Happy Anniversary 285bound.com

Happy Anniversary! Congrats and a big thanks to all of those who help keep it humming along, and thanks to all the members and businesses who make this site the best! JMC and CG - no amount of gratitude can be expressed for your gumption to start this crazy endeavor, and for your continued support! Look how far your baby's come in one year!

I think this is a perfect opportunity to look back and reminisce over some of our favorite threads, especially for those who have joined since, to see how silly, positive, thoughtful (at times), and fun it's been!

Here are just some of mine (there are so many more, especially the poll ones!)!

Pick 3 of the Week-Football Contest
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A Neutron Walks Into A Bar
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(Only because I had to play it a gazillion times for my daughter! Thanks Nmysys!)
The Halloween Card
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No one could never seem to beat daisypusher - Last Post Wins
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We never got around to having the dinner, but it was the beginning of feeling like I'd found real friends through this site. Thank you!
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And then, the picnic, where many of us met for the first time!
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Of course, VL's shellacking! Err, the 285Bound Presidential Election
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The first of many "VL Last Post" threads - and he'd only been here for 7 days at this point!
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The first of many ATTENTION EVERYONE: "THAT'S IT!"'s lol
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The first of many "Clear the Air" and Vent/Discuss Improvements thread
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A fine example of a thread that was started tongue in cheek and unexpectedly turned out to have a great discussion (and birthed the idea of creating a "Woman's Forum" in my head - still working on putting that together!)
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A perfect example of how we conduct business here at 285Bound: dealing with problems openly, honestly, evenly, and fair-handedly, and soliciting feedback from our members, after things had gone downhill thanks to a certain troll and had to be rectified.
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and which contains what I consider my most important post ever (I think it took me 4 hours to write!), because it spells out that which I consider to be the best things about 285Bound, and states the obvious which isn't so obvious unless you think back on it: no one's ever been banned (even though the mods have been called everything under the sun, and their authority "questioned" like you wouldn't believe!), no threads have ever been locked (except one but by consensus as it was a contest), and all with minimal moderation. Yes, it may get heated, yes there may be language in places here, yes, people take breaks/leave and come back, but on the whole, we all get along pretty decently, and have even on occasion, started apology threads - you don't see that elsewhere! (not bad for basically moderating ourselves! Bravo!)! So I'm gonna re-post it for a reminder:

I'll chime in with my 2 cents, as I have a unique perspective on this issue. Six weeks ago, Jim PM'd me and said he had an idea, so please call him. This was when Robyn discovered that her kitty had kidney cancer so I thought he wanted to talk about a way to cheer her up, as she'd taken the news rather hard. To say that I was speechless when he busted out with "We need to free up our time to focus on developing Communities Bound and would like to sell you 285Bound" is an understatement (Nmysys would've jumped for joy - me, without words!). I've cherished my time merely as a poster, without responsibility, but I didn't want anyone else taking over and messing with a site that was created with a vision that I had already bought into, heart and soul. Frankly, I could care less about the money (and trust me, it ain't enough to even support a single person on, especially for the amount of time spent, I won't be making a profit for at least a year to come, and Jim and Robyn still haven't made back what they spent getting it up and running, but such is the nature of start-ups).

Although I've been helping them with moderating (more on that in a minute) for several months now, there is much more to running this site and I've spent the last 4 weeks training, getting to know the history of why they made decisions that they've made, and what I need to do to make this site succeed. There is soooo much more than just moderating to make this place run well and be the best resource for all of you, but that, at times, is the most visible portion to keeping things running smoothly so it needs to be addressed. Before I go any further, I want to remind everyone that our goal in moderating is to keep our members safe and make this an easy site to navigate/keep it organized. We DO NOT moderate for content! Unless it contains personal information, racial, ethnic, religious, or gender slurs, threats toward other members, pornography, or violates the Fair Use Doctrine, you can post whatever you want.

As Jim mentioned, a certain poster has been put into Q for repeated offenses including racist or sexist hate speech, and pornographic postings, among other things. At one point this person was offered the option of leaving voluntarily or being put into Q and they chose to leave...but then came back with another nic. And after a period, began escalating their offenses yet again. As Jim touched on briefly in a previous thread about 285Bound being a business <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href=" 285bound.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6118&hilit=business " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6118&hilit=business<!-- l --> one of their key tenets of this site was to treat members like adults - allow threads to continue even if "off-topic" or acrimonious, with minimal interference. Only one thread has ever been locked on this site, and it was one that involved placing wagers prior to an event so in order to ensure that no one went back and edited their own posts after the fact in order to win, and everyone agreed to locking it by a certain time. NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BANNED!

With those points re-iterated, I want to state something that should be obvious, but isn't until it's explained (like I learned when training) - by adhering to a policy of minimal (note: minimal, not heavy, not completely absent, but juuuusst right) moderation, with additional time spent PM'ing or calling posters to explain when there is an issue (which takes a LOT more time and effort, but is well worth it - we don't just suspend or ban to save ourselves time and trouble), that means that threads will be much more emotional/acrimonious/upsetting/"go downhill", and means that there will be a lag time in dealing with an issue so please bear with us. We leave it to members to be personally responsible for moderating themselves or to take other members to task themselves (and there have been a couple of threads about this topic, sorry, I didn't search to include them).

When there is an issue, and we PM or call, we often get accused of being "just like Pinecam" or "turning into PC." I take offense at this. Our PM's and phone calls are our attempts to work with you on an issue and resolve it, not tell you what to do, not to slap your wrist, not to call you names, not to make you feel stupid, not to suspend you, and not to ban you. What I want to explicitly say is that with heavy-handed moderation, you wouldn't see half of what is on this site! AND, without any moderation, this site would be over-run by spammers, porn sites, trolls, etc in no time flat. Yes, it's difficult to deal with at times (you guys can ignore other posters, or choose only certain forums to view; we can't - we have to read it all), yes, it gets ugly, and yes, people leave. BUT, I've also seen threads resolve themselves all on their own, I've seen posters agree to disagree and virtually shake hands and walk away, and I've seen more than one apology thread by someone who's regretted what they said in the heat of the moment and manned up later - all of which builds relationships. Relationships cannot be strengthened unless they are tested and while we aren't all here to make friends, we are all here to make our community, and our country, stronger - that cannot happen unless we talk to, and listen to, and even fight with, one another. And it won't always be roses and wine all the time, but we'll be better for it. I believe that with everything that I am, or I wouldn't have agreed to taking on this venture, because the best friends that I have are the ones that I've had the biggest fights with, but have worked through those rough times with them, and now I know I can count on them even more than before.

Now, in regards to the person now in Q. As I said earlier, they were given the choice months ago to leave and start their own site where they could say whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, or they could stay but be in Q. They chose to leave, but snuck back in under another nic. They have no desire for descent, respectable dialog, and they have no desire to follow the few, very relaxed guidelines for this site - guidelines that are there to keep our members safe and to keep the site from liability, because this is a business. They've been told, ad nauseum, that they can post almost anything they likes as long as it's in the appropriate forum. They chose, over and over again, to blatantly disregard multiple communication attempts to re-direct their posts to the appropriate place or to treat the other members of this site with any shred of common decency and respect, and I won't even get into the foulness that they've spewed in PMs. We gave them more than enough chances. And, I want to make this point very clear: they still aren't banned. Their posts will be reviewed before going up on the site to make sure that they don't violate the guidelines that still apply equally to everyone, even them. Content is not removed, unless it is personal information, egregious slurs (racial or sexist), pornography, or threats of violence against another member. They have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to perform this task on their own so henceforth it will be reviewed for them, and then posted. (Don't be surprised when they try to come back on under another nic).

I now leave it open to comments - did we wait too long, should we have left it the way it was, did we treat them unfairly, what would you do if you were in our shoes, etc. As Jim and Robyn stated in the beginning, and I re-affirmed when I bought this site, this is a member-driven forum: we value your input and try to run it as best we can that benefits you the most, letting you decide what to say and how to say it, not high-handedly telling you or changing it for you. If you have suggestions for how we should run it differently, more or less moderation, then let's discuss it, pros and cons, adult-to-adult.

Sorry this got long, I had a lot to say. Thanks for listening.
SC

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