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Hayley
That's nacho cheese to spread around!
Canada
2752 Posts |
 Posted - 04/28/2008 : 3:51:32 PM
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So things look a tad different around here. You had two weeks to write to Bob and voice your thoughts, and we've had two weeks to discuss what you had to say. Some of you raised some interesting questions that we'll be talking about for quite some time. It's been a really good thing. This is to explain some of the changes you've seen and to allude to changes to come.
A. Moderators
You have, no doubt, noticed that we have added two new moderators to our team: IndiAnna and QueenElizabeth. In real life they're Linda Fiore and Elizabeth Sanders. The reason for this has been multifaceted. The adding of these two lovely ladies followed the disappearance of Gibberish (Samantha Riley) and Cucumber Queen (Rebekah Newborn.) As dedicated college students, their focus had moved to more lofty things than this forum and we needed someone to fill their shoes. We also decided it would be easier to moderate spam but allow for more discussion if we had more moderators to fill this task. The current work load of moderating was a lot for just two people and it limited discussion a lot. The addition of Lin and Liz's services should help to alleviate that a bit. We're excited to have them aboard. 
B. Speech Forum
They've disappeared/are in the process of disappearing and are replaced/being replaced with one sing folder. The set up we had before with three speech categories was superfluous, and you may have noticed was sparsely filled anyway. Only one of the three folders got much traffic. To make things easier to access, these three categories have been merged into one. Speakers, do not feel marginalized. The same amount of discussion will take place, it will just be all in one place, instead of spread out through three folders. (The active threads in the deleted folders were moved into the existing one, and the old ones were moved to archives.)
C. Forum Leadership
A few of you suggested that the Discussion section modding should be handled like a democracy, and after debating the pros and cons of democracy for a year, the LDers (and the other leadership) were not keen on this idea for a couple reasons. 1) Democracy is inherently a popularity contest. People's feelings could get hurt if they didn't get elected, and likewise it would encourage gossip about the people who do get elected. 2) Democracy is a system of favors. In other words, would elected moderators moderate at all? Doubtful. Just like in the real political system where politicians look out for special interest groups and favors, elected moderators would feel compelled to show favoritism. 3) It would be a lot of work to maintain. The moderators were actually incredibly willing to organize a temporary democracy, however, so this might be an option we'll explore in the future, after this season of transitions ends.Some people commented that it would remove any peer-to-peer tension if parents ran this forum. Can go wrong with that, eh? Unfortunately, this plan lacked workability. NCFCA parents are among the busiest parents in the homeschool community and running a forum can be time consuming. Finding a group of parents to monitor this forum is not only disrespectful of our parents time, but also an impossibility. In addition, it's been my conviction that a parent-run forum would be counterintuitive: it's easy to behave when our parents are around, but are true character is tested when are parents aren't there to watch our every move. This forum has been a tool for me to build my character independently of my parents' teaching, and this is something that would be stifled under a parent-run forum.
D. Spam
So what is spam, anyway? And why are we so anti-spam? For us, the answer to these questions has been trial and error. We have a lofty definition of spam in our FAQs, but what does that mean in practice? 1) Obviously anything that's inappropriate: obscene stuff, risque stuff, mean stuff. If you post anything that we think meets that criterion, it will be swiftly deleted and you will probably receive a PM from us explaining where we're coming from. In your PMs to Bob a few of you pointed out how degrading it can be to have a note edited into your post, so we've decided to refrain from public reprimands. We'll do our best to keep our modding discreet - hold us to that. 2) Anything that's less than two lines long. Believe it or not, some people PMed Bob asking why we made this rule, but rarely enforced it. It comes down to this: if what you have to say is less than two lines long, it's probably not contributing to any conversation. So it will be deleted. At any rate, we're reevaluating our approach to modding in an effort to be nicer and more effective.
E. Forum Logo
A few of you have commented that while you like the current logo at the top of the page, perhaps it's time for a change. So, for three weeks (April 27 - May 18) you can send your logo suggestions to the username "Bob." The image needs to be less than 600x600 pixels. You can use Photoshop, GIMP, Microsoft Paint, whatever to create your image. You can host the image on Photobucket, tinypic, Flickr, whatever, and send Bob the image or URL with "logo" in the subject line. Then everyone will vote for the logo they like best.
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Ch-ch-changes
