Those assumptions would be unfair and unwarranted, in my opinion. I admire your work here, PDM -- that's not empty flattery, that's based on observations of your battles with trolls and your obviously sincere efforts to be fair.

My issue is with the structure of the rules here, or lack thereof, whereby trolls/disruptors are allowed countless chances to "shape up" before they're finally told to "ship out."

---- perhaps something along the lines of "deputies" with the authority to issue official warnings but the obligation to forward anything beyond that to PDM or Lisa?

(Just for the record, not for a millisecond am I offering myself as a "deputy" moderator. I am willing to work very hard for something I believe in, but I am an adherent of a "three strikes and you're out" policy.)

The bottom line, really, is that it seems to me that every few months an individual joins the forum and wreaks havoc. Regardless of the specifics of the person's agenda, the outcome is stress and drama and confusion and conflict.

More and more "old hands" have left the forum or participate solely in PMs. Certainly, but it's also heartbreaking when a dozen or so helpful & informed members are so burned out on the chaos that they're not there to answer the young person's questions.

I appreciate the concerns and I will give them a lot of thought.

Trolls are a common issue across the web, we are not unique. If anything, we receive huge praise for having relatively few trolls here compared with most other forums. Our current system gets a lot of praise and has achieved fairly amazing results. There is always room for tweaking, of course.

In my experience, the best path is to always treat newcomers with respect and to gently guide them by modeling healthy behavior. Many people come into a forum with an "expectation of behavior" that is shaped by other wilder forums. It takes them a little time to realize we are different. We need to give them that time, and show them by our actions what we expect, so that they can learn how we are here.

I run two other forums and this same sequence happens. "Wild posting teens" come on, they are treated kindly, they realize that the forum is different than other ones they've been on, and often they adjust and become amazing forum participants. It's like running a boys & girls club and bringing in street teens, and watching them develop into amazing young adults. It's very rewarding.

As I said, I will continue to ponder this. For example, I don't feel the solution is to jump on and ban individuals in this category. I favor the carrot approach, not the stick.

Im sorry to hear about Pinto. Yes some of the new members are getting on my nerves. I appreciate this forum and all the work that has been put into it. I have learned a lot and hope that this problem is resolved.

I can certainly understand that, but what happens if someone grabs the carrot and the stick, hits us over the head with the stick, and absconds with your entire crate of carrots? lol

I do appreciate that you are giving our concerns thought -- thank you.

I very much agree with all of this:



We all learn from our peers and the people we interact with. It's up to experienced posters to model appropriate behaviors.

I am a new member, came here from one of Lisa's other forums.

I found THAT forum quite by accident when I got fed up with Yahoo and some of the other "big" forums.

Every now and again I will try to go and post on a "non-Lisa" forum . I am especially fond of anime and manga (and yes I am an adult, my son got me hooked on it) - but I just cannot stay on any other forum very long because I am so used to the level of civility and intelligence that I have found.

As a newbie - I can see that y'all are getting frustrated, and trolls are frustrating, no doubt! But from my viewpoont, it looks like they are being handled pretty well.

It is hard to see sometimes when you are right in the middle of something.

I know this is off subject but just wondering. I was looking through posts and it seems as though some of the forum members have quit. It says unregistered by their posts. Does that mean they have deactivated their account?

I was wondering because some people that have been on this forum for very long have all of a sudden quit?
Is it because of all the trolls?
I really am sad that some of the most helpful people have left.

Sprite - time will tell, but at least one of those members instantly made a new account. She "quit" because didn't want her private information from her old posts to be a target for hackers, so she was dodging them.

In the past we've had several situations where someone didn't like forum policy, they made a long post and quit, and then a month or two later they were back with a fresh account. It was a form of "drawing attention to their beliefs" more than a permanent decision. Again, time will tell.

Sprite,
Many "old timers" have and are leaving. I think it's a shame. Yes, in a way it has to do with the trolls but even more so I think it has to do with how the trolling was handled. It seems to me that the rude and obnoxious trolls ended up getting treated better than many long time helpful, contributing members.
The trolls pretty much got away with their repeated malicious, condescending, disruptive behavior because they "are JUST teenagers" and "don't know any better". Yeah right! NO ONE should get away with the things those kids were doing here. It's totally uncalled for. All in all they succeeded in their mission..to cause chaos and disruption for no reason at all.
and the regular forum members pretty much got chewed out for calling it as they saw it. And yes they may have called the trolls names, but none that they weren't deserving of.
As you can probably tell, I am pretty upset by all of this. It's not right. Most of the members who left were the backbone of this forum. I know that I gained soo much from them and others to come would have gained also.It's soo sad that they were treated so badly. They gave so much to this place and that is how they get treated?? Soon there will be no experienced keet owners left to help out newcomers here.

Kksuns - I believe every new member from that group was banned by PDM as soon as she saw them. If anything, some forum members wanted PDM to ban people before they were even proven to be trolls. I would not call that coddling. That was not "better treatment" for the incoming posters.

I agree I found it extreme to start banning people before they even said something. We were not treating new posters with respect, we were driving away some actual new visitors.

Which troll do you feel was not banned?