Iceman

You see Dave sometimes on the online list.

Not a big poster though.

mrfva

I used to be an avid member of their E39 forum ... before things got out of hand. Needless to say, it too was short-lived.

sdg1871

Thanks Rudy for putting the link up to that thread. That was one of the first threads I read here when I became an active member.

I think a board with 30,000 members and thousands of posts per day is best served when the moderators can read every post. The active involvement of the mods is vital to maintaining a high quality board IMHO .

I believe that this board is now of a size where no two mods, no matter how dedicated (and we have terrific mods), can possibly read every post. I agree entirely with the suggestion of one of the members that the number of mods be increased to four. We have so many very strong and well-respected long-term members that we are awash in talent to fill the roles.

I agree with the original statements from you and Iceman that the members should not play the role of sheriff. They should report problematic behavior to the mods and the mods should respond to the reporting member. The posts that I wrote that sparked this very productive reassessment of where we are as a forum were born out of my frustration that people were coming onto the boards who only wanted to cause trouble (by making comments that seemed to me to be designed to malign an entire ethnic group of our members) or to misrepresent who they were and that more needed to be done to stop this sort of behavior.

The reality is that in an online community as large as this one is, there are always going to be some whose behavoir offends the majority of the community. That's where the mods come in as the alternative are nasty wars between members waged in back and forth posts -- in other words, the kind of chaos at Roadfly that sparked the formation of this board.

It certainly seems from these discussions that more attention will be paid to nipping problems in the bud before they alienate valued members. I think that adding two mods to our terrific team of mods would help to ensure the continuing high quality of the discussions here.

C's Bimmer

That's funny coming from you...

Iceman

With all due respect, Sir, your post did not "sparked this very productive reassessment".
We have been discussing this recently and we were allready discussing countermeasures.

What really did spark this was the post whoring by some members, you included, which made some of the veterans leave.



What you describe of beeing the problem never has been a problem in this good functioning community before.
There was no need to start calling people out and accusing them of beeing someone else.

The things you did in this specific thread are exactly the probelm we experienced recently. And you are just a part of it!!! You are not guilty all alone!!!
We, the admins and mods, are just as guilty as we have been watching it waaaay too long, in hope the community will take care on the situation itself, as in the past.
Unfortunately this time members left the forum, so we had to jump in and start to moderate.

And we will now continue to do so.

Rudy

Scott,

I understand what you're saying about mods needing to be able to read every post but I respectfully disagree that it is required for a civilized community to exist. You are correct that we don't need self-appointed sheriffs but that doesn't mean we can't have a bunch of deputies out there who collectively can be the eyes of the mods and report things they may see that go against the board's generally accepted culture. Adding mods isn't something we've ruled out, but in my opinion, the problem isn't the mods, it's the recent posting style of a small handful of [relatively] new members. This, combined with many of our more respected members going into "lurk mode" caused much of these problem posts to go unreported for longer than normal.

I also realize why, out of pure frustration, you felt that some people were posting here with an agenda that wasn't in the best interest of the board but what I feel that you're failing to understand is that in every case, you were factually incorrect in your assessments -- not only with who you thought these people were but also with their intentions -- and rather than let the "real sheriffs" take care of things (which we were in the process of doing), you chose to hold court on your own and judge members without any proof or factual information to back up your suspicions. Unfortunately, other members took your lead and jumped into the fray, causing things to get worse before getting better.

Yes, I'm aware of at least two "new members" who created accounts just for the purpose of having some fun (not at your expense) and in the process, caused you to repeat the same pattern I described above. It was about that time when Iceman and I stepped in and began to ask everyone to chill out, etc.

That said, I commend you on your efforts to help us all out and based on your recent posts, I think it's clear that you understand what we all need to do as we move forward.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation in turning things around...

sdg1871

Thanks Rudy. You definitely get where I am coming from.

I apologize if the volume of my posts offended long term members. That was never my intention -- certainly not to drive valued members away. I tried to add useful content, organize meets, give my thoughts on leasing cars, give advice in areas where I might know a thing or two, post pics of meets, compliment members on developments with their cars or their lives, etc. I am truly sorry if the quantity of my posts made anyone (Calton, Frank, Gene, etc.) feel that this was no longer a place where they wanted to be. I had absolutely no idea that my volume of posts were offending long-term members. In the future, if someone has concerns about my posts/post habits, just PM me and I'll fix it.

Best,

Scott

Iceman

Ok, so... now... let's talk about the size of your signature.........

sdg1871

If someone wants to resize my sig photos, that would be great. I am not technically saavy in that. In the meanwhile, I will resize the text portions of my sig.

Iceman/Rudy, is this size better?

TexaZ3

Wow, JDN was still posting... RIP buddy.
Thanks Rudy.