It's really a shame..............

[Peregrine]

While your point may be valid Pete, you picked a bad example. The posts the guy made come off as being a troll... it was like he didnt think about them. His three posts were "Zorn will do a good job" "Skins will win the superbowl" and then he quoted himself.

[smoked]

I agree.

win4coach,

If you're still around, welcome. Please note in your top right corner, there is a box there with "win4coach" and "Private Messages." Click there, you'll see a "PM" (Private Message) awaits you.

[waterwagen]

I'll be honest,though a little suspicious of the simplicity of the thread at first, I realized I've seen the same from members who have been around for awhile. It was actually more tempting to send a few of the members who responded on that thread out the door,(especially for those that responded after my first post), for a bit than to just close the thread, (which I really didn't want to do). Thanks to those who responded in that thread for making the place feel welcome.

Wow, I think you're grossly overreacting. I completely agree with making new, and inexperienced, people feel welcome, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that whoever that was was just playing around. Heck, there are people on this board that create a separate account to play around with. :2cents:

[TK]

Maybe it isn't fair but I think a lot of people expect the mods to set the tone for things here. Honestly, how many times have you seen a member try and offer help in a civil fashion only to be ridiculed as a "wannabe mod" by others? Even though as long as I have been here the expectation has been that members would/should/could try to lend a hand where possible the reality tends to be a little different.

I can only imagine how much the staff has to deal with on a daily basis (but I have a lurid imagination) and dumping the responsibility of acting as den mother and social director is an additional burden but some that seem to enjoy tearing at others are not likely to listen to "just" another poster.

Having said that I have to agree and we all could make an effort to help spruce up the neighborhood here sometimes, especially with the newer members. I wonder how many have joined, got ripped for a duplicate topic or something that was discussed before they got here and never much posted again.

Yanno LB, you get character points for posting here and owning your side of it, but let me ask you something. Let's say you are right, the guy wasn't even a Skins fan, just joined to yank our collective chain, etc., and you saw it for exactly what it was, 'k? All it does is give him ammunition to talk :pooh: about ES and by extension the team to others doesn't it? We've always held that one of the prominent differences here as opposed to rest of the internet is that we are accountable for what we say, maybe we can try and apply that to more than just opinions on football.

And trust me, ain't no wings on my back, I need to try harder as much as anyone.

For anyone wondering, it's posts like this & the caring behind them, that as ES Staff, get our attention in a good way.

[mikeDinNYC]

pete, you have a good point there... i'm a moderator/owner of a very popular fishing forum and we get the same thing from our members... it takes a lot of patience to deal with newbies, because they tend to make the same mistakes and ask the same questions, but it's a discipline that older members and moderators must have to keep a forum civil and informational.

[Fred Jones]

Heck, there are people on this board that create a separate account to play around with. :2cents:

Call me not keeping up and oblivious, but is this something that goes on a lot or is it just a few select people?

Kind of going against the spirit of posting.

[PCS]

Wow, I think you're grossly overreacting. I completely agree with making new, and inexperienced, people feel welcome, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that whoever that was was just playing around. Heck, there are people on this board that create a separate account to play around with. :2cents:

Wow. Sounds like one of the ones I mentioned. Ya know. After I said to ease off who decided to respond anyway? Been on here over 6 years my man. You really think that there is something like this that I haven't seen before? And I did check for a duplicate account. First thing I did after my initial response. To be honest, it was you and others who overreacted on nothing more than assumptions. Now I am not saying I haven't done a few of those in my past as well. Even as a mod. And I can look back and not be all that happy with that. Sometimes it's best just to step back before responding in cases like this instead of joining the pile on. Because you know, we've all been known to be wrong before. And this one could simply have been what Pete said he was/is. The before mentioned benefit of the doubt.

[LD0506]

Awwwww, that makes me feel all warm fuzzy inside...... or maybe it's gas

And LB? I hope you know I didn't mean that as any kind of finger-wagging, you just afforded a good opportunity to make a point. If more people could take responsibility for their words that way, even if it's something small, we'd all be sharing a better community.

Kind of going against the spirit of posting.

And REALLY against the rules too Fred

[TK]

Awwwww, that makes me feel all warm fuzzy inside...... or maybe it's gas

Depends.

Did your Tarot cards tell you to go to Taco Bell?

[skinsince72]

I am pretty new to ES. Joined back when we lost Sean I guess because I needed to be around more Skins fans at that time. I have not started too many threads but there were a few that could have been thought out a little better.

I didn't get bashed TOO bad but i have seen some pretty harsh posts.

[wildbill1952]

Point well taken. Last year there was a young man who came into the forum and asked what he thought was a truly interesting question, albeit one we had heard ad nauseum about 30 times before. He was quickly hammered.

Not everyone lives on this forum and not everyone knows everything that has been discussed before, and despite claims to the contrary, the search function ain't always up to snuff. All of us need to take our roles on this board a little less seriously and understand that, somewhere deep down, a Skins fan is still a Skins fan. Maybe I don't want the guy dating my daughter, but I do like the team he likes. Close enough in my book to cut almost everybody some slack.

On the other hand, just like you don't walk into the neighbourhood tavern and tell everybody that they're all low-life scum, it's tough to put up with some of the more forgetful threads that start off with "You bunch of whiny jerks". A little class from everyone is always appreciated, even if I am a whiny jerk.

[LD0506]

Depends.

Did your Tarot cards tell you to go to Taco Bell?

Ze cahds, zey varn of peril!

[Jumbo]

My post got lost on the board's "maintenance cycle" but LB & LD are the kind of guys that do us credit on this board and that's independent of any views they have on any topic.

[waterwagen]

Wow. Sounds like one of the ones I mentioned. Ya know. After I said to ease off who decided to respond anyway? Been on here over 6 years my man. You really think that there is something like this that I haven't seen before? And I did check for a duplicate account. First thing I did after my initial response. To be honest, it was you and others who overreacted on nothing more than assumptions. Now I am not saying I haven't done a few of those in my past as well. Even as a mod. And I can look back and not be all that happy with that. Sometimes it's best just to step back before responding in cases like this instead of joining the pile on. Because you know, we've all been known to be wrong before. And this one could simply have been what Pete said he was/is. The before mentioned benefit of the doubt.

I never saw your post, so that wouldn't be me. I understand your point, but think you're overreacting when you talk about banning people for that thread, and with no personal attacks or profanity involved. Whether it's a dupe account or not, someone was either playing around or quite a bit different from pretty much any poster I've seen on the interwebs - which is quite a few.

Regardless, I don't want this to distract from my support of Pete's overall point, which is a good one.

[Jumbo]

I never saw your post, so that wouldn't be me. I understand your point, but think you're overreacting when you talk about banning people for that thread, and with no personal attacks or profanity involved. Whether it's a dupe account or not, someone was either playing around or quite a bit different from pretty much any poster I've seen on the interwebs - which is quite a few.

Regardless, I don't want this to distract from my support of Pete's overall point, which is a good one.

He's not over-reacting in my call. I might have put a couple on read-only, though prob not banned them. Any mod might have done so, reasonaby, profanity or attack notwithstanding. And for however many posters you want to posit that you've seen on ES as some credential for making judgments, multiply the **** out of that and you have PCS's perspective.

[Larry Brown #43]

My post got lost on the board's "maintenance cycle" but LB & LD are the kind of guys that do us credit on this board and that's independent of any views they have on any topic.

Thanks for the kind words, Jumbo. That means a lot.

[CrazyZeb]

I thought that thread was incredibly tame... still do

[Peregrine]

Once again, I agree completely with the gist of what Pete had to say. Its a very hard thing to do to help new people along and to take a step back at times. However, lets not overreact towards particular members who really didn't get out of hand.

There are a lot of smart people on these boards(and a lot of not so smart people, I should know), and they saw the poster for what he was. Hes from Michigan, he joins on the 14th, his name is win4coach, he logs in at 7:10, posts a one sentence thread, one person responds, another one sentence post that makes little sense, a second person responds, he then quotes himself, and logs off, all in less than 5 minutes. He has not returned since.

I think its an ongoing problem, and one that whether we like it or not(and probably not), we would do well to address by being more civil toward new members. Lets just not loose are sense of humor, win4coach hasn't.

[10fttall]

I think there's an important difference between newbie posts. I respect the sincere guy that posts a question about the status of our salary cap, for example. It's a legitimate question and there's not a cap thread on the front couple pages all the time. A question like that shows a fan who has sought out a collection of other fans, and might have some deep thoughts about the team and the sport, but maybe doesn't know the finer points of searching a messageboard's previous posts.

A totally different story is someone who pops up and posts something like, I think Jim Zorn is great, or Redskins rock! First, they must think there are only 2 other people on the message board and that it has not crossed anyone's mind that Jim Zorn will do very well. Either that or they are self-centered and bullheaded enough to not care what anyone else has posted and have not bothered to read ANYTHING on the board. Do you really think they could read the directions for registration, then proceed to the boards and stumble their way into creating an utterly useless thread, without noticing the guidelines for posting? Or they went through all those steps, but missed the PAGE FULL of Jim Zorn threads staring them in the face?

I don't think there's exactly a crowd of thin-skinned fountains of wisdom, that have been silenced by a little ribbing.

[skinpride1]

Good post Pete!!!!! I can remember my first days when I was new to forum posting. I was like how do I communicate and make the posts. People would say I was an idiot because of not spelling correctly. I finally figured what that ABC check in the tool menu is for :laugh: :laugh: and too hit enter twice to space between sentences or make paragraphs.

I had to figure out the hard way not to make a repeating post that has already been posted many times. I did get angry because there were some very rude people out there but nothing like it was three years ago. The mods do a good job at keeping the board cleaned up from those type of guys.

Remember try and be nice to the newbies and help them in the right direction!!!

[papaskin]

Well done Pete !

[LoudMouth12thMan]

Nice work Pete. I didn't get this smart without all of you guy's help. Thanks for making me what I am today, the same old bull ****ter I've always been. Still, you love me for who I am.

ALL HAIL ES BABY! :dallasuck

[Jumbo]

There are a lot of smart people on these boards (and a lot of not so smart people, I should know), and they saw the poster for what he was. Hes from Michigan, he joins on the 14th, his name is win4coach, he logs in at 7:10, posts a one sentence thread, one person responds, another one sentence post that makes little sense, a second person responds, he then quotes himself, and logs off, all in less than 5 minutes. He has not returned since.

Well, let's talk about the conclusions you and perhaps some other smart peope arrived at.

I had wanted to avoid this, but I will try to do it in a certain way and still make a point. The member actually had established a prior account recenty under the name Glenn155 but had never posted with it. He forgot how to access that account. His post in this thread was genuine, if not very elaborate or up to our normal hopes for a topic-starter. I'm hoping he'll return and be able to do better or just post in existing threads.

He has a long-standing e-mail with a Redskins fan group link on AOL and has used that in the past to communicate. What I'm saying is what you got was genuine, however simplistic. So, your assumption of motive was as erroneous as you were sure. He wasn't "screwing" with anyone, or the board.

Sometimes we may get too used to conflating speculation with fact on this board as shown in our posts, which reflect that we all think we are very smart and have great deductive abilites. Only a few of us actually do have such capability.

I think there's an important difference between newbie posts. I respect the sincere guy that posts a question about the status of our salary cap,...<edit>....

A totally different story is someone who pops up and posts something like, I think Jim Zorn is great, or Redskins rock! ...<edit>...Either that or they are self-centered and bullheaded enough to not care what anyone else has posted and have not bothered to read ANYTHING on the board.

And yet some people who have no negative qualities as you posit in your post, do access the board, both with and without help, only to say something simple. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. I know because I have helped two such folks do just that, though they did not hang very long.

Sincerity is not the same as complexity or sophistication.

Someone who joins to say "Zorn blows" can hardly be said to be "innocent" in their overall behavior, but the "yay Zorn" poster can be. It should be safe for either comment/poster in terms of freedom to express, but it should also be safe for the positive comment/poster to not be ridiculed. Not that the thick-skin observation holds any less true; just sayin.

I much appreciate that both of the posters I quoted here primarily supported Pete's concept.

Any kid or adult who only wants to say something good about their team and goes to its official board to do so should get some benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Guide them, politely, as Pete says. This poster, in accordance to fairness, received an NNT for his error prior to any of this discussion.

[Teller]

Unfortunately, I think the anonymity of message boards is something akin to the anonymity of the highway.

Think about it. Out there on the interstates, many of us are all too anxious to flip somebody off, call names, and generally act like idiots when someone begrudges us (however accidentally). Yet if someone in the supermarket accidentally pops out from an aisle and bumps into your cart, you're not going to start screaming at them, are you? Of course not.

Unfortunately, forums like this provide an easy opportunity to be a dick, anonymously. I've certainly been guilty at times, as have many others.

But ya know what? Get us all to a tailgate, and things are completely different. Guys who I thought were pretty much ***holes on the board, I've become friends with, having gotten to know them in person.

I guess the bottom line is this. Don't treat the other 80,000 people on this board like random idiots on the highway. Treat them like friends. Treat them like you would if you were welcoming them into your home. Essentially, you are.

Some of the closest friends I have in my life right now, I met through this board. And I'm grateful for each of them. We all, including myself, need to keep that in mind. Had I acted like an idiot toward them, it would have been my loss, not theirs.

[Veretax]

Excellent points. I agree, though I do sometimes wonder if a 10 post requirement before starting a thread would help with the big issues of learning to look for posts before posting.