"us" vs. "them"

[lowviz]

I was recently involved in a thread that caused me to back off and think. So much more so than I have ever done in the five short years that I have been a member of this community. This thread degenerated into a personal attack on a mod and further strengthened a general polarization that I find quite disturbing.

I am most comfortable being placed somewhere between the friendliest SB newbies and the “usual suspects”. I equally enjoy ideas from across the board. I come here to chat, learn, and goof-off on occasion. I’m neither a mod nor a dive professional and don’t have an “image” that I need to preserve or fluff up. I’m just a community member. Period.

We all know that there will always be an element that is bent on destroying the community and this is a large part of why mods exist. But this is not the problem at hand. The problem is a serious polarization between mods and the “vocal” members of the community at large. The present situation is a predictable outcome of mods becoming weary from dealing with relentless internal opposition.

Let it be known that I was “modded” in the thread that I’m alluding to. I made a reference to a past member that I really like. I’ll admit that I was mod-taunting and got slapped. So be it. I want to be able to take my slap like a man and get back into the mix like I could in the old days. The mods are rapidly losing the ability to distinguish between a temporarily errant member and a constant pain in the ass.

There seems to be a Cold War forming. I invite both sides to ease up. So sad that “both sides” seems to be the best choice of words.

It should have been easiest to just say “us”…

 

[oldschoolto]

The world is made up of 80% that think along normal lines and fit in.... Then you have the 10% on the far ends of normal... and then the 1% of off the wall bat$hit crazes... I don't see the trouble with keeping the site for the 80%..... Don't like it, don't look at it.... Want to cause trouble , You're out of here....

Jim.....

 

[Bob DBF]

In the words of the great peacemaker, "Why can't we all just get along?".



Bob
--------------------------------------------
On the Internet you can choose to be anything you want. It's strange that so many people choose to be stupid.

 

[letterboy]

The world is made up of 80% that think along normal lines and fit in.... Then you have the 10% on the far ends of normal... and then the 1% of off the wall bat$hit crazes... I don't see the trouble with keeping the site for the 80%..... Don't like it, don't look at it.... Want to cause trouble , You're out of here....

Jim.....

what happened to the other 9%?

 

[TSandM]

Moderating is actually a lot harder than it looks . . . When you have as many people on a board as this one has, you will have all kinds. Some people run afoul of board rules because they are unaware of them. Some people do it because they're really not very pleasant people, or they have their own pathology. Some people are temperamentally driven to push boundaries, and then you run into the problem that you let them do so because you don't want to overreact, and then when the problem gets out of hand, the very people who have been stretching the limits are now upset by what they see as an overreaction. To them, whatever finally pushed the button was a one millimeter extension, whereas the person doing the correction sees the entire stretch from where it began. And people don't like change; if there is a change in policy or a change in the rules, you will always have people who are deeply unhappy about it.

Most of us cope, maybe do a little griping and then get on with things. Some people just can't let go of a grievance, and that causes a great deal of upheaval.

 

[oldschoolto]

what happened to the other 9%?

the other 9% are vocal but not frick'n crazes....
think of it like this.... Most people don't really care what others do.. And don't spend their time trying to make others live and think like them...

Jim...

 

[mdb]

This is a great board. IMHO well moderated. I've been blocked a time or two for making comments re: the so called "tech divers"

I mostly enjoy solo diving. I dive as a minimalist, taking only what I need for the dive on hand. If a moderator blocks me from a thread or
a forum-so be it.

I enjoy seeing the newcomers posting and getting good advice.

 

[rhwestfall]

a state of flux is inevitable (its also known as "evolution") and things can, and will change. You may or may not like it, but I seriously doubt any changes were intended to to something "bad". There has been a change in the status quo, lets see where it takes us...

 

[lowviz]

This is a great board. IMHO well moderated. ...//...

I agree. I think that a lot of it comes from mods being part of the community at large. It is simple to be both, if a mod posts in a thread, then he/she can no longer "mod" that same thread.

I'll admit that I am, at times, a part of the "problem". Now and again I enjoy goofing with the "usual suspects". I've taken my lumps but they were always richly deserved and fairly served.

I can only imagine the work it takes to keep this place together. So as a word of thanks, I'm going on record here as holding the entire mod staff in highest regard.

 

[boulderjohn]

As a former administrator, both in a school setting and in private business, part of the problem lies in the similarity between some mod actions and personnel issues. In personnel issues--disciplining or even firing an employee--the administrator in charge is prevented by a combination of laws, contractual rules, and ethics from discussing the details of the situation. The person being disciplined usually has no constraints other than ethics, and some of them are ethically challenged. (That is often why they are being disciplined.) They cam spin any story they want about what is going on to their peers, while the administrator has to remain silent. I (and the morale of my staff) have personally been very much hurt in such situations.

Mods have no such laws, but we do have rules, procedures, and ethics constraining us from giving details of the discussions we have or the history we have with certain posters. Many of our discussions are quite heated, and we don't all agree on the results. We do not, however, make those disagreements public--we agree to support whatever decision is ultimately made or cease to be a mod. Several years ago we lost one of our most active and valuable mods for that reason.

Not long ago we had a long and involved discussion about a user with a long history of abuse spanning a number of years. He had been disciplined in the past, and he had been warned. We finally came out with what some mods considered too mild an action. That is not how he told it, though. As he described it, we had come out of nowhere to give an overly harsh and capricious sentence without warning to someone who had made a minor slip after a long history of being a perfect angel. That led to a lot of anti-mod rhetoric that we sat back and absorbed with nearly no comment.

Since we normally delete or edit offending posts, the evidence of a poster's transgression is visible only to the mods.