slowreactor wrote:Can everyone just SHUT UP and THINK ABOUT THIS? Also, I understand you have some issues with the mods and pets. Here's the thing: MODS ARE HUMANS TOO. You did mention a mod who apologized for picking favorites, but you said that one mod does not represent the entire mod community.
Slow
Mods are human, and because mods are human, CC admin should do what they can to minimize the possibility that a mods' "humanity" results in extreme favoritism.
Little things happen every day. What happened months back happened over an extended period and increased when I tried to get it addressed, extending to others who weren't even involved - much as you're seeing happening with the thread now.
Look around these forums; you'll see plenty of instances where people are complaining about favoritism. You may take the stance - as people did with me - that all those people must be wrong; must have been doing something to cause it.
In the months-long instance this mod is apologizing for, I'd simply got tired of some continual harassment I was getting for a few weeks and began retorting. When I began retorting, I was getting "disciplined" but the instigator never was. I commented about that one day, about that favoritism, and man, you'd have thought the heavens came down on me - again, you're seeing some of it, still, in this thread. After that, warnings were issued to all, which I heeded, and the 'pets" did not; the mods did not follow through with the warnings.
Oh, there were those who thought I should just ignore - mainly people who only saw a snippet here and there. There were those who thought I shouldn't complain about a mod or mods, ever, because I was complaining about popular mods. Heck, I was complaining about a mod that I otherwise liked. Instead of people (members, mods, admin) taking a look at the history of how this b.s. had started, I got the "HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT POPULAR VOLUNTEERS" messages - only, worse - for having made the statement.
There were those who thought I was making up how bad it was.
I do not believe in any conspiracy theories. If it happened to me, it could have happened, be happening, or has the potential to happen to others. Perhaps some of those who're now banned or getting uppity in forums and complaining about mods didn't start out that way.
Regardless what others, who only saw snippets, witnessed, what I experienced was bad enough, though, that the main "pet-saving" mod has apologized. I thought, wow, with this apology, admin can see that a situation really did get bad enough; a mod has admitted to it. Am I after the mod's head? Nope. I complimented the mod. The original title of this thread was "New personal hope for CC."
Bruce, Tish, others... who think no one should complain so publicly about a team of volunteers... At one time, I would've agreed with you about posts I'm making. But consider, if something like what happened to me over a 4-5 month period ever happened to you, you might think changes in that area are needed, too, and use every means you had to make people aware.
I thought, with this admission, admin would be able to see that stuff like this shouldn't happen. But for that, something must change. The same rules that applied then apply now; admin hasn't done anything to curb something like this happening to others in the future. There are still instances where one guy gets rapped for something, another guy gets a bye on it.
So, I contacted Andy, with a evidence that some of those previously-protected pets had started it up again, just this week; and with a copy of that mod's apology, also received this week. Evidence, I thought, that it not only can occur here, it did, despite all those people who thought I was just imagining how bad it was, or didn't care, because it was happening to me not them.
I thought Andy's response would be something like, "I'm sorry this happened. Team CC will be looking at ways to prevent this from occurring to others. Thanks for the information."
His response was more like the same, tired, disrespectful, "ignore it and move on, or leave," so I changed the title of my thread to "killed personal hope."
Mods need leeway; no rules changes should ever bind their hands to the point that they cannot exercise judgement. This escalating penalty system for minor annoyances may, however, be so harsh, that they do not wish to invoke it for some of their friends who get a bit testy at times; understandable. Why would they want a generally-good bloke banned for a few mistakes? So, instead, they do nothing. Sometimes 'nothing' works. For others, 'nothing' leads to ongoing nasties; sometimes those ongoing nasties cause other generally-good blokes to become disenchanted with this site. If disciplines for minor rules-breaking remained minor rather than major; if more things were 'warned' but warnings did not have to lead to banning; maybe more mods would use warnings even against friends.
Maybe. That might not be the answer. But as I've said, if what I know happened to me, and what a particular mod knows was done to me, unaddressed, was severe enough that the mod felt need to apologize for it all these months later, then doing something to prevent it for future seems better than the same tired tactic of, "ignore it or leave." I think more needs to be done than just these member attempts to shut me up about something that DID occur, WAS extreme, and SHOULD be stopped from happening to others.
To be clear, to the mod: I do appreciate the apology, and I do accept it. I think you might even have some ideas about what changes could be made that would prevent anyone doing a little too much abuse of authority, as you now recognize you did. This is no attempt to hang you out to dry; I didn't attempt that back then and have no reason to attempt it now.