- Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:51 am
#17276
thanks folks!
i think i was being clear from the outset that i based my opinions of the company's stock on the photos and samples they provided on the site. dugafola is right that people who have actually seen the drums are more qualified to comment, but i do have years of experience with drums and can offer an opinion based on what i can see and hear on the website. i apologise if this offended anyone.
in this case, everyone except for dugafola expressed their opinions without feeling the need to attack mine. i think their opinions naturally hold more weight than mine because the people either owned a drum from the company (multiple drums in one case), or had seen them up and close without owning one. people reading these opinions can make their own independent decisions, and i have tried very hard to avoid attacking anyone's opinions, although i've exercised the right to my own.
if i wasn't tied down with dealing with all the other stuff around this issue, i probably would have withdrawn my statements about the company, in light of all the good rap it has received. i have no problem admitting when i'm wrong.
even had there not been other positive reports of the company, if dugafola had a problem with how i expressed an opinion, i think he should have sent me a private message, and had he done so, i would likely have edited my post.
it is fine to disagree with others and offer some healthy critique of the points they make. it needs to be done with tact, however. i am careful not to force my opinions on anyone else, including not to attack them for expressing theirs, or overly criticizing the points they make. people can easily feel offended or humiliated if they are publically ridiculed for their opinion.
there is a line between offering an opinion that disagrees with someone else's and attacking it because you don't think it's as informed as it should be.
to attack any member's right to an opinion goes against the very spirit of this forum. i believe that is tantamount to the victimisation that one member said she received on another board, because she didn't read music or play jazz professionally. therefore some people attacked her for expressing her opinions about jazz music, when clearly she has a working and seasoned pair of ears and other relevant knowledge and experience to form valid opinions that she had a right to express. i would hate to see this forum deteriorate to the negativity displayed on the other board (which will remain unmentioned).
it's important to respect people on a forum where people's opinions are likely to be at odds with each other from time to time. in my experience, heated situations are always the result of either a misunderstanding or a lack of respect.
i do not wish to go too much more into dugafola's comments because the posts are now lost forever. i tried to treat the situation behind the scenes by engaging him by private message, but dugafola responded with a disrespectful reply that ended with an emoticon with a tongue sticking out. rather than react to this antagonism i simply repeated my request for him to edit the comments.
many hours later i checked on the thread and found that dugafola had written 'you can edit my posts'. had he not have written that, i would have referred it to the team to deal with. but with what seemed like his clear consent at the time, i went ahead and edited out the offending comments.
i tried to deal with the 2 objections by other members at the time by private message, but the problem is that once an objection is made in the thread, others will see it and respond. that is why it's better to deal with disputes directly with the team, and keep it 'off-list', so that (1) the thread doesn't become about the dispute instead of about the topic in the heading, and (2) the forum doesn't enter into negativity. if the dispute is handled early on by the team off-list, there is much more likely to be a win-win-win situation where everyone is satisfied of the outcome. we're not in the practice of avoiding controversy and healthy debate on djembefola.com. we simply want to deal with things effectively and to everyone's satisfaction, wherever that's possible.
when a person finds a post made on the forum objectionable, the rules and guidelines direct him/her to use the 'report post' button. this will alert the post to the moderators and allow him/her to make a comment (viewable only by the moderators) as to why the post is disagreeable. this is the preferred way to deal with spam, victimisation or any other perceived breach of the rules.
i also need to say that moderation is tough, and no matter how careful a moderator is, if they get involved with anything they easily find themselves in the firing line as people become disgruntled with the moderator's comments/actions without necessarily having all the background information. moderation is a very time consuming job, is not rewarded in any way, and involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work, so the nature of the beast is that other members may not always be fully aware of everything that goes on, but that is sometimes the way things should be, for ethical reasons. we would rather not have to go into details out of respect to the members involved, regardless of whether a member has themselves done wrong.
additionally, if a moderator had to explain every action taken, they would need to quit their job and social life to allow them time to moderate, and perhaps only a retiree could be in the position to do so. even so, i don't think that's a healthy situation for them! this was a relatively small matter but there was a very large concern that was very real to the people involved, which i can fully appreciate. it was a matter of perception though, and without having all the information at hand, misreading the situation is a likely outcome. that's why off-list dialogue with the team can make all the difference, otherwise relatively small situations can blow to big proportions.
in certain cases, a situation will be able to be dealt with quickly and may only require one moderator, while other cases will require discussion and action by the team. this situation was deceptive in that i took dugafola's 'you can edit my posts' to be his consent, and i think that could easily have happened to any moderator. as i said, most situations arise from misunderstandings. a proper off-list dialogue, possibly with another moderator, would have probably avoided this whole situation. as such, we are discussing steps to avoid even these kinds of situations.
more to come after the team have had the chance to discuss...
