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There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 11/19/2001; 12:00 PM Long-time members of this site are familiar with nitcentral, the bulletin board that is the only surviving aspect of Nitpicker Central Internet Extension Office. Voices of Unreason grew out of Nitcentral. I kept posting long rants on various threads there, and got frustrated with the fact that I had to keep them short. It's a bulletin board, after all, and a ten page post is ungood. Beyond that the first few Authors followed me here. It would be fun to play a "six degrees of Unreason" game and see how everyone's interconnected. Heck, I met my fiancee there. I generally don't indulge in cross-website criticism. If I have a problem with the way someone is doing something I much prefer to just talk to them about it. Or even better just keep it to myself; I have my own site and can run it however I choose. It's a big old web. It's not my job to police everything. Yet. I do have a lot of affection for Nitcentral, so I'm going to break that rule for a moment here. The site's kinda gone downhill. Specifically, the "political musings" and "religious musings" threads are a complete disaster, particularly the latter. Part of it is one long-time poster who refuses to act even remotely like a civilized adult. The majority of it is a complete lack of control by the moderators. In religious musings, the moderator made a thread with a title specifically to attack this poster. WTF? I've recently been spending some time reading the website for Design for Community by web notable Derek Powazek. The book is now on my shortlist--at the top, right before a good book on CSS and a good book on javascript, in that order. The excerpts from that book make for very interesting reading. It plays into some ideas that I've had half-formed in my head, and it expands on them in a clear and understandable way. Really, go read through the excerpts and decide for yourself. I've called for a moderator's meeting--I'll end up e-mailing the Chief Nitpicker himself--so that we can discuss some of these issues. I really don't want to continue to be associated with a website where a moderator makes a thread just to attack a member. For that matter, I don't want to be associated with a website where one member is allowed to run rampant the way this one member is. I am well aware that there are sites where he would be more than welcome. Brian Carnell, for example, doesn't seem to be horribly bothered by namecalling--he was quoted in my local independent paper once calling a local activist a moron. (The guy is.) That works well for Brian's community, and I'm not criticizing Brian for that. I do feel that the moderators at Nitcentral, lacking guidance from Phil, allow way too much nonsense. We're talking a man who won't let there be a board for discussing The Simpsons because Bart is a bad role model for children, in his opinion. I think he'd be heartbroken to see some of the things that happen at Nitcentral while he's away. I don't know what the end result of the meeting will be, and really whatever they decide is fine. It's not my site. It's something that has been bothering me for a long time now and I just needed to get it off my chest. I work hard to avoid that sort of thing happening here. That despite a commitment not to delete posts. I think the next phase of that is going to have to be some clear terms of service. There are obviously times when I am going to have to delete posts--copyrighted material and porn come immediately to mind. With a strong commitment to freedom of thought and responsible behavior, we should do okay.
Re: There's no love here! By: Brian Carnell on 11/19/2001; 2:56 PM At 11:16 AM 11/19/2001 -0500, Mark wrote: >I've called for a moderator's meeting--I'll end up e-mailing the Chief >Nitpicker himself--so that we can discuss some of these issues. I really >don't want to continue to be associated with a website where a moderator >makes a thread just to attack a member. For that matter, I don't want to >be associated with a website where one member is allowed to run rampant >the way this one member is. I am well aware that there are sites where he >would be more than welcome. Brian Carnell, for example, doesn't seem to >be horribly bothered by namecalling--he was quoted in my local independent >paper once calling a local activist a moron. (The guy is.) That works >well for Brian's community, and I'm not criticizing Brian for that. I was quoted calling someone a moron? Me? I find that hard to believe. ;) You know, from my experience, you really have to let the community that you're serving drive this. In my case, a lot of the folks who want to debate are sick of getting kicked from other forums. I actually prefer the forums where people get kicked for rudeness, but accede to my user's wishes. Plus, you know, my policy would *never* work with the sort of volume that a lot of sites have. It works because I've only got a couple dozen people to keep track of.
Re: There's no love here! By: Brian Carnell on 11/19/2001; 3:00 PM At 11:16 AM 11/19/2001 -0500, Mark Morgan wrote: >I work hard to avoid that sort of thing happening here. That despite a >commitment not to delete posts. I think the next phase of that is going >to have to be some clear terms of service. There are obviously times when >I am going to have to delete posts--copyrighted material and porn come >immediately to mind. With a strong commitment to freedom of thought and >responsible behavior, we should do okay. So far you seem to be doing good.
Re: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 11/26/2001; 9:56 AM Correction: actually, what Brian did was call him a putz. Stunningly accurate--how does the man expect the Internet to make money if companies don't try to make money?
RE: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 12/3/2001; 12:46 AM ...and there's no love from the Chief, either. Seen at Religious Musings today: "Note from the Chief: Greetings All! Gotta tell ya, this board has always been a question mark for me. Now that we have no moderator, I will be shutting off posting privledges and will need to be convinced that any *new* moderator will have some ability to keep the discussions in line with the general philosophy of NitCentral. Which is--for those of you who either do not know or have chosen not to remember--everybody has a right to express their own opinion around here so long as they can do it without cussin', fussin', flamin' or sleaze! End of Note from the Chief " Good to see you back, Chief. Hence the problem: When Phil's busy, which is all the time now, there is no grownup in charge of the playground. Some of the moderators do a really good job--Wes Collins at Political Musings is exemplary, and until very recently I had nothing but praise for Richie Vest of the various Star Trek franchises--but there really needs to be one person who is around regularly and can tell everyone to play nice, or else. Tempting as it might sound, that can't be me. I have two websites to run, both with major projects unfinished, plus an even more major writing commitment that is so far behind I'm surprised nobody has show up from a small town on the east coast and taken my head back with them, on a platter. I can't do be in charge of Nitcentral too! But someone needs to, or a neat site will surely fall to the Visigoths.
RE: There's no love here! By: Matthew Patterson on 12/3/2001; 9:12 AM I really hate to have to say this, but... thank God. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
RE: There's no love here! By: Seth Dillingham on 12/3/2001; 10:26 AM On 12/3/2001 at 12:02 AM, Mark Morgan wrote: >Tempting as it might sound, that can't be me. I have two websites to >run, both with major projects unfinished, plus an even more major writing >commitment that is so far behind I'm surprised nobody has show up from a >small town on the east coast and taken my head back with them, on a >platter. Funny, I was just looking at my old steamer trunk. I think it's time that I polish it up and repair those claw marks on the interior. It might be needed soon. >I can't do be in charge of Nitcentral too! That sentence sounds like you're about to break into a song (do be). Seth
RE: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 12/3/2001; 12:18 PM Hey, my neck stil hurts from the last time!
RE: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 3/24/2002; 12:54 PM Mark said: "I can't do be in charge of Nitcentral too! But someone needs to, or a neat site will surely fall to the Visigoths." This is why I don't self-edit posts--that my words might come back to haunt me. Suddenly the other day there arrived: The Garbage Dump <tease>Hmmm....I wonder what that thing is for?</tease>
RE: There's no love here! By: Sean McMains on 5/17/2002; 6:14 PM <heckle> I don't think Dreamzone counts as a weblog if you don't post for over a month, Morgan! </heckle>
RE: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 5/17/2002; 7:05 PM Why don't you be a nice lad and set up a separate conversation for the Journals and move all the old content over, then? Thanks.
RE: There's no love here! By: Mark Morgan on 5/18/2002; 3:35 PM Not really Dreamzone, over at my test Blogger site I've been dinking around some.
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