Lani
09-30-2003, 04:53 PM
Some of you have noted a recent change in "mood" around here and are commenting on it in other threads. People seem grumpier, have shorter "fuses," and are more likely to be argumentative and confrontational than normal.
Part of this is cyclical, and happens at predictable times during the year. We see the same thing in June when school lets out. The seasonal stresses of school starting and ending, people going back to their normal routine, and the approach of the holiday season seem to bring this on.
Part of this is just the nature of boards—as a lot of new members come on board, and the dynamic changes. The there's a "getting to know you" phase, when people settle into their long-term roles in the community. We all know how different people will react in completely different ways when trying to integrate themselves into a new social situation; some of these are more irritating than others.
MousePlanet has received a lot of media attention and new visitors in the past three months, and our MousePad registrations have jumped. This means there are lots of new members learning their way around the board.
A sudden influx of new members can be hard on a community. The new members fumble around and make mistakes, while the older members shake their heads at them.
In six months, when the members have become acclimated and a new crop comes around, they will say, "When I was a newbie, I never acted like that!" Believe us, some of you did.
So, what we're experiencing is normal, it's expected, and it will pass.
While we're on the subject, the MousePad moderators would like to take a moment to address other recent concerns:
1) The moderators "have it out" for me.
Probably not. The 11 MousePad moderators spend more time and effort moderating this site than most members could even imagine. And when a particular poster causes an enormous drain on our moderating resources—spurring an increase of reported posts, skirting the line every time they post, or generally creating a disturbance in the community—we are going to pay more attention to that person.
Yes, we pay closer attention to some members than we do others. We don't do it to "get" people or to push an agenda; we do it because we generally spend our moderating energy where it's most required. And sometimes that means keeping a borderline member on close watch until they learn the ropes, or prove that they never will.
But we don't have a little list of members we're just itching to suspend at the first chance we get. And no, we're not out to get you.
2) The moderators are too harsh on new people.
In reality, we don't try to be—but there have been some less-than-kind comments made to new members lately, and they were inappropriate. For that, we apologize.
One of the things we disabled soon after starting MousePad was the individual post count. We started to see a trend where new members were being brushed aside by older members on the sole basis of their post count. "Well, you've only posted here seven times and I've posted 1,000 times, so your opinion is worth less than mine."
We made this decision specifically to avoid the type of schisms we've seen between new members and old members on other boards. We want Mousepad to be a place where new members can feel welcome.
We'd all do well to keep in mind what the very word "newbie" can be taken to imply—like high school seniors who only refer to 9th graders as "hey, freshman"—a way of establishing a pecking order, immediately creating a hierarchy. We know that most of you don't mean it that way, but it isn't unreasonable if some take it that way.
One of the posters made a great suggestion, and we'd like to ask the members to adopt this policy. If someone asks a question that has already been answered 200 times before, or could easily be answered with a few seconds of searching, don't nail them for it.
If you are in a helpful mood, point them to the previous discussion, or show them where to find the information. If you're not in a mood to be helpful—and we all have those days—just let it go. But comments like "look it up yourself" and "don't you know how to use a search button?" are rude, and really turn people away.
We're all guilty of it, and we're not pointing fingers—but we are asking for your help.
3) Long-term posters are "immune" from moderation.
No, they aren't. Long-time posters, posters married to moderators, even the moderators themselves get moderated. Just because you don't see it happening does not mean it doesn't happen.
Long-term posters might have a little more leeway than a new member. That's only normal; we look at severity and frequency.
Where a new member might get a severe warning for breaking three major rules in a week, an older member won't get the same level of warning when they break their third rule in two years. But when a long-term member breaks those same three rules in a month, they will be warned—even more strongly, because they should know better by now.
4) If we complain or are mean enough to a certain poster, the moderators will suspend them.
Sorry folks, but that's not the way it works. We discipline people for violating the community policies. We don't moderate people just for being annoying. And we don't take action because the majority wants us to. Trust us; if we banned people based on complaints, the membership would look a lot different than it does now.
There is a perception on this board that a small inner clique dictates MousePad policy. And there is—we call them the moderators. Anyone who isn't a moderator, no matter how long that person has been here, has no say in these policies or their enforcement.
We also want to address the issue of "baiting." There have been some comments made, both on and off the board, that certain long-term members have intentionally baited other members, in order to get them to "cross the line" and thus be moderated.
We consider baiting to be the equivalent of trolling, and will deal with it as such.
5) The moderators are unfair—they nail some people for minor infractions, and let other people get away with murder.
Look, we're only human. When all of our moderating resources are spent fighting one fire, we may not see other hot spots around us. That's where you come in.
Every post has a "report this post" button. If someone is violating a community policy, please report it. It is so frustrating for the moderators to hear, "So-and-so did this again - they've been doing it for three months, when are you going to say something?" when nobody has ever reported it to us.
6) Hee hee — the elephant's gone. We won!
It is no secret that a member has recently been suspended. And there has been a great deal of gloating about this, and frankly we find it to be in really poor taste.
When we resort to a suspension, depending on the violations, the user is generally eventually allowed a second chance. Some never return, others do and get themselves banned permanently. Others return and settle down into the community.
Most of these occurrences are unknown to you because we do not discuss the reasons for suspensions and banning, we do not share the terms, and generally we don't announce them, either.
Anyone picking on suspended posters because of their status, or harassing them once they return, will bring down the wrath of the moderators upon themselves.
In other words, knock it off.
7) The moderators close threads too fast or they edit too many posts.
Our general rule is that a thread is closed when: It has degenerated into a fight between members, despite repeated moderator intervention
It is taking up way too much of our moderating resources
The subject of the thread itself is a violation of our Community Policies (i.e., a commercial post or spam)
It reaches 1000 replies.
Depending on reason, at the request of the original poster.
Various unforeseen situations we can't think of right now.Some people complain that we close too many threads, or that we close them too fast. And, you may be right. A and B above are very subjective, and depend somewhat on the overall mood of the moderators that given day. If there's only one major flame war going on at a time, we might let it burn itself out. When there are 11, we might shut them all down.
However, one thing we do not do is edit a post for content unless it violates a community policy. We may trim excessive quotes, but we never edit your added comments.
The MousePad moderators pride ourselves on not editing posts. Your posting history—good or bad—is there for the whole world to see. You build your own reputation, and you live with it.
Look folks, the reality of message board life is that people come, people go, people are annoying, and people make mistakes. As in real life, you make friends with the ones you like, you co-exist with the ones you don't mind, and you avoid the ones you just can't stand. We have a great "Ignore" feature on MousePad, and we advise people to use it rather than lose their cool.
This message board really is big enough for everyone. We would like everyone to please look at their own posts over the past month, re-read the community policies, and try really hard to maintain a polite, civil front.
We don't mind a good debate. We don't shy away from controversial topics. But we do ask that everyone—and that includes the moderators—conduct themselves in a civil manner.
Thank you,
The MousePad moderators
Part of this is cyclical, and happens at predictable times during the year. We see the same thing in June when school lets out. The seasonal stresses of school starting and ending, people going back to their normal routine, and the approach of the holiday season seem to bring this on.
Part of this is just the nature of boards—as a lot of new members come on board, and the dynamic changes. The there's a "getting to know you" phase, when people settle into their long-term roles in the community. We all know how different people will react in completely different ways when trying to integrate themselves into a new social situation; some of these are more irritating than others.
MousePlanet has received a lot of media attention and new visitors in the past three months, and our MousePad registrations have jumped. This means there are lots of new members learning their way around the board.
A sudden influx of new members can be hard on a community. The new members fumble around and make mistakes, while the older members shake their heads at them.
In six months, when the members have become acclimated and a new crop comes around, they will say, "When I was a newbie, I never acted like that!" Believe us, some of you did.
So, what we're experiencing is normal, it's expected, and it will pass.
While we're on the subject, the MousePad moderators would like to take a moment to address other recent concerns:
1) The moderators "have it out" for me.
Probably not. The 11 MousePad moderators spend more time and effort moderating this site than most members could even imagine. And when a particular poster causes an enormous drain on our moderating resources—spurring an increase of reported posts, skirting the line every time they post, or generally creating a disturbance in the community—we are going to pay more attention to that person.
Yes, we pay closer attention to some members than we do others. We don't do it to "get" people or to push an agenda; we do it because we generally spend our moderating energy where it's most required. And sometimes that means keeping a borderline member on close watch until they learn the ropes, or prove that they never will.
But we don't have a little list of members we're just itching to suspend at the first chance we get. And no, we're not out to get you.
2) The moderators are too harsh on new people.
In reality, we don't try to be—but there have been some less-than-kind comments made to new members lately, and they were inappropriate. For that, we apologize.
One of the things we disabled soon after starting MousePad was the individual post count. We started to see a trend where new members were being brushed aside by older members on the sole basis of their post count. "Well, you've only posted here seven times and I've posted 1,000 times, so your opinion is worth less than mine."
We made this decision specifically to avoid the type of schisms we've seen between new members and old members on other boards. We want Mousepad to be a place where new members can feel welcome.
We'd all do well to keep in mind what the very word "newbie" can be taken to imply—like high school seniors who only refer to 9th graders as "hey, freshman"—a way of establishing a pecking order, immediately creating a hierarchy. We know that most of you don't mean it that way, but it isn't unreasonable if some take it that way.
One of the posters made a great suggestion, and we'd like to ask the members to adopt this policy. If someone asks a question that has already been answered 200 times before, or could easily be answered with a few seconds of searching, don't nail them for it.
If you are in a helpful mood, point them to the previous discussion, or show them where to find the information. If you're not in a mood to be helpful—and we all have those days—just let it go. But comments like "look it up yourself" and "don't you know how to use a search button?" are rude, and really turn people away.
We're all guilty of it, and we're not pointing fingers—but we are asking for your help.
3) Long-term posters are "immune" from moderation.
No, they aren't. Long-time posters, posters married to moderators, even the moderators themselves get moderated. Just because you don't see it happening does not mean it doesn't happen.
Long-term posters might have a little more leeway than a new member. That's only normal; we look at severity and frequency.
Where a new member might get a severe warning for breaking three major rules in a week, an older member won't get the same level of warning when they break their third rule in two years. But when a long-term member breaks those same three rules in a month, they will be warned—even more strongly, because they should know better by now.
4) If we complain or are mean enough to a certain poster, the moderators will suspend them.
Sorry folks, but that's not the way it works. We discipline people for violating the community policies. We don't moderate people just for being annoying. And we don't take action because the majority wants us to. Trust us; if we banned people based on complaints, the membership would look a lot different than it does now.
There is a perception on this board that a small inner clique dictates MousePad policy. And there is—we call them the moderators. Anyone who isn't a moderator, no matter how long that person has been here, has no say in these policies or their enforcement.
We also want to address the issue of "baiting." There have been some comments made, both on and off the board, that certain long-term members have intentionally baited other members, in order to get them to "cross the line" and thus be moderated.
We consider baiting to be the equivalent of trolling, and will deal with it as such.
5) The moderators are unfair—they nail some people for minor infractions, and let other people get away with murder.
Look, we're only human. When all of our moderating resources are spent fighting one fire, we may not see other hot spots around us. That's where you come in.
Every post has a "report this post" button. If someone is violating a community policy, please report it. It is so frustrating for the moderators to hear, "So-and-so did this again - they've been doing it for three months, when are you going to say something?" when nobody has ever reported it to us.
6) Hee hee — the elephant's gone. We won!
It is no secret that a member has recently been suspended. And there has been a great deal of gloating about this, and frankly we find it to be in really poor taste.
When we resort to a suspension, depending on the violations, the user is generally eventually allowed a second chance. Some never return, others do and get themselves banned permanently. Others return and settle down into the community.
Most of these occurrences are unknown to you because we do not discuss the reasons for suspensions and banning, we do not share the terms, and generally we don't announce them, either.
Anyone picking on suspended posters because of their status, or harassing them once they return, will bring down the wrath of the moderators upon themselves.
In other words, knock it off.
7) The moderators close threads too fast or they edit too many posts.
Our general rule is that a thread is closed when: It has degenerated into a fight between members, despite repeated moderator intervention
It is taking up way too much of our moderating resources
The subject of the thread itself is a violation of our Community Policies (i.e., a commercial post or spam)
It reaches 1000 replies.
Depending on reason, at the request of the original poster.
Various unforeseen situations we can't think of right now.Some people complain that we close too many threads, or that we close them too fast. And, you may be right. A and B above are very subjective, and depend somewhat on the overall mood of the moderators that given day. If there's only one major flame war going on at a time, we might let it burn itself out. When there are 11, we might shut them all down.
However, one thing we do not do is edit a post for content unless it violates a community policy. We may trim excessive quotes, but we never edit your added comments.
The MousePad moderators pride ourselves on not editing posts. Your posting history—good or bad—is there for the whole world to see. You build your own reputation, and you live with it.
Look folks, the reality of message board life is that people come, people go, people are annoying, and people make mistakes. As in real life, you make friends with the ones you like, you co-exist with the ones you don't mind, and you avoid the ones you just can't stand. We have a great "Ignore" feature on MousePad, and we advise people to use it rather than lose their cool.
This message board really is big enough for everyone. We would like everyone to please look at their own posts over the past month, re-read the community policies, and try really hard to maintain a polite, civil front.
We don't mind a good debate. We don't shy away from controversial topics. But we do ask that everyone—and that includes the moderators—conduct themselves in a civil manner.
Thank you,
The MousePad moderators