I’m not sure what volunteer pissing contest refers to. What I’m pointing out, is that many of the core supporters of DMS are strongly objecting to this action. As far as negative things, I believe I described what I thought above. Walter isn’t a saint. But nothing he did justified what you did. Walter violated no rule. The Board isn’t entitled to just do any damn thing they want - the rules only permit you to diminish member rights as a result of breaking a rule, not because you just don’t like someone. It was an abuse of your authority, and an abuse of the trust the members (including Walter) placed in you.
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Y’all might have noticed that Andrew and I have been ping-ponging this topic from Members Only (where he’d like it to be) and Infrastructure (where Lisa moved it to after I posted it in DMS General). I’m in favor of the latter, and I encourage y’all to tell @Team_Moderators to leave it there, as Walter’s ban affects more than just the membership.
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Being that I was there doing the meeting I’ll abstain on this.
Nonpartisan statement:
BoD Agenda Minutes only list that there are complaints before the them. No details are provided. This practice I believe has been in place for sometime and is not unique to Walter. But that is the current policy and do not see how any nefarious intent could be imputed on the absence of other information.
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So is this where I am allowed to interject the idea of a silent majority? I’ve seen it used in previous threads…
1. Formal complaints against another member must be submitted, in writing, to the Board of Directors or to any member of the Board of Directors.[5] The complaint must have two parts outlined at minimum, a "Complaint" part and a "Recommended Solution" part. 2. The Board of Directors will decide to either hold a special meeting regarding this matter, or will consider it at the next meeting in its cycle. 3. The Board of Directors is not required to act in accordance to the grievance or complainant's "Recommended Solution" part and may devise its own remediation. **4. Complaints will be added to the agenda of the meeting, posted on this wiki, without identifying information.** 5. Minutes for the meeting will not be scrubbed of identifying information. 6. Any disciplinary action for which one or more of the Board of Directors or officers of the corporation (acting in their role as an officer) are involved require that a written record of the action, reason(s) for the action, and acknowledgement of the accused be sent to the Board of Directors for keeping.
Edit: The complaint is made, the direct parties are notified, the vague agenda item placed, then the rest happens at the meeting.
I have been following this thread and have opinions on the matter, but will refrain from comment.
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Thanks for item #4 I knew there was a reason, just didn’t see it as formalized.
Thanks
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Luke, I for one think the BOD does a great job. It is a tough, somewhat thankless and tedious job. I’m right there with @Lampy you guys shouldn’t have to deal with this type of stuff. I don’t think any of you want to be the arbiter of some punishment of the membership. I know you’d rather be about growing the organization and improving the current environment.
With regard to Walter, you did what you all thought was best. It just happens that many of us who were either unable to attend or chose not to attend, disagreed with the decision. I’m sorry no one came to his defense in the BOD meeting. I wish I would have been there.
I think, it probably did emphasize to Walter how important moderation and consideration are in a public forum like talk, but censorship wasn’t the right recourse in my opinion.
Walter is Walter. There are others on this forum who could from time to time probably tone down their rhetoric, too, including myself, but hey it is after all “talk”. This is an open forum for discussing pretty much anything germane to DMS. Restricting his right to defend himself, to comment on issues he feels relevant to his BOD election or participate in DMS discussions are all reasons to consider reinstating his access.
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He had the right to defend himself at the board meeting. He was in the building. He chose not to go.
Walter can petition the board to be reinstated at the next board meeting.
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He can, but the membership can also put pressure on the BoD to call a special meeting and fix this error in judgement without waiting an entire month. I suspect this is what will happen in a few days, given the early results of straw poll that Luke created, above.
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I wonder how many people who agree with the action of the board have long since muted this thread and therefore wont be voting in this unnecessary poll.
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I would like to quote the co founder of Discourse as I agree absolutely with him.
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I think mute / ignore is actively dangerous, and here’s why:
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It allows you to ignore bad behavior. If someone is a jerk, why complain? Just mute. No more problem. Except for everyone else that gets to see a person being a jerk to another human being in public. Which means you are now sending a message to all other readers that this is now something that is OK and accepted in your house. Hint: it shouldn’t be.
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It puts the burden on the user. A kind of victim blaming – if someone is rude to you, then “why didn’t you just mute them?” The solution is right there in front of you, why didn’t you learn to use the software right? Why don’t you take responsibility for the person abusing you?
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It does not address the problematic behavior. A mute is invisible to everyone. So the person who is getting muted by 10 other users is getting zero feedback that their behavior is causing problems. It’s also giving zero feedback to moderators that this person should probably get an intervention.
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It causes discussions to break down. Fine, you mute someone, so you “never” see that person’s posts. But then another user you like quotes the muted user in their post, or references their @name, or replies to their post. Do you then suppress just the quoted section? Suppress the @name? Suppress all replies to their posts, too? This leaves big holes in the conversation and presents many pretty hairy technical challenges. Given enough personal mutes and ignores, all conversation becomes a weird patchwork of partially visible statements.
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This is your house and your rules. This isn’t Twitter or Facebook or some other giant public website with an expectation that “everyone” will be welcome. This is your house, with your rules, and your community. If someone can’t behave themselves to the point that they are consistently rude and obnoxious and unkind to others, you don’t ask the other people in the house to please ignore it – you ask them to leave your house. Engendering some weird expectation of “everyone is allowed here” sends the wrong message. Otherwise your house no longer belongs to you, and that’s a very bad place to be.
Mute is a deeply unhealthy thing to allow in your community. Of all the Discourse communities we host and know of, none of them have “needed” mute. And if they told me they did, I’d give them the same explanation.
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I would also ask that people take a step back and look at this thread and the forums in the past few month and realize that people have lost sight of being excellent. That was a tenant that Dallas Makerspace was built on I don’t know when it became OK to bash members on talk and be disrespectful to new people just because it’s online. I know I have not seen that type of behavior at the physical space for years, I can safely say the last 2 years of in person board/member meetings have been the best ones since I have been a member of 6-7 years. But the forums have just taken a downhill turn by a minority of people and personally I don’t really care what happens to Walter in this case but I do think it’s time to give the moderators the authority to act and I absolutely feel that the moderators need the power to remove users that fail to be excellent to there other members.
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I normally remain silent, but the censorship claims seem over dramatic.
A member was not being excellent to other members using a medium called a ‘forum’ ( instead of being an ass to their face ). People decided that wasn’t appropriate and stopped it, less nasty crap to read and more being excellent to each other.
Sounds good to me.
Rich
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Read that twice. Especially like his last point. Thanks for including this information in the discussion.
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According to Luke’s unscientific poll, at least 25.9 people would disagree “People” were wrong to do so.
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The poll is probably biased given the thread it’s in. Though it’s informative regardless. The objection to the block has been heard.
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Should the poll be moved to its own thread?
That’s not necessary in my opinion.
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