We've got a major problem...

GuitarBizarre · 08-17-2013, 12:32 PM

Quote:

"The complaints I've made are shared by others in the original thread" For example, tore.

This spin-off thread is meant to isolate and abuse me. It would take some balls for somebody to come into a pile-on and fight for the victim. The only reason there have been so many posts by me is because people keep insulting me, dismissing facts (e.g., statements by tore), and distorting my position.

Quote:

Quote:
So basically your complaint is that because you or someone else don't have the kind of feedback you want from posts, (which strangely has nothing to do with the posts in question... odd) the whole system is flawed?

Please help me clarify whether or not that's your position. Because it sounds like you're willingly disregarding the fact that people routinely engage in good music discussions when there is a good music discussion going on. If your gripe is that the mods need to start deleting everything they deem as "not good music discussion", yeah, we can go Hitler with it if you want. But we won't. Because it's not our responsibility to ensure your posts are worth replying to. And the sooner you realize that, the less angry you will be.

And if you think this is some clique where only the members get involved in the discussion, you're deluding yourself. While we have somewhat cliquish factions here and there, I seriously doubt that anyone who has something interesting to say to someone who is interested is going to turn that convo down.

And unless you're suggesting that the mods drill into the brains of all our members and flip a "be interested in everything" switch, you already know what you have to do. Post interesting things in relevant areas. But don't blame the world when no one seems to mirror your sensibilities.

That's just ridiculous.

I don't understand a lot of that and am not in the mood to try to figure it out. Again, if people here would just think - gee, if someone prefers to talk with pals, he/she is naturally going to put less attention and mental energy toward reading and replying to non-friends' posts and probably automatically would go to a different thread featuring friends than reply to someone else (unless it's for the "fun" of mod-approved attacking). Of course people could fight their own tendency, but I see complete unwillingness by haters to follow any of my advice. Since I am a thinker, it pops into my head right now that the revived Journal in itself will just divert more attention from regulars to each other.

Anyone who sees this thread and does not approve of its existence should be ready to tell Yac what the real problem with this site is.

1 - "I'm a VICTIIIIIIM! You guys took me out of the discussion I was ruining so that I didn't ruin it anymore, and now I'm getting direct negative feedback on what I'm saying! You're so mean!"
2 - "I dunno what you said, so I'm going to ramble on about unrelated crap for a while! YOU'RE ALL HATERS, BECAUSE YOU WON'T FOLLOW MY AWESOME ADVICE! I am a *THINKER!* Therefore I *MUST* be right!"
3 - "Yac is above all of you so I'm going to start making baseless threats about telling him bad things about you all, which he will totally take seriously because he cares so much about my amazing opinions!"

Quote:

I think people can see through that, given the title of the thread and various mods' bashing and threatening me and condoning of nasty things posted by others.

At some point, Yac will make changes. Moderators don't last forever, especially when things go bad under their watch.

1 - "This thread is an ATTACK on me!"
2 - "Watch your back mods, the SHERIFF will see to it you RUE THE DAY you messed with me!"

Quote:

That is false dichotomy and distorted. There's no need to ban anyone and nobody is a total non-contributor, but of the people who are clearly acting against site rules, some of their posting histories would indicate that they have acted out against other members elsewhere on the site. I said before that banning me would not help the site at all, and any impact would be negative through loss of music posts and alienation of people who agree with me. And there's no acknowledgement that I have a right to be frustrated when we (atmosphere-change proponents) keep making reasonable suggestions that aren't even considered.

1 - "Don't ban me, I'm too amazing to ban! You wouldn't want to lose my POSTS and my FRIENDS now would you?"
2 - "I'm an "Atmosphere change proponent", all these other people disagreeing with me want the forum to stay how it is, no matter how many changes they've all already put forth as suggestions themselves! I'm the only one they should be agreeing with if they want changes!"

Quote:

I wanted to look at the numbers first, since they didn't make sense. They still don't make much sense, though the sheer age of some of those journal threads automatically give them many views (search engine robots included). I do not know how many people currently post to that section - mods could more easily research that than I could - but it ought to be less than the number in General Music. ("Ought to" because Journals are inherently clique-oriented.) I'm going to make another assertion - that Journals have virtually no impact on whether new members became regular contributors to the site. (Lots of people patting themselves on the back for something that in practice doesn't address the gist of Duga's complaint.)

So, I'm wrong about a very minor point that's hardly related to site atmosphere, and you want a medal? How many people have joined this week, been turned off by the types of discussion they've seen, and probably never will return?

Well, okay, on a positive note, some nasty posts were deleted from this thread.

1 - "These threads with hundreds of thousands of views are old! Clearly nobody reads them NOW, that's what I meant to say when I said nobody reads them! Maybe someone read them years ago! Mods, go and do a pointless survey of these statistics for me!"
2 - "I'm going to reiterate that new members are being put off, despite plenty of new members pointing out that they weren't! And other members pointing out that of the new members who didn't stick around, most didn't leave because of any "meanness"!"

Quote:

Robots index everything public, I believe.

How many times have you approved there a comment from someone with fewer than 30 posts? I see a few from one person - I didn't look back very far. Not did I look at other people's journals. Maybe they are visited as much as some music sections, but that would be a bad sign if true - journals don't and can't lead to the kind of sustained discussion that regular threads can.

Also, I didn't say anything about moderator performance re Journals. My point is that effort spent there doesn't do much for the site as a whole. The idea that people can fix this site by just posting more Journal entries or starting more threads is ridiculous. Unless Music Banter wishes to become the Live Journal of music musings, which is not my vision of the site and probably wouldn't succeed.

1 - Anything that is not *MY* vision of the site is clearly a terrible idea!

Quote:

I don't have a problem with people posting to their journals if it isn't distracting them from being 'productive' here. But the idea that, without other changes, members can increase their productivity to fix this site is silly. I haven't heard many reasoned objections to the changes I favor, while ironically I'm labeled unreasonable.

1 - "Without *MY changes, this site cannot improve!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopsych

I think some drama happens because the music discussion isn't exciting enough, with there literally not enough good threads to divert time and attention from fight-filled threads. (I certainly don't excel at rising above drama and am not the ideal person to be arguing Duga's case.) I also think that VEGANGELICA made a good list of suggestions (and I appreciate the music compliment). My additions would be discouragement of sarcastic and rude replies and outright intolerance of that as done with pictures. I genuinely believe in training - maybe I'm trainable myself, baaah - and I think things would improve gradually.

That said, there are two major questions:
Are moderators willing to change their own behavior as pertains to drama? (If not, they should just admit it and complain less about having to handle the reactions or, yeah, stop dealing with it altogether.)
Do many people believe there is too much drama on this site? Someone should do a poll - but it darn well won't be this whipping boy.

Right now there's an impasse - avoiding the issue won't help, and it probably can't be won by fighting.

1 - Yet another swipe at the mods.
2 - "Someone should make a poll, but not ME! I'd get too little ego stroking out of it!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopsych

Excellent replies in the past day. (Probably would have gone worse if I'd made more than one post.)

That's an exaggeration. Like I said, the music sub-forums I follow (and one I consider the main part of the site) don't look more active to me, and I view them daily, scanning for things worth replying to.

Now I admit I did sneer at one solution, people making more music threads. It does work a little, if it can be sustained. (But forcing people, such as me, to make music threads doesn't work.)

Edit: another point that I'm following-up on is that publicly telling one person (or maybe two) to calm down usually doesn't work, but (as done on other forums) it can work to politely request that a few people disengage from each other (or, for example, the thread will be locked or moved).

Also, actually I don't necessarily agree that current moderators are mostly responsible for the slide. From what tore has indicated, drama has been driving away people since even before he was a moderator. Furthermore, in the past few years, new member influx was going to decline anyway (because of Facebook, etc.), and when you have the same regulars for years, problems are almost inevitable. But I think some of the decline can be reversed and have been frustrated for over a year at a lack of changes in that regard.

It's unfortunate that between my abrasive nature in this sub-forum (pointed language more so than my points) and my lack of valued music posts (despite intent), my ideas don't get much credit. Because I do have ideas, and I do think some of them could help. I hope that they're among the ideas duga is considering - I've been waiting the length of this thread for someone to say that there might be subtle, direct, non-technical changes for reducing drama. It seems to me that "the needs of the many" includes less drama.

1 - "Forcing AMAZING people like me to contribute doesn't help - fine minds like mine must have the proper environment in order to contribute our amazingness!"
2 - "Despite my constant attack on the moderators, they're ok! Really, I'm sincere, you know?"
3 - "I'm abrasive and people disagree with me - but its not because I could possibly be wrong, its because I've worded it in a way they don't like!"