Apologia

[chamekke]

I just can't believe that somebody complained to you privately. Nasty stuff.

Look, just as a general principle, I think that if someone has an ongoing problem with the tone or content of someone's postings, and the moderators haven't already stepped in, that person should take it up with the mods. (If I may: the tea cops!) If there were anything to the complaint, they would deal with it offline in what I trust would be a skilful fashion. In this instance, of course, the mods would simply tell the person to get a life.

But in either case, there is no justification for personally hurtful messages like this.

I do hope that this hasn't poisoned TeaChat for you, Tom. This place would be infinitely poorer if you weren't a part of it. I really mean that.

[Salsero]

I think that if someone has an ongoing problem with the tone or content of someone's postings, and the moderators haven't already stepped in, that person should take it up with the mods.
I do hope that this hasn't poisoned TeaChat for you, Tom. This place would be infinitely poorer if you weren't a part of it. I really mean that.

They did take it up with our Mod, and "they" are a true plural, though the quantity unknown so far. If one person had an issue with me, I wouldn't bat an eye. This was a set of nameless "they" anons.

Nothing could poison me worse than the awful Yin Gou green tea by STEAP that I had today. It was a thoughtful gift from my daughter. It was also the worst green I have ever even imagined, much less consumed.

[Geekgirl]

This is the only forum I have participated in, so maybe I just need to grow a thicker skin.

My friend, allow me to share a bit of my forum experience here. I've been using online forums for a little over 10 years, starting on MSN groups and yahoogroups, then a couple of private discussion boards. There have been forums on fish-keeping, hiking, massage therapy and bodywork, religion and politics, photography, childcare and now, tea. I'm a bit of a forum addict, and have spent at least a couple hours a day playing in the discussion board environment nearly every single day for the last 10 years.

For all of that time, I have used the same voice that all of you see here. I am involved, straightforward and often wordy. As you can imagine, I've made some enemies over the years, but also some very wonderful friends. A few times I've gotten angry enough (or hurt enough) to leave off posting. IMO, this is a silly reason to leave a place that you care about.

My point is that, just like in real-life social settings where a large number of people gather, there will be people you don't connect with, and those who do not connect with you. Some of those people will lack the manners and good grace to just choose to interact with someone else, instead pushing their bad manners in your face and trying to make you conform to their idea of how everyone else should act. If you let that get to you, it's just the same thing as standing there at a party while a rude and drunken individual tells you that your taste in shirts sucks and you should change immediately or risk their ire. Okay, whatever.

I'm not sure that a thick skin is required; after all, the willingness to be friendly and accessible is certainly an appealing quality. But developing the ability to recognize when someone is just being petty and complaining, (or if the other person really does have the attitude problem, ) is invaluable if you want to play in online playgrounds.

People will say things on forums that they would never dream of saying to another person's face. The hard part is recognizing when to let it roll off your back, and when there is validity to the comment.

On a much lighter note, I've averaged 8 posts a day since arriving here. You, I notice, have averaged less than 4. I would imagine that, factoring in the bird pictures, and other non-tea posts I've made here, I still have you beat in the wordiness arena. I suppose my very own vituperative missive is still enroute to my private mailbox.

But that's okay. I have my boots on.

[Pentox]

I think that if someone has an ongoing problem with the tone or content of someone's postings, and the moderators haven't already stepped in, that person should take it up with the mods.
I do hope that this hasn't poisoned TeaChat for you, Tom. This place would be infinitely poorer if you weren't a part of it. I really mean that.

They did take it up with our Mod, and "they" are a true plural, though the quantity unknown so far. If one person had an issue with me, I wouldn't bat an eye. This was a set of nameless "they" anons.

Nothing could poison me worse than the awful Yin Gou green tea by STEAP that I had today. It was a thoughtful gift from my daughter. It was also the worst green I have ever even imagined, much less consumed.

"'they' anons" ? Seriously? In my opinion if you are trying to complain about someone talking to much on a discussion board, and you're just going to try to do it anonymously that just seems somewhat wrong. I get the unfortunately feeling (no idea how valid or not) that it would be someone (s) who are primarily lurkers on TeaDay, and it is by far better to talk too much in TeaDay that not talk enough. If it were just on topic in TeaDay then it would most likely be a boring and drab set of responses to the question. What a boring teaday that would be. And a boring teaday would invariably shrink and die.

[chamekke]

They did take it up with our Mod, and "they" are a true plural, though the quantity unknown so far. If one person had an issue with me, I wouldn't bat an eye. This was a set of nameless "they" anons.

Euchh, anonymous complaints. That's particularly annoying.

A long time ago, I worked in an office where everyone at clerical level was supposed to take work at exactly the same time: from noon to 12:30. One day I was so engrossed in my work that I worked to 12:15 without realizing it. So I took my lunch that day from 12:15 to 12:45, thinking that it made no difference since I worked on my own and was not responsible for covering phones or anything like that.

Then my supervisor called me in to tell me that someone had narked on me about my intolerable behaviour and that I was NOT to do it again. Company policy and all that.

All was fine until a few weeks later, when the same thing happened. I missed the noon hour and ended up taking my lunch a few minutes later. Again I was called in, on the basis of an anonymous complaint, and this time I was read the riot act.

Needless to say, I found a different place to work shortly afterwards.

The sad thing was, I never learned the identity of the small-minded, bureaucratic-hearted, poker-up-the a$$ individual who felt so strongly motivated to report me. It left me wondering which people in that workplace had truly been friendly, and which person(s) secretly wanted to see me chastised. My memories of the place, which would have been thoroughly happy otherwise, were - sorry, no other word - poisoned.

That's why I despise this kind of thing. It's so damn STOOPID.

[Salsero]

...your taste in shirts sucks...

How did you know?


Also thanks for the benefit of your ENORMOUS forum experience.

[Wesli]

I was actually going to say something about this *topic,* not about the Salamander.

I'm just going to take this completely from another forum moderator's post that is striking home:

I think it's about time this gets addressed.

I'm generally a rather easygoing person, and I don't mind the odd off-topic post in forums. But the way this has been going lately in here is starting to annoy me to extreme extents. I'm not vising any people in this post, I'm talking in general, but still a few persons are in my mind as I write this and if you have any form of consciousness you know who you are.

What some of you seem to fail to understand is the fact, that a forum is not IRC, MSN, AIM, or whatever other chat program out there. A forum is something where, when you post, you are supposed to stay on the topic started by the original poster, and what you write has to have some relevant interest.

Quote:
That's cool

Quote:
lol that's so true


Things like this are of no value at all, and if you REALLY want to post things like this, keep it in the chat forum, it's been made for that purpose.

I honestly love this place, and that's the reason why I'm posting this. If I didn't care about Piggymoo, I wouldn't care about all the mindless off-topic posting and spamming around. But I do, because I like it here, and I think this is a rather unique place on the web and I'd like to keep it that way.

Another issue that seems to be coming up is double posting. Please, the edit button is there for a reason! USE IT!!! Double (or more) posting really has no sense at all.

From now on I'm going to start deleting every single spam/offtopic/double post I see outside of the chat forum, and handing out warnings. You will get temporary bans for multiple offenses.


Thanks for reading this, and please keep it in mind.

"What does this have to do with them attacking Salsero?" Nothing, but as we've seen, whatever attack this was is just a nuisance not to be taken personally. It's the difference between telling someone "You smell like shit, get away from me," and "Check the bottoms of your shoes, friend."

Now, I don't want to antagonize myself, but this isn't about me. If I were new here and opened a thread to ask a question, only to have a page of posts going off on a tangent, I'd be pretty pissed off.

Hell, I get pissed off every time I use TeaChat to research, and end up having to dig through dozens of off-topic posts just to find responses that are of any value. Reading "I don't know," or "cool," or "me too" gets old. Seriously.

I don't want to turn TeaChat into a strict Q&A forum, so I think that random teachat should be encouraged, or else there would be no sense of community. But when I say encouraged, I don't mean all over the place. TeaDay, the LiveChat, and, for us luckies, ITD, are the perfect places for us to bullshit about most anything. For example, we *started* ITD for a group of us that were constantly present on the forums and the chat who went off-topic enough that we developed a community feeling, and created ITD as a place for us to do our thing. Just check out the oldest threads of ITD:

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?t=3079

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?t=3184

So we have places to do this kind of stuff: ITD, the Chat, and Teaday. We should allow ourselves this freedom, but we shouldn't get so used to it that we bring it outside of these places more than we should.

This has all reminded me of uchi-soto.

[Geekgirl]

From now on I'm going to start deleting every single spam/offtopic/double post I see outside of the chat forum, and handing out warnings. You will get temporary bans for multiple offenses.

I've been on forums where the mods held the reins in an iron grip and allowed no kibbutzing. All off-topic posting is stamped out, people who do too many smilies or "me too!"s get handslaps or put on moderation. The thing is, those forums die. It's very hard to build camaraderie or social connections in forums that disallow all the little social niceties that create community.

I would hate to see that happen here.

And as long as I'm speaking frankly, in for a penny, in for a pound.

I'm a little confused as to how these "anonymous comments" made their way from the source, through a mod, to Salsero? It seems to me that other mods may not even have been aware of the incident. This is generally something that mods are going to deal with behind the scenes, not going to the poster and saying "hey these anonymous people don't like you, just thought you'd want to know..."

I realize that I'm still new here, even though I've jumped into the deep end with all my clothes on, but none of this feels right.

[Victoria]

Well I'm coming in way late here!
I'm been offline most of the afternoon and all evening,
just trying to read eveything and get caught up.
Sal your photos are great!
I'm glad you decided to stay, I'm glad you kept your streak alive!

[Wesli]

Sorry Geekgirl, right after I posted, I added some stuff that took longer to write that it took you to respond.

I'm glad to see we agree.

[Space Samurai]

I think I get what Wes is saying now, and I agree. There are certain...housekeeping efforts that could help keep the Forum at large an easier place to brouse. I know my pet peeve is excessive quoting, which can get out of hand sometimes and really junk up a thread. And I too get annoyed sometimes when a topic I was interested in gets derailed into a series of nonsense comments.

I just figured these were things to be tolerated for the greater good of the Forum and our sense of community. I've only been on two forums, here and The Green Tea Forum, and that other place isn't much fun. I for one am willing to put up with some pet peeves if it means keeping this place lively.

[Mary R]

Excessive quoting is a huge pet peeve of mine, too. And quoting with pictures...especially when the post is right above yours. Ugh. If I do notice things like that becoming a problem, I do go and edit people's posts. Actually...I sometimes do that when people have issues with spelling, grammar, and capitalization, too. And excessive emoticon use. Honestly, that power alone is reason enough to be a mod.

Someday I will come to terms with the fact that I'm a freakin' grammar nazi.

Anyway, the point of this post was to say that if you do notice things in this nature that annoy you, send me a PM. It's an easy, quiet fix from the mod angle and hurts no one's feelings.

Wes: Thanks for the link to the uchi-soto Wikipedia entry. It really helped me understand your post and was an illuminating read. I know I'll try to do better to honor the out-groups from now on.

[hop_goblin]

Rubbish! You keep doing what you are doing my friend! This is a forum and by mere definition, you can post as much shit about any shit as you want!.

[olivierco]

I am glad to see that you decided to continue to post pictures Sal.

[CynTEAa]

Sal, I'm really glad you are back. You were sorely missed yesterday. I've enjoyed every post you've made!