Moderator team changes

[Tom L.]

It makes me very sad to see all these recent developments. Until then I was feeling that this board was the anti-VB. None of the feuding, bad blood, anger and so on. No personal attacks. Everything was nice. I felt comfortable here, with none of the really strict rules of VB. Now this has all changed.

I've almost come to wonder if such a thing (a polite internet board) is even possible. Some time ago, when I was getting sick of the nastiness on a board with which nobody here is familiar (you didn't miss out on anything- trust me on this), I PM'd a bunch of folks whom I thought would get along and started another board without even announcing it to the "troublemakers".

We managed to melt it down without any help whatsoever from our "enemies" on the first board.

It was rather amusing, even as it was disappointing.

 

[Ansciess]

We managed to melt it down without any help whatsoever from our "enemies" on the first board.

Tom, do you suppose that you could have structured the expectations and guidelines of your board such that that wouldn't have happened?

I think that conflict can be o.k. though - and expected especially if you include a debate forum on your board - as long as "troublemakers" are not in positions of power and "severe troublemakers" are identified. A board can probably just ride out conflict as long as no one steps too far out of line, and people will just weed themselves out if it's not the board for them. Ultimately admins have to decide what kind of board they want and structure the rules and forum accordingly. Nothing will please everyone.

 

[Tom L.]

I don't know. I had never started a board before, although I had helped moderate the first board I mentioned. I may have had unrealistic expectations. If I had to do it again, I think I'd do it differently. A debate forum like VB's "Compost Heap" or the debate forum Indian Summer has here might have been a good idea, now that you mention it. I just wasn't expecting things to get heated; we had all known each other for some time and I thought we knew each other well enough to know where we just didn't see eye-to-eye, and would be able to just not discuss those things.