I know jabba and I agree with you 100% and appreciate you highlighting it. It just seems that the words Nazi and fascism are triggering projected reactions and miscommunication despite your good intentions.
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I just asked Melvin if he agreed that it sounded a bit fascist? That’s where all this came from.
So, in his and other mods eyes, it’s fine for him to dismiss me despite the fact I know a lot more about this stuff than him, but it’s totally out of order for me to ask him if he thinks that sounds fascist…? I was the one with cause to be offended imo, but at that point of course I’ve called him a ‘Nazi’ in his mind so now he thinks he has the moral high ground, can act all offended and go and tell all the mods that I’m so unreasonable I’m calling him a Nazi. It’s all so childish. Call me a Nazi, see if I care, I’m Jewish. I’m sure I should care a lot more than most of you. Ridiculous stuff.
I love you Safety1st and you’ve definitely learned and taken on more than me from NVC in very little time, but really, the whole thing is so silly. All from asking someone if their (to my eyes) horrible and aggressive statement might be considered fascist, no matter how polite and nice they might pretend to be with words that surround it, underneath you discover their real attitude by analysing their actions rather than their words… no compliance, no effort to change, no effort to enact anything players want that they disagree with.
You’re fighting a losing battle if you want to fix this one imo safety1st. It’s just exhausting for everyone and pointless.
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I love that! Gives a glimpse of what is possible.
I love you too jabba but I will go down with this ship. And I won’t put my hands up and surrender. There will be no white flag above my door. I’m in love and always will be.
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Haha, music maestro! I driectly caught the tune in my head ;-).
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You are battered and bruised my friend. Please rest and I’ll see you on the battlefield when you’ve recovered.
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Why am if fighting some may ask? Well I see this issue not as a Maidsafe forum problem but a human problem. At least here we are more tamed in our responses. If we can’t work it out here in the light than how is the darkness gonna help improve the situation? Wherever we go there we will be.
Our best shot is here and now. We are paving the way for the new world and with MVP around the corner, the crowds are on there way to follow us wherever we lead them. Let’s lead them to love and peace.
I welcome the darkness but need my beacon of light to shine bright. Let’s do this together. We can do this!
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It’s not only that. Of course, as I said, I quit interacting with people when they say these sort of things. Here’s an analogy: just go to your local tennis club. You probably notice some people that were not elected by their community volunteer and do a lot of great work. And now imagine that someone walks up to them and says he or she wants to help. And after some talk, say 15 minutes words like fascism and tyranny start to fall. The person that wants to help says: “I’m not calling you Nazis, I’m saying your attitudes are dangerously close to that fascist ideology”. To a bunch of volunteers on a tennis club! Can you see where I am going? Now image if that person that really wanted to help also says he’s the professional and you are an amateur to one of the volunteers? And that person also says that “there is no positive energy coming from any of you about”?
How would that conversation go at that tennis club with all nice community members and volunteers that want to make the best out of it? Well, as you might understand that conversation would get weird quite fast. And I think the volunteers at that tennis club are not the ones that are causing the problem to be honest. I see this community as a “tennis club” if you like. I think we are way more open than other “tennis clubs” when it comes to asking members what they want. And I think the atmosphere and excitement with all these apps and app-stores, and crowdfunds from all these members is really great. Especially now we all wait for the MVP to go live. Look at all these weirdo’s (like me ;-)) that hang around on this forum every Tuesday night. It’s amazing.
Nicely put.
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I have no point of reference for this cause as I’ve shared before, this is my first forum. I trust this to be the case because only good things can come out of someone like David Irvine (my hero). However we can not compare ourselves to the rest of the world because we are entirely different. Me must set our own benchmark for continual growth and improvement because our competition is nowhere in sight. We must continue to evolve or we will die.
If this were a tennis club it would be run by and for the club, and rules would be written by the owners of the club. From a community member perspective you are not like volunteers at a tennis club, you are like self-appointed disciplinarians who walk around their private/communal parks/gardens telling other members to stop swearing, move their conversations elsewhere, put out that bbq, and be more respectful/be quiet… “Hey, the landlord asked me to keep an eye on this place, stop swearing you over there! There could be kids on the other side of that wall!” In such an atmosphere most people would probably not take kindly to it and you would not be popular. There is a difference between the doorman who keeps the spam out and the busy body inside doing more harm than good trying to control behaviour and keep everyone in line.
The busy bodies are nice people, the park would look crap without them, they do lots of gardening too and pull up the weeds etc. They just want a nice quiet, neat garden with no litter or noise, that’s what they interpreted the landlord’s remit when he asked them to keep an eye on it for them… meh, the youngsters and hippies want to have fun! They don’t like having lists of rules posted on their doors and the landlord wants everyone to enjoy this place and to stay here. Let’s just do it together! It doesn’t have to be chaos and it doesn’t have to be dull or quiet either.
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One of the things I’ve read many times from the mods is how much work this is and how tireless and thankless it is. You don’t have to be soooo busy, spread the effort to the community. Let us help you share the load. Think of it like crowdfunding and collecting a little from many instead of a lot from a few.
After all [quote=“chadrickm, post:3, topic:8068”]
We do love us some crowdfunding 
[/quote]
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Great insight, love how you put it
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@Safety1st Thank you for your comments on these issues; you are a shining beacon of kindness and positivity. Your intentions bleed through into everything you write, and you are a great credit to the community here, and I assume everywhere else, too.
If it happens, I will be there.
Very wise! And even our perceived attackers 
Careful there, you’re dangerously close to inspiring me to re-engage here. Oh, darn, you already have!
100% on target.
Another bullseye!
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I’m so happy you’re back. Thank you thank you! 
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I’m not ashamed to say. I hope it always will stay this way. My hat is off, won’t you stand up and take a bow ;-).
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Really I suppose this all comes down to what kind of forum you want and what you envision the forum as being for. I suspect this is where all the conflict comes from. A different vision being fought for from different perspectives.
You get more users and more activity if your forum it tolerant of behaviours. ‘Family-friendly’ is what businesses do as a sacrifice to maintain their brand reputation, or to keep their platform agenda clearly represented, but most would actually rather turn the rules off because you get more activity and more users when you police things less heavily.
However, this does mean it gets messier. Real information is harder to find. Cliques and wars develop that would have otherwise been nipped in the bud etc. That’s great for numbers, activity and engagement in the community, but does not make forum management an easy task. Management requires innovation if you let control slip away.
So… do you want this place to be an information resource for safenet with a core group of users who are helpful and practical? Or, do you want to build a huge a messy community who come back here every day because it feels like their home?
When the network goes live you need to have your minds made up which you think is more important because a lot of people are going to come here.
Do you want them to quickly learn about safenet and have their questions answered in a nice atmosphere? Is that what this forum is for? I’m not being facetious here. It’s a genuine question.
Or do you want to see them all stay and form relationships here and have a passionate debates in a space they come to think of as their home-from-home?
There is a clear path to one and a clear path to the other. You won’t have time for debates like this then, so you really need to know how you’re going to handle it now imo. If we all know which one this train is on it would be galvanising at the least. It may just be that you want this forum to be information and communication with some polite and solid friendships from like-minded people as a bonus. If so that’s fine. Perhaps this is just not what people like myself, tonda, Team_2E16 etc envisioned?
If you can all agree on or at least articulate what you want the forum to be and what you want it to do - in an open way here - then we’ll be half way to solving this imo. At least then we’d understand why you have chosen the path you have.
Let’s make it happen then. May I ask you or @jabba to post it. I’ve spent all day on the computer and will need to balance the rest of my time off of it for a while. Also, I don’t want to take the lead on this and believe it will be better received from one of you.
Below is a sample opener quickly drafted which you can edit as needed. @ will need to be added in the final draft.
Calling all regular forum members! We need your help.
- The problem: Fill in the blank
- Our proposed solution: Shared ownership of this forum
- Requirement: Show support for this change to take effect.
The post where we discussed this proposal is here: About the new "guidelines" - #110 by Safety1st
However, they are long and we will revisit the highlights in this new thread anyway. But please feel free to visit this post and other meta posts for more details information and insight.
Note that mods have been excluded from the list below but are free to join in this discussion if they choose.
Savage
et4te
Tim87
janeannford
Luke
Nigel
chrisfostertv
jm5
gohan00760
nowfeelsafer
joshuef
dyates
Safety1st
DavidMtl
asdf
FollowTheCycles
Jabba
dcmshub
mvanzyl
ross
optictopic
Al_Kafir
000
Audity
we_advance
Warren
DavidMc0
smacz
4M8B
janitor
Grizmoblust
tfa
riddim
BIGbtc
upstate
justin
Blindsite2k
sfcoin
betterthantrav
MrAnderson
Seneca
whiteoutmashups
dallyshalla
nicklambert
19eddyjohn75
Traktion
dyamanaka
dirvine
admin
Team_2E16
Thank you.
Edit: just realized that tonda was not included in the regular list. @moderators May I request that he be given an opportunity to participate in these discussions?
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I appreciate that, @polpolrene and I do want to make note here that I agree that you were also very helpful with my idea. You were very receptive and enthusiastic about moving the idea forward, and it only really came to a halt when other moderators chimed in and decided that it couldn’t be put on the front page for the rest of the users to consider. I do understand why that was the case at the time, as there were some other stickied posts that were important, but it could have been placed there later, I guess.
All of this previous interaction with you made me do a double-take when I saw your earlier, negative/dismissive responses to @Jabba 's proposal. Of course, it could that you didn’t think it would work, but it seemed you weren’t that interested in exploring the concept much at all. At least that’s the impression I got.
Were you still chafing from how this thread began? I realise that private conversations were posted without permission, and that is not cool. The question I have about that is this: Why did @Tonda feel the need to do so?
My theory is that there are some ‘originals’ and regulars here who have seen certain changes and feel that they are being ignored, there are attempts to placate their concerns with kind language and no real action, and that it is not them that are making this into a ‘Us vs them’ situation, but the mods, collectively.
(Not individually, but collectively. This is such an important distinction, as it does not require individuals to be paternalistic, only power structures. It is entirely possible to have a tyranny of great people, as the road to hell often is paved with good intentions.
Disclaimer: please be advised that I used the word ‘tyranny’ for literary flair and efficient communication of concepts, and that in no way, shape or form am I implying that the mod group constitutes a tyranny that will engage in genocide, mass arrests, or other historical hallmarks of famous dictators.)
I really, really don’t think any individual moderator I have seen comment or take mod actions has bad intentions. I really don’t. But to me, I feel that there is a lack of willingness to take action on people’s concerns. Or to give them a fair hearing on the front page, where it belongs, so that other users can see it and either weigh in, or ignore them.
I understand that some people in different parts of the world (perhaps France?) may react very strongly to the word ‘fascist’. Most would react to the word ‘Nazi’. Given that all I have seen and can verify is that @Jabba used the word ‘fascist’, I will focus on that alone.
I, like @Safety1st , perceive that @Jabba did not mean that you guys are ‘Nazis’, or even ‘fascists’. I believe that he was trying to get a very important point across: that from his view the ‘authorities’ on this forum were displaying some measure of ‘fascistic’ behaviour, rather than trying to slight you as individuals.
Do you, @polpolrene believe in a million years that @Jabba was actually comparing you to a regime that launched a war that killed 50-some million people, slaughtered 6 million Jews, brutally oppressed it’s citizens, accepted nothing other than total and complete compliance, etc etc etc?
Or do you think maybe he might have been pointing out that, on this forum, the mod team is beginning to become less and less responsive in material terms to people’s concerns, and that a ‘deaf ear’ is put forward, no action actually happens, points are ignored etc.
Here’s a question: what harm could it do to have a topic on the front page asking people to get involved with an effort to help the community define this forum’s rules?
What’s the real issue here? Why are you guys against doing it? What’s the harm?
Ok, I will.
Imagine that when the tennis club was founded, a bunch of people found the tennis club was not only a great place to play tennis, but also a great place to gather together with other intelligent, like-minded people to discuss other things that surround tennis, like physical fitness. The clubrooms were full, everybody was shouting and laughing and every now and then, people would argue. Occasionally, there was a vandal around, but for most part, the worst incidents in the club were people getting into heated debates and, occasionally, insulting each other. There was also some rubbish around the place.
Some called for volunteers to help clean up the place and attempt to resolve disputes. Most everybody agreed, and so a volunteer stepped forward and began to do their job. They cleaned the rubbish, and began to step in when arguments got out of hand. Everything was fine from the members’ perspectives. More volunteers were added to improve the club, and reduce the original volunteer’s workload.
Over time, though, some funny things started to happen. The rubbish was still cleaned up, for which everyone was eternally grateful. But instead of stepping in when arguments got out of hand, the volunteers began to step in when they seemed to think the argument might get out of hand. They started to pull people aside and advising them on the ‘correct’ language to use in discussions. They started to tell members not to discuss anything, including physical fitness and nutrition, on the tennis court and clubrooms that didn’t have to do with tennis. Instead, they built several little shacks way out back of the original clubroom that could be used for this purpose. Some members couldn’t understand why they couldn’t discuss physical fitness and nutrition in the clubrooms and on the court, given that, while it wasn’t about the finer points of tennis, it was related, and while there were strong opinions about both of these topics, they all learned something every time they discussed them.
Then the volunteers started to rewrite the rules themselves.
They started to tell people that they couldn’t discuss the volunteers’ actions in the tennis court, or the clubrooms, but only in a special, purpose-built shack out the back of the clubrooms. Some people didn’t like this. New members to the club didn’t even know the room existed, because most new members never read the terms and conditions when they joined the club. Those members who disagreed would go to the room and discuss the issues they saw with the club, but would only meet a few other disgruntled members who were ‘life members’ and so had followed the history of all of this, and of course, some volunteers.
The volunteers would often be very kind and helpful about the members concerns, but any decision-making would not be done by the club owner, or the members of the club, but among the volunteers themselves, and they had to go away and reach consensus on any changes. The answer was, more often than not, no.
This very much bothered the complaining members, many of which had been there before the club had been founded. They justifiably felt that their previous compatriots had been elevated to a status above them, and not only could they now implement the rules of the club, but rewrite them, wholesale. Some members grumbled about leaving. Others decided to take the dispute back into the main clubroom so as to get other members opinions, but were forcibly removed. Others decided to reveal private conversations they had with the volunteers, and were banned for a time from the club for doing so.
Despite all of this, the complaining members kept trying. Didn’t their opinion matter too?
It’s an unfortunate analogy, my friend. Because if the measures taken here were implemented in a real-world tennis club, there would a really serious problem for that tennis club. In the real world, the club owner would have stepped in a long time ago and reasserted the fact that the volunteers don’t make the rules, they just implement them. And therein lies the key to the problem.
In clubs I have been involved with in the real world:
- The rules are voted on by the members, or a committee elected by the members. I’m sure there is variation to this, in corporate ‘clubs’ and such, but they are clubs in name only, really. More like a gym membership-type arrangement.
- Communication between members is not restricted to certain areas. Ideas are allowed to spread, and members can consider them and debate them.
- Volunteers, or paid staff, do not write their own rules. They follow them, and enforce them. They have a vote, but not all of the votes.
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Seconded.
OK, I will try to discuss with @jabba and help to work it up, if he’s keen. Then we’ll send it back your way for ideas/comments etc
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…a more grownup / respectful way is to say “controlling” or something. Let’s not see the words “fascist” or “Nazi” in this thread again because they’re quite immature to use and they really don’t fit
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Sure, but in my opinion, people should be focused on his intent, rather than the least generous interpretation of his use of the word.
I agree in principle about not using inflammatory language unnecessarily. It was my understanding that, originally, @Jabba did not use the term ‘fascist’ as a noun, as in “xxxxx is a fascist”, but rather as an adjective ie “That is a fascist position”.
By the way, the primary reason I agree with you on avoiding the use of inflammatory language is not that people might get offended. I can say 10 things right here, right now, that are perfectly reasonable but would offend someone, somewhere. My emphasis is rather on what we are trying to achieve via communication. If your intent is to facilitate healthy communication, then you should probably refrain from using inflammatory terms. But in equal measure, you should probably avoid reacting unnecessarily strongly to terms like this when it is very apparent they were not meant in the ‘noun’ sense.
They are, after all, just words, sounds, utterances. It’s the idea, the meaning, that hurts. And if people considered his meaning, perhaps they wouldn’t react so strongly. And that would be the most mature, IMO.
Consider your words: You have just said something that could be taken to mean that @Jabba is not mature or grownup. Now, having talked to him, I know he probably won’t read that in that way. He will probably see your point; that there are better ways to communicate than to go to extremes of language. And it’s your point that matters.
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