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Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
Hi bingle,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. MobileRead is all about communication, and we want everyone to feel welcome, comfortable and respected here. Unfortunately, in a large community of users with many different viewpoints, there will always be a few people who will not be happy with the way our community works.
We don't arbitrarily ban people we don't like, or ban people whose comments are even bitterly critical. Criticism isn't a problem. A problem it becomes when someone lives for stirring up trouble in the forums, someone who
- feuds with other members and has the compulsive need to type things that will provoke a reaction;
- continues to post the same material over and over again without changing his position or developing the discussion;
- derails the conversation and community and has everyone focus solely on him.
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Hi Alexander,
Thanks for responding.
Again, I don't know what went on behind the scenes in this particular case, which is why I'm trying to refrain from drawing any particular conclusions. However, what went on in public did not call for a ban, in my opinion.
The list of things you've posted, after all, could refer to me, too. I'm sure I made a lot of people unhappy with my dire predictions about the state of intellectual property business, and some people could have construed that discussion to hit at least some of the bullet points above. I may even be making some people unhappy with this topic! Am I provoking people, or just bad at coming across in a neutral way, or just discussing a topic near and dear to my heart? I imagine it's hard to say (and I experienced that firsthand in the aforementioned discussion).
bowerbird is obviously a person with strong feelings about many topics. He has a grating way of expressing himself - he occasionally pushes boundaries just to challenge them, or as a statement. That's not pleasant, but it got his point across really well, I think (At least I found his postings thought-provoking, especially when he explained his personal style and how it relates to his crusade on ebook formatting).
I guess I felt that despite his style, bowerbird was contributing to a discussion in a positive way. Especially his ideas (and implementations!) of ebook formatting tools. I'd rather see thought-provoking ideas than pleasantness, I suppose. (Of course, both together are even better).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
Regarding negative karma - I agree with you. We thought about it again and decided it's not helping anyone (whether someone "deserves" it or not).
Therefore, we have now completely disabled negative karma.
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I appreciate this. I think it's a great change for the better, and helps more than anything else to avoid users feeling attacked for their ideas, or oppressed by moderators.