-river-connection.us
Facebook: fb.me/theriverconnection
I applaud this upgrade of the democratic process: a public poll (voter privacy is way overrated) and unlimited ballots per voter. Who came up with “one man, one vote” anyway? Whoever it was should be hanged for treason. Very inefficient.
The math: A total of 20 votes were cast, by 6 members. 7 votes (35%) were cast by a single member, and another 7 were cast by another member. Thus two members controlled 70% of the votes. Ingenious.
WaterBird, you should be aware that someone has noted this comment. It is not within the usual concerns of commercial interests etc. But it is also a bit out of left field.
@WaterBird - Not sure what your specific complaint is but those that chose to vote did, in fact vote. The idea behind the process was not to reinvent democracy but to only allow moderators that were nominated by other people.
Do you have an issue with the folks that volunteered to help moderate (primarily for spammers) or the moderation that has occured?
@Celia said:
WaterBird, you should be aware that someone has noted this comment. It is not within the usual concerns of commercial interests etc. But it is also a bit out of left field.
There is so much that could be discussed about your response around a campfire on a long night in June, under a full moon with the loons calling up and down the lake. How dynamics in a very small group are similar to whole nations. How leaders arise. How good it feels to have a bit of power over others. How power gets out of control when it’s not monitored. The role of dissent. The response to dissent. How dissenters should respond to threats of censorship. And infinite questions about the value of democracy and how to make it work.
If “someone has noted my comment,” I hope my comment invited that person to reflect on some of these questions.
Effort was spent in this thread reassuring people that these new moderators would not actually have the power to ban longtime members. It took less than 24 hours for the newly elected moderator to threaten to do exactly that because someone questioned the fairness of the election process, pointing out how odd it was that members were allowed to cast as many votes as they wished, so that in the end the decision was made mainly by two individuals. Not surprisingly, the moderator who was the first to start exercising her censorship power was elected by these two voters.
Okay, this is “only a paddling forum,” not the United Nations. But still it’s great to have this chance to observe a micro political process.
No one has banned you or said they would. I wanted to let you know that the comment had been noted by someone, who by the way was NOT any of the moderators. I am going to weigh out of this now, as before not doing any banning.
@Celia said:
No one has banned you or said they would. I wanted to let you know that the comment had been noted by someone, who by the way was NOT any of the moderators. I am going to weigh out of this now, as before not doing any banning.
What exactly was the purpose of telling me that my comment was noted and that it was “out of left field”?
@Waterbird, you are 100% correct. This is not the United Nations. It’s a privately owned website and the owners and their delegates are free to manage it as they wish. Equally, members of the community are free to join, or to leave if they don’t like the rules, as they wish.
But all this was simply a push to get better control of the amount of spam that had been steadily increasing over the last few months. I certainly don’t see anything underhanded in any of it, and I think the choices that were made were all good - and in fact fairly obvious - ones.
I am not a moderator, and I’m not the one who apparently noted your original comment, but I have to agree with the statement that your comments were “a bit out of left field”. So please, there is really no need for sarcasm as this has pretty much always been a friendly and helpful community and there are by far more important things to be concerned about.
@WaterBird the comment was flagged by someone else, not a moderator. It clearly hasn’t been deleted and you clearly haven’t been banned.
I’ll ask again. Do you have concerns about particular moderators or particular actions that have been taken?
If so, please reply.
If not, please tell me what action you are asking to be taken.
Whoteva.
I have not been here that long compared to many. The people I see as mods give me zero fear of them doing anything to anyone normal here.
@brian said:
@WaterBird the comment was flagged by someone else, not a moderator. It clearly hasn’t been deleted and you clearly haven’t been banned.I’ll ask again. Do you have concerns about particular moderators or particular actions that have been taken?
If so, please reply.
If not, please tell me what action you are asking to be taken.
My concerns are as follows. First, you should state clearly whether or not moderators have the authority to ban posters other than for posting spam. Don’t hint; state it clearly.
Second, how exactly do you define spam? Does it only mean advertising by companies that are not members? Is it spam if an individual member advertises his products or services?
Third, you should have specified how many times people could vote to prevent a small number of serial voters from taking over.
Fourth, you need a policy about moderators’ response to flagged posts. When a moderator says, “You should be aware that someone has noted this comment and it is out of left field” the translation is, “Someone didn’t like your post and I agree with them.” “Out in left field” indicates that the moderator thinks that comments should be kept in “center field,” meaning agreeing with the majority. I find these censorship warnings offensive. By what right does the moderator want to censor my comments about the democratic process? That’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?
Fifth, people who claim that this forum has always been “friendly and helpful” are mistaken. In fact there have been uncountable instances over the years of aggression toward all kinds of people—women, overweight people, people with mental health problems, people who expressed other opinions. Moderation WAS needed in those years, but for aggression, not for spam. Instead people were allowed to continue those behaviors for years. You only had to go to the political forum to see the ugly underbelly of pnet members. In the end it was realized that this was bad enough to be impacting advertising, so this is not my imagination. Claiming that this didn’t exist is insulting to members who were on the receiving end of it. So what guidelines are these new moderators supposed to follow in “moderating” behaviors and ejecting offenders, since there were no guidelines in the past? What exactly constitutes ejectable behavior?
Finally, I would love to hear that you plan to respond forcefully to sexual harassment. I’m not only referring to yuk yuk comments (tiresome and juvenile), but to more serious things like predators who seek sexual liaisons through the Getting Together & Going Paddling forum. You see, folks, this place has not always been “friendly and helpful” and this is why the choice of moderators and how they’re chosen is not trivial. Unless you think the entire forum or the entire website is trivial?
Keep in mind the moderators are volunteering their time to make this site better for the rest of us. I don’t care how the vote was conducted. It basically came down to nominating individuals we trust and hoping they would be willing to take on the job.
Only problem is this isn’t a publicly traded company so I think owners can do most anything they want our choice as users is to split if not really happy.
Sigh.
Waterbird, a post gets flagged when someone finds it to be inappropriate. I was trying to avoid saying that in the public forum but Brian did. So what the hey.
Your post came in weeks **after ** there had been an amount of input on moderators. Yes, it was out of left field because people had already weighed in and thought it was mostly sorted out. You are welcome to regard noting that it was a bit late to things as censorship.
You also apparently missed the initial discussion about why more moderators. As indicated by others above, Brian clearly stated in the original proposal to add moderators that the problem was a sudden increase of commercial SPAM.
You bring up other things that I can’t comment on a lot of it because there are boards I will only ever see if someone flags a post. Discussions on those boards often go in directions I am not interested in following. Frankly, continuing to slam me because I was trying to go light on saying you had been flagged is not going to get me involved in that. But perhaps others wish to engage with you.
Bye.