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View Full Version : A vote of Ty to Colin, Niall & Bill for the message boa



golach
03-Jul-03, 20:01
I for one want to thank the afore mentioned three.
through the message board I have made so many new friends and met 6 of them 3 for Scotland and 3 from the US of A.
I have had many a good laugh at some of the message topics and retorts, I have also shouted abuse at the screen o my computer because someone has dared to disagree with my opinion, but hey I am a honourable man and I come here to praise Ceaser not to, oops got carried away there.
Well Bill , Niall and Colin a toast till ye three for keeping me happy sane and thankful for the Caithness. Org Message boards
Golach

darklighter
03-Jul-03, 20:28
aye well said G
i ken the guys (in the real world ) & apart fae being good eggs they're doin a great job here

cheers dudes :D

htwood
03-Jul-03, 20:33
I heartily second Golach's toast to the CCWS team. Caithness.org is the best site for creating a sense of community. Thanks, boys! -H

Anonymous
03-Jul-03, 20:49
Aye I am sure they work hard and put a lot of effort in, and the message boards are good. However the response of Niall to Eve M was over the top and out of order, and it seems Niall thinks the message boards are drivel and wants rid of them - slightly different than what is stated in the Caithness.Org newsletter that gets emailed out.

You are correct Niall, it is your ball and it seems we can only play the games you want - you sound like a wee spoilt bairn.

Bye Bye it was good while it lasted, I'm off to find a message board where our drivel is wanted. I think Wounded Soldiers Dirty Weeker site (though the thought disturbs me) could be my future port of call.

Anyone want to get in touch by email can do so at:

kw14ultra@yahoo.co.uk

squidge
03-Jul-03, 22:41
It might be worth giving a vote of thanks to all of us who so regularly post here. Whilst Colin Bill and Niall provide the forum it is our persistence and our wit and our intelligence and our interest and our articulate comments that make it the success which it is. I do not want to underestimate the amount of work that goes into maintaining the boards however these boards are a reflection of the amount of work we also do in keeping our posts going... and that should not be underestimated either

Anonymous
04-Jul-03, 00:26
Apart from those who really do want to wind me up and poke and prod at the ways things are run here, I'm sure they all know what drivel I'm talking about. I really mean I have to read EVERY post in EVERY thread in EVERY forum. As you can imagine, I get sick of checking in after spotting new posts to see they all they contain are emoticons or lol or things to that effect. At least if someone has posted a comment or bit of discussion theres been a point in my logging in.

If there were fewer people not willing to abide by the agreement they signed up to, we would not have to worry so much about every single post.

I've stated on several occasions why, after trouble has been bubbling, I would like to see the end of these boards, its because I feel sick to my stomach after spending so many hundreds of hours working on the thing, a tiny minority want to make me work ten times as much justifing what I do to them.

Yes, you can say that I sound like a spoilt wee bairn if you like, but sometimes its the only way to get the point across to certain people.

It always manages to warm me up a bit though when people do like something thats happened on the forums, it gives me a warm glow to hear of folk poking and prodding at the new bits of an upgrade. Its great to see people from all over having good conversations about interesting topics. And yes there is drivel, my current pet hate topic is the What-or-how-fast-is-your-head-spinnin thread. How many times have a wanted to just delete itp s\kdgpsige8q ooooooo I really hate discussions on music and who likes what. But that should be ok, I'm not reading it for its content, I'm only reading it for anything that might need moderated. By the same token I dont see many of you down the javascript shed asking in vain about the actions of your object-elements. So fair enough, drivel to me and riviting to the rest of you, thats what I keep telling myself when I'm hovering over the delete button anyway.

I like having the forums because of the technical element, I enjoy the time I spend reading up on bits of it and tweaking templates. There are only a few topics which I feel I'd like to say anything on, pretty much the same as anyone else and I dont agree with everything thats posted and everyone doesnt always agree with what I've posted so that makes me pretty much the same as everyone else. But when it comes to the running of things it is only up to us what happens. At the end of the day there are over 900 people who could just walk away from the forums and never look back, we cant. We have to be here and available to keep an eye on all sorts of things at all kinds of times of the day and night. If things break down after 5pm the chances are we'll be trying to fix it and everyone wont be waiting until 9am to see if we're going to fix it. So help me I'll really be trying not to visit next time I'm on holiday.

With all that, I'm sure most people would understand how upset I'm likely to be when someone tries to make it more difficult for us. In all of these types of situations there will be 2 sides, my side and whoever's side. Once the point has been lost in nonsense and whoever's side just start attacking the mods and crying about how things are run, how am I suppost to react? I'm sorry if I come on a bit strong when people start breaking the pretty simple rules, trying to beat the auto-censor and trying to wind us up, but why should I sit here and just watch it happen. Do people think it would really be better if moderation was just done in silence, no warning, no clarification, just post removed and banned, after all thats pretty much whats supposed to happen. You post something that has to be removed and you lose your only life, then you do it again and its a ban. But how often do you see that happening, far more than double the posts have been removed compared to bans handed out. In fact it would be more like 20 times. We're obvoiusly going to allow our regular and sensible posters a wee slip every now and again, and why not? no one gets upset about it, they post it, we remove it and they realise why and its all good.

But then we get a "victim" and suddenly we're the bad guys, suddenly no one is allowed to think any other way than my way and no one is allowed to post anything, and , and and, blah blah blah, heard it all before. If you dont want to conduct yourself in the manner suggested then beat it, good riddence to you. There have been many many discussions on a wide variety of topics that have not resulted in people having posts removed and people being banned.

It is so soul destroying to get a kw14 in about the golachs and helens of the world. As squidge quite rightly points out if we didnt have all you folks here to use the forums then there would be no point in maintaining them, the rest of the site far outweighs the forum in size and visitor numbers and work needing done, but if we can maintain things here then why not, everyone wins, we enjoy keeping it here and you enjoy using it.

So the bottom line is this, these boards exist because we can be bothered having them, as soon as it becomes too much trouble they they get taken down, we try to keep that from happening by way of moderation, but if this becomes too much trouble we take the boards down. What makes it all so difficult is when people who have no vested interest in these forums just want to make snide comments and poke at us like we deserve to be ridiculed. If they dont like things here then they should go somewhere else, I'm not really interested in what they think.

So many other people are here, probably without every actually reading the agreement when they signed up, not that it will matter, because they already know how to conduct themselves in public and dont really need an agreement to keep them in check. These people are the lifeblood of any forum as they are adult enough to not require moderation. These are the people that I would like to thank for their conduct in all the time they've been here, their personal moderation of their own posts and their consideration for the feelings of others. They make it all worth it and for the moment they far outweigh the few that seem to want to ruin things.

I feel that I may be repeating what I've said before, perhaps I should take all the stuff about then negative side of things and make a text file I can just cut and paste, the thanks though, I'm happy to type.

Its late...

MadPict
04-Jul-03, 03:19
<snip>
And yes there is drivel, my current pet hate topic is the What-or-how-fast-is-your-head-spinnin thread. How many times have a wanted to just delete itp s\kdgpsige8q ooooooo I really hate discussions on music and who likes what. But that should be ok, I'm not reading it for its content, I'm only reading it for anything that might need moderated.

Niall,
Well sorry for trying to introduce something of interest to the forums. Or perhaps you prefer the Guff in the shed style of vacuous post that seems to have taken over the forums recently?

The first "What-or-how-fast-is-your-head-spinnin thread" (as you refer to it) was popular and at least drew sensible responses from people all over the world and united everyones common interest in music - it had 300 replies and 4000 views and was never off the forum index front page and 99% of the posts were on topic and informative.

How many posts currently on the General board can meet that criteria? ("Ashley Cowie - An Investigation" was the only one that came close and it disappeared too :roll:)

When it mysteriously disappeared one day I received numerous PM's about it - e.g.

"What has happened to your wondrous "What are you Spinnin'?" thread? Has it been suffered the fate of other popular threads? Ie, has it been deleted by the MB police without warning and/or explanation?"

Colin even said "and the content was interesting for lots of users" when I asked about it.

If it wasn't for the fact Colin said it became corrupted (and I still have his PM about it) after your remark above, I would have held you responsible!

It seems to me that the forums have become a cyber graffiti wall for a lot of people, which is why I haven't been as regular a visitor as I was. Shame, really as the standard of post has definately slipped recently. Maybe this is why you want to pull the forums?

You say you have no time to check the forums - well how about employing some moderators? Other boards do, and it would mean you don't have to check all those tedious posts about peoples common interests!

Once again, sorry that I caused you so much problem with one post - I will try and find something interesting like whinging about the state of parking in Wick or signs on the hill.

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/MadPict/images/borgsmile.gifMadPict
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/MadPict/images/gruff_ext.gif

Anonymous
04-Jul-03, 09:48
OK look, I'm sorry for referring to stuff as drivel, but thats what it becomes when you've stopped reading the posts as sentences and you're just looking for slaggings or swearing. I have no idea if any of it makes any sense or is interesting because I'm reading it like the autocensor would. I'm just not interested in the topic. I mentioned the JavaScript because I'm sure that most of you would consider pretty much everything ever posted on the subject to be drivel also.

We have discussed the idea of moderators but dont feel comfortable passing on all the grief to anyone else. And for the most part we dont need additional moderators, most of you can moderate yourselves just fine as I've said. We're looking at changing the rules so there is no "one-life", you break the rules and you are banned, no more discussion. We wont be banning anyone we know well as they probably wont break the rules as they havent so far and some of you have been here years ?;o)

I've also decided that there will be no more open air arguments like the one thats hopefully just ended. As soon as it starts everyone involved will be banned and that will be that. From the banned position we can then discuss things by e-mail until a decision is made. If people are not happy with the rules, as has been said, there are plenty other boards to go to without our strict code of conduct.

MadPict
04-Jul-03, 11:46
So can I take it that you are going to start deleting the inane posts that seem to appear and banning the posters of such real "drivel"?

You clamped down on the use of the forum message board as a chatroom, and quite rightly, as it was as annoying for me as it was for you to try and wade through the one word/line replies and liberal use of smilies. In the end I gave up even opening those threads.

Now I may have taken you remark earlier personally, but I think you do the majority of posters a deservice to class their input as drivel. I know you have apologised, but like a certain Italian politician, your true feelings have come out.

I moderate a very busy forum], and the rules are just as strict as here, but to ban someone straight away for "open air" discussions then talk about their reinstatement is very severe IMHO. We would only do that, and have done it, for posting pornographic images onto the boards. Anyone else who transgresses gets a warning. Banning is usually only done after discussion amongst Admins and Mods in the majority of cases.

"We have discussed the idea of moderators but dont feel comfortable passing on all the grief to anyone else"

I really think that you would benefit from moderators here, you use them in the Chatroom, so to allow additional powers to these may be worth considering. Even if it is for a trial period. The forums would be a lot tidier and you could concentrate on the things that really require you attention. Surely its up to the moderators to feel uncomfortable if they so wish - if they don't like it then they can quit?

I may sound like I am complaining about things, but I have always applauded the work here by you, Colin and Bill and feel the whole site is a great asset, a wee diamond in cyberspace, and the forums are an important facet of that diamond.


http://hometown.aol.co.uk/MadPict/images/borgsmile.gifMadPict
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/MadPict/images/gruff_ext.gif

Kenn
05-Jul-03, 20:50
Here's to "The Webmasters" who maintain this fantastic site..long may their beards grow [lol] Many thanks once again.
Hey folks we all have our thoughts,ideas,worries etc and it's GREAT that there is more often than not alot of "Horse-sense" traded on the boards makes for some interesting reading.
Heck had better keep it short otherwise mjay be having to delve into pocket to make donation towards new reading glasses for him who does the monitoring :eek: