Moderators 2

[Duane Meadows]

Thanks Moderators for the mostly thankless job you do. With all the flak you have been getting lately, thought a kind word is over due!

[paul cottingham]

As an aside, i think it is quiet around here cause a lot of folks have left. Of course, what the heck do i know...

[ian maybury]

Sorry - finger trouble...

[Scott Shepherd]

As an aside, i think it is quiet around here cause a lot of folks have left. Of course, what the hell do i know...

Hi Paul, glad to see you around. I think about 10 people left, at the same time, 100's have been approved. I, personally, miss a number of those who left, but there's nothing I can do about it. I just try and moderate with respect and I know I'm not alone in that. We have some great moderators here.

[Bruce Page]

I guess I'm to blame here. A member asked why his electrical wiring question on a jointer motor was moved to the Workshops forum. I looked into it and moved it back into GW&PT. I left a message in the thread saying that I didn't know why it was moved, (we are all human here) and that it was back. I checked back a few hours later and found a thank you from the OP followed by 4 comments/rants about over moderation. I deleted the 4 posts and closed the thread. I am sorry that I didn't PM the 4 offended members to explain my actions, I spent the day with my son & family. I thought my reasoning would be self evident.

[Paul McGaha]

Hi Paul, glad to see you around. I think about 10 people left, at the same time, 100's have been approved. I, personally, miss a number of those who left, but there's nothing I can do about it. I just try and moderate with respect and I know I'm not alone in that. We have some great moderators here.

Yes, some great moderators here. I think the positive attitude the Creek has is very appealing to the members.

PHM

[paul cottingham]

Hi Paul, glad to see you around. I think about 10 people left, at the same time, 100's have been approved. I, personally, miss a number of those who left, but there's nothing I can do about it. I just try and moderate with respect and I know I'm not alone in that. We have some great moderators here.

Yes, and some extremely heavy handed ones, and they are the problem. I appreciate the greeting, Scott, but it was a fluke i was here. I am pretty well gone, now. The heavy handed moderators (and the lack of any explanations or accountability) have done their thing. If I want to take crap like i have from some of them, i would spend more time with my in-laws.

[Ole Anderson]

As an aside, i think it is quiet around here cause a lot of folks have left. Of course, what the hell do i know...

So Paul, in the face of the long standing sticky about profanity or implied profanity, are you just pushing buttons to see what happens?

Those that get worked up about simply moving a post, well...

Thanks mods, I think you are doing a great job.

[Matt Krusen]

This is just stupid. Enjoy the site for what it is. Get some good info and go build something.

[Scott Shepherd]

I would note that the 10 or so would probably be called heavyweights in the grand scale of things, whose knowledge and contributions will never get to the hundreds that recently signed up.

I don't disagree with that Kent. I hate to see some of those people go. My point was, that I was talked to, and about horribly. Should I have left? Should I have kicked the person that was saying bad things to me? Did I ask for his account to be removed? No, I didn't. Look, there are all different personalities in the world, and here as well. Some times personalities clash and some people just don't get along. That's life. If I quit something I was passionate about every time I ran into a conflicting personality that said something offensive to me, I'd be sitting in a room by myself 24 hours a day.

We should be able to get past our differences and share the things we have in common rather than constantly rehash the things we don't agree on.

Were mistakes made in the past. Absolutely. Can we unring the bell? Nope. What's next? Discuss it for the next 4 years, or live in reality where those people are gone and not coming back? I'd love to have them back. But there's nothing I can do to make that happen. That's why my (and others) focus is on the present and how we treat people when moderating today.

[Keith Outten]

Gentlemen,

This topic has been discussed so many times here that I'm sure if you search our archives you will find the same exact topic has been hashed over a hundred times.

People join and people leave here every day, obviously more join than leave since our numbers have continued to grow for almost 13 years. The vast majority our this Community are pleased with how we manage our Forums, this is the primary reason that we rarely adjust any of the rules here. The discussions here are dynamic based on a wide variety of content and personalities which makes the job of managing this site a daily challenge and we do the best we can to be as consistent and fair as possible. I really don't think anyone can expect more from our Staff as they are all volunteers and they donate a lot of their personal time here serving this Community that takes away from their woodworking and shop time...but they do it because it needs to be done and they care about this Community.

None of us are perfect, we all make mistakes. We do count on the fact that a Friendly Community of people will be forgiving of mistakes made on either side. Concerning edits or changes being made without notification I am probably the worst offender. We all try to let people know when a post or thread has been edited or removed "BUT" there are over 96,000 registered Members here and five times that many visitors. The workload here can be unbelievable most days so we all have to manage our time the best we can. Answering Private Messages internally and email from those who are not registered Members is a mountain to climb just about every day here. Honestly there are many requests that never get answered but we do the best we can to support a Community based primarily on free access with a very small budget and just a hand full of volunteers.

[Scott Shepherd]

It's been bugging me a little to see this thread because it's the opposite of what I feel like is happening. I pulled up one of the moderator reports and asked for the threads deleted in the last 7 days and got a whopping 7 posts, 4 of them were deleted from the same thread, when a conversation took a bad turn. So 3 posts deleted in 7 days? That hardly seems like "heavy handed" moderation going on.

There were more posts deleted by users than moderators in that same time period.

Just a fact that should probably out there. And of the 3 that were deleted 1 of them was someone advertising their own services.

[Keith Outten]

I just checked our registration statistics, we average between 40 to 60 new registrations per day seven days per week and approximately 20 to 50 are approved per day. These numbers increase dramatically depending on the season but this is an average period right now. During growth spurts in the past I have had to review up to 250 new registrations per day for months.

Why are so many registrations rejected? There are many reasons for new registrations being rejected, not using a real name, nasty usernames, spammers, etc. The email we receive on a daily basis often has language that you would not believe, not all woodworkers are friendly. When we receive email that is full of foul language and personal threats we delete them right away as you would expect.
.

[paul cottingham]

So Paul, in the face of the long standing sticky about profanity or implied profanity, are you just pushing buttons to see what happens?

Those that get worked up about simply moving a post, well...

Thanks mods, I think you are doing a great job.

There, fixed the offending word (one which even my pastor wouldn't find objectionable in church.)

[paul cottingham]

Gentlemen,

This topic has been discussed so many times here that I'm sure if you search our archives you will find the same exact topic has been hashed over a hundred times.

People join and people leave here every day, obviously more join than leave since our numbers have continued to grow for almost 13 years. The vast majority our this Community are pleased with how we manage our Forums, this is the primary reason that we rarely adjust any of the rules here. The discussions here are dynamic based on a wide variety of content and personalities which makes the job of managing this site a daily challenge and we do the best we can to be as consistent and fair as possible. I really don't think anyone can expect more from our Staff as they are all volunteers and they donate a lot of their personal time here serving this Community that takes away from their woodworking and shop time...but they do it because it needs to be done and they care about this Community.

None of us are perfect, we all make mistakes. We do count on the fact that a Friendly Community of people will be forgiving of mistakes made on either side. Concerning edits or changes being made without notification I am probably the worst offender. We all try to let people know when a post or thread has been edited or removed "BUT" there are over 96,000 registered Members here and five times that many visitors. The workload here can be unbelievable most days so we all have to manage our time the best we can. Answering Private Messages internally and email from those who are not registered Members is a mountain to climb just about every day here. Honestly there are many requests that never get answered but we do the best we can to support a Community based primarily on free access with a very small budget and just a hand full of volunteers.

Sounds like a numbers game without regard to the quality of the people who left.