Moderators Guilty of Premature Evacuation
 

Bruce, you need some staying power. I asked some specific questions about the Shuttle 737-300, but you saved us all by shutting off the thread! Would you guys simply cool it? Haven't enough of us been clear about that?

But we already have a very good thread on the same subject, which I brought back to page 1. Why not keep all the information together? Isn't this much more useful to people?

Bruce
(Moderator)

I think that there are many of us who do not want this type of moderator activity. Your act of deliberately bringing the original thread back to page 1 is arbitrary, and I mean that with nary a scintilla of disrespect. I know that based on what he has posted, AndyMo agrees we me that the role of the moderator should be limited to near "emergencies" on the board as we witnessed around the holidays with "you know who". So in this case, the poster stated that there was a change in shuttle a/c... now that indeed has been posted, but since he was one of the first to actually witness this change, I asked him some specific questions that must have arrived in the great nether of the internet just as you pulled the plug on the thread.

Somebody made the analogy that the role of the police in Greenwich CT is different than the role of the police in the Bronx. I thought that was a wonderful analogy. The moderators keep promising to be restrained, but it ain't happening, IMO. If there are multiple threads on the same topic, some will live and some will not. That is the way it has been here in "Greenwich" for the several years that I have been here without moderator intervention and guidance.

Amen.


edited to add:

When the moderators close another thread, and someone starts a new thread to protest the closure, will the protest thread be shut down and all protesters pointed in the direction of THIS thread?

Just something to chew on.


Also edited to add: LOVE the thread title.

[This message has been edited by andymo99 (edited 02-11-2003).]

On January 31, I posted my experience on the same type of plane to the other thread. The closed thread was merely starting the same discussion all over again. The fundamental purpose of FT is to share information, and users are not well served by having to dig through multiple threads with similar postings. It just wastes everybody's time.

The reason that I jumped in and closed the other thread immediately is that I am reluctant to close them after they have a lot of postings. It's better to stop them early and redirect the discussion to the earlier thread, as I did.

I'm sorry that your post got through in the 15 seconds or so between my post announcing the closing and the actual closing. I had no way of knowing that you were posting just as I was closing the thread. No slight was intended, as I'm sure you realize.

Nobody is trying to engage in heavy-handed moderating. I'm just trying to stop the information exchange from being unnecessarily chaotic. Having said that, if other people believe that I'm doing more harm than good, please say so, either right here or through private e-mail. My goal is to be helpful, and if I'm not accomplishing that goal, someone needs to tell me!

Bruce

Of course this same standard of "chaotic information" does not hold when certain users (and even certain moderators) continue to spam the forums with the same threads about billboards et al..

Go figure http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

Andy, I had to be careful because as you know, one cannot edit mis-spellings in the title!

Flyertalk isn't fun anymore....

Actually, we're trying to minimize the number of threads on those subjects, too. The four moderators have exchanged e-mails on that subject.

The basic problem, as I described above, is that we don't want to close threads AFTER they have grown large. If we close them early and redirect the discussion to an existing thread, we have done something good (in my opinion, anyway). If we close them too late, we are just isolating a packet of information that will disappear eventually into old-age oblivion. That's not good.

Bruce

Bruce, with all due respect, I must side with RobertS975 and andymo99 on this issue. Without getting into the specific merits of this particular action, I do believe that less is more when it comes to moderating. Recently, quite a few threads have been closed just when I thought they were getting interesting! So what if they were straying into territory that had only a tenuous connection with DL?

I'm also finding myself in rare agreement with a post on this board by B747-437B. While I am as disconcerted with the SM changes as anyone else, I think we have made ourselves look like whiners with the proliferation of huge me-too threads that say nothing new.

Just my $0.02 ... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

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Vasant

Quote:
Just my $0.02 ...

--Your two cents are highly valued--

A thought...if the "older" thread has already aged off of page 1, then it's less important to merge/kill threads to keep from crowding other topics off of the first page.

In this case, by bringing the older one back, the situation was actually made worse, since we now have a closed thread hanging on to a front-page slot until it gets pushed off to ATL concourse D, er, page 2.

(Plus this thread, which is taking up yet another page 1 gate desperately needed for a Song Air arrival... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif)

In keeping with the topic "Moderators Guilty of Premature Evacuation"...

I believe as long as someone is not being a jerk-off about it, a thread should be allowed to live, reach its climax in popularity, and be allowed to go limp of its own volition. However, the condomnation of the moderators is also not necessary. They are trying to do the best job they can without being messy about it. So the conception of a few ancillary threads squirt by. So what? No big deal. There is no need to be a pill about it. Let us sponge up the information as necessary if it is pertinent, and not erect animosity in this esteemed foreplay ... er ... I mean forum. In other words, let's continue master debating the issues.

Who says FlyerTalk isn't fun anymore...?

Oh, yeah ... PMD did.

Canarsie, do you have a day job? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

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Vasant

I bet jimpop is rolling around laughing at you guys. It seems to me you are more upset with moderators than with not.

My $.02 is that the moderators need moderating. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif