This will be a long post, so here's the Executive Summary: I'm all for a merger into SPOC, and I appreciate the opportunity to go back to the other place, but I have no good reason to bother. I don't have any confidence that anything has really changed over there. I think that a lot more change is needed before any rational person would believe that the current "change" is anything other than an effort at damage control on a site that's imploding and is at an immediate risk of going under.
As far as a "short leash", I just don't want people that have an axe to grind to show up and start bashing people for no reason, attacking Rich, and just being unpleasant. If you come back, contribute, have some fun and contribute a little, we're all good. If we decide that someone needs to go, it won't be a kristallnacht kind of thing, there will be warnings and the community will know why someone was bounced.
I applaud the efforts to fix things. Seriously. With that said, I'm going to diverge from my last few posts where I talked about how much I'm willing to cooperate and contribute toward a merger. I'm serious about working in that direction, but I think that there are still some relevant concepts that need to be aired out and further negotiated before I'd be willing to consider returning to a site where I had been abused in abstentia for so many years for no valid reason.
I appreciate the concept of "amnesty", but I also think that "amnesty" is a term that is being used somewhat euphemistically. There are a lot of people who got kicked into the Sandbox when they never did anything wrong other than to disagree with a tyrant. If those people agree to go back, then they are not beneficiaries of an amnesty program. The person who is actually being granted "amnesty" is the tyrant, who is ultimately being rewarded for all of his wrongdoings (by re-population of his site) without being held accountable for any of his actions. Amnesty isn't being awarded to the political prisoners who were mistreated while they were there. I know that I'm beating a dead goat but I think it's important to assure that what's really being offered to us is bona-fide change, not some bullshit smoke and mirrors illusion of change. (edit: when I first went to commit this post I noticed that RobertR had written something very similar about the term "amnesty" being a bit of a misnomer. I guess that great minds thin alike.)
While I applaud everyone's efforts to fix things, and while I am serious about my willingness to contribute my expertise toward making a merger happen, I personally don't have any interest in going back to the other site. Yes, the door may be open, but I'm not sure that I want to go through it to access what is on the other side.
The site, in it's current embodiment, just isn't a place that I care to go. Maybe some of the guys who have been enjoying the site all along, and have just recently lost your access, will want to go back to something that you've recently enjoyed. But those of us who have been forced out for a long time don't really have anything to gain by going back. Our lives have changed in the past 4-5 years such that thecarversite.com is now totally irrelevant to us and to our lives. That place could burst into flames and we wouldn't gain or lose anything one way or the other. There isn't anything there that we're eager to go back to. The thousands of technical posts that I put into building that site have been purged by a tyrant out of sheer malice, and they are gone forever. The damage has been done, and it can't be undone.
Going one step further, while I appreciate being removed from the Sandbox, where I had been held in solitary confinement for so many years, I'm not at all impressed by the "changes" that have been offered so far. I'm going to stand fast on the outside and wait to see whether any meaningful change ends up taking place. Right now I hear that I'm being invited to come back, but at the same time I'm hearing that the prejudicial caste system is remaining in place, but that maybe it could change in a couple of weeks. I think I'll prefer to wait a couple of weeks to see whether or not any real change takes place before I even consider going over there.
I just don't have confidence in the site, because to me it looks like nothing is really changing. I see the same guy holding onto control, though now he's doing so by lurking in the shadows and retaining his status as an administrator while someone else puts a kinder, gentler face on the site as a co-administrator; this is an effort to win the hearts and minds of people who have been alienated. Even though people are having their accounts restored, I'm still hearing you say that you're refusing to permanently put away the ban-stick, and that you remain willing to beat people who step out of line if and when the group determines that the need should arise:
As far as a "short leash", I just don't want people that have an axe to grind to show up and start bashing people for no reason, attacking Rich, and just being unpleasant. If you come back, contribute, have some fun and contribute a little, we're all good. If we decide that someone needs to go, it won't be a kristallnacht kind of thing, there will be warnings and the community will know why someone was bounced.
That's removed my confidence that any real change is really going to take place. Color me skeptical, but if you guys want to make any serious inroads about convincing people that you intend to end the reign of a tyrant and free the political prisoners, then you to make some serious efforts. It's time to walk the walk instead of talking the talk. Token efforts aren't good enough.
The first thing that you need to do is to get rid of this "short leash" idea and throw away the ban-stick forever. Banning people is not something that is done on forums that are patronized by middle aged adult men. You need to stop thinking about when it's appropriate for you as a group to ban people, and come to the realization that there are many successful sites on the internet who don't ever ban users, period. Sites that are patronized by adults learn to tolerate opinions that are not widely shared, even when that opinion belongs to the one unpopular guy who doesn't agree with the consensus. You need give up on banning people. Period.
Second: need to get rid of the concept of having moderators. Moderators are unnecessary. After all, we're dealing with a community of adult men. If time has proven anything, it's that sites that appoint a group of people as moderators end up banning people. Why does this happen? It's because some moderator ends up trying to enforce his opinion on someone else who doesn't want to have someone else enforce his opinion on him. We're all adult men who don't like being dictated to about what we can do and what we can't do. Having moderators does more bad than it does good. Instead of appointing and re-appointing moderators, who condescend and tell people how it's going to be, you'd probably be better off by getting rid of your moderators. Communities of adult men don't need them. This site is a good example -- it's survived for a long time without having any power-hugry short-dicked asshole trying to enforce his will upon someone else.
Finally, you need to purge the site of it's tyrant. It's not good enough to just put a new face on the site while the same guy remains in control behind the curtains. You're not fooling anyone with this "new and improved administrative policy."
I can't speak for anyone else, but in considering whether or not I'm interested in patronizing any site, I use some common-sense criteria to gauge whether or not a site is worth patronizing. I won't participate in any site that doesn't meet these criteria, and I certainly am not likely to help to build-up a site that violates them.
Here's a short list for starters:
1. The site needs to not engage in the practice of kicking out users, deleting all of their posts, and destroying all evidence that someone existed.
2. The people who are responsible for those practices need to be permanently removed from power. It's not good enough for them to maintain their position of power from the shadows, without having to suffer any accountability for what they have done. To me, leaving them in control of a site, even if they're just standing in the shadows, amounts to providing amnesty for war criminals. These people need to accept responsibility for their actions, and the act of lurking in the shadows while you maintain silent control isn't acceptable to me. When change is needed, REAL CHANGE needs to happen.
3. The site needs to be a place that treats all users equally and fairly. It should not be a place that cultivates the feeling of superiority of a collective group of "insiders" who look down on other people as "outsiders." The site should not have power-hungry moderators or a silly member ranking system that rewards a population of yes-men and discriminates against other people based upon political views. Yes, I think that the entire concept of the cyber-medal is stupid.
4. The site needs to be friendly toward new users, who may only be interested in visiting the site one time in order to obtain technical information to fix their amp, and then move along. It is wrong to classify people who need technical information as "hit and run" users. Some people are not interested in becoming a permanent member of an online community, and it is childish to hold that against them. There is nothing wrong with a user who only wants to fix his amp and then move along to dealing with other important problems in his life. You need to stop placing unrealistic expectations upon total strangers.
In the big scheme of things, I'm more than willing to contribute in any way that I can to help to merge the two sites into one united site. But I honestly can't see any reason to go back to the other site when nothing has really changed compared to how it has been run over the past 5 years. Maybe for most of you other guys turning the clock back a month is good enough, but not for me. It's time for some real change to take place. Change for the better.
