[FAMSecretShield] Re: Sky and

[Guest guest]

I actually addressed this post in the Shield, but I will list out my response here so people can see it. Additionally, Ender I am adding a line or two, and a few paragraphs at the end, so you may want to read this one through carefully. I will highlight the added text in blue...

"On many boards the "Moderators" don't make it a point to advertise themselves a such and generally try to wear two hats... 1) a user that is equal to any other user and 2) the moderator who's job is to maintain order and decorum on the board and not act to support any personal agenda. When an "un-named moderator" does step in it this as a neutral party and not as a user that may have misinterpreted the point the other user was trying to make or simply doesn't agree with."

About two or three years ago, we did NOT use the title beneath out usernames, and the result was trolls running wild and a flurry of complaints to the group's Owner's e-mail box asking who was in charge and who , Tom, and Raven thought they were to be trying to control things when they were just members after all. So to clarify things, we began using the titles, and I think it has worked, because for the most part, the trolls have shut up.

The issue that we have right now is one of a troll in Secret Shield who has posted under a different user name both there and here and who was banned by approval of all the moderators from Secret Society. He argued politics there also, but switched sides at as it suited him just to keep people arguing amongst themselves. We know who he is because we can see his IP addresses. We let him stay in the Shield out of good will and to give him a second chance.

Moderating is a job where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

"It is not my intention that this be taken as an attack on any one, it is just as an expression of my perception of the way some thoughts, opinion, and people are treated on the FAM groups. When I first joined the groups several years ago I quickly became aware that there were a number of cliques in the group."

And that was what I had aimed AGAINST but the intitial trolls, whowere banned mostly before you even arrived, caused people to band together into factions which became cliques.

As you might remember from very early discussions, or perhaps you arrived after that point, people wgere sick and tired of liberalstrying to promote drug use, euthanasia, Satansim, abortion, and then simply disrupting the Aspergia boards if their points weren't agreed with. The whole point of the FAM forums from the start was to have those who wanted to have SERIOUS discussions get together as a single unit. It was also the result of so many Aspies on the Aspergia board whining about trolls, and wanna-bees and you name it hogging the board and steering conversations into idle chit-chat and foolish joking. So then I created what everyone asked for and people wound up over at WrongPlanet discussing spanking in the adult forum.

I, consistent as ever, have maintained these forums in keeping with what peope initially wanted, but it seems that no matter what I do, no one is pleased, which is why I have contemplated shutting them down from time to time.

But trying to please everyone seems to only result in annoyed members, and so I have taken another tact and simply responded quickly to trolls and cut off bickering before it can go too far. As the forum owner and moderator, I have access to information about the members that you do not, and often times when I ban a member, three of four additional usernames get swept up in the ban - all of them with the exact same IP address as the banned member, all of them trolls that members have previously complained about.

Often times what you may believe to be a simple political discussion going awry is really my having no patience with a troll who has no interest whatsoever in the subject he is discussing but who is just interested in riling up members. And even though I can see that his IP address is the same as another troll who left the forum in days past, I cannot tell you all that without compromising personal information. So all I can do is either try to get him to shut up by using FACTS or else ban him outright and look like a tyrant.

That is why things happen as they do around here.

TomAdministrator