Time To Cool Off

Very accurate words:

Realistically, these forums are, in ways, better then books. I am one who likes to share my knowledge, because others shared it with me.

I think I can speak for all who have invested small fortunes and enormous amounts of time to become "experts" in their fields that there is always pleasure found in being able to share information. There are certainly upsides to it all. But it comes down to time. The more one participates, especially if annointed an "expert", the more one's chain is pulled.

Before I sound too arrogant, a very good friend, who is of enormous standing in the community, often reminds me that his definition of "expert" in a certain category of reptiles is being the one that has killed in large numbers, if not the most, in that species of claimed knowledge. In that vein, I am brilliant. If God is a chameleon, I'm screwed.

Unless an adequate force is applied to restore order, the BOI will tend to the lowest common denominator.

Exactly!!!!!!!

Jim, I understand what you mean.

Originally Posted by Golden Gate Geckos

Exactly!!!!!!!

No. I think it is more like...

Unless an adequate force is applied to restore order, the PEOPLE within the BOI will tend to revert to animals.

Originally Posted by shrap

Rich,

It aint the site. It's the people. Or should I say the amount of people.

It is kinda like that nice small quaint small town that grows up. Once upon a time it was all strawberries and cream. Everyone knew each other by their first name, no one locked their doors at night, people went out of their way to help their neighbors, everyone went to the town functions and shared their lives with one another.

Then the small town grew into a big city. The population grew immensely, including a few that are bad apples who steal and take advantage of the trusting neighbors, so people stop taking the time to get to really get know each other, no one trusts each other anymore because of these things, they start locking their doors, quit helping their neighbors and stopped joining community functions and just do things with those they feel completely safe around.

Who said growing bigger was a good thing?

Actually, I disagree with this analogy.

We currently have something like 47,000 registered members, but ONLY getting between 800 and 900 of them checking in here within a 24 hour period.

That's nothing. Matter of fact, it is probably the same, or less, than when everyone is thinking the "golden years" of the BOI took place. So it has nothing to do with total numbers at all. It is more like the attitudes of the members themselves have changed over time.

Originally Posted by FunkyRes

I can make a suggestion to prevent the bumping of zombie threads. When a thread has been stale for a period of time (six months?) lock it. Weekly cron job on the server should be able to go through the database and do it for you. If there is a need to add material to such a thread, a request can be made to the moderator to unlock it.

Sorry, but no, I don't think that is the best course to take. There could be any number of legitimate reasons for someone wanting to resurrect an old thread. I've always viewed locking a thread as telling everyone "I don't want you talking about this topic any longer." And I have used that in the past for exactly that kind of reason. When threads would blow up, I have locked them with the warning that anyone just trying to pick up the baton in a new thread will have that thread deleted.

There is also a legal reason against locking threads. Locking a thread could be construed as becoming a co-author of a thread, which would put the person doing the locking in legal jeopardy if said thread ever triggers litigation from the parties involved. Accordingly, I have warned my moderators about being VERY circumspect when modifying threads in this and other manners.

Originally Posted by FunkyRes

IMHO Starting a new thread in the BOI that is not related to a transaction should not be tolerated.
A good guy or bad guy post should be related to a business transaction between the poster and the subject of the post, a query asking about someone should be just that - a query asking about someone.

Thus starting a thread not involving a transaction simply to link to another thread should be a violation of the rules and locked.

It won't stop all the drama but it will stop the old thread bumping.

Well, that depends. How many different forms of information and sources of opinions would you like to have concerning someone you were preparing to spend thousands of dollars on shortly? Wouldn't you like to have the WHOLE picture of who it is you are trusting with your money?

Originally Posted by Dennis Hultman

I guarantee if the site takes a hard-line on posts some asking for it will be demanding that it be removed later because it somehow infringed on what they wanted to post. Frankly, I'm at a loss at what to suggest.

During the period of time when I was VERY hard lined about enforcing the rules with the time when I received, BY FAR, the greatest number of threats, invective, and downright nastiness from members here on this site. People felt they had a RIGHT to be derogatory to someone else here. That they should be allowed to belittle someone and damn my eyes for stopping them from doing that.........

No matter where you draw the line in enforcing the rules, there will be a bunch of people saying it is too close to their side of what they consider as their freedom of expression. That it is way too restrictive and I am giving preferential treatment to the other group who appears happy with the arrangement. Been there, and done that.

And then there will be those who will try their best to get their toes over the line as much as possible without triggering the penalties. And they will afterwards yelp bloody murder that I had misinterpretted their intentions or their lapse was a simple mistake. Again, been there and done that.

Originally Posted by shrap

First, there is a difference between making tweaks and full blown changes. What has occurred often has been full blown change.

Trying to think of the changes and put it in this perspective.....

What changes COULD have been made tweaks rather than full blown changes? When the decision was made to restrict posting on the BOI to paid members with the goal to raise the level of credibility there, how could that have been handled differently so it appeared to be a tweak? $10 per year was definitely more "tweaky" than the normal $25 membership, wasn't it? Perhaps I should have made that Participant membership $10 for 20 years rather than per year?

Let's see, how about the change to strict enforcement of the rules? That was in response to not only a LOT of complaints I was getting (pretty much similar to what I am hearing now) plus a poll I ran asking about how I should handle enforcement of the rules. From what I recall, the greater majority voted for "ruthless" enforcement of the rules. So with what seemed like popular pre-support, I did exactly that. So would teaking mean easing into that "ruthless" enforcement? Perhaps, but from what I was hearing and seeing, it seemed like the membership needed a sharp slap in the face to bring things around. Which while it did bring the garbage to an abrupt halt, it also became evident that it just was not what the membership had in mind. What they apparently had in mind was that the rules needed to be enforced against the "other guy" and not them.

Changes have been made in order to make corrections in the direction of this site when it appeared to be going astray. Quite frankly, unless I had set this site up PERFECTLY from the start, changes were inevitable. But without that crystal ball to see into the future and plan accordingly, the BEST I could hope to do was to make changes on the fly, sometimes abruptly when it appeared necessary, and hope they make things better than they were. As someone mentioned, apparently many people just don't like ANY change, no matter why it was implemented, what it is helping now, and how it may make things better in the future. The obvious assumption there is that those people preferred NO changes, regardless of any necessity to implement them.

I guess I have just never been afraid of changes and just accept that they are a part of life. So I have no qualms at all about making MAJOR changes to any aspect of my life at the drop of a hat. This is just a message board website running on a computer. Changes take place all of the time. A major upgrade is going to take place in the message board software here as soon as the newest version is considered as stable. There WILL be some substantial changes in the way things work here. No doubt about it.

Sorry about that, but change is inevitable and we all just have to deal with it.

Originally Posted by Mooing Tricycle

I try to post things that can take people away from the BOI, and show pictures and such things, and to just sort of update about myself. I love reading about Cheryls Emu ( plus i love her writing style! its fun, and entertaining to read!) and seeing how maybe Haralds bulls and boas are doing, Or maybe if Bry and Laur are going to have snake babies soon! ( cause im sure everyone agrees those two DESERVE IT!) ^_- . I like to read the discussions that go on about certain animals, or the jokes that are posted in Just for Laughs, or looking at the classifieds to see what people have to offer. I look forward to a bunch of specific members posts/pictures when i come here, and while im not going to go crazy and name every single one of you, more than likely, if weve exchanged a couple comments/posts/PM's or talked in chat, i want to see how you are doing, and id love to see how your critters are when im not around to Chat as much.

I still love fauna, but i have been more absent. its been a nice break, and i Will try my best as well, to help in whatever way i can... to bring this site back and get the GOOD information flowing.

Well, this could certainly be the silver lining to the dark cloud of the BOI. I have been trying to get the discussion forums active for YEARS now and have failed completely. So much so that had I had the time in the last couple of weeks, most would have been rolled together into single larger forums. In other words, I was intending to take ALL of the snake related discussion forums and just move all the post into a general Snake Discussion Forum. Same thing for all the lizard forums.

But if the ravages of the BOI instead force people to the Discussion forums, maybe this is a good thing in some respects.

I'll just have to see how that all plays out. With breeding season in full swing, it will be a while before I can address any such forum structure changes anyway....