do you think the courthouse is out of control

CinnamonGirl wrote: The reason people left the Study in favor of this site is because you cannot have a discussion with a back seat driver telling you what to say. Organize the forum for everyone tell them why you are moving things etc. And it works pretty well.

And that's why posts are moved now, for organization. We've said from the beginning that the Courthouse was for good discussion and the Ring for insults and a place to duke it out. All we've done is actually enforce that request like we haven't been before, and we're doing it based on many members' complaints that it hasn't been done that way as they expected.

In the beginning we were BIG on responding to people. PC wouldn't even tell you what was going on with your post. I know someone that kept posting thinking his post wasn't showing up then got banned for posting a post too many times. Tricking your users is cruel. And arrogance will kill it every time.

And we do respond, inform them, invite them to ask questions back, and provide feedback. We are never into tricking members and have never arrogantly said that we are better than members.

In fact, in my view, if you are really good at moderation you make it look easy. Your users don't even notice and feel there is not moderation and wonder why it is so great, but it is there. You just enjoy the board and controversy is about your area, politics and you rarely even talk about moderation unless it is a suggestion here and there in the letters to the editor section.

That's the goal, but it doesn't always happen that way when people are unhappy with a board.

I got yelled at by an employee in a store this week. Never happened to me before she told me by asking her a question I was ruining her day she had better things to do. I let the manager know (I don't know if she will be fired) but seriously if you treat people that way you probably won't get customers.

So are you implying that we have treated members here this rudely?

CinnamonGirl wrote: There is a saying in sales. "You can't sell anyone if you don't love everyone" My philosophy? EVERYONE has a place. Trolls can even be neutralized with some tools that PC does not have.

So, let's put that to moderation of a COMMUNITY forum. Themed forums might be different but maybe not.

You can't moderate anybody if you don't love everybody. You start picking and choosing what can be seen, what or how things can be said or what people can and cannot post than it is not a public service and does not reflect their ideas it reflects yours. This skewing is extremely important.

Everyone does have a place, everyone's viewpoint is appreciated and that has been stressed by me over and over and over again. No one has been banned, we have no agendas against any individual posters, we don't treat anyone unfairly or unequally. Threads and posts have always been moved for organization since this site began and that's the only reason they are being moved now, and it's being done based on several months of both public and private requests by members about how this forum has been managed - you also don't grow if you don't listen to your customers and adapt and change as needed. We are not "picking and choosing" what can and can't be said, we aren't deleting anything anyone has posted, it's just moved. We've asked people to self-moderate, they do and they don't, and we move that which isn't to where it's appropriate based on that, nothing more, nothing less.

CinnamonGirl wrote: One of our very first posts on 285bound.com
mymountaintown.com/forum/6-the-courthouse/295-moderation#299

How well do you trust a site that does not value your posts and deletes them whenever they want. All our posts are still here from years ago. User data is sacred to me. I feel that trust in us was important.

Again, are you implying that this site no longer values members posts and just deletes them? Because you are wrong.

From that original post:
[quoteem285 Bound]The vision and mission of this site is to bring the community together and have a special place to do that. We also hope to build a model for other communities to do that as well. We moderate only to protect our members and the site from harm. So most of that moderation will be for spam and people looking to disrupt the site. The forums need regular maintenance and we view moderation more as keeping the site running. Any rules will be for that purpose.

We have done extensive research how how to do this and we will tweak things as time goes along. Basically, members need to be responsible for their own posts we don't take responsibility for what people say. We welcome your input and it is appreciated.[/quoteem] And after receiving member input, and seeing that there has been some harm and disruption, it was decided to actually enforce what had been asked for voluntarily, but not followed, all along. It's our job to make this a fun and enjoyable place for members to participate, and to keep it organized so that they can find what they are looking for because posts are where they belong. We are not taking responsibility for what people say, nor are we deleting anything, we are just moving them to where they belong. We hadn't been doing that because we had been leaving posts that people respond to, including insults, thinking that if they responded they were okay with them being there. This has led to an atmosphere of implied consent to continue with personal attacks in the Courthouse which has caused some members to leave, and has not encouraged all that many new posters to join in. We have always asked for personal attacks and insults to be done in the Ring, and after leaving it to members and nothing much changing, and finding out that it is indeed harming the site some, we are just taking the steps to do this ourselves now. It does not mean that we do not love everyone being here or do not value anyone's input or viewpoints.

Yes, but members here aren't complaining about PC, they are complaining about 285Bound. If CG wants to compare 285Bound's policies to PC's there a thread in the Ring for that. If she's posting here, then to me, she's talking about 285B and you're damn right I'm going to get defensive. She and I have huge disagreements on how business should be conducted and I'm going to leave it at that.