Is the community getting tired of maidsafe

PS

It wouldn’t be “my” forum, it would be a community run forum. The only privately “owned” forum is the one you are currently posting on.[quote=“Tom_Carlson, post:116, topic:12159”]
Full of yourself much?
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eh?

…and what makes you so sure of that if I may ask? Do you honestly think I’d be the only person to notice the glaring hypocrisy?

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Well, we kinda do and Maidsafe chose them, which I’m cool with, it is their forum and their project after all.

To me the problem was really not having an involved maidsafe rep like frabrunelle from the start. It would have been more tolerable for people to have been told that this is a private website run by a private company with its own rules, so live by them or shut up. It was much harder to swallow with community-mods calling the shots and no effective route to accountability or conflict resolution with any justified authority.

I don’t think this forum really needs to be democratically self-moderated anyway, it just needed to be clearly maidsafe’s, not the mod clique who were calling the shots. If it is a private company and they have staff running it then who is anyone to tell them what to put on their forum?!

If it describes itself as community managed then it is a problem because the expectation is that the community itself has some say. The people feel rightly frustrated, because it isn’t the private company that owns it making the decisions, it’s just a clique of a few people who share the same pov. I have no issue with it being a private, maidsafe forum with staff like frabs making the final call. I did take issue with it being a ‘community’ forum that was neither run by the community nor the company and was therefore run from mod pov, not community management pov.

They are good guys though. Your suggestions that they might operate beyond what they believe are the best interests of the community is a little insulting considering how much work they put in; I will distance myself from that comment despite agreeing with the general thrust of your argument.

Ok, enough from my big mouth. My arm is getting tired from all this pot-stirring. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Just going back to your point that the mods pov is that they are the community - do you not find this insulting? The point I was making is that whether or not they believe they are acting in the community’s interests is irrelevant. It pre-supposes that the community is unable to decide whats in its own interest for itself. It dictates to the community rather than defers to it. I find this condescending.I do not think I said anything insulting btw. Insulting is more like the @Tom_Carlson post…lol

@Al_Kafir you’ve been a member of this forum for a long time now. You’ve put in an extreme amount of work in talking moderation in topics like:

This discussion about a community forum yes/no is going in circles for over a year now. Several mods already replied to a lot of your topics. If people want to read in they can look in Meta. I won’t answer the same questions over and over again. If you have any new questions/views, feel free to start a topic again Meta. I’m sure people will reply. And when you talk about your ban(s) you always make it look as if you’re banned for being critical, and this is not true as you know (more like severe trolling). We always reply to questions and always look at proposals for change, but it’s the community that flags posts when they see trolling and more unwanted behavior. And we respond to flags in the most open and constructive way we can, but there’s a limit to all of that. A moment when all mods agree on a ban.

Maybe it’s time to agree that we disagree? I mean, you’ve made your points here again in this topic, out there to be seen by anyone. This is a great forum to talk SAFE and it’s technologies. We’re way less strict than a lot of other -use the search before you ask a question- tech forums as we welcome all new members trying to answer all the questions. As mods we touch less than 99.99% of all posts on this forum because we have a great overall atmosphere. I seriously hope you will enjoy the discussions here as a lot of others do. So much great stuff to talk about :+1:.

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If you own the site you own the forum. The “community run” is only a euphemism because in the end you control the controllers.

Exactly the same thing that happens here now.

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There’s accountability to other mods and the 3300 members of this forum. We’ll have a forum update coming with 2 new mods introduced soon, so it’s quite a team as we prepare for alpha 2 and 3 and beyond. @frabrunelle is not doing anything different than in 2014 when he offered to help out. And look at who liked that post ;-). It’s true that this forum went from 100% community to maidsafe/community but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We have a new domain (this one) as the old one was in the hands of someone who became unfriendly with this community. I’m happy that this domain is secured by the Maidsafe foundation, it takes away any risk of someone stealing it.

Yes, this is it for a part. We can’t satisfy 100% of all users. Some people just don’t like authority and think everything needs to be 100% democratic, including owning a domain. I know of 1 active member that got away because he didn’t like moderation (he made that public in a topic). Another active member just left after a 2 week ban. And we really only ban people for 2 weeks after something more than some name-calling happened. We’ve had 2 permabans of community members as far as I can recall. And believe me that you would’ve agreed with both of them. These were cases with extreme namecalling, blackmailing, making online threats and more like that.

We’ve also had a number of active members banned, but that number is < 5. That’s on 3300 members total, so as low as 0.15% of all members. And these were all allowed back (some only got banned for 24H to cool down a bit). We also try to talk before we ban, to see if there’s another solution. But don’t forget that we never just banned someone because we as mods think it was necessary, it’s always after a number of flags from the community that someone comes on the radar. We delete the posts that are inappropriate, but the community should count on us that we take it a step further when people keep crossing certain lines. We’ve got quite some new mods over the last 1,5 years and we’re never in a 50/50 debate where some say we should ban and a others say we shouldn’t. This means there’s great consensus when we ban (temporarily) and I’m quite sure you would agree with all of them if you could see why we did it. Our “suspended member list” is as empty as it can be at the moment. Quite cool on a forum with 3300 members.

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Yes that was my point. It is a good thing that it is run by maidsafe and they have ‘staff’ holding the reins, so community members feel they can turn to someone who’s interest is in community management rather than forum management (which have conflicting agendas). I was very pleased to see this happen.

This really highlights my point. One tonda, bluebird or A-Kaffir is worth 500 lurkers imo. From a mod team perspective someone who is difficult needs to be dealt with. When they cross a line (like saying they would punch you if they met you) then you have your reason and justification for permabanning. From a community pov this person is very valuable and we should be looking for excuses and ways to to keep them, not ban them (even though they create work). A forum mod bans in these situations, where a community manager is much more likely to reach out to the angry person and find out if they actually have violent intent, or were perhaps just frustrated and venting steam? The community manager wants to keep this active contributor because his interest and responsibility is to grow the community. A mod needs to manage it, so he bans because this person is creating a lot of work, and they can justify with complaints and ‘rule breaking’ - when users eventually resort to railing back with the only weapon left available to them, verbal abuse. Frustration makes all of act out a little bit, it’s only human.

At the end of the day a community manager’s bottom line is the users online and the trajectory of view and post count numbers. A mod’s bottom line is a clean, spam free forum that is useful to members.

Well, people have left the forum because of the moderation but without being banned. Folks like safety1st and Team_2E16 were never banned, but they pretty much only post in PMs and have done for well over a year afaik. There are others too. I stopped posting for a few weeks at one point because of this, but I was never banned.

Again, this is community manager vs forum manager stuff. I remember keeping trollish posters on our poker forums despite the complaints from polite regulars, even when those complaints then became directed at me for not taking enough action. @danski can testify to that ;). We went against our forum ‘player-mods’ and the community consensus because keeping people happy and keeping them engaged and involved are two very different things. A more democratic community would see the same kind of (imo) excessive moderation as we see now. Most do agree where the line is crossed. I’d rather maidsafe managed it with a focus on growing it rather than keeping it tidy and civil. The only difference being that those involved would not feel so frustrated or powerless if it were more democratic. I don’t think democratic is the answer though, autonomous is the answer. So decorum is the only real solution as I see it.

But I don’t think you should get defensive either Pol. I do know what it is like on your side of the fence and I’m not saying you don’t do a good job. I’m saying it is impossible for anyone to get this right without giving users autonomy. You don’t have the tools to get this right and you make the best of what you have, I wouldn’t take the migration of this community to decorum as an insult when it happens, we’re just all here because we want to be ‘free’. You’ve made this forum friendly and useful, I’m not suggesting there is anything to be ashamed of in that achievement, you are owed a debt of gratitude for it by all of us.

I’m sure I would have agreed that you could justify it, but that does not mean I would have done it. In 5-6 years of community management I never perma-banned anyone apart from spammers (I think?!). Community contributors are gold dust for a community manager/content whore. I created friction and issues by refusing to ban people for more than a day or two. I do agree that your perspective and actions have been perfectly conventional and justifiable. Even though I might have done it differently.

Anyway, decorum decorum decorum.

I look forward to some ferocious rows with people and plenty of F’ing and blinding. I am an argumentative soul and a know-it-all. You all know this already. It should come as no surprise that I would want a lively, argumentative and disagreeable forum to satisfy my need to argue with people. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

We are on the same team. We both want what’s best for SAFE. We’re probably both right in our own ways, it’s just frustrating to argue with a group of mods who all agree with each other, because the community is not being represented when a group of us disagree with you lot and you all agree with each other every time. As with life-banning tonda where many of us were dead-set against that, regardless of what he said. Or with banning profanity and beeping out all the swearwords… which everyone I’ve spoken to agrees (apart from the mods) was unnecessary and does more harm than good. Personally, I don’t like things too sanitised because passion and offence are fun and exciting. Being polite is just ‘nice’ /yawn :tired_face:

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Yes, I have posted a number of topics in the correct “Meta” category - what is your point and where does this contravene guidelines?[quote=“polpolrene, post:123, topic:12159”]
This discussion about a community forum yes/no is going in circles for over a year now.
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I haven’t even been on the forum for the past 11 mths due to you banning me - again what is your point?[quote=“polpolrene, post:123, topic:12159”]
I won’t answer the same questions over and over again.
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I am given different answers each time, if you don’t want to answer then don’t. You made clear in your earlier post that those running the forum are neither directed by Maidsafe nor the larger community, nor do you own the forum - so the very simple question is from whence do you gain your authority - who hired you to dictate to the community?[quote=“polpolrene, post:123, topic:12159”]
you always make it look as if you’re banned for being critical, and this is not true as you know (more like severe trolling).
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lol…au contraire - I was banned for being critical and it is completely untrue that I was banned for “severe trolling”. Unless you back this claim up with some evidence, then I suggest that it is you doing the character assassination and smear campaign. I give you full permission to re-publish whatever it was I said that warranted the near 1 year ban and then let the community decide or give reasons why you will not do this. [quote=“polpolrene, post:123, topic:12159”]
We always reply to questions
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Always? You just ignored mine…again.[quote=“polpolrene, post:123, topic:12159”]
Maybe it’s time to agree that we disagree?
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Fine by me, maybe just back up your slanderous accusation first? And don’t tell me to continue the discussion in meta when you are replying to me here - why don’t you answer in meta if thats what you want?
Edit:

This, as you well know is mis-construing the nature of my arguments. My argument is about the centralised structure of this forum, the lack of accountability to the community etc. What it clearly isn’t is complaints about moderation., although I recognise that by framing my issues in this way gives you an excuse for banning continuously. I have made this point many times, yet you still choose to frame things this way - how come?.

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It’s not just banning people for what they’ve had said. For a permaban someone needs to do way more than that, even more than just saying they would kick your ass in real life. Severe trolling is more like intentionally creating new topics in the wrong category, next to talking moderation in whatever topic (about safecoin, vaults etc.) with the full intention to piss of mods on a daily basis. Another one is spreading falsehoods about mods taking money/coins from certain projects just to make them look like a bunch of scammers. Another one is going into personal chit/chats with people over and over again, getting into fights every few days with a community that keeps flagging your posts for being rude and personal attacks etc. And I won’t even mention the severe personal attacks we got from permabanned folks over PM using different accounts. We’re not really triggered by accusations of this forum being like China or North-Korea, it’s more about a combination of the things I mention above, which took quite some time off my weekends. It’s also not the case that other members have nothing to say about it, you mentioned a few others that don’t like moderation and only used PM for some time. I can assure you that a bigger group kept flagging the posts from members that got a ban after a number of warnings. So whatever road we choose: being more “democratic” or “inclusive” to members as you proposed, who want a different approach for moderation, we always dis-satisfy another group that kept flagging the posts because they thought they were way over the line. Like I said before, we can’'t satisfy all people in a community.

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If you are referring to me again, then back this up - how is any of this NOT a personal attack and I defy you you demonstrate any personal attack by me on anybody! “Getting into fights” - otherwise known as debate - you know, the thing forums are for! "Going into chit chats with people - seriously? - these are “offences”?
IMO the facts speak for themselves, user engagement has fallen through the floor - why have you stopped proudly posting the forum stats? You have made absolutely clear that you are a law unto yourselves with no accountability to anyone, yet we are talking in a topic titled “is the community getting tired of Maidsafe” - how about some actual ownership of the problem, given that the running of this forum and its decline is nothing whatsoever to do with either Maidsafe or the larger community - its entirely on you guys.
The idea is to increase user engagement, not cull the community and basically introduce a dress code to your private club.You would think that if you wanted more user engagement, more of the message getting out there to the benefit of the larger community and Safenet that you would be generally supportive of an alternative forum…but no, of course not.
Edit:
A post I just made, addressed to the community and posted in what I believe to be the correct “community” section as it concerns the community has been moved to the “Meta” category away from the front page, where the community can’t see it without “scouring” the forum. Just letting folks know……cheers

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Absolutely agree dude.

Making the trading topic level two keeps everyone here happy who is level 2, and pisses off everyone who wants to join in the conversation but isn’t. You certainly are faced with a lot of ‘either/or’ choices. Power cannot help but cause harm, no matter how good the intentions of the person wielding it.

Autonomy is the only way everyone can be satisfied, democracy gives people a sense of empowerment, but it is a far cry from autonomy. Until we have the new paradigm we will always argue about these things. You can’t win. Neither can we. So we’ll all do just as anyone would expect and keep on giving our perspectives and trying to do the right thing.

Even now I’d imagine you disliking having this topic on the front page and thinking it looks bad. I would say the opposite. It’s click-bait. And when you get into this row you see a whole lot of well-intentioned, bright people arguing about something complicated and interesting. I think arguments and disagreement are very powerful ways to help people to get involved by having and sharing their own opinions.

Anyway, as you say, enough time has been spent on this. It always ends the same way, wait for decorum and deal with our own misgivings in our own way until then. I don’t want you to feel attacked any more than I want Al-Kafir to feel frustrated and angry at being powerless.

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Wondering the issues that led to that? Were people not listened to?

No, not really I don’t think anyone had said I think this is not a couple of weeks work, we all thought it was and nobody said I think this will be months. Quite unusual really in our team. We do have a few of the most pessimistic Engineers on the planet from that perspective :smiley: This was a confluence of not seeing that and combining it with a bit of a large routing clean up that never really got fully tested itself. So really bad luck for us, but a good lesson in reminding us to use the tools better (design and git branches with testnets).

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Can’t believe people are still arguing with @AlKafir. This is like groundhog day. Why don’t you reread old threads instead of posting new content? Btw the discussion above is ot. Is the community tired of maidsafe? Apparently no, otherwise they wouldn’t be here.

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There definitely comes a time when most issues have been debated and discussed. The refactoring phase contributed to a temporary feeling of deflation. However, this community is quite amazing in terms of support and encouragement, so that certainly has helped usher in the Calm before the storm (as another member pointed out) period you’re currently experiencing.

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Well said! I share your views and I am also understanding and grateful for what the mods have done in their spare time.

It’s also about fostering honesty through free speech which is always a plus.

Welcome back @Al_Kafir.

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I see this is the first time you have posted since January - glad to have been the inspiration for you to comment again… :wink:

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You’re very welcome.

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GOD what a tedious load of old nonsense that was i’ve just read from jan10 til today. zzzzz

who gives a flying toss who runs the forum… if you want to have side conversations and say naughty things you can, whats the biggie?

i’ve always understood this was the official maidsafe forum, so writing posts that are obviously outside the general interests of maidsafe will not go down well… normal corporate style don’t bite the hand…

on the actual point raised, surely with any long term project you will get exhaustion of effort outside the active bubble who can see whats happening and are involved?

thats why having vaults running at home etc is so important as it means people get invited back into the circle of trust, which means they are enthused again… nobody likes playing football if you never get picked…

even if these activities are in effect useless, if they don’t take too many resources its worth running them to make people feel part of the team…

fanbase entertainment is important!!!

anyway… hopefully there will be something i can run soon so i can be enthused!!!

hugs

rup

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Another delay for alpha 2… I don’t think we can expect a beta this year