Until this thread, I suspect no-one knew that Walter had been blocked. There is no member-visible indication that his account has been altered. If I had not forgotten to go to the meeting, I would have raised my hand to your question about Walter and Talk.
I, for one, have found some of your comments on Talk lacking friendliness (and verging on agressive). Should I push the next BoD to ban you? No, I wouldn’t, because I know everyone has their own communication style. Walter likes to debate things to death. Eh, well, he’s still a good fellow and I think he contributes positively to this community. Others apparently feel the same.
What if I were generally a good member, but even though I was trained on the lasers, I still made a mess of many of the projects I tried. I didn’t understand the importance of matching the beam strength to the material. More than half of my projects flamed up. In fact, three times I left things in such a mess that three different people made unique formal complaints against me to have me removed from laser approval. On the third complaint, would the board just hope I got better at using the lasers?
Like it or not, this forum is an important tool for DMS. Considerable time and resources are used to maintain it. In many ways, it is the spine of the organization. If it’s not being used with respect, then a member needs to be removed from the list of approved users.
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I just opened myself up. You’ll go at me like you have the other guy. But guess what? It’s not just me anymore. Things are changing at DMS. Maybe that’s because they needed changing. I’ve been very blunt about my goals for this forum. It needs to be a reliable tool, not someplace where a new member risks being smacked in the head during an unexpected round of verbal dodgeball. The group of you who agitate are at least consistent. I drew that map weeks ago.
(And yes, seeing @lukeiamyourfather’s comment pop up, I thank the board for their decision. I will add my complaint to the list if they take up the issue to unblock Walter. I’m growing more confident in who and how to approach such an issue.)
Obviously we need a watchdog group to make sure that items such as this are noted on the forums - not just the wiki - well ahead of time. I had no idea such a thing was going on or I too would have been at the meeting and spoken on Walter’s behalf.
I was in the meeting and remember this moment differently. It was not an honest question to the group, instead it was a serious lack of tact on your part. The board had just spent a few minutes talking trash about Walter with Brooks and a few others chiming in. So it was obvious to the room where the board stood on the topic. Then you raised the question and the room went silent. I CRINGED hard with others in the room. Silently making eye contact and taking note of the situation.
I would also add that I’m against blocking anyone from talk without due process. There should be very clear cut rules about what lines may not be crossed. And rubbing people the wrong way should not be included in that list.
You might want to take a look at this thread, and who’s posting in support of Walter, and against the recent actions of the Board. Included are a fair number of the hardest working volunteers in the place, many of whom contribute far more hours a week than you do. More than a few of them are Ladybird folks - pretty much the folks who elected you. So posting up that you had all this invisible support for the action, isn’t very convining. The support is right here.
The Board was out of line, and overstepped. It happens. Put it right, or don’t, but don’t expect us to forget it.
Personally, I would prefer that discipline was handled by the membership instead of the board. We spend too much time on mitigating interpersonal issues. In the process get blamed for either way it goes. If you are displeased with the outcome of the last meeting, please run for the board and you will learn what we see.
To my knowledge, we have provided everything Walter has asked for. So far he has asked for a list of the regular membership (voting). The issue was how much contact info to include. The law only stipulates the members address:
Sec. 22.158. PREPARATION AND INSPECTION OF LIST OF VOTING MEMBERS. (a) After setting a record date for the notice of a meeting, a corporation shall prepare an alphabetical list of the names of all its voting members. The list must identify:
(1) the members who are entitled to notice and the members who are not entitled to notice of the meeting;
(2) the address of each voting member; and
(3) the number of votes each voting member is entitled to cast at the meeting.
Walter wanted emails and phone numbers. Not sure that is cool with the membership.
Lisa bears the brunt of the criticisms on talk moderation. Thank you Lisa! Unfortunately the talk moderation experiment by members fizzled out to just a few of the same people.
Bradley at least deserved that same treatment as Walter in this case.
I don’t expect anyone to forget, but please handle your interactions yourself. The BoD spends way too much precious time on this stuff. I’d rather be putting together budgets for 1, 3, 6 months out for DMS’s future plans.
The moderator team will be working on rules which will be posted as I mentioned before. The lack of posted rules is basically what caused the issue to be handled at the board level instead of via moderator action - because we had nothing to back us up if we restricted specific actions. It is not my intent to have to use said rules except for (hopefully) rare occasions when needed. It will help set expectations and will allow us to follow through in a fair and consistent manner… The challenge is setting rules that will fall in the “Happy Medium” of the wide range of views that members across the spectrum hold. Please review my previous related posts regarding this. Thx!
There’s probably one or two people who would be in line before Walter if “rubs me the wrong way” were a reasonable thing to mute someone for.
Edit to add: I am for Walter in this dispute, and was not aware until this thread that he had had action taken against him.
Ninja edit der zweite: it might be reasonable to ask Walter to be less combative, but enforcement should wait until consistent and enforced rules come into place. Even then appropriate levels of warning / escalation ought to be used. Jumping straight to the banhammer lacks reasonableness.
You seem to want to make it a volunteer pissing contest while disregarding the negative things Walter actually did. If you think it was too harsh of a punishment, I get that, but don’t act like he’s a saint.
Unfortunately there are a few fringe cases that pop up that rules will help with.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Thanks!
If you or anyone else finds a way to make it happen, please let me know! I believe that being able to enable members to ignore others via software will help those who have a difficult time mentally ignoring them for any reason…
