Handbags at dawn, part 564949

Person Of Interest wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

My view is that ATD meanders off topic regularly but at the moment if Hairy posts in s thread then he gets jumped on by other posters. If punchdrunk says something then hairy has a pop back. Sensible posts anything Rickler has a pop at sensible who then reacts and it all kicks off.

Surely by having your own thread permanently is the ideal place to slag each other off if you don't want to ignore each other? Hairys put some people on his ignore list, if the others followed suit then nobody will get upset with it and the thread will become pointless and die a death won't it?

Lots of people have complained to the mods about the ongoing feud so we have to do something or we lose posters who are fed up with it all. You have to see it from the point of view of others.

What about creating a new forum for certain posters to slug-it-out? That way the usual suspects don't have to bother putting each other on their 'foes' list and can verbally beat the crap out of each other to their heart's content.

Two purposes would be served. 1, It would remove it away from the main topic of conversation thus saving the thread from possible melt-down. 2, It would provide endless hours of popcorn time to other ATDers.

The only thing would be what to call it? The Monkey Cage? Cesspit? Den Of Rage? Doom Room?

I like this idea!

Rickler wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

My view is that ATD meanders off topic regularly but at the moment if Hairy posts in s thread then he gets jumped on by other posters. If punchdrunk says something then hairy has a pop back. Sensible posts anything Rickler has a pop at sensible who then reacts and it all kicks off.

Surely by having your own thread permanently is the ideal place to slag each other off if you don't want to ignore each other? Hairys put some people on his ignore list, if the others followed suit then nobody will get upset with it and the thread will become pointless and die a death won't it?

Lots of people have complained to the mods about the ongoing feud so we have to do something or we lose posters who are fed up with it all. You have to see it from the point of view of others.

LOl.  GJ been possessed by Posty...

That's a reasonable point but it would have more accurate to say "ATD has been possessed by Pasoti". I'm not trying to be antagonistic here just trying to point out that Pasoti became what it did in tiny steps, for the large part, and each of the tiny steps was usually entirely justified (just as this one is).

Biologists use the phrase "convergent evolution" to express the process of entirely different creatures, say birds and fish and mammals, all evolving into creatures exhibiting similar characteristics (penguins and trout and seals all share a similar shape, for instance), because they all face similar advantages and disadvantages and their is a similar outcome which is best suited to their common environments. Other examples that spring to mind are bats and birds, monkeys and lemurs and arboreal marsupials. There's lots of them.

ATD will face all of the same problems that Pasoti once faced because it is essentially the same thing, well it exists in a similar environment and has a similar basic function, and the same issues will inevitably arise. Nobody sets out to make bad, ill-informed decisions and everybody makes the best of it as they see fit according to circumstance. In this case splitting the thread is roughly equivalent to "off to terraces" over there. It is a similar solution to a similar problem.

And so it will go on until, in a few years time, ATD becomes thoroughly Pasotified simply because it must at which point ATD2 will be needed.

If people do not want this to happen it is up to them as individual posters to behave in such a manner as to make the need for any moderation disappear.

Whatever transpires it won't be the fault of the mods, even if it is them that actually action unpopular (in some quarters) decisions; complaining about what they do is just a smokescreen created to deflect responsibility.

There. That's my say except to add that I don't really give a toss what the mods do about it and that the endless clashes bore me shitless.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Rickler wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

My view is that ATD meanders off topic regularly but at the moment if Hairy posts in s thread then he gets jumped on by other posters. If punchdrunk says something then hairy has a pop back. Sensible posts anything Rickler has a pop at sensible who then reacts and it all kicks off.

Surely by having your own thread permanently is the ideal place to slag each other off if you don't want to ignore each other? Hairys put some people on his ignore list, if the others followed suit then nobody will get upset with it and the thread will become pointless and die a death won't it?

Lots of people have complained to the mods about the ongoing feud so we have to do something or we lose posters who are fed up with it all. You have to see it from the point of view of others.

LOl.  GJ been possessed by Posty...

That's a reasonable point but it would have more accurate to say "ATD has been possessed by Pasoti". I'm not trying to be antagonistic here just trying to point out that Pasoti became what it did in tiny steps, for the large part, and each of the tiny steps was usually entirely justified (just as this one is).

Biologists use the phrase "convergent evolution" to express the process of entirely different creatures, say birds and fish and mammals, all evolving into creatures exhibiting similar characteristics (penguins and trout and seals all share a similar shape, for instance), because they all face similar advantages and disadvantages and their is a similar outcome which is best suited to their common environments. Other examples that spring to mind are bats and birds, monkeys and lemurs and arboreal marsupials. There's lots of them.

ATD will face all of the same problems that Pasoti once faced because it is essentially the same thing, well it exists in a similar environment and has a similar basic function, and the same issues will inevitably arise. Nobody sets out to make bad, ill-informed decisions and everybody makes the best of it as they see fit according to circumstance. In this case splitting the thread is roughly equivalent to "off to terraces" over there. It is a similar solution to a similar problem.

And so it will go on until, in a few years time, ATD becomes thoroughly Pasotified simply because it must at which point ATD2 will be needed.

If people do not want this to happen it is up to them as individual posters to behave in such a manner as to make the need for any moderation disappear.

Whatever transpires it won't be the fault of the mods, even if it is them that actually action unpopular (in some quarters) decisions; complaining about what they do is just a smokescreen created to deflect responsibility.

There. That's my say except to add that I don't really give a toss what the mods do about it and that the endless clashes bore me shitless.

Absolutely! - The rest is human nature but hopefully, the election of moderators/admin/owners will prevent or at least delay the 'PASOTI Effect'.

Now now, this thread is deviating again, start arguing or its off to Junior ATD!
That's just bullshit SFD, pasoti fiction (look what my spellchecker did to that lol) is more than splitting a thread and moving it to terraces, when we get pulled up for having multi's, banning people for being boring twats, positive, negative or the face doesn't fit, cleaning threads from any embarrassing modular errors, licking arse of anyone involved in the power games (who's on "your side") and generally acting like a bunch of playground bullies because they OWN the site then you may have a point but your comment is really feckin insulting to be honest.
If anybody wants things to change in the way the site works or is modded then post something on the site section, we the mods will discuss it and if there is a majority of posters voting for change then the site will change, democracy innit?

To be fair Iggy, I think that SFD was predicting rather than stating the here and now.

For me, the biggest single influence in how a site evolves is the way it is moderated. It is far and away the biggest mitigating factor in how a forum evolves. If somehow a group of social climbers who all thought the same way, were voted in to the Mod Room then the whole ethos and direction the site takes would change 180 degrees.

It's been said many times but probably the biggest core value of ATD is its 'light touch' style of modding which is adopted by all who are successful in being voted in. Long may that continue.

That said, the Mods are duty bound to do something if people are actually making complaints to them. (I still think that's a bit girly like running to teacher, but that's just me I guess)

My own take is that there are one or two contrarians (great word, knecht  ) who simply love a row, and enjoy pressing certain peoples buttons because they know those people are nailed on to react, but there you go.

Czarcasm wrote:

For me, the biggest single influence in how a site evolves is the way it is moderated. It is far and away the biggest mitigating factor in how a forum evolves. If somehow a group of social climbers who all thought the same way, were voted in to the Mod Room then the whole ethos and direction the site takes would change 180 degrees.

It's been said many times but probably the biggest core value of ATD is its 'light touch' style of modding which is adopted by all who are successful in being voted in. Long may that continue.

That said, the Mods are duty bound to do something if people are actually making complaints to them. (I still think that's a bit girly like running to teacher, but that's just me I guess)

My own take is that there are one or two contrarians (great word, knecht  ) who simply love a row, and enjoy pressing certain peoples buttons because they know those people are nailed on to react, but there you go.

Yes and I am not even sure if it would take a "group", I think that one bullying and controlling character would be able to intimidate his way to the control position and when intimidation fails, other underhand tools and tactics are used. But as we said from day one of ATD's creation, that will be the time to up roots and start again. In a way, ATD is simply an evolved extension of PASOTI where of course we all know how one person managed to gain the control position. I am sure that in time we will become PASOTI - ATD - ?.

Iggy wrote:

Now now, this thread is deviating again, start arguing or its off to Junior ATD!
That's just bullshit SFD, pasoti fiction (look what my spellchecker did to that lol) is more than splitting a thread and moving it to terraces, when we get pulled up for having multi's, banning people for being boring twats, positive, negative or the face doesn't fit, cleaning threads from any embarrassing modular errors, licking arse of anyone involved in the power games (who's on "your side") and generally acting like a bunch of playground bullies because they OWN the site then you may have a point but your comment is really feckin insulting to be honest.
If anybody wants things to change in the way the site works or is modded then post something on the site section, we the mods will discuss it and if there is a majority of posters voting for change then the site will change, democracy innit?

I think you need to read my post again, Iggy. You're getting offended by something I haven't said.

And I don't want to change the way this site works or is modded. You can do as you please. I don't really care about such things. If I feel that policy crosses a line that is unacceptable to me I might have a whinge and if that doesn't achieve anything I'll just stop posting. Right now I'm not whingeing no matter how you might perceive what I have said. The problem here and now, if there is one at all, doesn't reside in moderation policy.

The mods are there to moderate.

A big part of the job has been to try to spot the usual suspects finding their way onto here and causing problems. (Though sometimes I think ATD don't like it up em and go running to teacher to stop the nasty boys being .....errr ..... nasty). Another part of the job is to stop people posting "unacceptable" material - whether that be things such as 'porn' or posts that may lead to potential legal issues.

Another part of the job is to stop the site decaying into chaos. That's the really difficult one! One person's chaos is another person's normal behaviour. It was felt that the constant mutual abuse/provocation between the usual suspects was getting ridiculous. Too many threads were being taken over by personal wars making it impossible for other posters to enjoy the site. This site should be here for everyone. The argument had become more important than what was being argued about. Arguments are fine. Nobody in the mod room thinks they're not. But it was coming to the point where if suffered had said it was raining the come-back would have been "Don't be a cnut, it's not raining in Auchtermuchty!" Or if sensible had said he thought that he thought the pitch looked in good condition he would have been told to "Feck off and stop being a cnut you boring old man." What next ...... arguments in Pete's Word Game?!

This site should never be a totally un-moderated zone. There will always be disagreement over mod decisions made close to the boundaries. I think Sir Frank's analysis is a fascinating one. (And I agree with GOB that SFD was saying it may happen in the future not now.) It is up to individual responsibility to make sure the ethos of the site is maintained and that is an ever-changing ethos.

Even Sir Francis has said the constant bickering bores him shitless right now, so what if he decided he's had enough of the petty bickering and deletes his account? Just another statistic in the life of ATD but at some point if there are more people leaving because of a tiny minority who are just making every thread boring as buggery for everyone else then you have a problem.

I don't think there's ever any danger of ATD becoming Pasoti MKII. All posters who meet the qualifying criteria, which isn't exactly making it exclusive, get to vote for 3 mods. Personally I've always voted for two extremes and someone who usually takes the middle ground. To use actual posters as examples I might vote for Knecht, Punchdrunk and someone like Yea Man.

To me this is a way of trying to keep the site from being run by lily livered lefties like Knecht  or by right wing thugs like punchy  . That's just my reasoning. I don't think it's healthy to have a mod room that all agree with each other 100%. It can create a group that can thrust their ideas on the site which might be hated by the majority of the site.

Now I know we've had loads of people leave the site because they haven't liked something and it's up to them, but at some point you have to look at the reasons people are leaving and address this. There is a problem with 4 or 5 posters at the moment and other posters are complaining about it so it is something that us mods have to do something about or lose more posters.

What would be the ideal scenario for me would be that the ones involved all sort something out amongst themselves. Send messages to each other to try and reach a way of ignoring each other or going 15 rounds at a neutral venue somewhere and afterwards it's sorted, water under the bridge and start again. I can't see that happening and the messages will probably just make the situation worse, but it's what I would prefer. Or you could all send suggestions in to the mods and then all of us chat about it and try to come up with a solution.

What won't happen is what you see on Pasoti where somebody posts a quite reasonable comment or question and Newell tells them to feck off because it's his site and he'll do what he wants. ATD is all of ours and that's why it's worked so well and why it would be so much feckin better if the squabbling stopped. Yes I call people cnuts all the time but not fellow posters who I just don't agree with so I know it's rich coming from me but the one's involved all seem to get pleasure out of winding the others up and so it escalates.

If nobody can come up with a better solution then this is where the shit will be moved from now on. You have the chance to alter that yourselves.

A lot of sense being talked here. In my opinion, it's only a very few posters out of several hundred who obviously are never going to see eye-to-eye. That's just humans for you and some things will never change.

99% of ATD is pretty autonomous and problems rarely get to the point of being, well, real problems to the effect that it potentially could Pasotise ATD. The mods, in my opinion have got it just about right in the way they keep this site ticking along. Although saying that, I don't envy their job for one minute.

I was being slightly tounge-in-cheek earlier in the thread when I suggested a separate forum to split the anarchic posters to verbal each other to death, but what do you think mods? A DMZ ( Demilitarized zone) for anyone to 'Have It Out', if you will.

Thinking about it, I don't think you'll need to use too often, but it's there to nip the personal squabbling in the bud.

PS: That's it, call it the DMZ.  

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Iggy wrote:

Now now, this thread is deviating again, start arguing or its off to Junior ATD!
That's just bullshit SFD, pasoti fiction (look what my spellchecker did to that lol) is more than splitting a thread and moving it to terraces, when we get pulled up for having multi's, banning people for being boring twats, positive, negative or the face doesn't fit, cleaning threads from any embarrassing modular errors, licking arse of anyone involved in the power games (who's on "your side") and generally acting like a bunch of playground bullies because they OWN the site then you may have a point but your comment is really feckin insulting to be honest.
If anybody wants things to change in the way the site works or is modded then post something on the site section, we the mods will discuss it and if there is a majority of posters voting for change then the site will change, democracy innit?

I think you need to read my post again, Iggy. You're getting offended by something I haven't said.

And I don't want to change the way this site works or is modded. You can do as you please. I don't really care about such things. If I feel that policy crosses a line that is unacceptable to me I might have a whinge and if that doesn't achieve anything I'll just stop posting. Right now I'm not whingeing no matter how you might perceive what I have said. The problem here and now, if there is one at all, doesn't reside in moderation policy.

Not really offended SF just giving up smoking.   I can see the revalance of your post but the ananolgy, if that's the right word, that you are using needs that certain X factor which is a devious control freak, there feet wouldn't touch the ground here.

Czarcasm wrote :

That said, the Mods are duty bound to do something if people are actually making complaints to them. (I still think that's a bit girly like running to teacher, but that's just me I guess)

I was banned from Pasoti because, 'the mods are getting so many complaints about your predictions of doom' . That won't happen here.

As long as the mods and keyholders uphold the ATD ethos of free speech, they should act in any way they see fit to stop posters endlessly bickering, often offensively at present.
A 'fight' section and a week's cool off suspension of account for the persistent offenders etc.

    

Anyone who thinks the problem is going to be solved by setting up a special thread is just nuts.

In fact, the problem is never going to be solved unless you start banning and that is against the ATD ethos.

So who are all these people complaining in private and why - aren't any of them brave enough to say publically?

And personally...  I'm a lot more put off ATD by Greenjock's constant references to Hooper the Snooper etc than I am by Punchy giving Hairy a good licking which I actually enjoy. Maybe I should write and tell the mods and ask them for more of it?

FFS !  

If I don't like anything I just ignore it and skip to the next post. In general I believe we have got it about right. Would not like to see deletions or bannings unless the post is not legal or offends common decency. Like one of mine the other day. Perhaps I should ban myself!

I dont agree with the ignore button myself, and happily get on with the vast majority of posters on this
site, i dont like being called a cnut or a tosspot over a match thread or a prediction league would any of the holier than thou gang? if someone wants to call me that i will respond  as simple as that, those that dont like it sort out the one who always starts it! if not dont whine when it degenerates to a bitch fest.

Rickler wrote:

Anyone who thinks the problem is going to be solved by setting up a special thread is just nuts.

In fact, the problem is never going to be solved unless you start banning and that is against the ATD ethos.

So who are all these people complaining in private and why - aren't any of them brave enough to say publically?

And personally...  I'm a lot more put off ATD by Greenjock's constant references to Hooper the Snooper etc than I am by Punchy giving Hairy a good licking which I actually enjoy. Maybe I should write and tell the mods and ask them for more of it?

You see, that last bit there, that final part is trolling as it's designed purely to bait me into contradicting it and (Rickler hopes) into then proving I can best Punchie in an internet handbag fight. I'm not doing it Rickler as I can see through a trolling post.

I'd suggest people just do what I've done - foe list. Although, I can see posts if people quote them.

Rickler wrote:

Anyone who thinks the problem is going to be solved by setting up a special thread is just nuts.

In fact, the problem is never going to be solved unless you start banning and that is against the ATD ethos.

So who are all these people complaining in private and why - aren't any of them brave enough to say publically?

And personally...  I'm a lot more put off ATD by Greenjock's constant references to Hooper the Snooper etc than I am by Punchy giving Hairy a good licking which I actually enjoy.  Maybe I should write and tell the mods and ask them for more of it?

Very good post, what saintly person is offended? bored possibly but why offended? that is assuming of course that anybody has complained.

Rickler wrote:

Anyone who thinks the problem is going to be solved by setting up a special thread is just nuts.

In fact, the problem is never going to be solved unless you start banning and that is against the ATD ethos.

So who are all these people complaining in private and why - aren't any of them brave enough to say publically?

And personally...  I'm a lot more put off ATD by Greenjock's constant references to Hooper the Snooper etc than I am by Punchy giving Hairy a good licking which I actually enjoy.  Maybe I should write and tell the mods and ask them for more of it?

Ricks, I agree, and don't for one minute suggest it's going to solve anything by setting up a DMZ forum. It's just better for all involved if it's out of the way rather than turn what could be a reasonable, intelligent, articulate debate into a  bitch-slapping, potty-mouthed, wank me, spank me, eat me ,beat me bitch-fest.

is the mystery of dnmsnz solved ?

Rickler wrote:

Anyone who thinks the problem is going to be solved by setting up a special thread is just nuts.

In fact, the problem is never going to be solved unless you start banning and that is against the ATD ethos.

So who are all these people complaining in private and why - aren't any of them brave enough to say publically?

And personally...  I'm a lot more put off ATD by Greenjock's constant references to Hooper the Snooper etc than I am by Punchy giving Hairy a good licking which I actually enjoy.  Maybe I should write and tell the mods and ask them for more of it?

That must be you're put off by my constant references to Hooper the snooper because you keep in touch with the cnut and are friendly with him because you're often sending me PM's with information on this that or another you want me to post and congratulating me on my stance etc.

As I've said often before, there are loads of things that people could level about ATD but turning into Pasoti MKII isn't one of them. I get bored shitless by certain things and you obviously don't like me insulting your snooping friend. I can live with that  

Just for you though Rickler, what an utter cnut that Tony Hooper is, he really is a feckin slimy piece of shit.

Why wouldn't Rickler post information himself? Why would Rickler PM someone else and say "post this"? I genuinely don't quite understand that at all.

Thank gawd it's now all on one thread