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Since most of us never got to see this post in its orignal place, I am going to repost it now so that a few more peeps get to see it. Mule was a stand up guy and a great mods, he respected others feelings and while he had his own opinion he let everyone else have theirs also. I did pull this little tidbit out of christophers thread for mods, thought it would add a little dynamic to this thread.
Christopher:
I don't claim to be perfect, but I sure as heck am woking hard not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
When I appointed him, I got a bevy of comments, checked them out, and then corrected my mistake by removing him.
I have no doubt but that there will be other moderators who will come and go in the same manner over time.
And finally Here is Mules post
Came home today to a few PM's, one from christopher.
A few days ago I'd been getting questioned about why I was still here at all.
They wanted to know, here's what I told them. Some of you may agree, others may not, but this pretty well explains what I felt about the direction of SnoWest.
Here's a copy of the PM, cleaned up to remove names.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mule:
really tryin to get rid of me?
Originally Posted by Christopher:
Quote:
Your a puzzlement to me Mule.
You seem so unhappy, and you go out of your way to stir up things and voice your discontent in public and in private.
So I am left wondering WHY you want to be a representative of Harris Publishing on the forums??
Why am I still here? Keep reading. I hope you've got some time, this is a long one.
Mule's Response:
First and foremost, I am Mule. I have beliefs I stand up for, skills and talents, an attitude towards life and my own personality and opinions that you may or may not agree with. Second to that comes things like my job, moderator positions, and my interaction with those around me. I DO NOT change who I am to accomodate someone else's desires. You signed Mule, the person with beliefs/skills/attitude/personality, up for this and I agreed to it after several forum members nominated me for the position. I am not just a username you can shape and mold however you wish. Save that for your wambulance. I was hoping I could give a little something back to the place that got me into sledding to begin with, and provided the space to meet some people who have since become very close friends. I trust these people with my life when I go riding with them. That's not something I can say about any other forum I'm on right now.
The problem is not with SnoWest or HP like you believe. Sure, the forum structure is a bit awkward to me now. Maybe it's just personal preference, but I'd rather see all the Polaris threads in one pigeonhole, all the Cat threads in one pigeonhole, etc rather than dividing them down into dozens of little miniforums. Example: Before the "hope and change", I was a regular in /Polaris. There were a lot of threads on machines I had no experience with that I was able to help out in. Electrical problems, or maybe a question on how to mount something. Never would have seen those now, why would I go through IQR or Edge forums if all I have is a 900 IQ? But I digress. There's plugins for vB that will let you "prefix" a thread with categories, then filter the thread list by prefixes. Or fix the "Tags" feature to achieve the same effect. I don't disagree with all the changes you've made to the forum structure and features. I think a lot (but not all) of it can improve the forum in the long run. That being said....
What myself and many others do have a problem with the way it's being moderated. Little too much overmoderation from your god-squad for me recently. Sure, some threads needed to go, but there's others that really didn't need to be touched. When people start lumping me in with the idiots that nobody has much, if any, respect for in your mod squad (mostly supermods); I have a problem with that. I feel SnoWest is becoming less and less SnoWest and more "The Christopher Show". Throw all the numbers and statistics at me that you want, but what I'm seeing is a bunch of new people registering and all the old timers that know the machines and can answer the questions they have heading for the door. Step back and look at the real reasons people are complaining.
Which kinda leads me to the next problem I've had about the moderator structure recently. What's the purpose of having a moderator for each and every forum, if the supergods are going to come in and dick with it all anyways? Not saying all of them are bad; but there's a few that really shouldn't have the job. Others i'm somewhat indifferent towards, and others I do like and feel they're doing a good job (Scott, MH, Monte). But 60 moderator positions on a forum with ~2000 users on? ADV's much larger than SW, and does just fine with half as many moderators. The mod structure there is different in that when a user is promoted to "moderator", they're assigned a forum to "moderate" and also given supermod privs across the entire forum. There's none of this "you moderate ride reports, you moderate GPS, you moderate regional areas, but *these* special people can step all over you." Said it before, but it's the contributing members that make the forum; not the shiny things, features, hardware, etc; and some of the moderators here don't quite understand what they're doing to these contributing members. Read MPS's good long post that you (or your god-squad) so graciously deleted. The two of us may not agree with a lot of things, but I 100% agreed with what he had in that post.
You say there's processes in place to keep mods/supergods from abusing their power; I disagree. Sure, a PM gets sent when a post is touched. That wouldn't stop me from selecting every thread in FP/Politics/Max and merging them all together if I were to go postal. Same goes for supergods; there's no checks on their actions until someone starts b¡tching.
I also have some ethical questions regarding accounts being used to register services for this site. As I understand it, SnoWest is a business entity under HP. Why was a domain registrar account for another forum unrelated to SnoWest or HP used to create the new SnoWestOnline domain? It was obviously an easy update, after the whistle was blown on that one it was only a matter of hours before the entry was updated. Actions like this raised some red flags about who's really handling this forum and what their motives are.
I'm CC:ing this to "admin" and "sw pub" as well, the post in /Mod and PM's lead me to believe they may take interest in what I have to say in this PM.
Maybe Banksy's on the right track....
So again, looks like honesty doesn't get you anywhere.
Came home to this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher
Your letter made it's way up the food chain, and word came down that it was ok to remove you.
Considering you do nothing at all except cause trouble and try to cruise the forum without logging in as a "Guest" there is no reason I can see to have you as a moderator any longer.
Thank You for your past service.
There you have it. As a result of this I will no longer be an "active member" of snowest until the administration here figures out how to run a forum or finds new jobs. I'll still log in and check PMs, but I'll be over at other snowmobiling sites.
To all my friends on here, I wish you the best and hope to see you on the mountain and elsewhere on the internet.
__________________
ADVRider.com
ThumperTalk.com
YOUR WELCOME AND GOODNIGHT ALL
Christopher:
I don't claim to be perfect, but I sure as heck am woking hard not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
When I appointed him, I got a bevy of comments, checked them out, and then corrected my mistake by removing him.
I have no doubt but that there will be other moderators who will come and go in the same manner over time.
And finally Here is Mules post
Came home today to a few PM's, one from christopher.
A few days ago I'd been getting questioned about why I was still here at all.
They wanted to know, here's what I told them. Some of you may agree, others may not, but this pretty well explains what I felt about the direction of SnoWest.
Here's a copy of the PM, cleaned up to remove names.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mule:
really tryin to get rid of me?
Originally Posted by Christopher:
Quote:
Your a puzzlement to me Mule.
You seem so unhappy, and you go out of your way to stir up things and voice your discontent in public and in private.
So I am left wondering WHY you want to be a representative of Harris Publishing on the forums??
Why am I still here? Keep reading. I hope you've got some time, this is a long one.
Mule's Response:
First and foremost, I am Mule. I have beliefs I stand up for, skills and talents, an attitude towards life and my own personality and opinions that you may or may not agree with. Second to that comes things like my job, moderator positions, and my interaction with those around me. I DO NOT change who I am to accomodate someone else's desires. You signed Mule, the person with beliefs/skills/attitude/personality, up for this and I agreed to it after several forum members nominated me for the position. I am not just a username you can shape and mold however you wish. Save that for your wambulance. I was hoping I could give a little something back to the place that got me into sledding to begin with, and provided the space to meet some people who have since become very close friends. I trust these people with my life when I go riding with them. That's not something I can say about any other forum I'm on right now.
The problem is not with SnoWest or HP like you believe. Sure, the forum structure is a bit awkward to me now. Maybe it's just personal preference, but I'd rather see all the Polaris threads in one pigeonhole, all the Cat threads in one pigeonhole, etc rather than dividing them down into dozens of little miniforums. Example: Before the "hope and change", I was a regular in /Polaris. There were a lot of threads on machines I had no experience with that I was able to help out in. Electrical problems, or maybe a question on how to mount something. Never would have seen those now, why would I go through IQR or Edge forums if all I have is a 900 IQ? But I digress. There's plugins for vB that will let you "prefix" a thread with categories, then filter the thread list by prefixes. Or fix the "Tags" feature to achieve the same effect. I don't disagree with all the changes you've made to the forum structure and features. I think a lot (but not all) of it can improve the forum in the long run. That being said....
What myself and many others do have a problem with the way it's being moderated. Little too much overmoderation from your god-squad for me recently. Sure, some threads needed to go, but there's others that really didn't need to be touched. When people start lumping me in with the idiots that nobody has much, if any, respect for in your mod squad (mostly supermods); I have a problem with that. I feel SnoWest is becoming less and less SnoWest and more "The Christopher Show". Throw all the numbers and statistics at me that you want, but what I'm seeing is a bunch of new people registering and all the old timers that know the machines and can answer the questions they have heading for the door. Step back and look at the real reasons people are complaining.
Which kinda leads me to the next problem I've had about the moderator structure recently. What's the purpose of having a moderator for each and every forum, if the supergods are going to come in and dick with it all anyways? Not saying all of them are bad; but there's a few that really shouldn't have the job. Others i'm somewhat indifferent towards, and others I do like and feel they're doing a good job (Scott, MH, Monte). But 60 moderator positions on a forum with ~2000 users on? ADV's much larger than SW, and does just fine with half as many moderators. The mod structure there is different in that when a user is promoted to "moderator", they're assigned a forum to "moderate" and also given supermod privs across the entire forum. There's none of this "you moderate ride reports, you moderate GPS, you moderate regional areas, but *these* special people can step all over you." Said it before, but it's the contributing members that make the forum; not the shiny things, features, hardware, etc; and some of the moderators here don't quite understand what they're doing to these contributing members. Read MPS's good long post that you (or your god-squad) so graciously deleted. The two of us may not agree with a lot of things, but I 100% agreed with what he had in that post.
You say there's processes in place to keep mods/supergods from abusing their power; I disagree. Sure, a PM gets sent when a post is touched. That wouldn't stop me from selecting every thread in FP/Politics/Max and merging them all together if I were to go postal. Same goes for supergods; there's no checks on their actions until someone starts b¡tching.
I also have some ethical questions regarding accounts being used to register services for this site. As I understand it, SnoWest is a business entity under HP. Why was a domain registrar account for another forum unrelated to SnoWest or HP used to create the new SnoWestOnline domain? It was obviously an easy update, after the whistle was blown on that one it was only a matter of hours before the entry was updated. Actions like this raised some red flags about who's really handling this forum and what their motives are.
I'm CC:ing this to "admin" and "sw pub" as well, the post in /Mod and PM's lead me to believe they may take interest in what I have to say in this PM.
Maybe Banksy's on the right track....
So again, looks like honesty doesn't get you anywhere.
Came home to this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher
Your letter made it's way up the food chain, and word came down that it was ok to remove you.
Considering you do nothing at all except cause trouble and try to cruise the forum without logging in as a "Guest" there is no reason I can see to have you as a moderator any longer.
Thank You for your past service.
There you have it. As a result of this I will no longer be an "active member" of snowest until the administration here figures out how to run a forum or finds new jobs. I'll still log in and check PMs, but I'll be over at other snowmobiling sites.
To all my friends on here, I wish you the best and hope to see you on the mountain and elsewhere on the internet.
__________________
ADVRider.com
ThumperTalk.com
YOUR WELCOME AND GOODNIGHT ALL