I don't like the notion of backchannel at all. I prefer to discuss issues which concern the community in this thread. Whether it is proposing a new Monkey thread or discussions concerning violations of community standards.
Bureaucracy 1: Like Kafka, Only Funnier
A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
I could see that point Monique, in another circumstance. But in this one, Zoe was invited here immediately. It grew to 300 posts, in part, because she didn't respond.
What Cindy said. I was just writing it, but not fast enough. Damn you, wee fingers!
I would venture a guess that a poster violating community standards probably gets a number of private emails from members expressing concern. If they have a profile address listed that is.
I actually think Monique has an excellent point. It's not necessarily good for the board as a whole to have this stuff always be front and center, as we've seen. The person could be e-mailed and given a chance to respond just as easily as he or she could be given a chance to respond here, and I think that might well be less disruptive to everyone else and less stressful to face for the person in question.
The person could be e-mailed and given a chance to respond just as easily as he or she could be given a chance to respond here, and I think that might well be less disruptive to everyone else and less stressful to face for the person in question.
But given this particular case, with people speaking against action and in Zoe's defense, while others were pointing the finger at other posters for the manner in which they've called Zoe on stuff, our stompies were (and I'm not picking on them, I understand why) unsure whether to handle or how to handle.
Nothing that happened here gives me the opinion that a stompy would have contacted Zoe based on an email request.
Plus the stompies will be forced to make decisions backchannel, which they have already stated they don't want to do, and based on less information about how the board as a whole feels.
Well, and again this is all asspull, but they wouldn't be making a decision. It would be a case of X-many posters have officially expressed their discomfort, therefore automatically this is brought to the attention of B MP. Not in an aggressive way. One would certainly hope that people would speak to B MP themselves before running to a stompy (as has been the case so far), and maybe say (as Kat did, quite correctly) that they were going to make an official complaint.
there will be no way for someone to defend herself--or to come to the defense of another--until a decision has already been made.
Of course there will. I'm not remotely advocating a "four complaints and you're banned" kind of policy. I'm suggesting that making the first move towards warning be simpler, rather than hundreds of posters trying to decide whether or not a stompy should alert somebody that there was a problem. B MP will totally be able to email the stompy back and say "Shit, really? I didn't realise!" Or "No, this isn't fair. X did such-and-such first, which is why I said blah blah blah". I'm talking about proactively opening a dialogue, in an attempt to nip problems in the bud - not shooting somebody.
I could see that point Monique, in another circumstance. But in this one, Zoe was invited here immediately. It grew to 300 posts, in part, because she didn't respond.
This is why, though I think she stated it much more harshly than I ever would have, I think Allyson's right that Zoe doesn't care about our community standards or how we feel. It makes me feel like we're worrying about her feelings too much.
I think Kat's actions were completely right. She said in the thread where people got bothered that people were bothered and that she was coming over here.
It gave everyone, bothered and botherer, a chance to discuss it in the open.
Just to throw in my 2 cents about why she isn't posting in here--If I were Zoe, I would be pretty intimidated in this forum. (Even after the first few posts about the situation) And now, especially after 300 posts or so about how annoying and possibly mentally deficient I am, I really wouldn't want to post anything. Obviously, talking about it in the open is better, but it might be hard to post when you know that the majority of the posters wish there was a marcie program in order to specifically ignore you.
(But then again, if I knew everybody wanted to ignore me, I wouldn't continue to post in the other forums either. The whole situation is a little baffling.)
Cindy, I understand that there is the possibility that if she had followed Kat over here, they could have hashed it out, came to an understanding, group hug, everything's peachy in fifteen posts.
But what did end up happening was within 30 posts made within a half hours' time, people said they were tired of her snotty replies and someone had theorized that maybe she was "special." I hate to rehash things after the warning has already been sent out, but theorizing that either she wasn't ready to deal with it at that time, she was on the phone or in the bathroom, coming into it later would have still been intimidating, IMO, and is no less a public flogging than posting in Press that they've received a slap on the hand.
I'm not trying to judge the opinions people shared regarding this poster, or the outcome. But I think the process, as it stands, exacerbates a lot of issues and tends to make things worse, to be bluntly honest. I think if you've got people stomping out of the thread and/or off the board due to discussions regarding how to handle problem posters, that's a bad thing.