Site jabber is worse...i recognise all the recent one stars on there (by their avatars and.or usernames) as being people we've either banned or told they had to critique better than 'nice job'... but i don't care enough about site jabber to bother asking for honest reviews on there... they are pretty much an irrelevance... trust pilot matters more because a low rating on the big review sites can in some circumstances hurt your SEO... depending what the google algorythym is doing that week
Google is getting better at recognising spam and fake reviews these days, although that's more geared towards physical products.
My first review didn't post, most likely due to a problem we were having with intermittent internet. I posted a review just now that went through. Hope it helps.
I see we've gained another bad review on trust pilot since i made the post above... I wouldnt normally give this the time of day but since its so personal i'm going to call it out here This is the review First up if the member in good standing, who's clearly someone who's read this thread, would like to have the balls to speak to me here 'face to face' or at least user to user, instead of scurrying about badmouthing me behind my back, lets do this.. i give you my word here and now that you won't be banned or censured for it... which is why i'm doing this out in the open where everyone can see Secondly - ive never had a ban hammer rampage that's banned 20 people at time- except for spammers (we banned 64 spammers sharing a single Ip once)... Ian Jan and I collectively once banned 16 accounts (but actually only 11 people - sock puppets) in about a month when we first started which is what i understand some people called 'the great purge', Also you've not absorbed the point that apart from spammers neither I nor any of the mods permanently ban anyone alone... Perma banning is discussed in the staff forum and only actioned where there is a clear consensus of multiple moderators This tends to mean that the people who are banned are the ones to blame, because people have to seriously transgress the rules to get to the point where 3 or 4 or currently 7 moderators all think you are someone the forum would be better off without. Thirdly on the lounge - rules are also arrived at by consensus, not by me or any single mod making an arbitrary decision. We've never told off anyone for 'even using it' but we did collectively arrive at the decision (enshrined in the lounge guidance post) that this isn't facebook. Under this rule we dealt with one particular member who was using the lounge to post multiple intrusive questions about other members lives, and another who was using it for inappropriately personal posts. Again i'd stress this was a decision taken by the team collectively not by me alone. Finally let me say this... Moderating and administering this forum is a massive pull on time that i could be spending doing far more useful and frankly enjoyable things. I stepped up when Komposten stepped down because someone had to, and because I gave Wreybies my word that i'd look after the site when he made me a moderator. If the membership at large hate me, then fine - lets hear them say it my face. - if you all want to demonstrate that that's true, then someone else can take on this frankly thankless task
The stupid thing about this is that we're completely open to bad reviews where that review is genuine... if someones had a bad experience here then we want to know about it so we can look at whether its something we can improve. But there's a massive difference between a genuine poor review and someone who's in the wrong throwing their teddies on the floor because they've been banned, or they don't like being told to behave in an adult and responsible manner. The other silly thing is them going on about my post asking for honest reviews like its a bad thing... the mods and their click (it's clique, we're writers) ... trust pilot actively ask sites to ask for reviews... and it improves your site rating to do so Also mr bojangles - the reason i recognise the 4 or 5 bad reviews as problem members is avatars - if you use the same avatar on site jabber as you use on the site you're reviewing... its pretty easy to spot who you are...it doesn't take rain man. And I'll put it out there again if you're the 'member in good standing' behind either of those reviews - if you'd like to come and have the discussion here like a grown up...I promise you won't be banned or censured for doing so. I guess if you don't, everyone can draw their own conclusions (I've renamed the thread since we've digressed a long way from the original question)
I already drew my own conclusions, but I am in control of my mouth today and will not express those conclusions in the language that immediately comes to mind. One person's ban hammer rampage is business as usual for another person. On the dance forum, it isn't unusual to ban 20 or more "new members" a day; belly dance attracts some real weirdos.
I will say this. I doubt the membership hate or dislike any of the moderators. You guys make the place run. I think it's just some unsatisfied person who don't know when to just move on. Or just a troll? This is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to internet 2.0 or whatever it will be called. The internet where what you say is attached to your identity, less trolling that way. Though, such an internet would also have its drawbacks I guess.
It is - kinda this was a multipart saga the first time it occurred was when Wrey left... the way the forum software works we can't make new medals without an admin (mods can award them but only if the admin makes them first..because our medals are linked to each winning entry they can't be made in advance).. that issue was resolved when Daniel created Komp as an admin fast forward 18 months or so and Komposten steps down... the same issue occured, but again it was resolved by making me the admin Occurrence three was different... in May 21 the medal engine (where i create the medals) stopped working... i couldn't tell why and neither could Daniel... much head scratching ensued... eventually i tried the old IT favorite of turn it off and turn it on again (or more accurately toggling my ability to make medals on and off a couple of times)... that fixed it, but we still don't know what the original problem was I was going to start awarding medals again in febuary and catch up the backlog as i went... but then i suffered a family bereavement, since I'm actually a real person with real feelings and everything (hard to believe i know) that meant that medals weren't maybe my most pressing concern. The plan now is to start awarding them again in March, assuming the medal engine stays functional - I've created a test medal without a problem so it should be okay.. then i'll catch up the 24 medal backlog (8 per contest) as quickly as i can.
Looks like I've been cast into the category of suck-up. Huh. How about that? Somehow I am not devasted by aspersions cast by a person who hides in the shadowy corners of the internet and plies his or her poison pen in anonymity. I'm not familiar with the model of review sites. Do they have moderators or does the entity tolerate attacks on specific individuals as being free speech?
Users can report false reviews.. but they don't generally remove reviews unless its heinous. Sites can also report troll reviews , but to do that we need to register and claim the page. Tbh whoever it is is making themselves look silly, petty and vindictive which will lead most people to disregard the review, especially when we also have the contrast of the good reviews. I'm going to talk to Daniel about putting a Trust Pilot widget somewhere so that people can continue to review with more frequency A decent number of honest reviews will bury the trolls... noting that i said honest, not necessarily just good. We've got no problem at all with people posting 1, 2, 3 whatever star reviews that genuinely reflect their experience... if people have things that we could do better, or things that didn't work for them, we're open to hearing about it directly or in a review
The only ones i have an issue with are the liars, such as.."admin refused to deleted my personal information".. no, no we didn't... the rules on that are very clear "Accounts will be deleted on request with all personally identifying account information (name, date of birth, email etc) removed. Posts will not be deleted but will instead be assigned a random user name. If you are requesting account deletion and you have personally identifying information in any of your posts, please send a message to the mod team or use the Contact Us form with links to the posts concerned and we will remove that information." Three provisos being i) we give people 48 hours to change their minds..because we have had people demand to be deleted then get upset because they didn't really want to be... ii) people contacting us via the contact us who aren't logged in, need to tell us what their screen name is... iii) If you approach us for a deletion via the contact us, we are going to send a convo to the user concerned asking for confirmation... that's because there have been instances of people asking for accounts other than their own to be deleted.
Gee - that must be tough. I know a girl who runs a site for photo models, she spends a considerable amount of time weeding out the freaks... its not that bad here... our "Ban Hammer rampage" is nearly all spammers... i don't think we ban 20 people for conduct issues other than spam or duplicate accounts, in a year most years ETA I just had a look at the full list of banned people in the back end... in the last twelve months since mar 1 2021 we've banned 636 accounts of these 605 were spammers or spambots 13 were duplicate accounts for people previously banned 2 were banned for using duplicates to cheat in the contests and 16 were banned for behavioral issues, mostly around either unacceptable behaviour, extreme disrespect to other members, or extreme disrespect to moderators when picked up on more minor rule breaks.
You have my sympathies, but unfortunately, this is perfectly normal behaviour. The internet makes it easy to hide behind anonymity. You have the "admin" title, and that makes you the big red target. You're also, and this means no disrespect to the other mods, the most active and visible staff member. In my experience, every mod team has at least one person who is seen, justly or unjustly, as the "nasty" mod. You mostly don't do your mod stuff in public here so we don't see what goes on behind the scenes, and most members have no comprehension of how moderating works. On our history forum, we have a public suspension log which records all suspensions, and the reasons why. We do that so that members can see action is being taken, and what kind of behaviour is unacceptable. Like here, we discuss all suspensions between the team. I'm the "senior" mod (by virtue of being the longest-serving, nothing else), but I can't ban someone unilaterally. Most forums are the same (or if they aren't, they die quickly). We've explained that to the members over and over again, and yet, it's the mod who posts the suspension notice who gets the flak. Every one of our team has had someone complain that they are abusing their power by banning someone. Some of us have had death threats. I looked on the reviews we have - one of them is from a member who was banned for rudeness (and had been banned from multiple forums, as well as having a court case brought against them for libel, for the same behaviour), and two mention a "petty mod" (i.e. me), complaining that I got riled up over them posting about topics that are banned by the site rules. Yet another one complained that we "censored" his Islamophobia. It's never their fault that they break the rules, it's yours for enforcing them. For the record, at first, I found you a little abrasive (we had our run-in when I first joined), but after I calmed down, I realised that was just your style. I don't see, or have a problem with it. We sorted it out and you're considerably less abrasive than I am with rule-breakers! I wouldn't worry about it.
It takes a little time to work through the daily spams. Full confession: when I see certain unique components in user names, I ban the users without looking further. Even so, some sneak through and we end up with naughty links and posts in Cyrillic alphabet. The previous supermod (the one with the ring to control them all) and her court spent untold days clearing a backlog of hundreds of spammers that slipped through the poor filtering system then in place. We had to clear them one by one and the process required several steps for each offender. PIA indeed. I spent forty years either dancing or teaching dance; dealing with weirdos goes with the territory. Occasionally weirdness is explained in unexpected ways. We have one member who barraged us with questions about belly dancers in cartoons and movies, and who was utterly clueless about social decorum. Some folks got quite heated about it until the young man's mother came online and explained that D was an autistic 15 year old boy focused on cartoon dancers and costuming and who meant no offense and no harm. To make a long story short, people embraced him, tracking down obscure dance scenes and cartoons for him and answering his questions patiently. He still turns up once or twice a year with a new cartoon reference.
Yes indeedy, there's currently 3708 accounts caught in the spam filter.. they're the ones with pink user names... i gave up trying to clear it to zero sometime ago because they can't do anything until they're approved.... these days we only worry about spammers who avoid the filter - usually four or fivea day, although we had a spectacularly bad day with 28 a few days ago
I would advise against posting too much in this thread. It's given the troll more than enough attention and they probably don't deserve it, yeah? I mean, they called me a suck up who is part of some kind of clique. People who know me well know that I'm really not that sort of person. I've only been posting here regularly again for about a month too, and it's mostly because I might be able to help out new poets, people interested in Latin, and also mention my new book because I want others to know about it. I'm not here to make friends or enemies. I'd also suggest others do the same.
We had something similar, but with a different result. We had a member who had absolutely no concept of personal space or privacy. He kept posting about how he liked little girls who were dressed as boys and kept asking members who revealed their sexuality about cross-dressing. He was clearly on the spectrum but we gave him lots of chances over the years. Eventually, he publicly revealed a member's sex and their sexuality, which he had harassed her about it PMs. We couldn't allow it to go on, for the sake of the other members and we had to ban him permanently. He was a "popular" member, and it caused an outcry, but everyone said they saw it coming.
I think we've all been there - both this team, and wreys team before us have had those moments I did think about closing it for that reason - but i figure this isn't really about the troll... We've always been a forum that values openness and honesty even when its difficult... hence why I'm asking "member in good standing" to come sort their concerns out like grown ups. The fact that he or she hasn't done that instead of posting anonymous reviews speaks volumes.... I think therefore I'm going to leave the thread open, and anyone who wants to discuss any part of the forum or any issues is welcome to use it... i'd rather have an honest conversation about the difficulties around medals, or the policy about the lounge or workshop or whatever, than have someone feeling like they're being ignored or hushed up
