Disappointed - Page 2

I was going to post a joke, but things seem pretty serious, and this may not be the time for levity.

You're right. I'm not sure what I was writing there, but I misspoke, probably because I was interrupted mid-sentence while typing. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that there are thousands attacking the site. I meant to say that there are thousands visiting the site, and a relatively small percentage of them are actively trying to attack the site in one way or another. They have succeeded in driving a number of participants away and/or reducing their contributions. Some of them are pure spammers and just take our time to manage. We have to attempt to distinguish these, and this is a challenge to do. I think we do a good job, but it's not perfect.
By the definitions of "commercial" that I find, I disagree. EpicSki is not run for the purpose of profit. The goal is to make it self-sufficient so that it doesn't cost more to run than is collected from the limited revenue sources we have. It would also be nice to be able to pay for some services that would help to improve EpicSki over time, so that's a secondary goal. But, in the sense that "commercial" means "prepared, done, or acting with sole or chief emphasis on salability, profit, or success", I would disagree that EpicSki is "commercial."

The terms of commercial contribution to the site is outlined in the Terms and that hasn't changed for a number of years (since well before my time). My role is both. I act as a member of the management team for the site and as the leader of the moderators. As such, I contribute to policy discussions when we have them and also set policy for the moderators based on overall site policies and procedures. Moderating with a light hand has been our stated policy for some time (since before we had a moderation team), and has been discussed in threads here off and on for a while. We run the site by the Terms and the Posting Guidelines. In general, they should cover all areas of question. If anything in them isn't clear, we'd like to know so that we can clarify them, possibly by making adjustments to the wording. I understand that not everyone agrees with everything in them, but they are the Terms and Guidelines for EpicSki.

I support the comments by MTT, VSP and co.
Meta-discussion on a site is a healthy thing, and there seems to have been a move to stifle meta discussion of Epicski in recent times.

Many deletions and bannings seems to be dealt-with very quietly. This gives the appearance of a unified and nice site, but if it can't be discussed openly then what is really going on?

As Epicski moves into a more commercial sphere, I am concerned at some of the side effects.

Please read what I wrote, ant, and tell me with what you disagree. Thanks.

For those that have patiently followed this thread, let me share my perspective. As moderators we screw up. On a policy level we are willing to discuss it on the open forum, but not specific moderator actions.

I banned Volklskier1 the other day based on his IP matching a previously banned member, along with some other circumstantial evidence. It turned out to be a mistake. Did you see a thread here? No. We worked it out by PM and email and his status was restored. That was an extreme case.

As members of EpicSki and skiers, keep in mind, there is nothing we'd rather do than meet you in person and ski. Pffft, moderators are just people taken from the membership ranks who have some promise of diplomacy. It sometimes doesn't come through, but we are just part of this divergent collective. We make a ton of mistakes and need your feedback by personal message, email, post or whatever to correct misunderstandings. We have no agenda other than to have a fun welcoming place to discuss all things skiing and then some. If everyone here will just understand that, the remaining discussions will be civil and result in the changes or non-changes you seek. The fact I can delete, moderate or move a post should not set us so far apart. Send a PM, let me or any of the mods know your concerns, and you will deal with fellow members one on one. Post up a complaint, conflict or rant in a public thread here or elsewhere, and the results are predictable.

No one here is expected to agree with everything all the time, and the mods can be depended on not to be perfect in their administration of the site. IMO, we done good here, simply because we returned the what we received. That's what happens when it gets personal. OTOH, many members could tell you of successful results that come from quiet discussion and negotiation of specific moderator actions. For larger policy questions, post your concerns, lets discuss it and make it work for the collective for smaller moderator actions like the deletion of a post or a PM warning, lets discuss it in private first. We'd appreciate the opportunity to recant without the pubic attention.

Policy = fair game. Let's discuss it
Specific conflicts and disputes, give us a chance to review it first.

I'm with sibhusky on this. Yeah ram and stop doing so much of "thats a joke" after an offensive or offtopic point. Both in this thread and in so much of your HS defense you do that.

Saying "you sure cloud the issue thats a joke" or your other say-one-thing then say you didn't mean it its just humor, is just poor communication. Or more likely, deliberately trying to offend someone to make a point without owning up to what you said. If your bud HS can walk the walk, then perhaps in your posts you should talk the talk rather than "oh I didn't mean that I'm just using humor to insult you" passive-aggressive style.

Drifting back OT, I totally agree with that this policy of 20-25 meaningful posts before being able to offer items for sale. I'd think that at least 97% of the membership (thats a joke, before your time ram) don't want it to be a sales site, we do want to be able to offer extra gear or pick up deals from people who have credibility in the community. Plenty of ebays and craigslists and other advertising sites if someone's only interest is to sell gear.

Another board (non-ski-related) I'm on has a similar requirement for their forum where items of value are swapped, except even tougher. You have to have 90 posts and 90 days of membership before you can even see that forum. If people post-pad non-substantial posts, mods lower their post counts so people can't qualify by doing nonsense or 1-liner "me too" posts. The 90 days in conjunction with that means that the swapper offering goods has a posting history that potential customers can search to get an idea of what this person is about. Epic might not be at "90 and 90" but both a substantial-post and minimum-membership-time are good ideas IMHO.

I'd even go along with making posting in the gear-swap area a supporters-only function as long as the forum software allows it to be read by non-supporters, to maximize the seller's chance of finding a buyer. The deal could always be transacted by PM, so the person interested in the item wouldn't need to post back to the same thread.

I think this whole "can newbies TO EPIC sell things?" is a separate issue from the "has Epic changed from what it used to be?" and "Is Epic commercial, non-commercial, or weird hybrid?" questions.

Oh yeah some other boards have an absolute ban on posts commenting on moderation. If somebody persists in publicly posting complaints about moderation they get suspended. Point being that the site is whatever its TOS from its owners/managers/mods/whatever decide it should be, and they don't want the content of the site diluted by pages of moderation analysis thrashing. Epic is actually reasonably liberal in only discouraging moderation discussions though allowing them within reason - preference is to keep the discussions in PMs.

As much as we might like to think so, this (or any other site like this, whether non-profit or commercial) is not a democracy. It's a private site, and back in the "good old days" when AC ran it by himself as a hobby it still wasn't purported to be a democracy. We don't have votes here. We do have influence, but we make our influence known by our individual histories of posting substantial information, comments, and questions. Again relating back to it making sense that people who want to make some material gain here should have established at least some sort of positive reputation. 20-25 posts is pretty slim as a requirement.

When his post was deleted, a PM was sent to him. It was HIS post, so HE was PM'd (not the whole community, I think that might be a bit excessive, don't you agree?).
IF he had replied to the PM, then things might have progressed. Rather, there is now a thread on TGR about it.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the moderators contacted him about his post, or should they have just deleted it and said nothing?

Cirquerider also mentions the banning of Volklskier1 - when that happened, there was a series of PMs that were exchanged, and the ban was lifted following the PMs. Other people have been put on time-outs after multiple problems, each problem would have had a PM sent to the member. If the member chooses not to reply to the PMs, then what are the moderators to do?


Thanks to everyone who is contributing to this discussion in a polite way - through discussion we can grow and become better.

Open discussion or discussion behind closed doors?

This thread!

I think ya done good...

It is a given in A-team management circles that open disclosure/discussion of both issues and errors results in far better long term results (including organizational/community cohesion) than huddling in secret and protecting egos and hiding decision making rationale.

I believe the lack of transparency created by the desire to keep things behind closed doors at epicski (especially with respect to specific decisions) tends to be corrosive over time. To the extent that an individual impacted by moderator decision making allows or desires a discussion of a particular issue, I believe the community benefits long-term from both the discussion and the resulting audit trail that documents the evolution of sentiment, culture and policy within the community. Likewise, complete transparency about ownership, management policy making, and policy implementation would do nothing but help the place.

To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of malice or any lack of good intent. And I fully acknowledge that a whole bunch of folks put a great deal of honest effort into trying to make this a valuable place. I just think that it would be a better place and would deliver greater value to members and owners alike if there was greater transparency - and the kind of resulting trust that might bias people impacted by mod/owner decisions to shoot a side channel note in a friendly way rather than "put up the shields".

Just my friendly .02...

You would be surprised how little is discussed 'behind the scenes'. I would say 75% or more is sorting through the ideas that are brought up here. I am unsure what you are referring to with "transparency", please explain.

In A-team leadership circles there is a common goal for the good of the organizations and the individuals involved in it. Unfortunately, that is not true in the general public EpicSki community, although it is more generally true among Supporters.

We came to this Guideline through a series of very painful public conversations where members of the moderation and administration teams were accused of intentions that were in complete contrast to the truth. Because repeating something often enough makes it the "truth" to some subset of the population, these "facts" became unquestioned and unquestionable. That put moderation and administration in a near stranglehold. We cannot and will not have that again.

I find it interesting that the skis are being sold via a thread in the Swap forum as I type this, don't you?

I also find it interesting that complaints about the policy are openly being discussed in this thread, don't you?

The issue is primarily intent. There is a set of people who see evil intent whenever something occurs with which they don't agree. It is far more likely that there are a number of pieces of information that they don't have that contributed to the decision. Rather than hash and rehash most stuff in public, we make decisions and move on. We all want the same thing (the health and growth of EpicSki) and we have about 15 people involved at different levels in these discussions (the 10 mods plus members of the administration/management team). The mods are all well-known members of the site, most having been here for a number of years. I am one of the more recent additions among the team. When they became mods, some people acted as though they had joined the dark side! What craziness! They invested more of themselves for the sake of EpicSki and got attacked for it.

That's why we don't allow general public conversations about moderator actions. They tend to be nasty attacks, just as some were about this incident (I deleted them last night as the threads were being created). That kind of blasting has no place here, and we're not going to allow it. However, as this thread demonstrates, reasoned discussion is welcomed. It is often just faster and more direct to deal with it one-on-one instead of in front of hundreds of others, some of whom just enjoy throwing fuel on a fire.

You can add me to the list of people who believe that moderation at Epic seems to be moving in a direction of self protection and out of the realm of comment of ordinary members. I recently had some disagreement about moderator action and will say I was very dissatisfied with the response and follow up I received. The policy that individual moderator action is not to be discussed in an open forum is one that I continue to have strong disagreement with. Additionally I find the "business" activities of Epic to have further biased this site. Whether those involved in management of this site recognize it or not there is a bias from Epics "commercial" activities that definitely rears its head. While I still enjoy and actively participate at Epic, no longer do I have the same sense of community about this site that I had at one time.

"Bias" is a matter of perception. I can say I'm not biased and you can say I am. It doesn't matter what the topic is. How do we know if there's real bias or not? We don't. We only know how we as individuals interpret it and feel about it.

Si, I tried to explain why we don't talk about it. You weren't involved in those ugly discussions, and maybe you didn't see them. But, do you think it's OK for members and/or Supporters to attack a moderator's character and intentions through misinterpretation or misunderstanding, and then to broadcast such things to the entire site? Doing so effectively impugns the personal reputation of an individual, and in many cases a person that folks will meet in person. It's happened. Quite a number of times. And it's not ok and we can't--and won't--let it happen.

The only way to manage that (as we've been told by the members) is to be consistent in our actions with respect to the "rules" (their word, not mine). So, we're trying to do that.

Again, I'm sorry that you and others feel that EpicSki is somehow "over-moderatored". In practical terms, our moderation of posts has not increased substantially over the past two years. I think that impression comes from a very small number of incidents (like this one) that develop a clear delineation of opinion and then turn into an interpretation of "why" things happen that is in direct contradiction to the reasons stated by the moderator(s) and/or adminstrator(s), as though any of us would lie to protect anything (what is there to protect?!?!).

Mudslingers always win battles in public anonymous media.

no good deed goes unpunished

i dont think some of you realize how quickly a website can be destroyed without moderators, and neither would i if i had not seen it happen. this place is free and yet STILL gets complaints.i would like to thank those doing a thankless job so well.

duke, I agree. the mods here aren't perfect but are necessary and protect us and the site - and are most importantly always trying to do the right thing.

kind of like taxes, they are the price we pay for civilization. would you want not to have policemen, firemen, road crews etc.?

Sorry, I don't agree that sites are destroyed by being unmoderated. Look at tgr, it is mostly unmoderated (except for self-moderation by the users), and the only moderation I know of is the extremely rare banning of users.

However, I agree with the moderation policies of epicski, and when I do have an individual gripe (having been guilty in the past of questioning individual moderator's decisions), I take it up via PM. When I want unmoderated, I go to tgr. If you want to see really extreme moderation, try the K2 ski forums site.

I am a member of a workout forum that the admin has been MIA for months on. It is totally overrun by spam postings. I'm sure even at TGR that someone is moderating that type of activity.

As to the other type of moderating of posts, IMO there are many times when insulting and threatening posts need to be removed. It's all a matter of degree.

Anarchy only functions well in very small groups with common ground, and groups which are fairly closed off to new members with possible ulterior motives.

Turning this into an issue of whether there should be moderation or not is very misleading. The issue that many of us are voicing concern about (and Irul is leaving about) is whether moderater actions should be beyond the scope of any public comment.

Most issues (whether we're talking about EpicSki, families, countries, etc) can be resolved by dialogue and reaching a mutual understanding. But you can't have dialogue if one party doesn't want to talk to the other.

I've made some very specific comments about why we instituted this policy. Unless those specific issues are part of the conversation, this discussion is useless. Saying it the way you are makes it sound like we're hiding from the public, creating all kinds of machinations in back rooms. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I am trying to protect the moderators from character assassination. Can I say it more specifically and directly than that?

Steve, while moderator actions seem reasonable to you I think it is you who is missing the point. Your explanation about avoiding character assassination just doesn't hold up. Moderators, as well as any other member, should be protected from personal attacks, as I think they are. To say that discussion of the actions of Moderators is not permitted in Epic forums for this reason seems baseless. As others have said, such discussion is important to the health of a community. If someone comes with personal attacks on an individual (whether that person is a moderator or a mere member : ) that should be dealt with appropriate moderator action. Similar arguments can be brought up in response to some of the other reasons you have provided for the policies as they stand. I hope you get the message that some of the reasons you are providing for policy just don't hold up for some of us.

As far as I'm concerned the people running the show here are free to set the rules as they wish. What I'm trying to do is give you feedback on the consequences of your actions. Do with it what you will.

Echoing what Si said...

Also, at least from my perspective, the community at large will reflect the behavior you expect. I suspect that if you expected adult behavior from the community, you'd get it from the vast majority of members. While you'd get some number of violations, that just can't be taken to zero, a more transparent and inclusive approach to some of these discussions would result in increased compliance with the "rules" as well as additional community enforcement. IMO, this sort of community cohesion only develops from discussion and debate regarding specific policies and specific decisions.

Despite TGR's negative reputation among some folks here (a reputation I do not agree with at all), that community has developed its own approach (almost 100% community driven and enforced) as to where certain lines are and how they deal with people who cross them. Frozen rarely has to take explicit action, yet some of the people who have crossed those lines seem to have disappeared from that community. Coincidence? All with a whopping big mod force of one...

As Si said, I respect the right of the owners and mods to set and enforce policy here as you guys see fit. And I'm not arguing against the existence of "house rules". I'm simply telling you what I, as a member of the community, believe will preserve and grow the value of this community for me.

I hear what you are saying, but I disagree pretty strongly. I've seen it happen enough times that it's clearly a goal of some to force their own agenda by complaining long enough and loud enough to create a truth through their commentary.

I find it incredibly ironic that you are making comments about the lack of policy discussion within a thread about policy discussions.

Attacks on moderator actions often become attacks on the person disguised as attacks on the action. For example, "Deleting the threads complaining about the Swap thread deletion was stupid and a sign of power-hungry moderation." Is that a "personal attack"? Not really. Yet, it is.

Any moderator action is likely to be a point of disagreement for at least some percentage of the membership. This means that every moderator action would be a topic for debate in the general membership. We have seen this spin out of control to the point that everything is being second-guessed by everyone and sides get drawn and frustration and anger overflows to all corners of EpicSki.

This is what we are avoiding. I do not understand why someone would object to taking up the discussion in private first in an effort to understand and reach an agreement unless they thought by gathering public support they could force a change and "win" while the moderators "lose." Can you help me understand that, please?

I'm in the group that feels if you disgree with action done by mods or admins you PM them and ask for an explanaition. A private conversation is not a secret agenda. Most moves by mods are done with consultation with the group and are not an extension of a singular motive. At least that's my understanding of their procedure.
Making your concerns and dissenting opinions clear to the mods or mods might be a quick way to clear up a misunderstanding or a mistake by them. They are by no means perfect and do need, at times, some centering of their position . Only by communication without the angst of hyberbole can changes in policy or direct action be corrected.
Trying to incite the masses with fits of self serving rage with no suggestions for improvement or constructive criticism do the forum no good at all and just serve the need of the poster to vent to an audience.

Constructive change that can be implemented can only be done wihin the system. Use the PM. The folks running this forum are not hard to communicate with.

I think a lot of the current concern with this issue, being voiced by participants, is not the fact of moderation, but that it appears to be conducted in, for want of a better word, secrecy.

There is also concern that the personal feelings of moderators affects what, how and who they moderate.
Since moderation is done without any kind of public discussion and therefore accountability, it is inevitable that people who are aware of things that have been moderated (and people who have been banned) feel concerned.

Issues of spam and anarchy are separate from the concern that many of us have, and are voicing.

I understand this concern. However, I think that threads like this make it clear that such is not the case. I do have a concern about metadiscussions overwhelming the real content on EpicSki at times, and that has been greatly reduced since we got clearer on this. There is no doubt that everyone's personal feelings affect what and how they do things, and with whom they communicate. It's more difficult for moderators, because we can't just ignore people and posts. However, given that there are 15 people involved in these processes, I believe that we've come as close to eliminating this bias as we can. Especially when we take on deletion of threads or placing a Time Out or ban, we spend a lot of time and effort discussing it and getting agreement. Thank you for drawing the distinction.

Please also consider this: it's not uncommon for regular members to be aggressive and even vulgar in attacking moderators and/or their actions. Moderators, of course, do not respond in kind. After a while, such attacks take their toll. I'm personally and deeply grateful to those who have taken the time to send me supportive e-mails and PMs during those times. I don't believe that there is a solution to this that will address all sides of the issues. And we're all (members, Supporters, moderators, and administrators) emotional human beings. We really are doing our best and don't want to be "secret". We do want to avoid being targets any more than we already are, though.

Si, Irul was welcome to post in this thread or send a PM or express himself in any number of ways. Instead he posted three threads with the following titles:

The Moderators Blow!!!
Yo mods...can't stand any criticsm???
Hey Moderators...pull Your Head Out Of Your Ass!!!!!

Now, we would have deleted such an attack on ANY OTHER MEMBER. Should we allow such an attack to be made on ourselves? Would you? Not only that, but while this obvious violation of Terms and Conditions occurred, Irul was NOT banned. He posted his farewell speech in two places, and that was not moderated because it did NOT violate T&Cs.

Its easy to conclude that Irul is leaving because he wasn't allowed to express his opinion concerning the moderators or the moderation of this site. But if you know the facts, you would realize that is an extremely inaccurate statement. In most cases, we bend over backwards to accommodate members discussion of site policy, and oversight of our approach to things. There have to be limits, and those limits are where the discussion is a blatant attack or insult in violation of T&Cs, or where the discussion reveals matters of privacy that is not our place to discuss in public. Secrecy? We just don't think we should have to post a discussion of every action we take, so its never seen...like the three deleted posts of Irul.

Actually both Frozenwater and The Suit moderate. They recently banned someone who is a member here and it appears to be a mistake. That member asked me to intercede as a messenger to have him reinstated. The first thought that came to mind was, gee, I need to start a thread on this site and rant about this injustice. :