07-17-2017, 02:47 PM
Prologue: In the past 8 months I've thought a lot about this site and its members. ALL of its members. I've thought a lot about my decisions, my actions, my mistakes and my responses. I have my confidence, but I also have my regrets, pride, and my embarrassment. Despite anything that has happened in the past I am trying real hard to ensure that my own hands are not clutching stones.
So the question was, do we put everyone into a certain member group and give them access even if they didn't want it? Believe it or not there are a lot of folks that don't want to see our views on politics. Instead, they just want to come to a Vikings fan site to talk about the Vikings.
We tried to cover as many people as we could think of to set permissions initially. If I missed you and you wanted the ability to post in these forums I apologize. I simply can't remember everyone that posted what. If you are interested in adding to these conversations just let us know and I will be happy to set your permissions for you. If you personally can think of folks that I might have missed that you would like to have these types of conversations with PLEASE let me know so I can make sure that they are set to go when they visit. I'd actually rather NOT have to react to a PM request if I could help it.
I made it so that everyone can READ the discussions by default so at the very least in the meantime that it takes to set permissions for someone wanting to post they can at the very least follow the discussions. But as Jimmy alluded to there are people that just cannot handle this forum and will want to wreck it for YOU. That often is their goal. It isn't about removing someone because they got heated and let fly with a "Hey fuck you pal"... Ok we should be trying to avoid those types of responses, but everyone goes off the rails now and again. And we as a group need to help to self correct that type of behavior. When presented with that type of comment are people able to respond with "Hey, I'd rather not get into that I'm just trying to present a different viewpoint"? Or does it just end in matching Fuck You's back and forth? Because there are people that LOVE to see that type of interaction break out. And at some point a mod needs to remove those people from the conversation so that actual dialogue can take place. They are called trolls and while we have been lucky to not be overrun with them, we have had our share of them in the past. Both intentional trolls and unintentional ones.
By and large, even though I don't participate in these discussions anymore, the back and forth is fairly civil. But for me I don't see the fairness in removing a member from the entirety of the site just because they got heated in a political discussion. To me that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by way of over moderating. (yes I realize the irony of me making that statement) This was something that we were unable to do on the "Old Board". The only option was to ban them from the site entirely which put a lot of pressure on mods because often they were being tasked with having to ban someone that they otherwise appreciated as posters. Or people that they generally agreed with on controversial topics. My own personal mea culpa moment is that I wasn't able to see the obvious solution which was to have a separate mod group for those conversations. It is as obvious as being hit on the head with a frying pan now. Especially since I frequent sites that have this exact same model. I was stuck on how to be fair to ALL posters and the mods that I missed the concept that you could have a different group do that job. Duh.
My own frustration led me to make a decision that wasn't well received and I've been trying to find a solution to that for 6 months.
Speaking of the old board ... I didn't want your information being stolen. It was no longer supported, and there was MAJOR security holes that were no longer being patched. As software gets older and computing advances holes in software open up. We all know that. And that's what was happening. The software was no longer being supported to guard against that. We had to make a change. And there was nothing out there that could provide the same features out of the box. In reality it took us 4 months to come up a new software solution that gives us the same functionality as before and much more. I think it is so far working out great, but there was a hiccup in getting people set up appropriately.
After saying all of that.... there are a number of message boards out there that serve people's needs. And for the most part they are all great. With good communities. I don't begrudge any of them. I don't have any ill thoughts about any of them personally. I'd wish that they could find a way to interact with our community and spend some time with us as they browse their internet haunts. And I promise that I will try to find ways to make our site more inviting to them.
I have administered this site for what... 5+ years now? I've made some mistakes along the way. I will make mistakes again. I'd rather not see the community pay a price for my mistakes. I am willing to listen.
So the question was, do we put everyone into a certain member group and give them access even if they didn't want it? Believe it or not there are a lot of folks that don't want to see our views on politics. Instead, they just want to come to a Vikings fan site to talk about the Vikings.
We tried to cover as many people as we could think of to set permissions initially. If I missed you and you wanted the ability to post in these forums I apologize. I simply can't remember everyone that posted what. If you are interested in adding to these conversations just let us know and I will be happy to set your permissions for you. If you personally can think of folks that I might have missed that you would like to have these types of conversations with PLEASE let me know so I can make sure that they are set to go when they visit. I'd actually rather NOT have to react to a PM request if I could help it.
I made it so that everyone can READ the discussions by default so at the very least in the meantime that it takes to set permissions for someone wanting to post they can at the very least follow the discussions. But as Jimmy alluded to there are people that just cannot handle this forum and will want to wreck it for YOU. That often is their goal. It isn't about removing someone because they got heated and let fly with a "Hey fuck you pal"... Ok we should be trying to avoid those types of responses, but everyone goes off the rails now and again. And we as a group need to help to self correct that type of behavior. When presented with that type of comment are people able to respond with "Hey, I'd rather not get into that I'm just trying to present a different viewpoint"? Or does it just end in matching Fuck You's back and forth? Because there are people that LOVE to see that type of interaction break out. And at some point a mod needs to remove those people from the conversation so that actual dialogue can take place. They are called trolls and while we have been lucky to not be overrun with them, we have had our share of them in the past. Both intentional trolls and unintentional ones.
By and large, even though I don't participate in these discussions anymore, the back and forth is fairly civil. But for me I don't see the fairness in removing a member from the entirety of the site just because they got heated in a political discussion. To me that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by way of over moderating. (yes I realize the irony of me making that statement) This was something that we were unable to do on the "Old Board". The only option was to ban them from the site entirely which put a lot of pressure on mods because often they were being tasked with having to ban someone that they otherwise appreciated as posters. Or people that they generally agreed with on controversial topics. My own personal mea culpa moment is that I wasn't able to see the obvious solution which was to have a separate mod group for those conversations. It is as obvious as being hit on the head with a frying pan now. Especially since I frequent sites that have this exact same model. I was stuck on how to be fair to ALL posters and the mods that I missed the concept that you could have a different group do that job. Duh.
My own frustration led me to make a decision that wasn't well received and I've been trying to find a solution to that for 6 months.
Speaking of the old board ... I didn't want your information being stolen. It was no longer supported, and there was MAJOR security holes that were no longer being patched. As software gets older and computing advances holes in software open up. We all know that. And that's what was happening. The software was no longer being supported to guard against that. We had to make a change. And there was nothing out there that could provide the same features out of the box. In reality it took us 4 months to come up a new software solution that gives us the same functionality as before and much more. I think it is so far working out great, but there was a hiccup in getting people set up appropriately.
After saying all of that.... there are a number of message boards out there that serve people's needs. And for the most part they are all great. With good communities. I don't begrudge any of them. I don't have any ill thoughts about any of them personally. I'd wish that they could find a way to interact with our community and spend some time with us as they browse their internet haunts. And I promise that I will try to find ways to make our site more inviting to them.
I have administered this site for what... 5+ years now? I've made some mistakes along the way. I will make mistakes again. I'd rather not see the community pay a price for my mistakes. I am willing to listen.