Conservatory closes its doors

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

You gotta be careful not to read too much into posts sometimes.

amen ...

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

I like it here also, and I participate in NO other forum site. Never have. Probably never will.

You gotta be careful not to read too much into posts sometimes.

Originally Posted by GeoffC

amen ...

Can I get a "Whoop, Whoop"?

Kaz

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Can I get a "Whoop, Whoop"?

Kaz

Whoop, whoop! There you go

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Can I get a "Whoop, Whoop"?

Kaz

i'm sorry, steam locomotives are rarely found these days - how about a fog horn ....

[tirsales]

Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oood

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oood

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oood

Hate to be pedantic here, but I think you missed an 'o' (the one that should be after the 13th 'o' from the left if you're wondering)

It should be "Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood"

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Hate to be pedantic here, but I think you missed an 'o' (the one that should be after the 13th 'o' from the left if you're wondering)

It should be "Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood"

Oh, I am dreadfully sorry! You are actually right there ...

[nekokami]

As a member of the moderation team, and one of the moderators who expressed grave concerns about the direction the Conservatory was taking, I wanted to respond to some of these comments.

Originally Posted by Daithi

I can understand why Ea is upset.

When the Conservatory for first proposed the idea was shot down by the moderators. Then it was put to a vote and overwhelming the Mobileread community voted in favor of the the Conservatory. Now it is being shutdown because "private" messages were sent to Alex indicating they didn't like the tone. Then the Conservatory was closed with no warning whatsoever. Try looking at it from Ea's perspective and maybe you can see why he feels shafted.

I can appreciate Ea's perspective-- echoed by Daithi here-- that the decision was made with no advance warning. However, the creation of the forum was not as simple as what you are describing, either. As a member of the moderation team, I can tell you that there were a lot of difficult decisions around how-- or if-- to engage in this experiment. One late decision that was made was not to include "Leave things as they are" as a poll option, even though this had been discussed and several people in the moderation team (myself included) had expected to see that as a poll option. The choices were limited to "New forum" or "New prefix." As a result, we have no idea what proportion of the MR community actually wanted the new forum area. We only know that of those who thought something needed to change, a new forum area was preferred over a prefix.

Originally Posted by tompe

Do you mean the content or the tone? I really do not get what it was that upset people. I participate in discussions in other places on the net and the Conservatory seemed just like a standard discussion place. And if you discuss certain topics you will get polarized opinions and sometimes bad arguments but so what?

Tompe, both the content and the tone of the Conservatory area were the cause of complaints to the moderators. As you probably all know, there is a "report post" button on each post. Reporting a post results in adding the post to a queue and sending email to the entire moderation team. Many of the posts reported are spam, and are simply dealt with by the first moderator who has a chance. When a dispute arises between members, however, and a post is reported, the moderation team discusses the situation and decides what action to take, if any.

In the Conservatory, not only were a number of threads started with what appeared to be deliberately provocative topics, but the tone seemed to become angry much more quickly than in other areas of MR (even compared to copyright or DRM threads). You wrote, "the Conservatory seemed just like a standard discussion place." However, one of the comments we've received consistently about MR is that it is not just a standard discussion place. People find the tone here unusually civil and friendly. I feel safe in saying that the moderation team considers that maintaining this atmosphere of civility and friendliness is a priority. It does not mean that people cannot disagree with one another here. But we would like to be a cut above the usual internet forum in which flame wars seem to be a daily or hourly occurrence.

You wrote, "And if you discuss certain topics you will get polarized opinions and sometimes bad arguments but so what?" My response: why should we even discuss those topics here, unless they relate to ebooks? I understand building community with the light-hearted banter in the lounge, but these controversial topics don't bring people together, they drive them apart. Doesn't the internet already provide enough places where that can happen?

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

And what I've found here is that when you do ask there's usually quite a lot of people willing to help you and point you in the right direction. Unlike some other forums I've been on, where the standard response is to tell people to use the search function

I've noticed that too, and I think it is representative of the difference in attitudes here compared to many other places I've been online (and I go back to the days of 300 baud dial-up modems).

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

...when someone from across the pond posted something once about going to the NEW FOREST and I'd never heard of it before, I asked what it was. To me, the name sounded like a term that the "locals" might use, like a "pet name" or nickname" of a place. Kind of like we might call McDonald's, Mickey D's, or WalMart, Wally World.

I received a response that said something like (I paraphrase) "Why ask here? Look it up yourself here" with a link to a Wiki page.

I am so sorry this happened to you. Providing a link to someone to answer a question is a reasonable practice; including the search terms you used to find the link is also helpful. But telling people "search for yourself" isn't what we hope for in this community.

Finally, I'd like to respond to some specific concerns from those who find the Lounge cumbersome or unsatisfying to use. I hear the following concerns:

1 - One can't subscribe to a subset of the lounge, e.g. only specific prefixes, for notification purposes
2 - One can't choose to select or exclude specific prefixes in the "new posts" view
3 - When thread drift occurs, more action could be taken to split threads, so the original topic can be continued and the new topic can continue

It seems to me that these are concerns that we can look to address. The first two involve technical issues that will require Alex's attention (and I have to say, this is the best forum I've ever been on from a technical standpoint, bar none. Alex is a genius in this matter.)

The third would involve action by moderators, but we do have the technical tools to do this already. We could probably use the "report post" function for this, with a request "please split" in the report field. That is, if the original poster (or the other participants) feel that a thread needs to be split, they can report the first post, include "please split" in the field provided, and perhaps identify followup posts that should go to the new thread, as appropriate. I would far rather spend my moderation time helping members split threads so everyone can enjoy conversations than responding to complaints about vicious personal attacks.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Tompe, both the content and the tone of the Conservatory area were the cause of complaints to the moderators. As you probably all know, there is a "report post" button on each post. Reporting a post results in adding the post to a queue and sending email to the entire moderation team. Many of the posts reported are spam, and are simply dealt with by the first moderator who has a chance. When a dispute arises between members, however, and a post is reported, the moderation team discusses the situation and decides what action to take, if any.

In the Conservatory, not only were a number of threads started with what appeared to be deliberately provocative topics, but the tone seemed to become angry much more quickly than in other areas of MR (even compared to copyright or DRM threads). You wrote, "the Conservatory seemed just like a standard discussion place." However, one of the comments we've received consistently about MR is that it is not just a standard discussion place. People find the tone here unusually civil and friendly. I feel safe in saying that the moderation team considers that maintaining this atmosphere of civility and friendliness is a priority. It does not mean that people cannot disagree with one another here. But we would like to be a cut above the usual internet forum in which flame wars seem to be a daily or hourly occurrence.

You wrote, "And if you discuss certain topics you will get polarized opinions and sometimes bad arguments but so what?" My response: why should we even discuss those topics here, unless they relate to ebooks? I understand building community with the light-hearted banter in the lounge, but these controversial topics don't bring people together, they drive them apart. Doesn't the internet already provide enough places where that can happen?

Point taken. I probably have a too idealistic view of what you can get to work. In a perfect world you should be able to keep the tone in the rest of the forum even if you have on forum were certain types of discussions are allowed but maybe it is impossible in practice.

1 - One can't subscribe to a subset of the lounge, e.g. only specific prefixes, for notification purposes
2 - One can't choose to select or exclude specific prefixes in the "new posts" view

I actually found a good solution to this. I know have two buttons in one of the row in firefox and they are "MR no lounge" and "MobileRead" so if I fell reading in the lounge also I press "MobileRead" and if not I press the other button. I was surprised that I liked how this works.

The thing I am missing now is marking a whole thread as read. The only way I have found is to go to the last post in the thread but that is to much work.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by nekokami

We could probably use the "report post" function for this, with a request "please split" in the report field. That is, if the original poster (or the other participants) feel that a thread needs to be split, they can report the first post, include "please split" in the field provided, and perhaps identify followup posts that should go to the new thread, as appropriate. I would far rather spend my moderation time helping members split threads so everyone can enjoy conversations than responding to complaints about vicious personal attacks.

Another thing that should be done is change the report form notice and/or report button hint. Right now you see this when you click "report":

Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, copyright violations, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts.

Not many people know it can also be used to request thread renaming. I think this and other uses should be explained. And maybe "Contact a moderator" instead of "Report post" for the button hint.
(maybe we should make a separate thread for this...)

[Daithi]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Not many people know it can also be used to request thread renaming. I think this and other uses should be explained. And maybe "Contact a moderator" instead of "Report post" for the button hint.
(maybe we should make a separate thread for this...)

I'd second this.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by tompe

Point taken. I probably have a too idealistic view of what you can get to work. In a perfect world you should be able to keep the tone in the rest of the forum even if you have on forum were certain types of discussions are allowed but maybe it is impossible in practice.

thanks for understanding, tommy.

I actually found a good solution to this. I know have two buttons in one of the row in firefox and they are "MR no lounge" and "MobileRead" so if I fell reading in the lounge also I press "MobileRead" and if not I press the other button. I was surprised that I liked how this works.

it would be really great if you could make a new thread explaining how to do this, in case other people would be interested, but don't know how. thanks !

Originally Posted by igorsk

Another thing that should be done is change the report form notice and/or report button hint. Right now you see this when you click "report":

Not many people know it can also be used to request thread renaming. I think this and other uses should be explained. And maybe "Contact a moderator" instead of "Report post" for the button hint.
(maybe we should make a separate thread for this...)

very good suggestions, igorsk. i will bring them up to alex, in case he doesn't see them.

[Daithi]

As to the Conservatory. I'm fine with whatever Alex wants to do and don't see any reason to give a dead horse another whack.

[Seabound]

Thank you, nekokami! I wish other admins/mods took the time and effort to explain things in detail as you did. I appreciated your post very much.

Originally Posted by nekokami

You wrote, "And if you discuss certain topics you will get polarized opinions and sometimes bad arguments but so what?" My response: why should we even discuss those topics here, unless they relate to ebooks? I understand building community with the light-hearted banter in the lounge, but these controversial topics don't bring people together, they drive them apart. Doesn't the internet already provide enough places where that can happen?

This is well and good. In fact, there was a time when I considered MR a welcome haven from the heated debates of other forums I visited. But recently, even before the conservatory, there were threads which I would consider "polarizing" and not at all related to eBooks which were allowed to fester. And it was even some mods who objected to closing some of those threads. If MR is going to adopt a "cut above the rest" theme and tone, then it would be good if admins/mods would uniformly impose that policy, instead of cherry-picking threads which would be allowed to continue on and on and on, even though it is obvious that the topics are viewed passionately by different sides and do not "bring people together".