This is a matter for the Stompies to work out, and so not for voting on.
Please.
If this community insists on hashing out every bullshit bureaucratic detail in an open 800-person forum, it will be the death of it.
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
This is a matter for the Stompies to work out, and so not for voting on.
Please.
If this community insists on hashing out every bullshit bureaucratic detail in an open 800-person forum, it will be the death of it.
Cindy, that letter is fantastic and clever and all of that, but I wonder if our goals would be better-served with something shorter and more straightforward, along the lines of,
Dear Buffistina Monkeypants,
Your posts X (through Y) in thread Z have come to our attention as being outside our etiquette. Specifically, several posters read them as (personal attacks/disparaging of a specific group/rude beyond the telling of it/other).
We enjoy your contributions to the community, and we understand that everyone makes mistakes. This is not an official warning -- but please try to think before you post in the future, or we will issue one.
If you want to read our etiquette, the short version is LINK. (This matter was also discussed in bureaucracy starting LINK).
Thank you for your attention,
Stompy McStompypants
IMO, we don't need consensus around warnings. If we agree that making other people feel bad is wrong, not everyone has to feel bad before there's a problem.
Agreed.
Nice Cindy. I think it needs to be chopped some, but I am not alert girl at the moment.
eta: I do like the humor element. Very Buffista-y
I don't understand why we're backing away from our nice three-step process. An "unofficial" warning from a Stompy makes no sense to me. We worked out a procedure: Warning, Suspension, Banning. Period. Clearly, we're all willing to give people a chance and all of that -- whenever there's a problem poster, people point out the issue to them and try to engage them in dialog. This happens fairly regularly. When that doesn't work, the next step should be a Warning.
Also, if
The Stompies are moderators. It's a light-touch moderation, but it's moderation. Period. The discussion is not over whether or not to have moderation, it's about what kind of moderation we want. Knee-jerk anti-moderation sentiment not only misunderstands the actual dynamic of the community, but makes it harder to have that important conversation.
I really think the admins need to word the warning.
Also a warning from an admin does go on someone's "permanent record".
I think a standard warning letter is a great idea. Not only might it save the Stompies some time and trouble, but if we all know what the wording and import of the letter would be, it might be easier to agree that one is needed in a given case. The example Cindy posted would be a far different thing to me than one that said, "You're being a jerk. Knock it off or we'll boot your ass." I didn't really think something as strong as the latter would be sent, but my point is that I didn't know exactly what would be sent. I think it could be easier to agree on sending something when we have a clearer idea what it is. (This is not meant to insinuate that the Stompies would be anything but gracious and clear. Just that I have trouble discussing the sending of an unknown.)
I really don't like this trend of backing down off our warning/suspension/banning system.
By the time people come to the admins to complain they have already bent over backwards trying to accomodate the problem poster and have already made polite requests (or been driven past polite requests into terse requests).
The time for gentley worded requests for pleasant behaviour is past and it's now time to say "look, you've made many people upset, you've broke our rules of etiquette and this is a warning for you to stop. If you don't and have to be warned again you will be suspsended for two months. We'd rather that it not come to that so please respect our community and our rules."
Which is still polite but to the point.
I prefer Lyra's wording -- straightforward is better than clever in this case -- but agree that this is the official warning. This is what gets sent from "Admin" after individual in-thread efforts have failed, the last chance before suspension.
I don't think I'd have a problem with the system being changed from warning/suspension/ban to warning/warning/suspension/ban, but that's a much bigger policy issue.
Am - thanks, I've corrected.
Sorry, I wasn't drafting an official warning, I was drafting the notice, the kind that doesn't go down on the record, askye. I thought we had a draft for the warning.
I agree with Laura that mine needs to be chopped, and although I like bringing the fun in, Lyra's suggestion that it be more straight forward is an important one.