davbret...
i agree completely!
i happen to use vulgar language, but that's who i am.
i am no different around my peers or family.
i don't know why this has become such an issue.
i'm not cursing out people on this board!
WTF..(is that ok?)

 

Maybe what this forum needs is a battle royale....

Or a hug.... THEN a Battle Royale!

YES!

 

>>Was that really neccessary domini? Do you need to name names and junk like that? I think that kind of "Hey Joe, you used be a bad-boy and now you're great" junk is as immature as direct insults and has no place on this site.

I disagree, orbhot, it was totally necessary and it wasn't junk. I'm very sorry you see it like that. It was a genuine cudo to him. It was posted publicly to show people can have bad days and can grow from them. This thread was about the site's profanities and personal attacks. So I wanted to point out that people can change or people can have an off day and can move on from it.

And now onto a separate point, why are you trying to make me out to be a "bad guy" here for posting a cudo for someone!? Why are you calling me immature? Isn
't that to be considered a personal attack, labelling someone with something like that? I thought I added a great point to this tread. A point that people shouldn't be stereotyped for a post or series of posts in this case. That people should get given the benefit of the doubt. That people can grow and move on. That people can change.

 

I think that the spirit of MCO is to help each other as enthusiasts of owning and driving MINIs.

I do not like seeing anyone treat another person with disrespect on this site.
Sometimes you might feel like saying something negative but there are other ways to voice your opinion. Try a PM to the person if you must.

I do not believe that this site is "overmoderated". Overall I think this is a pretty good site for MINI owners.

It is always up to each of us who are active MCO members to make this site what it is and to also make it better. Lets try harder not give up on it.

 

>>
>>And now onto a separate point, why are you trying to make me out to be a "bad guy" here for posting a cudo for someone!? Why are you calling me immature? Isn
>>'t that to be considered a personal attack, labelling someone with something like that? I thought I added a great point to this tread. A point that people shouldn't be stereotyped for a post or series of posts in this case. That people should get given the benefit of the doubt. That people can grow and move on. That people can change. >>>


And there-in lies the fear of over-moderation. As we hopefully have all realized by now, it can be difficult to express or read TONE on the internet. Most of us are not accomplished writers and, although we might have a particular flavor or intent behind our words, it is not often clearly understood.

The result, it can be interpreted as a personal attack.

To be honest Domini, I read your post with a sarcastic tone and incorrectly interpreted it as an attack not kudos to the recipient. Should the thread be locked for that???

 

Drink the purple Kool-aid.

 

What's a "battle royale"? If it's like a Crown Royal...I'm with that (although a nice single malt would be preferable...minihune, you listening? ).

Of course, I'm fairly sure that a goodly percentage of current MCO members are not legally able to consume "adult beverages" ... so maybe this too is not a good topic?

 

Ill take the red pill..

 

>>To be honest Domini, I read your post with a sarcastic tone and incorrectly interpreted it as an attack not kudos to the recipient.

I have a question, for you KevM. Why did you look at my message with a sarcastic tone? I ask this for a variety of reasons. One reason is to show to the group, that the way one looks at things car dramatically affect ones understanding of them. Another reason I ask is, is there something I should be aware of that has caused you to read my post as sarcastic?

 

Can't we all just get along?
-Rodney King

:smile:

 

I suspect the real problem here is the medium as much as the message.

email seems to the writer to be the spoken word but to the reader it is the written word. Because there are no vocal inflections or facial/body language clues for the reader they project whatever value/mood they are in at the time to interperate the post and can come up with something quite different than was intended.

This has become a big problem with corporate emails and I have learned to read BEFORE hitting the Send rather than afterwords. That - and avoiding the 'reply all' function can avoid a ton of grief.

I tend to click away from rants unless they are very erudite and humerous so in the long run they become self defeating for the writers' point of view.

 

>>>>To be honest Domini, I read your post with a sarcastic tone and incorrectly interpreted it as an attack not kudos to the recipient.
>>
>>I have a question, for you KevM. Why did you look at my message with a sarcastic tone? I ask this for a variety of reasons. One reason is to show to the group, that the way one looks at things car dramatically affect ones understanding of them. Another reason I ask is, is there something I should be aware of that has caused you to read my post as sarcastic?

hmmmmm fair question. It is certainly not some bad prior experience with your posts or anything.

Not sure, but let me throw out a couple of possibilities.

1. I'M very sarcastic by nature, and probably expect the same from people.

2. I was feeling on guard about the topic (as a sarcastic person, I find that I do offend more often then I intend to). So I may have transferred those feelings of being on the defensive to your post as being on the offensive to someone.

3. I may have taken "offense" to the vulgar (ostentatious) concept of congratulating another for his/her personal growth. (see my previous post on offense and profanity). By this I mean, I might have thought to myself, "even if true, in seems awfully pretentious to point out that not only did another person have a fault, but to rub their face in it by mentioning their improvement."

Please don't mis-interpret this, I wasn't ACTUALLY offended, heck, I wouldn't have been if your post was meant for me and was ACTUALLY meant in that manner... but I think I have relatively thick skin I'm just playing along with the exercise to demonstrate how people are "offended" and how virtually impossible it would be to moderate it out of the realm of possibility.

_________________
She let's me drive her MCS (which is good, cause I gave it to her as a wedding present)!!!

Our Baby? - she's an 03 Elect Blue (white roof/wheels) MCS, w/ all the toys (premium, cold, h/k, Nav, xenon, fogs etc) !

 

>>Can't we all just get along?
>> -Rodney King
>>
>> :smile:

YES!!! With a "Vanilla Lemon Drop" (Vanilla Vodka shot and suck on a lemon afterwards) Yummy...see, I feel better now.
:smile:

 

Everyone,
I wanted to provide to some clarification on the profanity and personal attack policies that we are attempting to enforce. First some things we are not saying:

- we are NOT saying don't use profanity (we do ask to consider whether you need to include any form of profanity in your post but its not prohibited from occassional use)
- we are NOT saying don't use of special characters to soften profanity that you may use (often I will update posts to replace profanity with special characters)

We ARE saying that personal attacks will NOT be tolerated regardless if they use profanity or not. When I see a post saying "You're an *********" it will be deleted. Also, if a thread has largely turned into a slugfest we will delete the whole thread (this is due to the amount of time that is required to clean up a thread when there are many posts). We will always, at first, do our best to save the constructive part of a thread, but if it degenerates into multiple pages of ranting and/or bashing it will be deleted.

Again, I want the site to be as open and informative as possible but I also want it to develop into the best example of what an online community can offer its members. To do that everyone needs to contribute in a positive way.

Mark

 

The MAN has spoken !!! I agree ,let us now move on

 

So...

No Battle Royale???

 

Pop-Tarts for everyone!

 

>>So...
>>
>>No Battle Royale???
>>
>> I wanted to see one......

 

Right on, Mark. Good work.

 

Woohoo!

I think one of the reasons this sight was the best in the first place was the overall sense of being able to ask a dumb question without being shot by 16 people within the first 3 minutes after the post (disclaimer - there are no such things as dumb questions).

Some of that has started to subtly change, and I'm happy to see some of the moderators put their foot down.

This doesn't really border on removing freedom from individuals, but it does require consideration from individuals. What ever happened to the golden rule?

I know a bit about flying and cars, but I know nothing about the rodeo. If I suddenly became interested, and went to a new board about rodeo and asked questions, they would probably sound totally ignorant - and that's OK. I would hope that there would be a site where one can ask and glean info about a new topic in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere - something MCO has done well. It is really up to us to maintain that. If we can't, the next step is moderation - and what's that saying anyway (eventhough I really don't live by it), moderation in all things...

I think what Mark is saying is that the swearing or cursing itself is not the issue, it is the context in which it is used.

I want Brown Sugar pop tarts!



Randy

 

>>- we are NOT saying don't use profanity (we do ask to consider whether you need to include any form of profanity in your post but its not prohibited from occassional use)
>>- we are NOT saying don't use of special characters to soften profanity that you may use (often I will update posts to replace profanity with special characters)<<

Actually, Dave did say both of those things:
Might want to clarify that somehow (OR just drop the whole thing... )

_________________

 

Maybe some of us aren't as familiar with some of the discussions that got out of hand, so its hard to definitively know where "the line" is from experience....hence some bewilderment. However the guidelines are clearly stated and we all trust they will be enforced. Also, we all may have to do some readjustment because some of the "normal banter" we've been accustomed to (...and been amused by?) on occasion just won't fly now. We'll get there, but the moderators should just do their job as they see fit and we'll catch up.

 

>>Actually, Dave did say both of those things:
>>>>
>>Might want to clarify that somehow (OR just drop the whole thing... )

I spoke with Dave this afternoon and the policy is that Personal attacks (using profanity or not) will be dealt with swiftly. Additionally the use of profanity for the sake of profanity will be dealt with as well. Just a couple of days ago we had a user which started posting profanity wherever possible. That said we have to take each occurrence on a case by case basis....to date every incident has been different.

In case it isn't obvious the reason that this has become such a hot button for us over the last few days is that there have been a large number of personal attacks starting up (must be the heat) and profanity has gotten out of hand in these threads. Given that the current process is to contact a moderator if you see something that is questionable or obviously violate the site posting guidelines, we've been receiving a LOT of PMs and email. Since we all want to move the site forward both functionally as well as informationally, cleaning these issues up takes a huge amount of time that we could be spending elsewhere on the site (like getting it migrated to a new software platform so we have better features for everyone). All I'm asking is that the site guidelines be observed to keep this a pleasant place to visit.

Now that this has been beaten to death I'm getting back to work on the migration and other site-related issues.

Thanks!

Mark

 

Maybe the better way of describing the problem is profanity with personal attacks, or profanity that's used to incite. There is a big difference between bombing the forums with profanity and an occasional profanity to express frustration over fresh damage to your MINI in an accident.

The example Mark gave is a good demonstration of how people have taken to using extra characters in an attempt to skirt what profanity is. This has been increasingly common in some of the multi page flames. Because of that context - to attack, incite, or bait other users, it becomes a moderation issue.

Say you want to quote a music lyric quoted, the context is totally different then. "Get ready cuz this *****'s about to get heavy." - Eminem

To pick up on something Randy took note of, the tone of the site has started to change in subtle and not so subtle ways. There has been an increase in hostility and a less welcoming and tollerant atmosphere. That's personally what is most disappointing for me.

Regardless of what we do as moderators we won't please everyone. We are put in a spot to balance the need to have a broad range of topics on an informative and welcoming site and trying to draw a line between simple disagreement and outright hostility to other members. We're not on a witch hunt, but at the same time we will step in when things boil over.

Dave

Edited: just noticed this was my 2500 post

_________________
PM Dave

 

Hey Y'all
being an old SYSOP, when you have an open public board, you have to cater to the general mass, EG: I have two heavy users on my board, one that talks in let's say "shop" talk", the other user that'a never seen anybody have a "FIT" also use's the board. How do you keep them both happy? You have to moderate the post.
Usually this is software invoked, EG: tell software to not let S#$%&" in, it will then bonce it to the moderator, for he or she to view. Then they will edit it if need be.
Running a Bulliten Board System back in '95 , that 80% of the people in the chat rooms were totally RUDE. I guess they have gained power behind the keyboard!

As for MCO, this is a free place to come and enjoy the MINI Cooper,
So I think thier request on language is not unreasonable. Remember it's open
to ALL, you might be surprized at what you think is cool, may totally offend someone else.

BTW: To Randy, you can't have brown sugar pop tarts! they ARE mine!

just my 1/2 cents worth