Posters who think they're customers

BrianCalgary

I have read this type of approach many times in the past and feel the urge to comment.

A customer pays for a good or service and then can complain when the good or service does not live up to expectations or for the value in money paid out.

So a few things to remember:

1 - On boards.ie you pay nothing
2 - you are not a customer
3 - Mods don't get paid

4 - we mods do this out of the goodness of our hearts
5 - whining and complaining rarely gets you anywhere.


These are the independant thoughts of one mod who has been around for about a year and a half and don't necessarily represent the view of boards.ie or any other mods.:)

mike65

Wrong. I'm a subscriber.

Mike.

Owen

I agree with everything you say Brian, but I still think Mods should follow a standard banning procedure, except in the case of trolls/shills/repeat offenders, ie : warning/pm, then a ban which includes a pm to save the "Am I banned?" threads.

cornbb

I agree with you mostly Brian but there are a few mods who enjoy the odd sneaky powertrip too methinks.

DeVore

We did a comprehensive survey of our customers not too long ago. We got a very large sample set (3,500) and scored very highly in the customer satisfaction dept.

MikeS, if you are unhappy about the service you have gotten, I'll offer you and anyone else who is, a full refund of your subscription with our best regards.

DeV.

Sparky

What, we dont get paid.

News to me!

Karoma

People on both sides are taking the Internets way too seriously.
I see Boards.ie as a private playground with open gates. Join in. Don't be a dick. Share your sweeties with those that have shared theirs. HAVE FUN.

randylonghorn

mike65 wrote:

Wrong. I'm a subscriber.

Mike.

Why does that make him wrong?

Subscribers make a voluntary contribution ... they do not have to, no-one hounds them for it, they are perfectly free to use the site free of charge for as long as they like, as far as I can figure out. As such, they do not "pay" for the service.

Pay: "to settle (a debt, obligation, etc.), as by transferring money or goods, or by doing something."


More generally, I think the whole world is gone "customer" mad, tbh. There are times when it's a very appropriate outlook, there are times when it's not.

Commodification seems to be the newest "grand narrative", though I suppose one could argue that it is the bastard offspring of capitalism.

I await the day when a shop assistant smiles at me, then rings the extra charge for doing so up on my bill. Certainly, they don't do it much for free any more.

Karoma wrote:

People on both sides are taking the Internets way too seriously. I see Boards.ie as a private playground with open gates.

... with a few basic rules to stop people being bullied or beaten up, and the whole thing turning into Lord of the Flies ...

Karoma wrote:

Join in. Don't be a dick. Share your sweeties with those that have shared theirs. HAVE FUN.

Agreed.

WhiteWashMan

I on the other hand feel I have a foot in both camps. I definitely feel that the users (read:customers) have the right to a common set of rules and regulations across the site.
I also feel that many bans or warnings are handed out that are not correct. and conversly, there are many bans that are not handed out, that should be.
i think its annoying as a customer (read:user) when you see inconsistancies across so many forums, and even through individual mods.

on the other hand, i do feel that mods do get beaten up over the smallest of things, and yes, we do do this out of the goodness of our own hearts, and we arent paid for it etc etc etc etc etc.

and you know what, we have bad days. we ban people for something one day that we wouldnt on another day.

now, i have a few ideas of my own, but i dont want to put them up here yet.

what i will say is that I think this site has become too big for an ideal or ethos to govern the thinking here, and i think it needs to be looked at if the site is to grow. there does need to be something put in place to allow managable and staged growth. otherwise, the more people here, the more bogged down things will get. im not saying the site will close down, far from it, but if this site wants to expand and beecome something other thatn it is current incarnation, then it has to look at itself, becuase the current set up wont work with more people in it. there are too many inconsistancies.

perhaps those in power ought to put together their own business plan (hint hint) about what they really want? PM me if you want some help

the_new_mr

Spankeh wrote:

What, we dont get paid.

News to me!

I wasn't told!!!!!

Ruu_Old

My account is due to mature by now.

I just do my best to keep the place ticking over like most of us do. We are only humans and make mistakes like everyone else. There has to be a balance though and I reckon we are not too far away from having it the right way.

DeVore

Lol... I wish we had the sort of money to pay that wage a month!

We try our best to run as good a ship as we can here. No one is perfect and its an imperfect world... again I point to the survey of satisfaction. I think we strike a good balance here.

DeV.

the_new_mr

Yeah, it's a rockin' wee place. And so HUUUUUUUUGE!! I'd say I've only visited about 10% of the forums on here. Pretty funky

Asiaprod

I have no complaints, If I lost it I would have to get a life, I'll keep this one thanks:)

Beruthiel

DeVore wrote:

Lol... I wish we had the sort of money to pay that wage a month.

Some boss you'd make.
€14 an hour is slave labour!

Hagar

You could live quite comfortably off your Site Ban Bonus.

r3nu4l

Hagar wrote:

You could live quite comfortably off your Site Ban Bonus.

So you mean if I set up a whole load of fake accounts and B banned them, we could share out the site-ban bonus between us?

Meanwhile, back on-topic...
Ned and WWM make the point of a proper banning procedure, warning, ban, PM to banned user etc. A great idea that has been discussed on the Mod forum but there are certain mods who have said quite openly that they refuse to send PMs to banned users as it would be too much work.

My thought would be that if this is too much work then ask for another mod for your forum to help with all this extra work.

As a subscriber to boards I view myself as a (contented) customer, just because I make a voluntary subscription does not mean I'm not a customer...I voluntarily pay for products I buy from shops, that makes me a customer rather than a shoplifter.

There is no difference. With a boards subscription you get extra services including access to the S&S forum and a custom avatar, not much but it's something. If I want to I can sample as much after-shave as I want in Boots for free using the tester bottles (sample boards for free) but I can't get access to the full bottle (avatar and S&S forum on boards) without paying (subscribing)

Don't forget that boards.ie and the boardsgroup are for-profit companies, neither is a registered charity or non-profit organisation.

Gordon

r3nu4l wrote:

there are certain mods who have said quite openly that they refuse to send PMs to banned users as it would be too much work.

Got a link? The mods that I know that do that (myself included sometimes) do it for the reason that if someone is being an absolute muppet then they don't deserve the time it takes to get a nice response saying that they are banned. If someone is being an arse then they should do the legwork to get back in to the forum that they are privileged to post on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are cases of lazy mods, just as there are lazy users; but the reasons that I have seen for not contacting the posters are/come from what I said above.

challengemaster

imo - make this a Sticky and have all relevant details in it - and then HOPE people read the damn stickies...


agree fully with first post.

5starpool

As far as I am concerned, If I ban a user that actually uses the forum then I'll send a PM. If it is a random muppet that comes in just to cause trouble then I'm not wasting my time doing it.

Owen

Gordon wrote:

Got a link?

I was going to provide several examples from a thread I had originated when I was banned from Paranormal. The thread was about 12 pages long, with many many Mods standing on soapboxes saying they'll do whatever they want when they want, it's not a job, etc, but now the thread is 2 pages long. Go fig.

There is a need for a correct banning procedure (With the exception of deliberate trouble makes/shills/trolls) to be put in place, along with an eMail of guidelines that is sent to a new user upon registration of their account. We all assume that people know to read the Charter when posting in a Forum, but for many, bans occur early in their post count because they don't know what a Charter is, or if they should read it in the first place, most people just reply to threads on the main page for the first few weeks, so they'll never actually come across each Charter.

Rev Hellfire

If people don't read the charters what makes you think they'll bother to read the guidelines. Anyway with the variations between forum moderation styles it would be pretty pointless.

Cuddlesworth

I like the muppet=ban approach.

Owen

Rev Hellfire wrote:

If people don't read the charters what makes you think they'll bother to read the guidelines.

As I've already said, new users don't know about the existence of the Charters. They register, and then they see threads on the main page, and directly reply to them, not knowing what they should or shouldn't be behaving like, or saying. New users should receive an eMail telling them to read the Charters, or it should pop up when they're going through the stage of creating an account.

Owen

krazy_8s wrote:

I like the muppet=ban approach.

No one is disagreeing with that, if someone is a genuine trouble maker, then yes, ban. But if it's someone is a new user to boards, and is still finding their feet, then they'd feel a whole lot more welcome by having the usage policy explained to them, instead of what's currently happening, where someone is banned, not PM'd, and can't figure out what happened. That's not a constructive situation.

Rev Hellfire

ned78 wrote:

As I've already said, new users don't know about the existence of the Charters. They register, and then they see threads on the main page, and directly reply to them, not knowing what they should or shouldn't be behaving like, or saying. New users should receive an eMail telling them to read the Charters, or it should pop up when they're going through the stage of creating an account.

All nice in theory, but in the end of the day I doubt for a minute that anyone would bother to read the mail. If someone fires in blindly then deserve all they get in my book. I do think though that some mod's are to a bit to free with ban stick, but different horses for different courses I suppose.

Zaph

Going back to the OP's point, I'm a subscriber and I'm quite happy to get (relatively) nothing for it, as there's not an awful lot more that the admins could offer anyway. The way I see it, the upgrades regi made last week wouldn't have been possible unless at least some people subscribe, and by doing so we help keep the site running relatively smoothly for all. I'm not looking for thanks or anything, I'm sure I'm not the only subscriber who thinks like this, and I'd hate to see the site grind to a halt just because there was a few quid needed. Think of it as a little 21st century altruism

_blank_

Agree with everything Zaph has said there.

I'm not a customer of Boards, I've never seen it like that.

magpie

A customer pays for a good or service and then can complain when the good or service does not live up to expectations or for the value in money paid out.

So a few things to remember:

1 - On boards.ie you pay nothing
2 - you are not a customer
3 - Mods don't get paid

4 - we mods do this out of the goodness of our hearts
5 - whining and complaining rarely gets you anywhere.


These are the independant thoughts of one mod who has been around for about a year and a half and don't necessarily represent the view of boards.ie or any other mods.

What Would Jesus Do?

AlmightyCushion

seansouth wrote:

Agree with everything Zaph has said there.

I'm not a customer of Boards, I've never seen it like that.

I have to agree as well. Boards is a service that I am lucky to recieve. I feel that I owe boards more than it owes me.

This site is put together by the money of the admins and the subscribers and the time of the admins and the mods. If the site goes down or a mod makes a decision against me that I don't agree with (hasn't happened yet) I will be pissed off but I understand that sh!t happens and get over it. At the end of the day for every ban that isn't deserved there is a thousand that are. The mods make this a better place free of idiots and spam.

RE*AC*TOR

ahh fresh meat.....

Cabaal

jahsus Dev you could have told me we don't get paid, I've been depending on that money to get my Mortgage!

seamus

To *get* your mortgage? I showed my bank manager that thread and he practically threw money at me! What am I going to do now?

Cuddlesworth

seamus wrote:

To *get* your mortgage? I showed my bank manager that thread and he practically threw money at me! What am I going to do now?

Give it to me?

Cabaal

seamus wrote:

To *get* your mortgage? I showed my bank manager that thread and he practically threw money at me! What am I going to do now?

Yeah but I need to show him bank statements and my P60 from boards.ie in order to get approved, this really isn't good enough,

the_new_mr

Maybe it would be cool if, when you ban user (either using the pop-up menu or the modutils) then it would open a new window/tab with a form that has a default message like the one that Hobbes uses to be sent to the banned user. I've been using a slightly altered version of his ever since I saw it.

DeVore

Lol.... but there is a serious point to be made here and its not one that the admins have overlooked. We have to take a holistic approach to mod-management simply because there are too many of them to micro manage.

The same thing happened to us when we hit 1000 users, we made the decision to stop modding the forums individually ourselves (the admins) and created a few local Mods in each. Now we have 500 mods and we are reaching the same issues with them. In part we have helped the situation by creating the smods but by and large we leave the mods alone and they can be kings in their own little fiefdom. There are periodic discussions between the admins as to what to do about this and whether we need to do anything about it at all. I think in the next year there may be some changes to conflict-resolution but what we have works pretty well, so I dont think we'd change much...

Now, we listen to complaints in feedback and private PM's so dont think it falls on deaf ears. But if we are going to rebuke a mod for his/her actions it will be in private so the rest of you wouldnt be aware. This has happened many many times. On occasion it has led to the removal of mod-ship because of irreconcilable differences.

DeV.

DeVore

ned78 wrote:

I was going to provide several examples from a thread I had originated when I was banned from Paranormal. The thread was about 12 pages long, with many many Mods standing on soapboxes saying they'll do whatever they want when they want, it's not a job, etc, but now the thread is 2 pages long. Go fig.

Well since every post is write-locked after 48 hours, I "fig" you might have found the wrong thread

DeV.

jhegarty

DeVore wrote:

But if we are going to rebuke a mod for his/her actions it will be in private so the rest of you wouldnt be aware. This has happened many many times. On occasion it has led to the removal of mod-ship because of irreconcilable differences.

DeV.

I think this is where people get it wrong... they expect it to be like a court (justice should be seen to be done) and not like a company (employee is slapped around in private by hr/boss)...

seen as boards is a company and not a government the latter is of course the correct way for it to be.....

MooseJam

ive signed up to boards , 50 euro plus, and have received nothing but abuse from mods

ecksor

For 50 more I will harass you on a daily basis.

MooseJam

ecksor wrote:

For 50 more I will harass you on a daily basis.

ok sounds good to me, but i should be able to change my name for the 50 ?

ecksor

Is there a name change request being missed? I can have a look at that if you supply a link or a request.

Does it involve any sort of fruit or dairy produce?

MooseJam

ecksor wrote:

Is there a name change request being missed? I can have a look at that if you supply a link or a request.

Does it involve any sort of fruit or dairy produce?

lol ecksor is on the ball -> im good now though im sure you have noticed, no more badness from me

aidan_walsh

Wasn't that particular username previously perma-banned for muppetry, or am I thinking of someone else?

ecksor

Apart from advertising matchboxes and that unbearable whiff of troll on the Islam forum, yes, you're a model poster.

Or another viewpoint is that you're still a frickin' clown who couldn't stay off of our radar and perhaps there's no reason to tolerate you at all.

Hagar

MooseJam wrote:

ive signed up to boards , 50 euro plus, and have received nothing but abuse from mods

Go on over to LGB I've arranged a little treat for you from one of the mods.

oscarBravo

r3nu4l wrote:

...just because I make a voluntary subscription does not mean I'm not a customer...I voluntarily pay for products I buy from shops, that makes me a customer rather than a shoplifter.

I couldn't disagree more. You don't "voluntarily" pay for products you buy from shops; you're required by (contract) law to do so. No payment, no goods.

I subscribe, and I don't consider myself a customer. I'm just giving something back, is all.

MooseJam

ecksor wrote:

Apart from advertising matchboxes and that unbearable whiff of troll on the Islam forum, yes, you're a model poster.

Or another viewpoint is that you're still a frickin' clown who couldn't stay off of our radar and perhaps there's no reason to tolerate you at all.

yes im a muppet and a big clown but i did donate 50 so im due a little bit of tollerence, im sorry about the matchbox , i was a bit tipsy is all, ill donate another 50 in the morn to make up for my mistake

aidan_walsh

MooseJam wrote:

im a muppet and a big clown but i did donate 50 so im due a little bit of tollerence

lol.

mad m

MooseJam wrote:

yes im a muppet and a big clown

I have to burst into a song now....."Its time to play the music,its time to light the lights,its time to play the music on the Muppets show tonight."...Cmon everyone....



Sorry,couldn't help myself.