Passive-Aggressive Modding

[Nyoibo]

Seriously, though, unless it gets pointed out, how often does one check a banned member's profile, especially months or even a year or more after the banning?

I have, but I was gone for around a year, I was mostly trying to work out why people had been banned and checking their profile and the last few posts they made is about the onyl way to find out without asking, which is usually frowned upon.

[Rapscallion]

If someone is banned as a result of the posts they made, we often remove those posts.

Rapscallion

[Andara Bledin]

OK I admit that it's probably rare that a profile of a banned user gets checked at all frequently....

The first several profiles I ever looked at were banned members. One who had posted somewhat recently, and others who had left comments in the profiles of other members I looked up for other reasons, such as friending.

It's also turned into a bit of a Mod bashing thread.

It started out a mod-bashing thread.

I have been approached by the "We don't see eye to eye" or "I know we don't get along"...

Neither of those are the same as "I know you don't like me." Both of the examples you give are based on a mutual understanding. The one he used put all of the onus of the bad relationship on her, and unfairly, at that.

Knowing Ree, and I'm sure he knew here personality quite well by that point, he likely knew that she'd feel the need to respond and try to set the record straight, giving him an opportunity to be a jerk.

Right, it was a difficult time. With high flows of emotions and nerves rubbed raw from those emotions. I think it should, maybe not been deleted, but left till a later time when nerves weren't so raw and emotions weren't so high.

It seems to me that the person who hadn't just lost a parent and thus should have been thinking entirely rationally should be the one to be held to the fire for starting shit that could have been left alone.

Are you honestly, seriously, defending this twit for harassing someone who just lost their mother? Really?!?

Isn't that last sentence itself "passive-aggressive?"

As far as I can tell, that's his primary posting style.

And no some good people out there won't try to avoid misunderstandings because unless told that there could be a misunderstanding they will believe there is no misunderstanding.

How is this even relevant? This is one of the flimsiest straw men I've seen erected in some time.

....

Honestly, this whole thread should never have been started.

The responsible thing to do would have been to ask the mods if this was something normal or if, perhaps, the defacement was part of some hack or the like (I can certainly see that happening) and gotten some reply before smearing what was a one-time occurrence all over the forum.

Shit-stirring like this is quite an art, and I'm not entirely sure it wasn't deliberate.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

Honestly, this whole thread should never have been started.

I think it's served a purpose in being cathartic and somewhat revealing that there is more than one side to a story. This is a very unusual circumstance and we'd not usually reveal the sort of information we did in this thread, but I'd be happy to say there is a different perspective of what we do now available.

I'd prefer not to have to go through this again on someone else's membership. I also have to say that if we have an issue with what someone's done a quick and private word usually gets a far better response that what caused this thread. Most mod/member interactions are pretty urbane and we generally forget about them within a few hours. We try not to sweat the small stuff, and it really gives us no pleasure to have to use even infractions, let alone banning people.

Rapscallion

[blas87]

I know I'm probably not the only one here who has this story, but I was once a pretty problematic poster at CS, a few years ago.

I had the....victim complex that we've seen as of recently here. I once thought that I was singled out, other posters were allowed to get away with more than me, and that I was getting PMs and reminders to act appropriately just because it was me.

Outside of the boards, I grew up a lot and changed a lot of my views in a short time, and I'm glad that I matured and was able to see the bigger pictures and the situations for what they really were. I was being an immature little brat and I was behaving inappropriately. I'm lucky that I never made it to moderated poster or banned. If it wasn't for Raps and the mod team helping me see what I was doing wrong, I probably would have gotten banned.

It's just a shame that you can't get through to certain people, or they continue to dig in the knives and hurl the insults and not let the situation rest.

If I'm not mistaken, Hobbs always took issue with his CS banning, and never was satisfied with the answers he was continually given as to why he was banned (and I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but I can only assume the same about here at Fratch, because of the continued contact with Ree, whom he always took issue with).

Sorry for the threadjack and the self-indulging post here, I just felt it was pertenent to the topic at hand. Some people, you can help see where they've been wrong, and others you just can't.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, I definitely agree that some good things have come out of its existence. Plus, it shows that not only is there more than one side to a story but that you can't stop at just two sides, either.

I'm still of the opinion it should have been handled the same way it started and not been used in this manner.

^-.-^

[Boozy]

As far as I can tell, that's his primary posting style.

What a good opportunity for another reminder to all Fratching members:

Everyone here will have issues with another member's posting style from time to time. Unless someone is breaking the rules of the forum, the moderators will not get involved. Moderating someone's tone is virtually impossible, so we don't like to try.

The correct course of action when you come across a poster's style that you don't like is to follow your mom's advice: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Focus on the issues and not on someone's perrceived attitude. Never make things personal when they don't need to be.

Thanks everyone.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I don't like your tone, there. XD

Seriously, every single person who's ever been part of forum staff on a board has come accross a "problem child" who simply rejects any efforts on the part of the staff to reason with him/her. Such a person will throw any second chances back in the faces of the forum staff, will refuse to curtail the bad behaviour that got him/her under the attention of the staff in the first place and will nearly always badmouth the staff to his/her friends, acting as tho they were unfairly singled out.

On my forum, there was such a person. We gave them every chance to behave themselves; even revoking a permaban after they apologised thru email. But said person went straight back to misbehaving on forums, making endless accounts and attacking the staff whenever they could. They would not listen to us and there was nothing more we could do but perma ban them and this time, never lift it.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Not including blatant trolls and spammers, it's pretty difficult to get banned from CS (and I imagine this place). You really do have to work at it. In fact, infractions are not casually tossed around, either. More often, the miscreant will get a pm. The vast majority of people who get such pms are understanding about it and don't get angry and everyone walks away friends.

Then there's the sector that just can't stand any sort of confrontation, no matter how gentle and who think they are never wrong or that the rules don't apply to them. . These people take it personal. Which just goes to show that even here, we have our share of sucky customers.

[blas87]

I agree with you, Lace and Kink

I've posted about this place before, but before I found CS, I was a member on a venting site for waitstaff/cooks/restaurant staff. That place was such a free-for-all that it really wasn't that much fun, as Mike and other long-time mods have pointed out that old CS wasn't as much fun when there were problem members and flame wars.

In the beginning, it was fun to bash the trolls* and feed them. The admin and mods on that site encouraged it. But this one troll* refused to ever go away, and they didn't ban her. And then her beef with that site spilled over into Tipping.org and after a while, when the threads got off topic of tipping and going-ons in the bizz, members turned against one another based on our beliefs and lifestyles and it got to be a huge mess. Just a huge mess. People were hardly ever banned or moderated. The admin and mods always joined in on the bashing. When the focus went off the troll* and onto other members.....it was a mess. Just a mess. I will never go back to that place again.

*= for the record, I don't think Hobbs was necessarily a troll, and I am not making a distinct comparison between him and this notorious poster at the other site I used to frequent.

[Nyoibo]

If someone is banned as a result of the posts they made, we often remove those posts.

Rapscallion

Yeah, which to and admitedly curious and occasionally down right damned nosy person like me is infuriating.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Not including blatant trolls and spammers, it's pretty difficult to get banned from CS (and I imagine this place). You really do have to work at it.

Same goes for the forum I admin for. Our permaban list is, contrary to popular belief, very small. We're far more likely to give out a temp ban of a few days or a week to give a member a cooling off period, and even then it's cuz our hand was forced due to the member just not listening to warnings and infractions.

However, I'm sure that the people on our permaban list, and CS.com's too, think of the staff as being power hungry dictators who revel in punishing people for no reason. -.- I've had someone invoke Godwin's Law on me; a friend of a troublemaker who said I was being like Hitler. I just replied back saying I'd prefer it if I was labled Stalin. They didn't reply.

[Rapscallion]

Yeah, which to and admitedly curious and occasionally down right damned nosy person like me is infuriating.

Don't get me wrong, we do save them as 'soft deleted' for evidence in case of trouble further down the line, but it doesn't look good on us if we allow such posts to stand. It's worth noting that if we'd left them up and said, "The above forumer has been banned for this post," this thread would have read 'Aggressive Modding' instead.

There's no point to going out banning people on a whim. Without the members, you don't have a forum.

I think we've done a fair bit of explaining from our perspective on this thread. I'd like to ask out there if people still think we've been unfair from what you've read, if you didn't think us being unfair was likely to be the case, if you thought initially that we were unfair and if you've changed your minds as a result of this thread? I'm genuinely curious.

What are your opinions on this affair? Feel free to PM me if you want to contribute and don't want it in the open.

Rapscallion

[telecom_goddess]

I don't think anyone has been unfair no...Ree had a right to get upset and things did get out of control. I just had a problem with the profile editing. It seems two faced to me...."don't insult us in public but we reserve the right to humiliate you in public on your profile"...

Again I know it's NOT normal practice and this was an isolated incident so that's fine. I just wouldn't want it to become a regular practice.

[the_std]

My opinions can be summed up thusly:

1) Everyone who is upset about this is taking it way too seriously. It's a forum where we dish about crappy people. It's not like you guys have any legal hold over anyone, and therefore any so-called "abuse of power" has no true effect on... Anything. Yes, I understand that, to some people here, this community is important, but those people are usually not under any kind of true scrutiny, because our mods are fair and even-handed 95% of the time.

2) Mods make mistakes, and if this is the most scandalous thing someone can dig up on our mods, then we're sitting pretty, as no one who is currently allowed on the site has been harmed in any way.

3) I don't even think this is a mistake. The situation with Hobbs was extreme, and emotions were running high. Of course any recourse is going to be stronger than usual. Put yourself in Ree's shoes (the exact situation, no "coworker" crap) and then tell me you wouldn't have any kind of reaction at all. And then think of having been Ree's friend and working with her closely on the mod team for all this time, and then tell me you wouldn't have done... Something.

I think the mod team is handling things extremely well, and I congratulate them for their efforts. If it had been me, I don't think I would have been as mild as they had been.