Where is everyone?

It seems some of the kiddies picked up their Legos last night and went home. They'll be back soon enough.

For those curious, last night there was an incident in which a number of posters violated our rules in response to social media posts from a handful of Broadway performers. From there, in trying to manage the situation as it escalated, a number of other posters responded with genuine concerns, which I can guarantee were heard, understood, and appreciated.

However, the combination of the personal attacks, the questions about the attacks, and attacks on BWW itself became a larger issue both online and off line, so we decided to close down the conversation for last night, and we reopened the boards this morning.

As we said in the post pinned at the top of the board, we are evaluating a number of different measures internally this morning to address the ever-changing world of online communication, and how we want BWW to be a part of that. As final decisions are made, we will roll those out, and inform all board users of what's been done and how those choices were made.

In all honesty, one of the biggest issues is trying to figure out how best to respect our user’s freedom of discussion while also balancing our obligations as members of the Broadway community; one known for kindness, inclusion, and understanding. These are both incredibly important parts of who BWW is, but when they occasionally come into conflict, it creates difficult decisions, which I'd imagine that many of you can understand.

Thank you for your interest in creating an informative and positive place to discuss theatre!

Updated On: 12/10/18 at 11:34 AM

I cannot directly speak to the specifics as to why individual posts/threads were removed, but, yes, I think that you would be safe in assuming that those were a part of the incident last night. As I said earlier though, if there were things that were deleted en masse, all of the legitimate points and concerns were noted and recognized, and are very much a part of our ongoing, robust internal discussions this morning.

Updated On: 12/10/18 at 11:47 AM

i literally had my friend change by bww password to something else so i could study for my exams and then something big goes down and i miss it.

Last night a number of old threads were bumped and spammed in regards to this issue. In the interest of keeping the boards from being spammed entirely into one topic on the front page we were forced to remove older discussions. We're working on system features to prevent this from happening in the future.

Thanks for your continued feedback.

~A

MauraLovesMusicals said: "i literally had my friend change by bww password to something else so i could study for my exams and then something big goes down and i miss it."

I was online last night. Your exams were way more important.

No, you aren't being rude \_(•_&bull_/ (and neither was Greenestreet). While I think there is a bit of a difference between spam and trolling, your point is valid. First, I'll speak to your personal point, for the posts like you made, we generally let them go at first to see if they are genuine, before deleting.

However, to seemingly acceptable posts/threads being deleted last night, "spam" might not be the exact word that I would use, as it wasn't people trying to get you to contact them for computer help or anything. However, with the rash of posts all at once, it became spam-like in its totality. So, we made broad strokes to stop the offending conversation before it got out of hand last night. Some steps are things that we do on a daily basis, some were worst-case scenarios that we honestly wish we never had to do. But, to stem the tide we felt like they had to be done.

Also, there have been some posts recently that we've deleted because they claim that one BWW staff member made unilateral decisions to delete posts/threads for personal reasons. Now, you can believe me or not, but I can guarantee you that that is no where near true. That staff member was one of a number of people involved in decisions last night, and any decisions made (especially larger ones) were arrived at by multiple people on BWW's admin team.

We take all of these things very seriously, as they have far reaching impacts, so we try to arrive at the best decision together. However, unfortunately, last night, because of how things spiraled out of control, there were not only no "best decisions," there likely weren't any good ones either. So, that is why today we are evaluating things on our end to improve the message board experience for everyone.

Updated On: 12/10/18 at 12:19 PM

GreeneStreet, I can tell you that I first came to BWW years before I joined the team, specifically because of the message boards and that desire to communicate about the art form that we love, so I certainly sympathize.

As we do when deemed necessary, some users have been suspended, but no posters have been banned indefinitely. Normally, we have a process that we go through before we suspend someone, but because of the rapid succession of offending posts last night, we amended that a bit. Also, for posters that have been suspended before (including some long-time ones), we go straight to suspension.

Also, from some of the posts that we've seen this morning, it seems like some people think that they have a handle on everything that went down last night, but there is a lot more that happened that just being a part of the boards would not allow you to see.

So, when we say that we are examining all internal options to make the board a more positive experience for everyone, we genuinely mean that. We welcome anyone who wants to be a part of figuring that out to do so, even if they currently are not able to post. As long as things are respectful and not attacking, you are welcome to voice concerns here, or to email contact [at] broadwayworld [dot ]com.