STEPHEN FRY

I chose them.

Sounds like a line from Star Wars or something:

"You chose well Master Skywalker..."

Ah, so Atari is THE BOSS. How do you get to be the boss?

KSx

So that's what the question was about? I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I kept writing answers and then deleting them thinking they were stupid or crap.

Don't be too hard on yourself Nic. I've seen moderators/admin make far worse mistakes, who are very heavy handed and don't show remorse for it or that they even care how badly they are treating members (especially new ones). I think in Maniac's case we've just got to give it time. She's on Facebook so there is the option to contact her which you don't always get when people leave forums or just disappear for no reason and you start to miss them and they never put their e-mail in their profile.

I've moderated forums before including my own and I tell you this must be one of the easiest forums to moderate! No bitching, no fighting, no flaming. PERFECT!! X-D

Now it's like that. There were some rough patches in the first half of this year where at least one member thought it was acceptable to be mean to other members, belittling them, making them feel stupid and some members nearly left because they were so upset by it. The manic-depressive board seemed to be a magnet for the most trouble with some people telling others who were reaching out for help to pull themselves together and get over it. After a lot of meta-discussions over what people expected of this forum, what kind of topics they were expecting and levels of discussion and what is considered acceptable behaviour and what isn't and references were made to Stephen Fry's message on the home page about this being a place where you won't get harrassed, heckled or hectored, things then got better and went back to being fluffy and squishy like it did when the forum first launched in September 2006.

It is great for a forum see a forum a that's grown and developed to be a welcoming and warm place where people don't get bitched at or flamed. To not have moderators getting anal over petty rules and telling people off for things like repeat threads and then threatening to ban them. I come online to have a fun time and talk to like minded people and have interesting discussions, not watch my back and feel restricted and suppressed in what I can and can't say.

John Steed, I was just thinking of Maniac this morning and wishing she would come back. Even as new as I am I still notice when people stop posting and it does leave a hole in the community. The situation that happened, I think, got blown way out of proportion by everyone involved. I personally should have realized earlier on to ignore it and not think anything of it. I suppose it was because it was the first blatant attack(so to speak) that threw me off to what could have caused it. I took it personally and shouldn't have. You on the other hand, I think you did your job. What you had to do given the circumstances and I think you did a good job at that. To be honest, I don't think that you could have changed the outcome had you done it differently. When she is ready to come back she will(I hope) and I hope she realizes that she CAN come back.

I don't think you should beat yourself up for what happened, it can't be changed and while I look at how it was handled and see nothing wrong with it, I know that everything said here can be taken a million different ways depending on who is reading it. I appreciate you sticking up for me, very few people do online and in RL so that meant a lot to me. Perhaps Maniac just needs a little more time. Perhaps you do too. I'm sure you'll both be able to make up. Hell, I'm hoping to make up with her myself. I've messages to her through someone telling her that I do. So when she's ready I'm hoping that she'll come back to us. Looking back on all of this is just seems so silly and I hate that it got to the point that it did with everyone.

John Steed
does indeed
rock the house.

side note: do you all see the hiv and me board possibly becoming similar to the SLOTMD board? Where it starts out to document one of Mr Fry's projects and ends up being a good place for info and chat? I think that would be beautiful.

Nick, sorry if I shocked you, I started the thread because I was curious about you, that's all.

Personally I love this forum. I love the people on it, and I love the way it is moderated with plain old common sense and decency. I've been pretty distressed at times, but allowed to express my feelings. I've been on other forums where people got banned or major cruel arguments went on and I didn't feel like going back. One forum (NSHN) banned me because I dialed 999 when a pregnant 17-yr old girl posted about a suicide attempt and then PMd me to tell me she had taken an overdose (and she told me what she had taken - which I wont repeat - and I knew it could easily be fatal). I saved her life. We are still in touch, but the NSHN banned me the next day. C**ts. Their loss.

I'm sure Stephen would be proud of this fluffy, squishy forum that deals in a subject that is so rarely fluffy or squishy.

KSx