Laura

In for a penny in for a pound...

I have the greatest respect for Alex in principle, although he seems like quite a shadowy figure around here.

What I wonder is whether what is going on here has more to do with the individual power trips of certain "moderators" than Alex's original intention.

This was the best place to be. It is now balancing on the cusp. And I'm afraid to say that Ablemuse is a side issue to the 'Sphere not the other way around.

Poetry should excite emotion, passion, debate, contention for goodness' sake. Otherwise this is nothing more than a knitting circle devoted to counting stitches and debating in an oh so refined way the relative merits of substituting a plain stitch for a purl.

When we're not discussing American Idol ad nauseam that is.

Jesus!

And since I'm about to get blocked from the site I'd just like to take the opportunity to ask Michael C to make sure he turns the lights out when he leaves.

To the few friends I've made here (most of whom have now left when I think about it) I say thanks for a good experience.

Philip

Yes, when I've had a few light-hearted, well-reasoned posts deleted already today, just because they're talking about the recent exodus...well, what's the point of me hanging around a site where I can't talk about a pressing issue that affects all of us?

Seriously, it's shameful...and I'm usually the first to jump to the defense of an admin / mod, since it's generally a thankless job.

I hereby formally disassociate myself from this thread. Please don't hurt me!

I'm shocked at the posts that have disappeared today. I mean, at the fact that they have disappeared, not at their content. I really can't believe it.

Chris

Referees
 

Dunno what started this uproar, but, as Shaun points out, exercising authority for the good of a group is a thankless job. Is moderating here something people take on for any reason other than the good of the group?

Sometimes referees call foot faults or fouls when none has ocurred. They make mistakes. They may even favor one player or team over another. But without them there's no game (ever tried one of the unmoderated poetry boards?) and the game benefits the players a lot more than the refs.

See, the thing that I believe is bothering people more than anything is the utter abolition of any PUBLIC comments on the issue. Alex writes:

So we're encouraged to put our deepest, heartfelt works out there in the open for public consumption and discussion...but we're not allowed to publicly discuss the workings of the forums themselves? Something is wrong with that, and it's what's causing all these threads and posts to pop up after the original incident was swept conveniently under the rug.

Max, it's for the benefit of the players, until the players start quitting because of it. First Mark and Paul, then Janet, Rose, Quincy, Marybeth, & I forget who else, because the threads have been deleted. If the all stars start retiring because of the officials, it's the fans, the league, and the game that suffers, not the ones blowing the whistles.

I would have been fairly unmoved by all the departures had the threads in which they were announced and explained been allowed to stand. Their removal is a severer indictment of the administration than any accusations they contained. How many other such threads once existed, which I never saw? They speak to my imagination with a combined eloquence far more powerful than any one of them could have mustered on its own.

Chris

I agree, Chris....and, granted I am just a daily lurker, not a contributor, but when posts are quickly removed by mods, I would think writers, particularly the fine writers here, would be outraged by anyone being censored. If writers do not stand up to defend freedom of speech, who will?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7iXcKKpdx0

Pat

Chris,

Players quitting doesn't change the dynamic I speak of. The game (you're right) suffers, but the sport is still not organized for the benefit of the refs.

People I respect are very upset about whatever it is that's happened here, and I'm willing to believe that the moderator(s) was/were wrong, but:

That Eratosphere refuses to let itself be used for public criticism of its volunteer moderators seems to me reasonable, maybe necessary.

Max

But Max, it goes well beyond that. I started a thread yesterday to announce that I had reactivated another board that I once started. In my announcement, I did not offer any reasons or refer, even obliquely, to Eratosphere or its moderators. I did not even encourage people to visit my board. It was just one bland, boring sentence making a simple factual statement that could have offended no one. But the thread was promptly removed without any notice to me or explanation. In fact, someone alerted me to the fact that the thread had been deleted or I might not have noticed it myself.

It's kind of scary that moderator powers are being used in this manner. Apart from the injustice of deleting my innocuous and entirely appropriate thread, it creeps me out to wonder how many other threads or posts have been silently made to disappear in this fashion. Even as I type this now, though I am not singling out any particular person or using inappropriate or offensive language, I feel there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that this post will be either disappeared or edited out from under me, and I certainly have no confidence that I will manage to see all the responses before they, too, are silently made to go bye-bye.

I will copy the thread as soon as I post just so there will be a record to circulate in case this disappears, leaving in place only Max's defense of the moderators and creating the false impression that no one disagreed with Max.