Guybrush

If I had written that I wanted to stay on as a mod, I undoubtedly would be compared to a power hungry tyrant intent on ruling some MB police state

I'm sorry for singling you out, Trollheart. I like you a lot, but I don't like the tone of our discussion which I find a little too heated. Perhaps we can take it to PMs?

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RoxyRollah

Maybe not a power hungry tyrant. But I felt a couple times that it went from friendly suggestions, to hostile take over, with no regard for anyone's opinion but your own.
I feel you had some good points and some **** ones but it doesn't matter now because you left a bad taste in my mouth by not knowing when to quit.So ifthe poll was put up AGAIN worded differently I dunno I could vote yes to anything, because now I don' t trust you. .
Youd make a fabulous politician.


Edit:May I ask why you are trying to police the nature of two friends banter the sake of the board ? If ppl are friends then its not the rest of the boards concern. Because you can tell they are friends.

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The Batlord

Nah, he's just stubborn, opinionated, and passionately intellectual. I don't know if you were here when he was still regularly active, but tore is possibly the smartest non-Batlord person who's been on the forum since I've been here, but he isn't arrogant about it; he's just smart enough that he's usually right -- even if he can sometimes be blinded by idealism.

I don't know if this forum had as many thought-provoking debates since he dropped off the radar. JWB certainly sparks a large amount of them, but his threads are often derailed by controversy that obscures legitimate points until the furor quiets down and people finally start to listen to what he's saying. Tore's discussions almost always stayed on-topic.

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RoxyRollah

I never said hes a bad person Charles, I ****ing dont trust his plan now.

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The Batlord

P.S.: And as much as tore seems to complain about when he stepped down as a mod, that was actually one of my favorite times he was around. I think he forgets that it was as much frustration with having to set an ideal example as a poster as it was frustration with the way the forum was running.

As a mod, tore was always reserved and professional, but the day he stepped down, I was flabbergasted at the filth and profanity he posted. Don't let him fool you. Tore's mind is in the gutter just as much as ours.

Reminds me of a cadet platoon sergeant from military school who stepped down halfway through the year. He was mega-cool before, never abused his authority, but was still mostly professional. Then he quit, became a Private, and next thing you know, he's as much of a cutup as anyone else in the barracks. He introduced the tradition of nailing people in the nards with a Slim Jim (and yes, that ****ing hurts). Much love to Sergeant/Private *******.

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RoxyRollah

Its not about him tho. I dislike the way this got handled somewhere around page 4.
When it started to come across as obey or meet the ban hanmah.

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The Batlord

I don't like his plan cause I don't like it. However, I trust that he has the best interest of the site at heart, and doesn't just want to feel self-important, or seize mod power again (I doubt that he gives a flying **** about it as anything more than a means to his desired end). He was never heavy-handed when he was a mod either. Tore's one of the most beloved members of the site for a reason: he has integrity, doesn't get involved in drama, and is far smarter than all of us.

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RoxyRollah

You keep thinkin Im putting him down as a person.Im not.Im not buying this lemon,I don't want to and I don't have to.I don't trust it wont breK down before I drive it off the lot.

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Yac

So to add to what I wrote.
Remember that whatever changes will be made, it will be a compromise. This means that even if you feel like what you proposed is 100% foolproof and genius, it might not make the final cut.
Bill Cosby, who I rather liked until the recently uncovered facts about him, once said something like this: I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Now regardless of the source of the quote, it is very true.
Also remember that almost like in Newtons 3rd law, every action has a reaction. Anarchy might have driven people away, but it also brought people. Stricter rules enforcement will do exactly that. Some people might not like it and some of them will leave. Others will feel this place has become what they were looking for and they will join.
next: finding good mods is extremely hard. I've been at it since 2007 and I know what I'm talking about. It's exactly like with politicians: those who want power most of the time shouldn't have any. Not wanting power is often, but not always, a good indication of sanity, and only sane people should have power. it's a paradox of sorts, but it's true. It means that while the initial assumptions here are ok in theory, we don't have a box of mods stashed away or additional mods we could delegate here. The mods we have here are imo sensible and level headed people that I enjoy discussing forum issues with either in private or in the private mods forum, yet I'd bet there are members out there that hate some with a passion and/or think they shouldn't be mods.
And finding suitable candidates is by no means easy, even on a forum as big as city-data (almost 1.9 million registered accounts) it often takes weeks to find someone to fill in a vacant spot after a mod goes away.
Also, the notion that only spammers should get permabanned - I disagree with it. Imho it should be reserved for spammers and repeated offenders. Folks that couldn't care less about the rules, folks that are only "having fun", folks that keep posting copyrighted images despite being told to stop etc. An online forum is a community. A community has rules - strict or lax, it's irrelevant. Someone who shi*s all over these rules, time and time again, after having been told to stop, should be kicked out permanently.

Guybrush

To Bats, besides generally being too kind, that's an eerily accurate description. You even mentioned my corrupt and filthy sense of humour which is something I've generally tried to keep away from the forums.

Thanks for the kind words, Bats (you creepy little man)

I feel like you're implying that I have an ulterior motive and, fun as that might be, I really don't.

I see myself more as an engineer than a politician. If I see something that doesn't work as well as I would wish, I want to improve on it and I like fiddling with projects like this. I prefer to look for solutions rather than problems and as Batlord writes, power (like modship), is merely a means to an end (to fix something I perceive as a problem).

Regarding discussions and others opinion of me, I want people to like my suggestion or see the sense in my arguments. If they like me as a person, that's nice, but ultimately not what I think is important. I myself tend to not take things personal, looking more at what people write than how they write them, and sometimes I (regrettably) forget that other people might not "work" the same way.

In my daily work, I work with environmental laws towards businesses. Sometimes that means excercising authority. Work on such cases has to be done with objectivity, honesty and transparency (almost all the work I produce is available for public scrutiny) and when modding or discussing serious topics, I basically try to bring that work ethic to these forums.

If two friends are chatting with eachother on the forums about something which has little real relevance to the topic or anyone else, then they could do so on PMs or Skype or Messenger or Facebook or what have you instead.

I generally think that writing posts on a forum should be more like publishing something. That's the way forums are intended to work. Topic titles are a bit like book or chapter titles. The words in your posts will remain there forever (okay, until the forum is deleted). It's just not made for real time chatting.

I understand that many people don't agree with me, but I think leaving The Lounge alone is a good compromise. Plus, there's all those other places where one could "chat", like in plug.

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