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Author | Topic: Changes at EvC Forum | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
To those very unhappy with the recent changes I can only say that the Internet is a very big place and you should have no trouble finding venues more to your liking, but this website's purpose is not to play host to people who continually make their feelings known that they don't like it here or that they feel a significant injustice has been committed. Please vote with your feet.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
The strong sense of entitlement a number of people had and that some here still continue to exhibit is what was making change so difficult. I've never wavered from my goals for this site, and I've never been shy about expressing them, and I strongly disagree with anyone who believes EvC Forum was not getting substantially further and further away from these goals.
If there were mistakes it was in believing that the site could be run democratically, not in the sense of voting but in the sense of trying to allow everyone a voice. The more we gave people a voice through the many feedback threads and the many moderators the worse things became. We were turning into just another cacophonous and chaotic Internet discussion board. There are too many of those already. This is a site which I pay for, maintain, monitor daily, moderate, keep the server running and up-to-date, and write all the code. Over all the years since 2001 the only thing at this site I can point to that I didn't do myself, other than the text of the messages, is the logo that was contributed by TrueCreation. A number of people did answer the occasional technical question for me, usually about Internet server issues, and for that I am thankful. I'm also thankful to all the moderators we've had who gave so freely of themselves and their time. And I'm thankful to those knowledgeable members among us who have contributed so much to other's understanding, and to everyone who has made discussion here a positive experience. I would not try to diminish these many contributions in any way, but given my own contributions I don't think it should come as any surprise that I had been feeling much like the little red hen for quite some time. So those who would like to be permanently suspended, it really isn't necessary to harp incessantly about how terrible things are here and/or what horrible things I have done or am doing and/or in some other way vilify me. Please just post your request for permanent suspension here. But those who would like to discuss creation/evolution in a moderated environment that attempts to encourage constructive discussion, please carry on. If you become concerned about any members or posts please post a message to the Windsor castle thread, but keep in mind it isn't a discussion thread.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Everyone is raising good points, but I have just reached my limit, and I'm no longer emotionally able to continue carrying the majority of the load while getting abused for it.
Hopefully the history of this thread shows that I don't mind constructive discussion, but I will no longer endure me or my site getting trashed. Schraf's Message 166 (in effect stating that I prefer people Randman and Paula Rose over serious contributors) and Trixie's Message 167 (in effect stating that I don't care about quality discussion) are examples of just the kind of ad hominem I'm not going to tolerate anymore, because defense is an endless task, ignorement wasn't causing any diminishment, and addressment just lends them legitimacy. People can go to other sites if they wish to trash me or EvC Forum, but we won't be doing that here anymore.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
LucyTheApe writes: How about giving moderator or (Host) powers to the host of the thread or topic and let them worry about how the debate goes. The host would have the power to temporarily or permanently suspend members only on that thread. This is already on the to-do list, but it isn't yet scheduled. I'll again make my periodic but never-answered plea for coding help. Perl, HTML, Javascript and CSS familiarity is very helpful. Those already familiar with C and C++ would have no problem with Perl. Javascript is straightforward but arcane because of significant variations in supported features across currently available browsers.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Hi Arach,
I appreciate the expressions of concern, but I'm fine. The board is now structured very close to the way I had it when I first created it, and I'm very happy with that. I really don't know what more I can say. I know the disruption to the EvC Forum community has been extremely significant, but I've had several weeks to think about this and I still don't want the indefinitely suspended members back. I will probably never want them back. I can't count the number of times I've been persuaded to unsuspend someone and quickly regretted it, Randman and Faith being two well known examples. It was constantly argued that even though they behaved badly a great proportion of the time that because they caused very valuable rebuttals to be posted that they should be permitted to stay, in fact, that it would be better for the site if they stayed. My own view has always been that bad debate pushes out good debate, and while I've been talked out of acting on this on a number of occasions, that has always been my unwavering view. Those who can focus their attention on the topic of discussion while following the Forum Guidelines are welcome, and those who can't will be advised about it and eventually suspended, like Randman in his recent return where he gave up after just a couple weeks under my preferred approach to moderation. This is why I so strongly disagree that it is a reasonable interpretation of my recent actions that I don't care about the quality of debate or of the debaters, as you said when you referenced Schraf's reply. I'm the person who cares most, and those who make it more difficult for me to keep the quality of debate high certainly cannot be said to care about the quality of the debate. If they did they'd still be here. Instead what they cared more about was not having disruptions to their community of buddies. I also think that by and large the suspended members don't want to be back, because I haven't received a single request for reinstatement. Jar has a new board over at Dreamcatcher, the entire former EvC Forum community can be reunited there. I think we've gone back and forth on this enough. I appreciate the concern, but I'm not changing anything I've done.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
When I didn't get a reply to Message 29 I thought that meant you weren't interested. I wasn't going to email you anything, but just make a directory of code available to you on the server. I'll try to do that later today.
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Admin Director Posts: 13040 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
I keep thinking, "Maybe if I just try to explain things one more time this yet another incarnation of a moderation discussion will finally close," but once again history wins. Each explanation just begets more objections, the discussion never ends.
As I've said in this thread a number of times, we're not going to be doing that any more. That's why the moderation threads are closed. It's ironic that I allowed this to happen in the very thread where I announced that we're not going to be doing this anymore. If this site was special for you then it was the people that made it special, and you know where those people are. Anyone who needs help contacting anyone just send email to Admin and I'll see if I can facilitate.
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