The Great Moderatorial Experiment, PART THREE: The aftermath

[_moksha]

Okay. Goodbye MormonDiscussions.com.

Those that want to stay in touch, my email is eric@mormongulag.com

Goodbye. It's been real.

Could you leave the ball so the rest of us can play till dinner time?

[_bcspace]

I voted worse because harmony confused a comparison of mine directly related to the OP as a personal attack and edited it. Not a big deal really but I think the changes are too much work for no gain and some additional risk of wrongly interpreting posts.

[_Yoda]

Okay. Goodbye MormonDiscussions.com.

Those that want to stay in touch, my email is eric@mormongulag.com

Goodbye. It's been real.

Could you leave the ball so the rest of us can play till dinner time?

ROTFLMAO!

[_Some Schmo]

I voted "worse."

I thought the board was fine the way it was. Of course, I've never been one to try to appeal to the vocal minority.

Quite frankly, I find the board is less interesting now.

I think it's ironic that people talk about wanting "adult conversation" and yet, by doing so, are asking for protection from others. Don't people understand what personal responsibility really is?

Oh well. The fact is, in the end, I'm not really that invested. The board takes its direction from the balance of its posters, and people can choose to stay or leave based on whether they like what they read or not. I guess I should admit that I don't really care either way.

[_Imwashingmypirate]

ABINADI'S FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[_Imwashingmypirate]

I made room for error in the document. Also, I would like a reference from the constitution stating "racial slavery is awesome". It appears you are intellectually inept and dishonest. Women not voting is a cultural phenomenon that has been repaired. The documents ability to adjust and evolve for the further protection of God given rights is Divine in my opinion. It truly is a living document.

My knowledge of Scalia's jurisprudence is sufficient. (This next paragraph has now disappeared.)

You sure have a mouthy tone for only being here (MAD) a week. Take it slow, and please be careful how you approach people. Some of us are not as far away as your computer would have you believe. Just pretend I am in the room when you post and you won't be as brave as you were in this last post. There are crazies in cyberspace, you never know how short some of our fuses really are.
Lamanite

I don't see what is so bad about this.

[_Ray A]

I voted that the board is better, along with the majority. However, Shades will have to make a realistic assessment. Is "better" going to attract more here? Keep the same numbers here? Seems to me that Mormons and others are still bidding goodbye, or still not resuming posting. What has been the net effect of this experiment?

The number of votes so far is in the mid-30s, which is about the number who've voted in past polls, so the experiment hasn't brought stampedes of new posters here. All it seems to have really done is create more work for the mods. Insults still exist, and can still be posted, then the mod work of shifting it to the Telestial begins, which only shows that beastie was right about that. Then follows arguments about why it was shifted.

In reality, it looks like a half-pregnant experiment. I've been here through thick and thin from the beginning, when Shades said "let there be Mormon Discussions", and I've given as good as I've got. So I'm really assessing, I guess, what does "better" really mean? You insult me, I complain, your insult gets shifted, but still visible in another forum. It's sort of like putting out the fire in the living room, but letting the fire in the storage room keep burning.


The other factor is numbers, which seems to have remained constant from the beginning, with some waning and waxing from time to time. Then there are those who feel that something has been lost, and who very much dislike seeing that red ink. Many here have left the Church, and even an apparent hand of authority is going to rile them. Rules is something they wanted to escape.

One thing I do strongly agree with is that private messages, in any form, ought not to be posted, except for benign reasons. Even in war there are conventions and limitations. So in trying to be realistic, I see no halfway measure being very successful in the long term, as far as "better" is concerned, with the exception of a ban on posting PMs.

So again I think beastie gave a realistic assessment. Change probably isn't going to make much difference, so if you don't like the atmosphere the only option is to leave for somewhere more conducive, and exmos will gather more to exmo boards, and Mormons will gather more to Mormon boards. And trying to change MDB to please either side seems to be a divergence from the original intention - that the board will shift in the direction that the majority of posters favour, naturally, not by polls or experiments.

That's my post-experiment thinking, at least what I can gather up at the moment.

[_Jersey Girl]

I've been reading this thread, wondering how I might comment in some helpful way and I find I'm still at a loss. Let's see what I come up with here.

I am one of those who stopped posting due to lack of interest in the limited focus of the board and a variety of things that were taking place, and returned to follow through on posting the pinned thread in this forum about the Stanford authorship study. I consider the interaction between Dale, Alma, Danna and Byron on that thread, priceless to me and their contributions a gift to anyone who is interested in the S/R theory. In that regard, I can honestly say that I feel more than satisfied about what is taking place there. There are four posters cooperatively working their way through a number of topic related issues, no detectable ego nor evidence of one upmanship or struggling for position of any kind. Their participation there is more than I could have expected in the way of fair treatment of the topic and the material being presented fully fascinates me.

I do appreciate the work of the new moderators. I know, without their saying so, that they are taking care about what they do and trying their best to apply the rules that were revised for this experiment. In that regard, I think that from what I've seen, the experiment has been successful on account of their efforts. The new mod's have done their job well and they deserve thanks.

People who have leveled criticism at the mods aren't thinking any more rationally than those who were involved in events that took place involving moderator issues a while back. There was talk on this thread alluding to a power grab of some sort. Let me tell you something, folks:

There is nothing on this board that a mod can do, that can't be undone.

If you want to spout off at someone, you have the entire Telestial Forum to do that in and some folks around here need to stop attacking people who are volunteers. You try doing what they're doing. Those types of defammatory comments are one of the main turn off's on this board and it only serves to self-defame the character of those who make them.

For me, I think that the experiment came far too late and that whatever expectations I once had for this board had already eroded to a point of total ambivalence. I haven't voted in this poll.

[_Jersey Girl]

I wanted to add this as a separate comment. I found it disturbing that a situation that began on this thread between gramps and Lamanite, and then carried over to this thread: http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8300&start=0

that included threats of violence went unaddressed by Shades beyond Shades advising Lamanite that violence is never the answer.

I find it astonishing that admin, while in the process of polling this board regarding experiments in methods of moderation and general tone of the board, presumably in an effort to make the board more welcoming/palatable/user friendly or what have you to participants, and after new moderators have invested time in this experiment, would essentially blow off threats being made on the board.

This experiment had to do with acting on personal attack, either removing or transferring them. A poster makes direct and obvious threats and nothing is done?

This makes sense, how?

[_cksalmon]

I wanted to add this as a separate comment. I found it disturbing that a situation that began on this thread between gramps and Lamanite, and then carried over to this thread: http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8300&start=0

that included threats of violence went unaddressed by Shades beyond Shades advising Lamanite that violence is never the answer.

I find it astonishing that admin, while in the process of polling this board regarding experiments in methods of moderation and general tone of the board, presumably in an effort to make the board more welcoming/palatable/user friendly or what have you to participants, and after new moderators have invested time in this experiment, would essentially blow off threats being made on the board.

This experiment had to do with acting on personal attack, either removing or transferring them. A poster makes direct and obvious threats and nothing is done?

This makes sense, how?

I was only a temp mod, Jersey. The experiment is now over. So, I realize you're not talking to me.

I don't know what to tell you. I would say that, to my mind, Lamanite's comments were quite obviously ridiculous, asinine, embarrassing, and immature bluster. I think Shades took them far more seriously than did I, so props to him for that, I suppose.

cks