What's Warbs have to say about all this, Hello Warbler, calling Warbler...?
Since Thursday evening Warbs has been oeprating off an incredibly slow PC that's taking about 15 mins to load a single TH page (other fora are fine). Consequently a 4 page thread is taking me about 90 minutes to work through, and on a fast moving one, my contribution is likely to be out of date the moment its posted. I'm not sure why this is happening, as the hard drive is identical to my own, but its severly restricted my caapcity to engage. Indeed, I might appear to be logged on for lengthy periods, though in reality all i can see is a frozen page with a windows icon fluttering away for 15 mins in the top right.
I would however make some comments.
In the first case neither thread should have degenerated to the level that they did, and in doing so I think there's a sense of collective embarrasment (to differing degrees) attached to those indivduals that contributed and propogated it. What were we discussing? Think about it! The relevance of the haka in modern rugby union, and the retirement of a horse. The first should have been easy to confine within its subject matter, its hardly contentious and I know quite a few kiwis who wouldn't have got as worked up as that. The second should have been easy too. Your chance to pay tribute to an old favourite, and then after that, a chance to assess him in an historcial perspective. Thank God we don't do politics and religon!!!
Clearly the second argument was fed by the first, and it was most regretable that a bit of 'afters' was left hanging over, especially so since Andrew had given ground in conceeding he'd gone along way to initiating the rugby argument after having taken time to reflect on the 'cause and affect'. Indeed, with a bit of common sense being alluded to, that thread did make it back on track, and so it was most disappointing to see its remnants flare up at the next collapse of the scrum a day later!!!.
It should have been left there, unfortunately it wasn't, and those who sought to continue the debate through another proxy, and some of those who dived in for no good reason other than to hurl abuse, have hardly distinguished themselves either.
Moderators exist for a purpose, and whether you like it or not, this forum has consistantly underlined the reason why Col has always felt it necessary to ask people to act as custodians thus. The danger of moderation involves being sucked in personally, and for that reason its probably necessary to stay a little bit more aloof and detached than one would otherwise do as a normal poster for such time that you hold the baton. Getting sucked in, will more often than not put you in a lose/ lose scenario, and especially so on a partisan issue. Trying to remain as neutral as possible is of course helpful, and where as few can be under illusions of my own opinions on various subjects, I've tried to reduce the input by 50% and not get personally involved in the heat of things any longer.
The issue of the re-production of PM's:
I can probably clear up quite quickly. There is a reason the letter P appears in the acronym, and re-producing something for public consumption is normally a serious breach of protocol and trust. If trust breaks down, then we have a serious problem and one which can only lead in one direction, that being deterioration. In this case however, permission (well you might even call it a request?) was given by Garney, and therefore, there is no issue in this regard at all. It might become occasionally necessary in the instance of 'mods only' to share PM exchanges amongst ourselves, but only if someone is under consideration for a sanction, and only then if the PM is both relevant and recent to the situation being considered, otherwise it is a practice that we don't engage in. The sharing of such info is purely done in the interests of fairness and completing a picture that best facilitates fair decision making. There is also an occasional slant on this where one person might make a PM allegation about another to a moderator. The mod might very well be in possession of a PM to the contrary. Under this scenario, a mod might choose to relay the tone of this PM to the accuser if they felt it would positively assist in dispute resolution and nip something in the bud before it escalates beyond remediation. At no stage however, would the PM be reproduced, or any passage quoted to the other party. All you would seek to do is give them an assurance to the contrary and ask them to take you at your word that their suspicions are unfounded.
The issue of deleted posts:
We did have T&C's once upon a time, but these seem to have disappeared?. There was however a code of conduct attached to them regarding what was , and what wasn't acceptable behaviour. If a moderator has felt it necessary to remove a post, then it will have been in response to a perceived transgression of these terms. Where as someone might request a deletion be reconsidered, it is not an entitlement to expect to have it reinstated just because it has been challenged or demanded. Some posts are removed temporarily and later reinstated after discussion (indeed, I did so to one myself recently regarding a racing game which we decided we could let go as 'fair game' in the competitions forum, rather than spam).
Going off topic:
This one is probably much harder to moderate than most as there is no small degree of subjectivity involved. I'd accept that threads do wander off topic occasionally, and in some cases productively, and in most cases they do eventually get back close to their origination. However, there's a few grey areas.
In the first case you can have two seperate subjects being discussed on the same thread. In itself this is hardly criminal, but it doesn't make for good continuity nor easy reading. I seem to think we had one on the 'Congo' thread recently where myself and Clive digressed thus. In situations like this, those who 'cuckoo' a thread should consider starting a seperate one, unless the digression is for a short duration only. As i said, this is the easier one to deal with.
The harder one concerns a digression being used to either deliberately sabotage, or as a vehicle to level unrelated abuse at each other. In this case failure to respond to requests to get back to the subject at hand has to involve deletions or the thread being locked. Reptitive postings of this nature has to ultimately involve censure. There is very little else we can do.
Longevity of service
I'll keep an open on this but would ask if anyone seriously believes that because they've contributed more posts than someone else, or been signed in longer than someone else, regardless of quanity or quality of contribution (how you'd measure quality God knows?) that this entitles them to some kind of exalted status or preferential treatment? If you do, I'd be interested if you could spell this out more precisely (without naming people obviously)
In the meantime, the events of the last few days have been quite depressing to try and watch, albeit from a position of catch up. The bottom line is that no one benefits from behaviour of this nature (and that's not attaching blame anywhere). I'll join the appeal for a bit of unity that has been echoed by a few in response to the unfortunate fallings out. My God, I could understand it if it were something worth worrying about. A haka and Kicking King!!! keep things in persepctive please folks
