This thread has contained some very wonderful posts about all the wonderful things that are so great about this community, many of which I've saved to read again on 'blue' days. Thank you for all those that have posted such great things. BWW is a special place.
I also had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours over lunch with Patti yesterday, and without speaking for her, I don't think there is *anything* insincere about her appreciation for nearly everything on the site, including 99% of what appears on these here boards. It wasn't something that she expounded upon in her original post, because that wasn't what the post was about, but she's attempted to clarify that to me, online and to all others that have asked her publicly and privately. I've now experienced this both first and second-hand, and her message is consistent as is her appreciation for all of the positive aspects, including what we're all learning as a result of the conversation she sparked.
As I explained to her yesterday, there's not a day that goes by that we haven't had to remove a small amount of posts from the site - including spam, and including things that violated our guidelines. Some of these came via reported abuse, and some we caught. There has never been a specific post that's violated our guidelines, that I've seen that hasn't been removed... but we've often talked about our awareness that we (and no one) could catch everything as it went up, which is why we'd been talking about adding the 1 click abuse button.
We were planning to roll that out next week with some other (still under construction) updates, but as it was ready, we rolled it out early.
Are there cases of things that are, and have been in a gray area of what's a personal attack, what's a disagreement, what's abuse and what's something that just isn't a shared opinion? Absolutely, and that will never go away in a community as diverse and vibrant as this one is. There's been times when I think we've over-moderated, and there's been times when I think we've under-moderated and I've been 'yelled at' for both.
Addressing that, the other change that we've made was making our guidelines clearer for what happens to those that violate our rules. The policies in the past about warnings, deletions and suspensions have not been as consistent as they could have been, and I think now make everything clearer for all involved. As we've additional additional moderators (like Alan) this will make their jobs easier and improve our communication with all of you as to what we're doing, and why.
And I remain available myself, nearly 24/7 via PM, or email. robert(at)broadwayworld.com
And we're working to improve paragraph spacing on long posts next!
Updated On: 3/13/16 at 07:27 PM
