Yes...I am aware of that! Read it again and you will see I was clearly referring to you'll likely (even by accident) eventually find a goldilocks forum that meets your needs.
It is fairly obvious what occurred at dpreview. Anyone that spoke up would tend to meet the delete / change thread stroke of hand by a mod. Folk that spoke up to support their rhetoric, eg which ever cameras they were trying to big up for amazon, I don't know but they where given free reign and allowed to speak out in favour of certain things whilst no criticism of the product was tolerated at all.
Perhaps you never 'got into trouble' because you didn't speak out much or often or never had a particularly firm or strong viewpoint on most subjects. Just saying. Logically that is what happened. Otherwise many here were visiting a totally different forum from you for the last 15 years. Which is more likely to be true?
You said the moderation at dpreview was too heavy handed but it's not enough here. I merely pointed out you've not found your ideal goldilocks forum yet...
You do realise that posting your opinion is you entering into the debate. Either way I'd love to know which forum you felt was "under' modded / not modded enough at dpreview...
On one of the DPReview forums a member made a post literally cursing everybody with "f" word for not acknowledging his posts when he / she helped. When I mentioned that this language is not appropriate on public forum, I've got a lecture from the moderator in English and no action toward this member.
I spoke my mind freely, expressed my opinions strongly, and engaged in healthy debate with impunity. All while maintaining a demeanor that was respectful of the community. I frequently engaged with moderators. yet managed to avoid censure. Did I observe oversteps? Yes. Did I see things that I felt merited intervention…also yes, and more frequently — though perhaps not by a great margin. I agree that we had very different experiences. Mine wasn't based on my being a milquetoast.
This is the exact kind of debate I’m not interested in. I lost my taste for argument as sport thirty years ago. As a member of this community, I am concerned about the course this site is steering. I stand by my observation and belief that the loud and outspoken don’t inherently form a majority. Carry on.
Ghundred @AlanSh has written:
Please can stop this personal attacking (and yes, that is how I see it). It does you no favours.
Sorry, I should have known better than to start wrestling with a Pig. Everyone gets dirty, but the Pig loves it. Apologies
You very well get what Primeshooter is saying to you. But likeGhundred said above, you love it in the mud.
And that's fine, as long as you don't frig up the none to light moderation that Bob and his team are trying to put together here. You just don't know when to give up on a back and forth. So as much as you enjoy having the last word, stop and pause once in awhile, so you're not the cause of this ending up with it being Kim Jong Un moderation here.
The beauty of the Internet is you only hear one embellished side of a story. The second beauty of the Internet is only those will a grievance - real or not - will post. In reality one of the issues with all forums is they are for the most part private. It is unfair to make a decision based accounts from potential malcontents. Today with VPN's "hide my email services," etc. one person can become many and it is almost impossible to track.
There is a misconception that there is "freedom of the ability to express any and all opinions on a platform where someone else is paying the freight." If a person came into my restaurant, store, club, bar, take your pick and startled to hassle or harass another customer - I as the owner have the perfect right to sent over security and remove him. It is no different on a privately owned forum. DPR was the sole property of Amazon. They had the perfect right through their management at DPR to moderate it in anyway they saw fit. However, I must say there were several on DPR that wanted to push the limits and thought trolling, personal attacks, etc. were some how they're "right." As a long time watcher of the FujiX forum, I thought the moderators bent over backwards to give everyone the benefit of the doubt even to the point of not stepping in soon enough. Let's put it this way they showed a lot more restraint than I would have in some cases.
So far here so good as most things I have seen have been pretty civil, but I expect over time there might be individuals that present challenges to the ownership of this forum. A privately owned forum is not a democracy. It is not even a representative democracy. It is private funded and as such at the end of the day it is the purview of the owners to set and enforce a code of conduct. Those that abuse the privileges afforded by this form are hurting everyone on the forum.
I agree. Small man with a huge power trip issue. But not worse than DPReview administrators who tolerated it. They designed a system that allowed moderators to abuse posters without any recourse. Many moderators stsyed decent, MAKO did not.
He would even pull posts where he participated in a discussion but disagreed with someone. Just because he could.
The Democrats are on the right side of middle, but not so far right as to make them far right per the reply you are replying to. Unless, of course, you think believing Covid-19 and climate change are real are examples of support for conspiracy theories, and the desire for a universal health care and making the minimum wage a living wage are examples of support for an autocratic regime.
Matter of perspective, I suppose.
The far-right is trying to "cancel" Bud Light for supporting LGBTQ+ causes -- there's no shortage of either side trying to "cancel" this or that. It's simply a matter of values -- what you, personally, feel should be "cancelled".
True -- but I loved the Off Topic Forum on DPR and am pleased to see it being recreated in this thread. All-in-all, I think the "politeness level" in this thread is acceptable, to be honest -- I'm not a fan of things being too sterile, but nor am I fan of things getting unhinged. Everyone has a different balance point, though, so I get that.
The very nature of this thread leads to this kind of conversation, though. And so long as it's relatively confined to threads like these, I don't see the problem. If it were to infect other threads not conducive to such diversions, that would be an issue, though. For example, I'd hate to post a photo of a certain political figure with farm animals and have it devolve into something distasteful, as opposed to photographic technique, where the latter, obviously, would be the intent of my posting the photo. : )
I have consistently supported Bob's facilitating/mediation model.
I have also consistently posted that the facilitators should not be allowed to permaban any member, at least without Admin approval after they review the situation.
I have consistently posted that members must have an easily accessible appeal process to Admin to request them to review any facilitator action taken against them.
I enjoyed a couple of bottles of Old Peculiar in Santa Barbara, California about 40 years ago. A buddy and I had hitched from Wisconsin to California to visit a friend. A trucker drove us most of the way, picking us up in Minnesota and taking us to LA. We repaid the favor by helping him unload the trailer... palette after palette of Kraft parmesan cheese.
We hitched from LA to Santa Clara where our buddy worked for General Magic and spent a night in Santa Barbara along the way. I forget the name of the establishment we were at but recall that their claim to fame was a tremendous selection of beer. Among the labels was Theakston Old Peculiar.
To this day, it's among the best beers I've ever had. Thanks for conjuring old memories.