A particular thread has come to my attention (Have you noticed the changes on the forum?), but quite honestly I don't have time to read all 360+ posts within it. I read the first few pages, and the last couple of pages. So perhaps something posted in the middle was important to the discussion, but I have to claim purposely forced ignorance on those posts, nonetheless.
The moderators here were pretty much given carte blanche to manage this site to the best of their abilities using their own judgement in most matters. This is why I specifically chose the vehicle of the membership choosing these moderators, rather than my attempting to pick people who may think exactly as I do. I wanted the moderators to BE what you all felt was best for this site in those duties.
As far as I can tell, they are all three doing an excellent job of it, and if the amount of negative feedback about there actions is any indication, so do you all.
But there are some things that will need my own attention, for one reason or another. There may come times when situations arise where the tools they have at their disposal in order to "fix" a perceived problem may not be enough to do the job. Quite possibly this thread mentioned above brings to light one of them....
Personally, I guess some fault will lie with me, because I did create the Chat Chat forum, but did so with little or no guidance about what really would be acceptable there. One of my faults is that I expect people to act and behave in a manner that most people would find to be sensible, adult (but not TOO adult), reasonable, and with the current and future audience of this site kept in mind. Yes, I have allowed children to have access to this site. I felt that OUR future in this interest demands that I do so. When I was a kid, I would have DIED to have something like this available to me. A place where I could soak up all the knowledge presented about corn snakes, with really no restriction other than my ability to read fast enough. And being a curious minded kid, certainly I might wander into a forum where topics might be discussed that my mom would be aghast at my reading. Maybe even aghast enough to pull my access to this site.
Is that what you all want to have happen here? Get this site blacklisted by parents because the topic matter offends THEM that their children are reading? Is that really fair?
Now, I will go on record to state that I really have no problems with adults talking about adult topics. That generally comes with the turf in ANY publicly accessible forum. The problem comes in where to draw the line. Unfortunately, that place for the line will vary depending on nearly everyone tasked with drawing it. And as such, everyone else will be dissatisfied with where that line finally becomes drawn. Realistically speaking, one person is going to piss off a handful of people no matter what he or she chooses to do.
Obviously, the best method would be to simply filter out everyone from such a forum who is not above a certain age bracket. But kids being kids, some (perhaps most) will lie about it, and then you wind up in the same pickle you started out in. No one here, especially me, is going to attempt to verify the age of everyone currently on this site and signing up in the future. So that simply becomes an impractical manner to tackle this problem.
There really are only two choices about this: Either the viewers are limited as to what they can see, or the posters are limited as to what they can say. The logistics of handling either one of those practical methods will prove to be a headache to any involved. And again, quite likely people will not like how it would be implemented, no matter how it would be so.
So here's some choices I can see, off the top of my head:
Perhaps you can think of something else to add to this list.
Obviously #3 would be the most black and white of the possibilities, but the filtering mechanism will have to be such that it is as little headache as possible, and pretty much automated. The obvious choice would be to add it as an optional to the Contributor level membership, since the ability to pay the membership contribution pretty much rules out anyone not able to have a PayPal account or some other mechanism in order to effect payment. Or I could handle this much as I have with the FaunaClassifieds site where I have an unrestricted HELL forum, which has it's own specific payment option. But I think I would handle that differently here (and perhaps in retrospect over there) by making that particular membership LIFETIME (meaning the maximum length of time I can set up a membership OR the death of this forum or me, whichever comes first).
Anyway, I don't have time to proof this post, so please excuse any poor word choice or punctuation. This is just something being thrown out on the table, and is by no means anything that I feel required to do either way. My goal with this suggestion is to try to give as many people as possible whatever it is they want out of this site without negatively impacting the site in general or the other members. If you have a better idea of how best to do this, then take a stab at it. Bearing in mind that not everything is possible nor practical, and anything that requires my personal hand in it 24/7 or is a technical headache to implement, quite likely will not be top of the list of choices.
Oh yeah.... I'm going to post this originally in the "General Chit-Chat forum", because that is where this issue originated, then move it into the "Discussions about this site" with a forwarding link, because I believe that is where it is most appropriate to be placed.
The moderators here were pretty much given carte blanche to manage this site to the best of their abilities using their own judgement in most matters. This is why I specifically chose the vehicle of the membership choosing these moderators, rather than my attempting to pick people who may think exactly as I do. I wanted the moderators to BE what you all felt was best for this site in those duties.
As far as I can tell, they are all three doing an excellent job of it, and if the amount of negative feedback about there actions is any indication, so do you all.
But there are some things that will need my own attention, for one reason or another. There may come times when situations arise where the tools they have at their disposal in order to "fix" a perceived problem may not be enough to do the job. Quite possibly this thread mentioned above brings to light one of them....
Personally, I guess some fault will lie with me, because I did create the Chat Chat forum, but did so with little or no guidance about what really would be acceptable there. One of my faults is that I expect people to act and behave in a manner that most people would find to be sensible, adult (but not TOO adult), reasonable, and with the current and future audience of this site kept in mind. Yes, I have allowed children to have access to this site. I felt that OUR future in this interest demands that I do so. When I was a kid, I would have DIED to have something like this available to me. A place where I could soak up all the knowledge presented about corn snakes, with really no restriction other than my ability to read fast enough. And being a curious minded kid, certainly I might wander into a forum where topics might be discussed that my mom would be aghast at my reading. Maybe even aghast enough to pull my access to this site.
Is that what you all want to have happen here? Get this site blacklisted by parents because the topic matter offends THEM that their children are reading? Is that really fair?
Now, I will go on record to state that I really have no problems with adults talking about adult topics. That generally comes with the turf in ANY publicly accessible forum. The problem comes in where to draw the line. Unfortunately, that place for the line will vary depending on nearly everyone tasked with drawing it. And as such, everyone else will be dissatisfied with where that line finally becomes drawn. Realistically speaking, one person is going to piss off a handful of people no matter what he or she chooses to do.
Obviously, the best method would be to simply filter out everyone from such a forum who is not above a certain age bracket. But kids being kids, some (perhaps most) will lie about it, and then you wind up in the same pickle you started out in. No one here, especially me, is going to attempt to verify the age of everyone currently on this site and signing up in the future. So that simply becomes an impractical manner to tackle this problem.
There really are only two choices about this: Either the viewers are limited as to what they can see, or the posters are limited as to what they can say. The logistics of handling either one of those practical methods will prove to be a headache to any involved. And again, quite likely people will not like how it would be implemented, no matter how it would be so.
So here's some choices I can see, off the top of my head:
- ALL participants can voluntarily refrain from using language and innuendo that would likely be considered as offensive to the majority of people reading their posts.
- All participants can post whatever they please, but will be subject to the scrutiny of all the viewers and possibly subject to sanctions by the moderators after the fact if their post appears to be crossing an arbitrarily enforced line drawn by necessarily vaguely defined definitions.
- A separate "adult only" forum can be created for those who WANT such a thing, and completely inaccessible to anyone but those people who desire such access and able to prove they are actually adults.
Perhaps you can think of something else to add to this list.
Obviously #3 would be the most black and white of the possibilities, but the filtering mechanism will have to be such that it is as little headache as possible, and pretty much automated. The obvious choice would be to add it as an optional to the Contributor level membership, since the ability to pay the membership contribution pretty much rules out anyone not able to have a PayPal account or some other mechanism in order to effect payment. Or I could handle this much as I have with the FaunaClassifieds site where I have an unrestricted HELL forum, which has it's own specific payment option. But I think I would handle that differently here (and perhaps in retrospect over there) by making that particular membership LIFETIME (meaning the maximum length of time I can set up a membership OR the death of this forum or me, whichever comes first).
Anyway, I don't have time to proof this post, so please excuse any poor word choice or punctuation. This is just something being thrown out on the table, and is by no means anything that I feel required to do either way. My goal with this suggestion is to try to give as many people as possible whatever it is they want out of this site without negatively impacting the site in general or the other members. If you have a better idea of how best to do this, then take a stab at it. Bearing in mind that not everything is possible nor practical, and anything that requires my personal hand in it 24/7 or is a technical headache to implement, quite likely will not be top of the list of choices.
Oh yeah.... I'm going to post this originally in the "General Chit-Chat forum", because that is where this issue originated, then move it into the "Discussions about this site" with a forwarding link, because I believe that is where it is most appropriate to be placed.
