I'm going to dive into some of the many excellent points you raised next, but i do want to speak to this one 1st, because I think it illustrates a fundamental double edged sword that effects all of the rest.
It also doesn't help that so many members have been banned. And those were more often than not exactly the people with opinions. So yeah, they talked back and yeah, they sometimes caused problems. Well, they're now banned. What nobody seemed to have realized is that they were also the life of the party. If you throw out everybody with an opinion you are left with a pretty docile bunch. Not that those of us who are still here, are. Of course not. I know I'm not.
But still, don't ban people so easily. Give a warning, give them a time-out for 2 weeks. But don't ban them permanently, at least not for being opinionated on photography relevant issues.
I was actually surprised to see this come up today. More so, within the context of the rest of your post.
I am afraid that personally I have to agree with you that things got out of hand for some years, but I feel as if we have had few, if any, bans for quite a long time now. In fact, I could dig up the date that this trend changed dramatically, as it changed when I came back out of retirement from being POTN Moderator. It changed immediately and very thoroughly. The era of POTN Ban-hammer was in fact exactly the reason I came out of retirement. So mention of that time as if it were relevant today does confuse me.
And yet, I guess the legacy remains. To this day, I occasionally see a bumped zombie thread, and come across an old POTN friends' name with BANNED under it, and dive into the history to see why? Can I get them back?
What's more confounding is that you are referencing that time period right after the considerable effort put into voicing your concerns re: current moderation. Of course moderation does not need to be soaked in bans, but it was this same restructuring that dialed in the ban's that has led us back to the more approachable, much more tolerant, less authoritarian POTN attitude towards moderation. Very conflicting IMHO.
The double edged sword I mentioned at the top.
More moderation please, but don't enforce anything when it gets down to the bottom line
(the only tool we have when members absolutely refuse to follow rules, are suspensions/bans.)
Even in the heyday of POTNs' Mod Squad with suspensions occurring regularly, as a team it is imperative not to escalate minor infractions into a confrontation that can only end in someone leaving. So choosing to come down on cross posting, brings us back to what I mentioned in my first reply. There are too many good people posting on POTN, in this very thread, that I'd really not enjoy opening a confrontation that results in their departure or ban.
Speaking for myself, I think POTN could use more moderator coverage, for exactly the reasons you mention. Time online being a huge one. That definitely falls on me, as recruitment is my charge. I am going to take your comments as evidence that some of the data I have been operating under, might be misguided. (We have fewer conflicts, fewer reason to ban, the mod to active member ratio is actually not that low, etc. ) That said, having 24 hour coverage of a forum is a very heavy load to lift, even with significantly more numbers than we have today.
After reading Pekka’s reply to my comment I looked up a few of those banned members and you’re right, most were banned years ago. Not much use in trying to get them back, I guess. Too much time has gone by. It didn’t feel that long.
Jake, I realise that to have a 24/7 mod squad present is hard to achieve. But right now we are often 20 hours or more without a moderator in the house. That just seems too long. Can’t there be some kind of middle ground? It happens regularly that I think a mod should intervene. Big fights are dealt with later, but the smaller stuff is missed when you’re not here. As to that double edged sword, it doesn’t need to be that, does it? Just a relaxed, good humoured type of moderation that you yourself are so good at. With time-out for die-hard rule-breakers. Something like that. Of course, I know nothing of moderating a forum, so there is that…
I think updating the forum would already make quite a difference. AMASS is still brilliant but the board needs some work as it’s a bit stuck in the past right now and that’s not good.
