Poll: Are you satisfied with the current state of Talk?

DMS General
1

The time has come that we have outgrown Talk in its current form and the growing turmoil that’s risen out of our current discussion forum must come to an end. Now, more than ever before, we must nurture unity within our maker society as we strive toward our common goal of cooperative growth, education, outreach, and physical expansion.

This online venue, which could be an invaluable source for useful information, as well as a positive community building tool, not just to our internal community, but to the maker movement as a whole, has become a haven of decent, negativity and an outright derailment of our primary mission.

It’s not possible for us to agree on all issues, but we must be parallel with a common code of conduct for which we publicly treat our fellow members.

Team PR has been tasked by the BoD to develop a strategy for modifying current moderation procedures, as well as content and brand management within our controlled domain with a specific focus on Talk as well as the currently unsanctioned forum residing within the platform of Discord.

Next Monday, a special BoD meeting has been scheduled to resolve this and other issues regarding expansion.

As, chair of PR, I am assembling a team of 10 assigned specifically for the purpose of brainstorming, discussing, analyzing, debating and forming a written reconstruction blueprint congruent with our interpretation of the Dallas Makerspace community as a whole.

Some changes will not be welcomed by all. Some are satisfied with the current state of Talk, but it’s become apparent these individuals are the minority and possibly the most antagonistic of our community.

The benefit of retaining both current and future quality makers with whom align with the vast majority of our organization will not only substantially outweigh the absence of the hostile minority, but will also encourage higher morale and significantly enhance user experience both on campus and off.

Please let your voice be heard right here, right now.

Please take a moment and comment on this thread an answer to the following questions.

  1. Are you satisfied with the current state of Talk?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

  1. If you are not satisfied with Talk, what are the most impactful changes that could be made which would enable a more enjoyable experience for you?
  2. What are some of your ideas on optimal procedures in which to implement these changes?
  3. What do you like most about Talk?
  4. What do you like least about Talk?
  5. Add other comments you would like heard.
2 Likes
2

We have many different types of people that are members of Dallas Makerspace. Some of them like certain ways of relating and others like other ways of relating. Some like different types of music, art, culture and social collaboration.

One of our main missions is to provide spaces for social collaboration. It’s in our Certificate of Formation and our Mission Statement. We provide for many differing cultures including those with thicker than usual skin.

There are many groups of people and those groups do not always find harmony being all shoved into one long list sorted by last post. This is one of the down falls of Talk. There are not independent spaces for each of these groups to gather and make HOME. Home is where, when you find someone peeing on your carpet, you can boot them out. Talk hasn’t been like this, a few overworked moderators attempt to lightly manage the whole thing at once.

What has happened with Talk is the group of people with Thick Skin Won. They pushed out the others that don’t have a thick of skin. So, this vote is primarily from those with that sort of skin. The others have already left and aren’t going to come back without a radical change in format.

We need something that can allow people to create their own HOMEs with their friends and keep house. Customize it, put up pictures in the header. Invite people in and Kick people out. Give moderator access to others. And allow others to come upon it and join it.

There are many social networking solutions out there. There are many software packages.

I do think Talk should remain but not indexed in the search and not promoted.
Allow those that like it, to continue using it. Or alternatively, to make it read-only.

2 Likes
3

So anyone who answers yes are already judged by you?

I’ll pass on your vote…

I’ve moderated multiple web forums and IRC chat rooms. If you start clamping down, I’ll tell you from experience it will get ugly with the pushback before it gets better.

8 Likes
4

I agree … that is why I say leave Talk as it is. Just remove search engine indexing of it.

Then create something completely different and push that forward as the main online social collaboration platform.

1 Like
5

I still vote on being able to block certain people on your own. The argument in the past is that person might be the one person who can help with a project, but if I think they’re an a-hole online I rarely want to deal with them in person.

17 Likes
6

I completely agree.

2 Likes
7

Most of Talk is locked behind the members-only wall, so it’s not indexed by search engines.

1 Like
8

This would improve my Talk experience by volumes.

9

No it isn’t. a few categories are blocked by member-only walls

https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/categories

1 Like
10

The software that we use for Talk, does not support and will not support blocking of individuals by other individuals.

11

Respectfully, a couple of problems with this approach.

Nice to hear progress, however, why not wait until the new board is in place? The current boards vision may not look anything like the incoming boards vision. This is important since it is the BoD that would be ultimately responsible for any approval of direction.

As chair of PR, part of your job is getting the buy-in of the membership. WIthout it, you are pissing in the wind and telling yourself its raining. Echo chambers are bad. Echo chambers in PR are the literal downfall of organizations. All the good ideas and vision don’t make it so. It requires the efforts of more than Team PR to be successful. Rather than immediately put people on the defensive, why not attempt to be neutral. Calling out the “boogeyman” isn’t effective and hurts your long term goal. PR is not the conscience of the community, that is management or directors. Further, you make no mention of offering for anyone to be involved. Just that you are going to pick a team of 10. Back to the original point, you want buy in, people need to feel involved. If it looks like you are going to shove it down their throat, they will buck you everytime.

You realize that seeking the buyin of people requires you to be bridge builder, not a bridge breaker.

In closing, before you proceed to far down this rabbit hole and try to “fix” the cultural “problems”, why not address more reasonable items. I don’t, advertising, marketing plans, etc. And learn to use spell check. Spelling errors from marketing mouthpieces are not acceptable.

8 Likes
12

I think we rely too much on the flagging system. Flags aren’t moderation; that’s why the number of times you can flag posts is limited. They are supposed to be way to notify the moderators that other action might be needed, such as locking a thread or (shock! horror!) suspending or banning someone.

Honestly I think we have a culture that’s pretty moderation averse in general, and changing that would make the experience better.

16 Likes
13

We need to revamp the moderator guidelines and have moderation handled by people not directly involved in leadership/admin of the space and forums. (e.g. I personally don’t want to deal with flags, I just want to keep the software working).

Collaborative threads (wisdom of the crowd type stuff) where many users/members provide input and we can get a diverse set of eyes on a problem/project/etc.

Threads being derailed. Moderator guidelines should be updated so that threads can be kept clean of off-topic posts and stay productive.

4 Likes
14

I think we should perhaps investigate further into what @thespacemaker recommended as far as the rating system goes. I don’t recall specifics about it though.

15

All Talk needs is heavier moderation. Too many topics get derailed off topic. Too many times the same handful of people re-hash the same grudges, some apparently dating back to the Ladybird location.

Finding room in the budget to pay moderators an honorarium of sorts would go a long way to making Talk what it needs to be.

9 Likes
16

I think you were going for dissent probably

7 Likes
17

The Show and Tell thread is a “haven for decent.” :smiley:

Oops, there goes that “derailed off topic” thing I was talking about!

3 Likes
18

Opening with “Say Goodbye to Talk as You Know It” is unnecessarily inflammatory.

This does not bode well for any changes.

10 Likes
19

Just the way this post is titled shows a bias against a vocal involved community. You are really wanting TALK to be a mouthpiece for PR and the Board of Directors. At that point it might as well be a newsletter mailed to my home.

Now if you really want to replace TALK, do so with something that can attract people to collaborate in self assembled groups. Forcefully stove-piping people into groups will not solve the communication gaps.

20 Likes
20

I definitely think you came at this in the wrong way and it seems unnecessarily hostile. I get that talk at times seems like a cesspool, but you can’t come at the membership in a way that seems like you are culling the herd of the riff raff so you can keep up appearances.

15 Likes